JOSEPH LEDLIE MOODY

 

 

 

Joseph Ledlie MOODY  was one of the California pioneers of 1849, he having come to this state as a youth of twenty years and having served eight years as superintendent of bonded warehouses in this state. After retiring from this Government office he became the owner of productive coal mines in California, in the Bellingham Bay district. He initiated his activities in connection with this line of industrial enterprise in the year 1860, with merely nominal financial resource, and through his careful and well ordered business activities in California he acquired a substantial fortune. In 1876, at the age of forty-eight years, Mr. MOODY retired from active business, and later he traveled extensively through various European countries. He was an honored and appreciative member of the Society of California Pioneers, and was a resident of San Francisco for many years prior to his death, which occurred on the 2d of April, 1900, his widow being still a resident of this city.

 

     Mr. MOODY was born in Columbiana, Ohio, on the 27th of June, 1828, he having been the sixth of the eleven children of William and Isabel (LEDLIE) MOODY, and the youngest of the children having been Robert. William MOODY was born in the north of Ireland, where he was reared to manhood and where he became a lawyer by profession and vocation. In 1810 William MOODY came to the United States, and here he passed the greater part of his life thereafter at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, though he was for a time a resident of Ohio in which state his son Joseph L., subject of this memoir, was born, as noted above. William MOODY died in the 1840's, when the subject of this sketch was a lad of about fourteen years, and his widow having survived him a number of years.

 

     Joseph L. MOODY acquired his early education in the City of Pittsburgh, where he was afforded good advantages and profited fully thereby. He was an ambitious youth of twenty years when he came to California, as already stated and of his career in this state adequate mention has been made in a preceding paragraph.

 

     January 15, 1863, recorded the marriage of Mr. MOODY and Miss Ida Jorane SCHANDER, daughter of John Frederick and Rachel (HANDLIN) SCHANDER, who were early settlers in California. Mr. and Mrs. MOODY became the parents of four children: Frederick Schander MOODY: Edna Jorane became the wife of Raymond Hough SHERMAN , and is how deceased: Mai is the wife of Douglas S. WATSON of Palo Alto, this state and Eva Ledlie, wife of Henry C. BREEDEN, died October 24, 1900.

 

 

Transcribed by: Deana Schultz.