Pen pictures from the garden of the world, or Santa Clara county, California, Part 112

Author: Foote, Horace S., ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 844

USA > California > Santa Clara County > Pen pictures from the garden of the world, or Santa Clara county, California > Part 112

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The children by his first wife are: George B., resid- ing in San Francisco and employed in the German

Bank; Minnie, wife of Willard Lee, in Los Gatos; and Anna, who resides at home. The children by his second wife are: Helen C., Mabel, and Julius B.

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SAIAH SHAW. Among the old pioneers of Santa Clara County may be found the gentleman whose name heads this sketch. He is a native of New Jersey, born in 1813, but was reared in New York. For a number of years he was engaged in the mercantile business in Chicago, in which place he was united in marriage to Miss Jane McDuffy, a native of Vermont. They came to California in 1852, Mr. Shaw coming by water and Mrs. Shaw crossing the plains. Such a trip in the early pioneer days was a long and tedious journey, and often attended with many trials and hardships; but by her skill and man- agement Mrs. Shaw rendered the trip a pleasant one. In 1853 they settled in Santa Clara Valley, where Mr. Shaw purchased 350 acres of land. He has since sold off all except 183 acres, which he has in apricots, prunes, and peaches, having over 15,000 trees in all. He took the first premium given in the county on exhibit of cheese.

Mr. and Mrs. Shaw have a family of seven children four boys and three girls. Two of the daughters are married, and the youngest, Miss Nettie, Principal of the Eagle District School, is at home. The four sons, Celia, John M., Lincoln, and Joseph, are all interested on the islands, and spend most of their time at Hono- lulu. The family are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Mr. Shaw is politically a Repub- lican.

OHN B. BEAUMONT. One of the thoroughly self-made men of Santa Clara County is John B. Beaumont, who has been for the past twenty- eight years engaged and interested in the manufact- ure and sale of lumber in Chicago and Michigan. He is now interested, with his son, J. M. Beaumont, in the drug business, in San Jose, besides which he is engaged in horticulture, owning, and taking an es- pecial pride in, two model fruit farms, one of ten acres, on the Stevens Creek road, the other, of five and one- half acres, on Saratoga Avenue. On the Saratoga Avenue place he has planted seventy-six pear, and six hundred and thirty prune trees, which are in full

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bearing. On the Stevens Creek road place are a few almonds, walnuts, figs, and olives, besides three hun- dred peach trees in full bearing, one hundred and fourteen Bigarreau cherry trees, four hundred apricot trees, five hundred vines of table grapes, ninety-five egg plums, and four hundred and twelve prune trees, just coming into bearing. Mr. Beaumont's horticultural ventures, it will be seen, have passed beyond the ex- perimental stage into that of assured success.

Mr. Beaumont was born in Middletown, Connecti- cut, in 1816. His father was born in 1766, in En- gland, coming to America at a very early age, and removing from Canton, Massachusetts, to Connecti- cut toward the close of the last century. Mr. Beau- mont, Sr., built, in 1808, a cotton and woolen factory at Middletown, Connecticut, continuing in that busi- ness all his life. He died there in 1865. His brother, James Beaumont, with whom he came to America, built the first cotton and woolen factory in America, located at Canton, Massachusetts, which he operated during his life-time, dying at Canton at the age of ninety years. James Beaumont was also the inventor of the glazed cotton wadding now so generally in use. The mother of J. B. Beaumont was Miss Bethsheba Hubbard, a daughter of Decico (?) Jeremiah Hubbard, of Middletown, Connecticut, a family descended from the original Puritan stock of New England. She died at the age of eighty-eight years, and is buried by the side of her husband, in Middletown.

J. B. Beaumont attended the usual local schools until his eighteenth year, when he went to Philadel- phia, there introducing, with a company, the mica- ceous brown sandstone of Connecticut. In 1839 he was married to Miss Kesiah Roberts, a native of Phil- adelphia, and removed immediately to the West, set- tling in Alton, Illinois. Of this union there were born two children, Joseph M., now in the drug busi- ness in San Jose, and Mary E., who married Edward R. Earle, of Sterling, Illinois, now deceased, and who resides with her parents in San Jose.

