San Francisco County
Rhodes Borden
Rhodes Borden, attorney at law, Oakland, is the eldest son of Dr. Joseph Borden and Juliet Elizabeth (Rhodes) Borden. He is a native of Alabama, and comes of Revolutionary stock on both sides. His father, Dr. Joseph Borden, was born in Carteret county, North Carolina, in 1806, and moved to Alabama in 1832. Said Joseph Borden was the son of Joseph Borden Sr., and Esther (Wallace) Borden; and Joseph Borden Sr., was the son of William Borden, who represented Carteret county in the Provincial Congress which met at Halifax in 1776, and formed the first constitution of the State of North Carolina. Ben. Borden, a historic personage of Virginia, to whom the Continental Congress gave authority to issue bills of credit, was a kinsman of said William Borden, the above political fact was the origin of the expression, “as good as Ben. Borden’s bill.”
Both William and Joseph Sr., were large land and ship owners. They owned Bogues’ Banks (a corruption of Borden’s Banks), where Fort Macon now stands, on the eastern coast of North Carolina; and they suffered large losses both by British and French spoliation. The name Borden was originally “Bourdon” in Normandy, whence the family came; but became changed when transplanted to English soil. Simon Bourdon went to England with William the Conqueror in 1066 and obtained lands in Kent—his coat of arms being a lion rampant, holding a mace.
The family remained in England until the civil wars of the Stuarts, when three brothers emigrated to the American colonies, settling first in Rhode Island. One of the name (John) was a companion of Roger Williams in his retreat among the Indians, and was by them called “honest John”. One branch of the family went South and settled in Virginia and North Carolina; the other remained in New Jersey and that vicinity. Our subject’s father (Joseph) graduated as a physician in New York State, at the State Medical Institute of Herkimer, and afterwards in the Medical College of Pennsylvania. He practiced his profession in Alabama, where the best years of his life were spent, and died at nearly seventy years of age, in Fresno county, California. His brothers were: William Hull, a graduate of West Point; Benjamin, Thomas, David and Isaac Pennington, planters in North Carolina, and afterwards in Alabama; and James Wallace, a judge on the Federal bench in Indiana for many years. His only sister was Mary Wallace, the wife of Israel Sheldon, of New York, a retired capitalist and millionaire. All the brothers lived to old age except Thomas, who died in middle life.
The mother of our subject, Juliet Elizabeth (Rhodes) Borden, who is still living, is a daughter of James Rhodes, of Wayne county, North Carolina, in which county she was born. In 1848 she was married in Sumter county, Alabama, to Dr. Joseph Borden, the father of our subject. Her father, James Rhodes, was a man of prominence and wealth, both in North Carolina and in Alabama, to which State he subsequently removed, and where he died in 1886, at the age of seventy-nine.
Her grand-father, General James Rhodes, was also a citizen of North Carolina; he represented his district (Wayne) in the State Senate for many years; was a General of the State troops, and was ordered into the field when war was declared against France in 1797, and Washington was made Commander-in-Chief. He was kinsman of W.R. King, and the friend and contemporary of Judge William Gaston. He married Anna Blackledge Bass (the only child of Dr. Andrew Bass, a prominent patriot of the Revolution), and died about 1810, when not yet forty years of age.
The father of General James Rhodes served in the Revolution as a Lieutenant-Colonel of the State troops; was on the State Committee of Safety from the Wilmington district, and represented his county in the Provincial Congress which met at Halifax in 1776, and formed the first constitution of North Carolina. Dr. Andrew Bass, above mentioned, was also a delegate to this Congress, which marked one of the most important epochs in the history of the State.
The children of the marriage between Dr. Joseph Borden and Juliet Elizabeth (Rhodes) Borden are four sons and one daughter, to wit: Rhodes Borden, our subject; Nathan Lane Borden, a farmer in Fresno county, California, having one son (Rhodes); Sheldon Borden, an attorney at law in Los Angeles, California, having two sons (Cecil Alexander and Harry Innes); Ivey Lewis Borden, superintendent of Alameda Water Works; and Anna Helen Borden.
The immediate family of our subject came to California in 1868, settling in Fresno county in the Alabama settlement, near Borden. The colony consisted of about twenty families, and it acquired a large area of the richest and levelest land in the great valley of the San Joaquin.
Rhodes Borden’s early education was received at Greene Springs school, in Greene county, Alabama, a special school of high reputation. Subsequently he pursued a collegiate course at the University of Kentucky, at Lexington, Kentucky, until 1869, when he came to California and conducted the farm in Fresno county until 1881. Next he came to San Francisco and pursued the study of law in the Hastings College of Law, and in the office of Garber, Thornton & Bishop, for three years; and received his diploma in the law department of the University of California in 1884. He has since been engaged in the practice of his profession in Oakland and San Francisco.
Transcribed
by David Rugeroni.
Source: "The
Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 2, Page 225 - 226, Lewis
Publishing Co, 1892.
©
2005 David Rugeroni.