Sacramento County
Biographies
JAMES H. HAMILTON
JAMES H. HAMILTON, a rancher of Sutter
Township, was born May 9, 1832, in Kentucky,
and is the son of James and Sarah (Lewis) Hamilton, natives also of Kentucky. The
grandfather of James H., also named James, was a native of Scotland,
came to America
before the Revolutionary War, in which he served as a soldier. In his
family were three children: William D., Mary A., wife of Boone McDonald, and
they resided in Kentucky until
their death, and James. In the family of the father of the subject of this
sketch were thirteen children, six sons and seven daughters. The sons
were: William, John, Andrew, McCrager, Matthew and
James H. The latter was brought up on a farm in Kentucky until he was
seventeen years of age, when he learned the carpenter’s trade, and followed it
some three years in Kentucky and eleven years in Callaway County, Missouri; he
and his wife and one child, in 1864, came to California overland, with mule teams, consuming four and a half months’
time. Going direct to the Cosumnes
River he commenced farming for
himself, and was engaged in that pursuit two years. He then tried his hand
at gold-mining, and found that, after a six-months
trial, it took two dollars to make one. Quitting that he
went to Sebastopol, in Sacramento County, and purchased land from the State, commenced stock-raising, and
continued that business until 1881, with marked success. In that
year he sold out and bought his present property of 120 acres, five miles south
of Sacramento and one mile east of the Freeport
road. This land is specially adapted to fruit. Four acres are in
strawberries and five acres in choice varieties of peach, plum, French prunes,
Hungarian prunes, silver prunes, apricots, apples, Bartlett
pears, nectarines, almonds, persimmons, English and black walnuts, and some of
the finest grafted orange trees in this part of the country. Mr. and Mrs.
Hamilton have made one visit to his old home in Kentucky,
and to his mother, who is still living in St. Charles,
Missouri, at the age of ninety-one
years. After making that visit he was glad that he had a home in California,
to which he might return. Mr. Hamilton has been a member of Callaway
Lodge, No. 105, I. O. O. F.; is now a member of Sacramento Lodge, No. 2, of the
same order, and also of Sacramento Grange, No. 12. In 1856 he married Miss
Rebecca La Rue, a native of Virginia,
born November 11, 1834, and a daughter of Jacob and Elizabeth La Rue, both
deceased; mother died in 1867. Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton have two children:
the daughter, Annie E., born in Callaway County, Missouri,
June 15, 1861, is the wife of H. W. Foster; and the son, George L., born
November 13, 1871, is now attending the Sacramento
Business College.
Transcribed 9-14-07 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated
History of Sacramento County, California. Pages 639-640.
Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Marilyn R. Pankey.