Mr. Beaumont was a member of the second lodge of Odd Fellows organized in Illinois, and of Wildey Encampment, of the same order, the oldest in Illi- nois. He is Republican in politics and believes in the fullest protection of American industries. He has a beautiful home at the corner of Second and Market Streets, San Jose, where he will probably pass the evening of his life surrounded by all the blessings which the word " home " suggests.

Mr. Beaumont never received a dollar of financial

aid from any source whatever, but accumulated his property and wealth by personal energy and enter- prise.

M. BEAUMONT. This gentleman commenced business in San Jose, at Nos. 13 and 15 West Santa Clara Street, Knox Block, November 1I, 1885, having bought the drug store of B. J. Rhodes & Co., who established the business. Mr. Beaumont was born in Alton, Illinois, in 1839, his parents, J. B. and K. E. (Roberts) Beaumont, having removed from Philadelphia to Illinois in 1832, and being among the pioneers of Illinois. At that time Alton was perhaps the largest town on the Mississippi River above New Orleans. Letters for St. Louis came addressed to St. Louis, "near Alton, Illinois." Mr. Beaumont re- mained at Alton until his twenty-first year, attending the public schools of that town, finally graduating at a private boarding-school at Farmingham, Massachu- setts. He afterward attended a mercantile college at St. Louis, Missouri, graduating in 1857. He was for three years book-keeper for the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company, at St. Louis, after which he went into the lumber business with his father, in 1863, in Chicago, remaining four years; later he was in the same business at Big Rapids, Michigan, until 1885. He came to California in August of 1885, and in the following November bought the drug-store which he now owns.

Mr. Beaumont has been associated with his father, J. B. Beaumont, since 1863, first in the lumber, and later in the drug business. Theirs is the leading drug- store in San Jose, and under the thorough and ener- getic management of its present proprietors is likely to remain at the front, its location, near one of the principal business corners of this growing city, being a most fortunate one.

IRAM C. MORRELL was born in Waterville, Kennebec County, Maine, April 25, 1835. His parents, Ephraim and Achsa (Clifford) Morrell, were both natives of Maine, and are still living in Waterville. They had a family of eight children, six of whom are living, four sons and two daughters. Hiram was the fifth child. He was raised in Water- ville, and educated in the High School there. He lived on his father's farm till fifteen years old. He

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then went into a store and clerked about a year and a half, when he went into a machine shop, but after- ward went back into the store. In 1854 he came to California and mined for about a year on the north fork of the American River, in Placer County, and was interested in mines there for three or four years after that. He then went into the saw-mills of that county and sawed sugar-pine lumber for about three years. From there he went to Humboldt Bay, where he ran an engine in a saw-mill for one winter. Next he came to Santa Clara County in 1860, and ran a saw-mill for Howe & Welden, where the Forest House now stands, near Alma; was there one season, when he went into the employ of McMurtry & Mc- Millin in the same capacity; was with them four years, on the Los Gatos Creek. In April, 1867, he bought his present place and moved there, where he has since resided. Mr. Morrell has been engaged in lumbering for a great many years. He now has timber land and a saw-mill in Santa Cruz County, sawing lumber for Santa Clara County.

He was married, November 15, 1864, to Clarissa R. Burrell, daughter of Lyman J. Burrell, deceased. They have five children: Lizzie M., Clifford H., Jesse B., Minnie C., and Albert E. His ranch contains 250 acres, of which 100 acres are set to fruit, fifty being in fruit and fifty in vines, all in good bearing condition. He has some apple trees thirty years old; has thirty acres in grain, and the rest is timber and pasture land. Mr. Morrell has been a member of Santa Clara Lodge, No. 52, I. O. O. F., for twenty years.

