Santa Clara County
Biographies
JAMES FLETCHER PHEGLEY
A superior education, keen powers of observation, perseverance, and high ideals as to the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, have gained for J. F. Phegley a deservedly prominent place among the residents of Gilroy and vicinity. Acquiring his competence through the laborious occupation of stock-raising and farming, and investing the same with the dignity of thoroughness and scientific research, he has at the same time represented the best class of Democratic politicians, sustaining also fraternal membership, and exerting an influence as steward and trustee of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, of Gilroy. From 1887 until 1891 he served as supervisor of Santa Clara county, and for the long period of eighteen years was a school trustee of Old Gilroy. For many years he has been one of the chief sustainers of Lodge No. 154, I. O. O. F., and has passed through all of the chairs.
Of German descent on the paternal side, Mr. Phegley was born on a farm in New Madrid county, Mo., November 7, 1838, his father, David, being a native of Indiana, and his mother, Nancy (Morgan) Phegley, was near Louisville, Ky. David Phegley had the right sort of grit and determination in his youth, and when sixteen years old left home and became a steamboat hand on the Mississippi river. For several years he followed the strange life of a waterman of that time, but finally invested his earnings in Missouri farm land in New Madrid county, establishing a home in the then practical wilderness. An incentive to zealous labor was the young wife he had met and married at the outset of his farming career, and who bore him but one child, the present retired stock-raiser of Old Gilroy. The success of the father, and the perseverance of the son, enabled the latter to leave home and acquire an excellent education at the Arcadia College, in Iron county, Mo., from which he was duly graduated from the English course in the spring of 1857. Returning to the home farm, he assisted his father with its management, and in September, 1860, was united in marriage with Mary C. Hancock, who was born in 1842. She was a daughter of George W. Hancock and Margaret McMahon, the later a native of Kentucky, whose grandfather McMahon fought in the war of 1812, and was with General Jackson at New Orleans. The father, George W. Hancock, was a cousin of General Hancock, and dates to the old signer of the Declaration of Independence. The young people settled on a nearby farm in New Madrid county, and ten years later, in 1870, came to California and lived in San Jose for a few months. In the meantime Mr. Phegley looked around for available property, finally purchasing a farm eighteen miles south of San Jose near Madrone, where he engaged in general farming until 1875. He then removed to Gilroy to educate his children, remaining there until September 3, 1883, when he came to his present home of seventeen acres at Old Gilroy. In the meantime he uninterruptedly continued stock-raising near Hot Springs, this county, until a few months ago. Since selling out the farm he has devoted his energies to the improvement of his well appointed home property. The five children born to Mr. and Mrs. Phegley are: Mrs. Stella Meeds, of San Jose; William M., of Gilroy, Cal.; Mrs. Annie M. Naylor, of Gilroy; David F., living at home, and Mrs. Nora May Kunts, of San Francisco. A lesson in moderation, industry, and morality is furnished in the life of Mr. Phegley, and it is to men such as he that communities owe their fundamental strength.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
ญญญญSource: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Page 955. The Chapman Publishing
Co., Chicago, 1904.
ฉ 2016 Joyce Rugeroni.