Sacramento County
Biographies
HON. JOSEPH
M. INMAN
HON. J. M. INMAN--A California statesman who has won distinction of an enduring kind rather early in his career, is the Hon. J. M. Inman, the well-known attorney who has become the popular state senator responsible for so much sane and important legislature of the past few years. He was born at Bishop, in Inyo County, Cal., in 1875, first seeing light on the last day of the year, the son of Joseph W. Inman, who had come to California in 1852, and who the next year at Hangtown married Miss Minerva Gunter. Mr. Inman followed the occupations of other early settlers. Both parents now rest from their labors, their long and useful lives having been closed with becoming honor.
J. M. Inman attended public schools, and later studied law privately; and having been admitted to the bar in 1907, he opened an office in Sacramento in the same building in which he is still head-quartered. For a couple of years, from 1913, Mr. Inman served in the California state assembly, and in 1916 he was elected to the state senate, and in 1920 reelected. From 1913 to 1919, he was particularly active in the legislature, and introduced bills to do away with leasing lands to persons ineligible to citizenship. He organized the California Oriental Exclusion League, and became, as he is today, its president, and he was instrumental in drawing the anti-alien land bill passed this last election. Mr. Inman was chairman of the committee on commerce and navigation, and in the session of 1923 he was chairman of the committee on public utilities. In this session, among other important bills he succeeded in passing, was the foreign language school bill, which prohibits schools in California to teach a school wholly in a foreign language. In 1917 he secured the passage of the indeterminate sentence bill. During the World War he served in the 6th U.S. Battery, Field Artillery, being stationed at Camp Taylor, Ky., until after the armistice, when he was discharged. Aside from his profession, Mr. Inman is also interested in ranching, owning two fruit ranches in Sutter County, which he has improved from raw land.
Senator Inman was married, in 1906, and at Sacramento, to Miss Edith Trainor, the daughter of Frank and Katherine Trainor, and they have two children, Edith Minerva and Dorothy Frances. The senator is a member of Sacramento Post of the American Legion. He is fond of hunting and fishing, and was the first president of the Wild Goose Country Club.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With
Biographical Sketches, Page 934.
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.
© 2007 Jeanne Taylor.