RTHUR C. PENNIMAN, the subject of this sketch, who came to California in 1852, was born in Jefferson County, New York, in 1828. His father, Eli P. Penniman, was born in Keene, New Hampshire, in 1800, and when about twenty years old went to New York State. He owned a woolen cloth factory in Lockport, New York, which he sold out and went to Illinois, in 1842, and bought a section of land from the United States Government · within thirty miles of Chicago, in Lake County, near where Libertyville now stands. He died there in 1884. His mother, Margaret (Poor) Penniman, is a native of Jefferson County, New York. His father and mother were married in 1823, and to them were born five children. Hiram P., the eldest, was born in 1824, and in 1850 came to California, and is now living in Oakland; Louis E. was born in 1826 and

died in Libertyville, Illinois; the next child is the subject of our sketch; the fourth child was a daugh- ter, Mary Jane, born in Jefferson County, New York, in 1830, and is now Mrs. Ralph Bagg, of Afton, Iowa; the youngest child, Harriet J., was born in Jefferson County also, in 1832. In 1853 she and her husband, George S. Pottwin, came to California. She died in 1873, and her husband in 1886.

Mr. Penniman attended the public schools and worked on his father's farm until he attained the age of twenty-four years, when he bought a team of four horses and a light two-horse wagon, and, leaving the parental roof, drove to Chicago, where, in company with Squire Lee, of Libertyville, Illinois, and his son, Austin Lee, he started to Council Bluffs, Iowa, to which place they drove, a distance of 700 miles, in fifteen days! On the last day of July of that year they drove into Placerville (having driven down from Carson, Nevada, over the old Hangtown road), and ate a good old-fashioned "vegetable dinner." They brought all of their horses through, which they sold for $400 each. They were just fifty-one days cross- ing the plains from the Missouri River. Mr. Penni- man, in partnership with his brother Hiram, who had come to California in 1850, planted a vegetable garden of four acres at Sonora, on Mormon Creek, Tuolumne County. They sold cabbage at twenty-five cents a p und; raised one weighing thirty-eight pounds! sold ater-melons at $3.00 each, and eggs at $3.00 a dozen. He put a hundred acres in barley, which he sold for ten cents a pound in bundles, straw and all. The spot right where their garden stood was afterward prospected for gold, and parties had earned as high as an ounce a day. He remained on this ranch a year, then went to Contra Costa County, and took up a ranch of 160 acres, right back of Martinez, where he remained for twenty years; then he sold out to his brother Hiram, and moved into Martinez, where he kept a stable for two years, after which he came to this county, and says he has enjoyed life more than in any other part of California.

Mr. Penniman was married, in 1856, to Miss Helen S. Huff, who was born near Cleveland, Ohio, a daugh- ter of Alvin Huff, who died in Indiana when she was a child. Four children have blessed this marriage: The eldest, George Arthur, was born in 1857, and married, December, 1887, Miss Effie Bardsley, of Oak- land, California. He is now a member of the firm of Ingram & Co., successors to A. C. Litcomb & Co., wholesale jewelers, 24 Post Street, San Francisco. The second child, Helen S., is a graduate of the San

S. It. Borings

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Jose High School, and also attended the State Normal School. She still remains under the parental roof. Luther E., born in 1870, is also a graduate of the High School of San Jose, and is now attending busi- ness college. Edwin R., who was born in the centen- nial year of 1876, is attending school at the Willows.

Mr. Penniman's brother, Louis E., raised a company of volunteer soldiers during the late war, and, though unable to accompany them himself, owing to his busi- ness demanding his attention, he presented each of them with $50 to help out the cause.

Mr. Penniman is a member of the Masonic fra- ternity, and is a Democrat in politics, and believes in the protection of American industries, especially in the protection of the fruit interests of California.

AMUEL W. BORING. American biography has always been considered to be of the greatest interest, much outranking in this regard the same study in any other land. The cause of this is the large proportion of self-made men included in our population --- men who have plucked the flower of suc- cess from the thorn of difficulty and adverse circum- stances.

