Butte County
Biographies
JAMES FRANKLIN MOREHEAD
JAMES FRANKLIN MOREHEAD.--A native son
who, as a successful financier and the enterprising president of the People’s
Savings and Commercial Bank, and also as director in the First National Bank of
Chico, has done much to sustain the enviable reputation of California for sound
banking methods, is James Franklin Morehead, a son of James J. Morehead, who
was born in West Virginia. At the early
age of sixteen the father crossed the plains as one of an ox-team party, and in
1852 came to Butte County and Chico. At
that time the country was covered with timber, and he settled along the river
and engaged in the cattle business.
After a while he was superintendent of the Parrott Ranch, but in 1870 he
bought the home place, the Rancho de Farwell, comprising seven hundred
sixty-three acres adjoining Chico. He
engaged in grain and stock-raising, cleared the land of timber, and improved
the farm, bought more land adjoining, and finally had eleven hundred fifty-four
acres in one block west of Chico. He
also owned lands in Tehama and Colusa Counties, which he rented out to other
people, and he owned some town property at the corner of Fourth Street and
Broadway, on which, after his death, the Morehead two-and-three-story building
was completed. On February 5, 1885, he
died in his fifty-seventh year, widely respected and mourned by many a pioneer
who could look back to Chico as a settlement consisting largely of its adobe
post office. He was a member of the Odd
Fellows and was an active and prominent Republican.
Mrs. James
J. Morehead was Miss Ardenia A. Boydstun, a native of Little Rock, Ark. who
crossed the plains with her parents to California in the fifties, and settled
with them near Dayton, in Butte County.
She is the mother of three children, two of whom are still living: Mrs. O’Conner, of Chico, and James Franklin,
the subject of our sketch.
Born on the
Parrott Grant, February 13, 1870, James Franklin Morehead was brought up on the
home farm and educated at the public schools of his district, as well as the
Hopkins Academy, Oakland, from which he graduated in1889. He then attended Heald’s Business College in
San Francisco and graduated in 1891, after which he returned to the ranch to
help his mother. His next venture was in
the canning business with the Chico Canning Company, where he was assistant
manager in the office, but in three years he sold out to the Fruit Canners’
Association and went back to farming.
He was one
of the organizers of the First National Bank of Chico, being an original
stockholder and one of the first board of directors, and with the bank he
continued as a director. In 1914, he was
one of the organizers of the People’s Savings and Commercial Bank, and from the
first was president of that enterprising institution. He was also one of the organizers of the
Butte Investment Company, being both a director and its treasurer. He built the Broadway Theater and the Park
Garage.
Mr.
Morehead was married, at Oakland, the Miss Margaret Cabaniss, who was born at
Jackson, Miss., and is a graduate of the high school there and a Graduate Nurse
of Merritt Hospital, Oakland. One son,
James Cabaniss, has blessed their union, and he resides with his family at
their attractive home on First Avenue, in Chico Vecino.
A prominent
Republican and an influential leader in national political interests here, Mr.
Morehead is also prominent in Chico Lodge, No. 423, B. P. O. Elks, and in Chico
Parlor, No. 21, N. S. G. W., in which he is Past President.
Transcribed by Priscilla Delventhal.
Source:
"History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 591-592, Historic Record Co, Los
Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Priscilla Delventhal.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies