Santa Clara County
Biographies
JOHN JAMES PEARD
Yet another of the soldiers of the Union to find in Santa Clara county the ideal of a peaceful and happy country existence is John James Peard, a California pioneer of 1873, and the owner of a valuable little ranch of five acres on the Hamilton road. Mr. Peard has established a pleasant home for himself and wife and mother, his father, for some years a member of his household, being now deceased. No children have come to gladden the heart of the owner of the ranch, yet he and his wife, formerly Mary Dowton, a native of England, find their lives brightened by their congenial surroundings. Mr. Peard has set his land to prunes, peaches, and cherries, and has adequate improvements for their proper care and shipment. He is a progressive and increasingly successful horticulturist, having a natural liking for scientific research, especially as it throws light upon so absorbing an occupation.
Mr. Peard is a native of Genesee county, N.Y., and was born September 14, 1842. His parents, Thomas and Frances A. Peard, were born in Ireland, and upon becoming residents of this great Republic took up a farm in Genesee county, N.Y., where the father combined his trade of shoemaking with that of general farming and stock-raising. He came to the home of his son, John James, in 1883, and thus rounded out his busy career in an atmosphere of sunshine. Although his wife has reached the advanced age of eighty-two, she is able to look on the bright side of life, and to prove that old age may be made beautiful, useful, and tender. She has reared a family of five sons and two daughters.
While living on the home farm in Genesee county John James Peard secured a fair common school education, and at the age of nineteen enlisted in the Ninth New York Heavy Artillery for service in the Civil war. Eventually he was transferred to the Second New York Artillery, Sixth Army Corps as a private, and when discharged from the service in the fall of 1865, had attained to the rank of second lieutenant. He saw much of the grewsome(sic) and terrible side of warfare, participated in the majority of the famous battles, and after the cessation of hostilities returned to his simple country life with renewed appreciation of its possibilities. After arriving in California in 1873, he farmed in both Yolo and Colusa counties, becoming identified with Santa Clara in 1876, and until 1879 managing a rented farm near San Jose. He then purchased his present place on Hamilton avenue, and while cultivating his land has taken an active interest in Republican politics, education, and undertakings of the Phil. Sheridan Post, G.A.R., of San Jose. He is highly respected by his enterprising neighbors, and is cited as an example of the self-made, well made horticulturist, whom the youth of a later day would do well to emulate.
Transcribed
3-1-16 Marilyn
R. Pankey.
ญญญญSource:
History of the State of California &
Biographical Record of Coast Counties, California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A.
M., Pages 1025-1026. The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
ฉ 2016 Marilyn R.
Pankey.