Mayor Boring, the subject of this sketch, illus- trates this fact. He was born in Jonesboro, Tennes- see, in 1824, his parents being Absalom and Elizabeth (Ruhle) Boring. His father was a native of Mary- land, who emigrated to Tennessee with his parents in 1810. His mother was a native of Pennsylvania, her parents having come from Germany to that State in early days, removing thence to Tennessee. Mr. Boring attended the public schools in Jonesboro up to the age of twelve years, when his parents removed to. Rushville, Illinois. He there attended school, and later worked at the saddlery business until 1846. In that year he enlisted in Dunlap's company of the First Illinois Cavalry, for the Mexican War. He went to Mexico, and served during the war on the line of the Rio Grande, under General Taylor, engaged principally in the scouting service. The scouting service was more active and dangerous than any other branch, and although such a young man, Mr. Boring's ability was at once recognized, and he was elected Orderly Sergeant of his company, serving with dis- tinction. In the hazardous scouting work he saw much service of both responsibility and peril, as it is a service calling for great risks and hardships, making it at once laborious and all-important.

At the close of the war he returned to Rushville, remaining during the winter of 1848-49 engaged principally in making up a train for the trip across the plains, which was made in 1849, the train starting from Rushville on the twenty-eighth of March and arriving in Placerville-then called Hangtown-on the tenth of September. The whole trip from Rush- ville, Illinois, to Placerville was made by ox teams, the teams being brought through safely, with the exception of one ox, which was killed on the trip. Mr. Boring was in command of the trains, his expe- rience in the Mexican War enabling him to make the journey with less loss than was suffered by most of the emigrants. In this train were 15 wagons and 114 oxen, only 5 oxen of which were lost on the trip, one of them being stolen by Indians.

Mr. Boring remained in Placerville, and mined during the winter, after which he removed to Nevada City, mining there for two years. In 1852 he was appointed Under-Sheriff, serving for two years. In the fall of 1855 he was elected to the Legislature for the session of 1856. In the fall of 1856 he was elected Sheriff of Nevada County, holding that position until 1859. He then engaged in the mercantile business in Nevada City until 1864, when he removed to San Francisco, and from thence, in 1866, to San Jose, where he has since remained. He was sent to San Jose as agent for an express company. On the fourth of March, 1870, he was appointed Under-Sheriff of Santa Clara County, holding that position for four years, with Nick Harris, Sheriff. In 1874 he took the position of Secretary of the San Jose Water Com- . pany, remaining with the company until 1878. He then engaged in the real-estate and insurance busi- ness, in which he has been interested since that time. In 1878 he was elected to the State Senate, filling a vacancy, which expired in 1879. Mr. Boring is a stockholder in, and was one of the organizers of, the Paul O. Burns Wine Company, and was its first sec- retary. In 1881 he became a resident of El Paso, Texas, remaining there for four and a half years, and engaging in real-estate speculations, which were quite successful, from the fact that he had preceded the railroad development which took place there later. Mr. Boring has made but one visit to his paternal home, in Rushville, Illinois, since 1849. This was in 1880, when he accompanied the California Com- mandery of Knights Templar to the Triennial Con- clave at Chicago. At that time he visited his parents' graves near Rushville.

In 1857 Mr. Boring was married, in Nevada City,

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to Miss Susan M. Reed, a native of Wisconsin, who crossed the plains in 1852, with her stepfather, Will- iam Sublette, and her mother, Maria L. Sublette.

Mr. Boring is now the Mayor of the city of San Jose, being elected in 1888 on the Democratic ticket. He owes his election, however, not to party tactics but to his great personal popularity, and to the confi- dence felt by every citizen in his unflinching honesty and his great capacity as a business man. In all matters of a public and general interest, Mr. Boring has always shown himself a large-hearted, public- spirited and able upholder of the good of the people. His life has been an unusually active and laborious one, characterized throughout by the singular energy so typical a product of the West, but always tem- pered by a scrupulous care for the rights of others and a zealous desire to promote their good. In his personal bearing he exemplifies one's idea of the gen- tleman, a little lacking perhaps in the culture and polish of the schools, but possessing instead what is infinitely better, a good heart enshrined in a manly breast speaking through a large humanity and a wide experience.

