Santa
Clara County
Biographies
EDWIN J. BRYANT
The milk business of Edwin J. Bryant is
not only one of the largest, but one of the longest established in the city of
Gilroy. Uninterruptedly, since its owner
came here in 1868, after sustaining severe business losses elsewhere in the
state, he has catered to an increasing trade, his name
being synonymous with reliability, courtesy, and deserved success. Notwithstanding his career has been an uphill
one, attended by reverses and discouragements, he has substantial results to
show for his pains, being a property owner in Gilroy, and variously identified
with its commercial and social interests.
His standing is attested among other things by years of association with
the foremost fraternal organizations in in the country, including the Masons,
of which he has been a member since the beginning of the Civil war. Formerly a member of the Jefferson Lodge No.
97, of Laporte Cal., he is now a member of the Keith Lodge No. 97, of Gilroy,
and of the Eastern Star. Years ago he
joined the Odd Fellows of Laporte, and is now a member of the Gilroy Lodge No.
154. He is also identified with the
Rebekahs, and the Ancient Order of United Workmen. In political affiliation he is a Republican,
but having no official inclinations, has never entered the political arena.
While Ohio was still a wilderness,
intersected by Indian trails and dotted with the peculiar architecture of the
red men, John Standish Bryant, the father of Edwin J., left is ancestral home
in Connecticut and struck out for himself toward the little understood
west He was young, strong and ambitious,
and the loneliness and uncertainty had no terrors for him. As yet he had no one but himself to look out
for, and he had infinite faith in his own and the powers of nature. Clearing a stretch of ground in Portage county, Ohio, he came to a realization of the great
agricultural opportunities by which he was surrounded, and in time had a farm
well under cultivation. About this time
he married Miss Rebecca Jackson, daughter of a pioneer and neighbor of Portage county, and with her removed to Salem, Marion County, Ill.,
where he engaged in farming and also served as sheriff of the county for three
terms. His wife dying when her son Edwin
was three years old, the family was broken up, and he went to live with his
daughter in Fremont, Ill., where he met with the serous accident which resulted
in his death. While hauling wood down a
hill the team ran away and he was violently thrown to the ground, sustain
severe internal injuries which shortly terminated his life.
After his mother’s death Edwin J. Bryant
went to live with Thomas B. Dwyer, afterward a very prominent man in municipal
affairs in Chicago., Ill., to which city he took young Edwin, giving him a
practical common school education and otherwise fitting him for the
responsibilities of life. Arriving at
the age of sixteen, young Edwin, alert for opportunity and enthusiastic over
the glowing reports of easily gained fortunes on the coast, began to work for Knight,
Gregory & White, extensive cattle raisers and shippers, and while in their
employ accompanied a band of cattle across the plains, driving them during the
summer of 1853, and encountering the usual experiences which attended such
ventures in the early days. The cattle
were sold close to the American river, near Sacramento, and soon after young
Bryant found employment in a sale stable in Sacramento. About this time he learned that one of his brothers,
Calvin Bryant, who had left home several years before, was located in
Marysville, and was employed by the California Stage Company. Edwin Bryant worked a month on a ranch and
then continued with the stage company until 1857. He then located in Laporte, where he drove a
passenger train of mules to the mines, and in the fall of 1859 located in the
desert below Los Angeles, at Cook’s Wells, twenty-five miles from Fort
Yuma. Returning to Laporte in the spring
of 1861, he bought the stable in which he had formerly been employed, and
continued running the mule train Downieville until selling out in 1864. Having been appointed postmaster of Laporte,
he served a year and a half, and then engaged in the hotel business with signal
success until a fire in 1868 put an end to his expectations in that
direction. He lost practically all that
he had in the world, and soon after observed an opening for the milk business
in Gilroy, which while not a promising or remunerative as he might desire, has
transformed him into a man of substantial financial standing. In Strawberry Valley, cal., in 1864, Mr. Bryant
married Melissa A. Barnes, a native of Massachusetts, and who died while on a
visit to her old home in the east in 1893.
No children have come to gladden the Bryant home, yet the genial owner
is comparatively happy and contented, laboring industriously every day in the year and
maintaining the high standard which he set for himself upon embarking in the
milk business. He has made many friends
since his face became a familiar one in Gilroy, and his business standing is an
enviable and honored one.
Transcribed by
Louise E. Shoemaker, October 25, 2015.
Source: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages 813-814. The Chapman
Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2015 Louise E. Shoemaker.