JAMES REID

Sacramento County

Biographies

JAMES REID

JAMES REID, a pioneer, was born in Perth, about forty miles north of Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 10th day of September, 1806; his parents being Peter and Jean (Jack) Reid, the father a cattle dealer, or drover, of Perth. The subject of this sketch was the oldest one of a family of eleven children, and when fourteen years old was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and served four years learning that trade. When he was twenty-two years old he decided to go, with his brother-in-law, who was preparing to emigrate to America. They set sail from Dundee in the brig Majesty, for New York, and after a voyage of six weeks’ duration, landed safely in that city in August, 1829. He immediately obtained work at his trade, but found that making shoes in New York was very different from making brogans in Scotland. In 1832 (known all over the East as the great cholera year), he was working in a shop on Eighth avenue, and to escape the dread disease went hastily to Connecticut. When the frosts of the fall had allayed the danger he returned, and established a shop on Eighth avenue and Nineteenth street. When the excitement consequent upon the gold discovery in California was at its height, he made one of a party of forty who purchased the brig John Anderson, fitted her out with a cargo of mining implements, (which were found to be of no earthly use when they arrived), a run of mill-stones, etc., and started merrily to make their fortunes in the land of gold. Alas, for human hopes and expectations! They made the voyage around the Horn in five and half months; the captain died, and storms beset their pathway, both external and internal, for discontent prevailed among both passengers and crew; and when they arrived off the brig at Sacramento, he was only too glad to realize $200, as his share of the investment of many hundreds of dollars. He had had the forethought to bring a stock of shoes and brandy; these he sold and in this way gained a start. He then opened a tin store, a leading industry in mining days when wash-pans costing “three bits” would sell for $6, and screens costing 30 cents would readily sell for $5 “in dust.” He afterward started a bath-house near the bridge, and later on kept a saloon on the present site of the water-works building. He continued in the saloon business till 1856; in the meantime he had acquired property, which was invested in a ranch on the opposite side of the American River, and to this ranch he moved his family in the fall of that year, 1856. The floods of 1867-’68 absolutely destroyed his property, house, buildings, stock, everything, and he went into the railroad shops, where he worked in the boiler department for thirteen years. Mr. Reid was married in Perth, Scotland, in 1828, to Margaret McKewen. They have three daughters living. Their only son died at the age of fifteen years. Mrs. Reid died in April, 1889.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. Page 649. Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.