Mr. Boring is a member of San Jose Lodge, No. 10, F. & A. M .; of Howard Chapter, No. 14, and San Jose Commandery, No. 10, Knights Templar, being a charter member of this latter lodge; and is also a Free Mason of the thirty-second degree of the Scot- tish Rite. He is a member of the prominent real- estate firm of Potts, Boring & Walthall, of San Jose, and in business as well as social circles holds a leading position. He is also the personal owner of consider- able real estate in San Jose and the valley, besides holding stock in various public enterprises.

ILLIAM L. PEARCE, son of Francis and Jane (Waters) Pearce, was born twenty-five miles east of Land's End, England, January 26, 1819. His father died at the age of fifty-four, and his mother at the age of ninety-four. They had twelve children, of whom eleven grew to maturity-seven sons and four daughters-of whom three sons and two daughters are now living. William is the eldest of the living children, and lived with his parents until twenty-three years of age. April 4, 1843, he was married to Elizabeth Hicks. For some time before and after his marriage he worked in the mines of Ballswiden, in the Parish of St. Just, about six miles

from Land's End. Leaving Penzance September 4, 1848, and landing in New York about October 15, 1848, he worked in the various mines in the East; was in Bristol, Connecticut, copper mines three years and nine months. His wife died in England, in 1853, five years after he left that country. She left four children, and after her death Mr. Pearce sent for them. His son William was accidentally killed in Mexico, in 1885, by firing at a target. Of the other children, Francis and John reside in Los Angeles, and Eliza- beth Dunstone resides at the New Almaden mines. Mr. Pearce went to Wisconsin in 1856, and located at Blue Mounds, and bought a farm; was married there, October 25, 1856, to Louisa Dunstone, a sister of John Dunstone, who married Mr. Pearce's daughter Elizabeth. Mr. Pearce worked the farm until 1860, when he came to California, and was at once em- ployed at the Almaden mines, where he blasted rocks and timbered, and did other work in the mines for about fifteen years. During this time he spent one season on Williams Creek, in British Columbia, work- ing in the gold mines there. In 1869 he bought a ranch at Los Gatos, and came here to live in 1875. He sold his ranch in 1882, and in January, 1884, went into the grocery business in Los Gatos, which he still follows.

Mr. and Mrs. Pearce have had six children, named James H., Josiah, Bartholomew (deceased), Louisa, Bartholomew, and Franklin.

ILLIAM L. NORTHERN. To say that a man lives in the Willows District has come nowadays to mean almost that a man has grown wealthy in fruit-raising. Those who have settled in that fertile section have shown them- selves sagacious, and are now reaping a rich reward for their discernment. Mr. William L. Northern came to California in 1859, and, after a residence here of seven years, decided to settle in the Willows. In 1868 be purchased six acres of land, where his homestead now stands. Four years later he set this out to fruit- trees, including apples, plums, and prunes. From time to time he has added to his possessions until now he owns twenty-four acres of land, all set out in fruit, sixteen acres being in yellow Newtown pippins, and eight acres in prunes. As yet only the apple crop is in bearing. As an instance of the returns afforded by fruit in the Willows, it may be stated that Mr. Northern received as high as $3,200 one season

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for the apple crop sold upon the trees, and his average income therefrom varies from $2,500 to $3,000 per year. The codling moth, which has been such a pest to fruit-growers, is effectively controlled by Mr. North- ern, so that last year the apples were in much better condition than before. He kept six men busy a good part of the season picking off the fruit that was at- tacked. This was dumped into a large kettle, thor- oughly cooked, and fed to the hogs, thus effectually killing the worms. This did not in the least affect the quantity of the fruit on the trees, as it simply served the purpose of properly thinning it, and even then it has sometimes seemed still to leave the fruit too thick.

