JOHN ROBERTSON

San Francisco County

Biographies

JOHN ROBERTSON

JOHN ROBERTSON, superintendent of the California Jute Mills of Oakland. Was born in Dundee Scotland, February 26, 1843, a son of James and Anne ( Maxwell) Robertson, both born about 1820, and their parents were also well advanced in years. The father was a manufacturer of flax.

John Robertson received a good sound common education and was brought up to the business he is now engaged in. At the age of nineteen he was married, in Dundee, to Miss Anne Miller, a native of that country, and commenced traveling to Scotland and Somersetshire, England, and in 1865 went to France, in charge of a mill in Landernan, near Brest, a flax and Jute mill and remained there six years, until the close of the Franco-Prussian war- 1865 to 1871. He got an invitation to come here in 1871 (this mill was started in 1869); his varied experience made him a recognized expert. Where the California Jute Mills Company bought their machinery in Dundee, they learned of his ability in this line and so invited him to come out. His career here has been a continuous attention to the superintendence and promotion of the enterprise. In 1881 he superintended the erection of the Jute Mills at San Quentin, for the Government of the State, being two years so engaged. In 1883 he was instrumental in organizing a new company, which bought out the old. The new company has erected new brick buildings covering a whole square, and new improved machinery. They employ an average of about 400 hands, and the product is sold by the representatives of the company in San Francisco. They have four Children; James, John, Robert and Mary; their mother deceased, in 1883, in San Francisco. James has learned the trade of machinist and is employed in San Francisco.

Transcribed by Kim Buck.

Source: "The Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages 624-625, Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.

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