Sacramento County
Biographies
JOHN F. BEDWELL
In Poinsett county,
Ark., at Crowley Ridge, John F. Bedwell
was born March 14, 1868.
His father, Samuel K., a man of good abilities and a millwright by trade, built
the first flour mill at Memphis, Tenn., and other pioneer mills of different
kinds in that vicinity. In 1871 the family moved to Fulton county, Ark., where the mechanic turned farmer and lived until April,
1908, when he died. His wife, formerly Eveline Lampkins of Tennessee, bore him six children, of whom our subject was the
youngest.
When John F. Bedwell
was eleven years of age he left home to paddle his own canoe, going to Newport, Ark., where he worked on a farm two years. Then, at the
age of thirteen, in 1881, he came to the Pacific coast and located in Los Angeles, where he found employment in a nursery at which he busied
himself until he was sixteen. After that he was a fireman in the employ
of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and as such worked on trains between Los Angeles and Bakersfield and Los
Angeles and Barstow two years and between Los Angeles and Colton one year. Then he resigned his position to go into
the real estate business, and he and his partner put on sale one of the first
tracts exploited at Pasadena. For eight years he operated successfully, buying
and selling land in large and small parcels, for himself and others; then
he disposed of his interests in Los Angeles and vicinity and went to Arizona. He carried on business in various parts of that
state until 1900, when he went to San Francisco and was for four years a salesman in a music store.
After that he was similarly employed in Sacramento two years. January 1, 1907, he opened a real estate office in Sacramento, and in 1909 John F. Fleisher became his partner in the
handling of large holdings in Sacramento, Placer and Sutter counties. Their offices are at No. 704 J street, Sacramento, and at Pleasant Grove, Sutter county,
and in their undertakings they are meeting with merited and unusual
success.
The present Mrs. Bedwell
was in maidenhood Lucy Jones, a native of Sacramento. By a former marriage Mr. Bedwell
has three children, as follows: Edna, Mrs. Melliken,
of Fresno; William Wilbur, employed on the transport Sheridan, plying
between San Francisco and Japan, and Irvin F., who is serving in the United
States Navy.
Transcribed by Sally Kaleta.
Source: Willis,
William L., History of Sacramento
County, California, Page 667.
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1913.
© 2006 Sally Kaleta.