Mr. Northern was born February 15, 1836, in Wilkes County, North Carolina. When about nine years of age he removed to Tennessee, where he re- mained until twenty-one years old. This time was spent at Newmarket, which is situated some twenty- five miles east of Knoxville, in Eastern Tennessee, on a farm with parents. In 1857 he emigrated to Mis- souri, and in 1859 came to California. He went at once to the mines, locating at Inskip, about thirty miles from Oroville, in Butte County, and engaging in placer mining, with the usual luck of miners, sometimes rich and sometimes poor, generally poor. He saw, however, that there was nothing permanently

profitable in mining, and in 1866 came to Santa Clara County, where he worked at the carpenter trade until he married and settled down to farming. His parents were Thomas and Lucinda (Holt) Northern, natives of North Carolina, who removed to Tennessee in 1845. The subject of this sketch had nine brothers and sisters. Three of his brothers did honorable serv- ice in the war for the preservation of the Union: Thomas S., who was First Lieutenant in the First Regiment of East Tennessee Cavalry ; James M., also a soldier of the Union army, who died in hospital from wounds received in the battle of Murfreesboro; Alfred F., also a soldier in an infantry regiment of the Union army under General Thomas, throughout his campaigns in Tennessee. Joseph H., who lived in Newmarket, was killed soon after the war under dis- tressing circumstances. A stranger whom he was hospitably entertaining overnight robbed and mur- dered him!

Mr. Northern was married at San Jose, December 24, 1868, to Miss Lizzie H. Easley. Their children are: Lulu Maud, born March 2, 1870, who graduated at the Willows Grammar School, and is now attending the Garden City Commercial College; Pleasant M.,

born February 13, 1872, graduated at the Willows Grammar School, and is about to attend the Commer- cial College; and Cornelia May, born November 20, 1876, died June 26, 1881.

Mr. Northern is a member in good standing of Friendship Lodge, No. 210, Masonic, of San Jose, of Commandery No. 10, Knights Templar, of San Jose, and of Howard Chapter, No. 10, Royal Arch Masons, also of Garden City Lodge, No. 142, I. O. O. F., of San Jose. Mr. Northern is a consistent Democrat, strongly in favor of the protection of American indus- tries and the fruit interests of California, in so far as this protection cannot be used as a basis for monopoly,

BALMER C. PERKINS was born in Cato (now Ira), Cayuga County, New York, August 13, 1822. His father, Moses Perkins, was a native of Saratoga Springs, New York. Removed with his family to Logan, Michigan, in 1831, about six years before it became a State. The place where he located is now in Lenawee County, of which Adrian is the county seat. He located on a farm of 193 acres four miles west of town. The subject of this sketch lived in Michigan until 1852, when he came overland to California. He was six months less six days making the trip. He at once went into the mines and opened a store at Diamond Springs, and remained there until 1855, when he sold out and went to Coon Hill and bought a claim with the intention of working it, and built a house, but hired a man to work the claim. He found a good many difficulties in this task. About this time, in company with others, he built a flour mill on Weber Creek, between Diamond Springs and Placerville, called the "Mountain Mills," and supplied the surrounding country with flour. In 1862 he sold his interest in the mill and went back to Michi- gan, where in February, 1864, he bought a com- bined flour and saw mill with his cousin, Wilson Per- kins. The mill was run by water, and was situated two miles south of the town of Hudson. Selling out the next year he removed to Portland, Ionia County, and went into the hardware business with H. G. Ste- phens, and continued in the business for six years un- der the firm name of Stephens & Perkins, when he sold out to Stephens and bought a stock of goods, groceries, and crockery, and opened a store and ran it a year. Then he sold out and moved back to Hud- son, where his father lived, and bought in the store

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Pen pictures from the garden of the world, or Santa Clara county, California, Part 112

Author: Foote, Horace S., ed Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 844

Author: Foote, Horace S., ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 844