San Francisco County
Biographies
JAMES
B. STANSFIELD
JAMES B. STANSFIELD,
manager and part owner of the Broadway Stables, 1368 Broadway, Oakland, is a native of England, born February 14, 1864, and brought up in Lancashire. His
father, William Stansfield, was a land surveyor, architect,
and for some six years before his death, in 1875, master of the Middleton Grammar School; was of superior education and high standing in the
community, and died at forty-five years and seven months of age.
Mr. James B.
Stanfield was only eleven years old at his father’s
death. From boyhood up he was engaged in the care of horses, and in all
grades of stables, even before his father’s
death. Indeed he was for a time too intensely fond of stable life. In
1883 he came to America with the intention of locating in Texas, where he had a prospect of following profitably his
favorite vocation. After making a brief visit to his maternal uncle, John Brierly, a foreman in a Philadelphia cotton mill, he proceeded to Texas, and for the first nine months was employed by
Lieutenant Rumbough, of the Third Artillery, then
located in San Antonio, taking charge of his stables. The military company
was then removed, and he took charge of J. A. White’s
breeding farm at Boerne, Kendall county, Texas where the proprietor kept four stallions, and remained
three years. Then, in the fall of 1887, he came to California, first settling at Santa Paula, Ventura county, where he broke two
trotting-bred colts for Mr. Baker, a real-estate man and horse-fancier.
The following year he
quit Mr. Baker and traveled through Southern
California, and then was
employed by A. J. Snyder in Oakland, a
year or more. He afterward broke sixty head of horses for Rheinhold Hesse, a hardware
merchant of Oregon, who became the possessor of many horses through the
hardware trade, in the settlement of bills etc. Mr. Stansfield
then took hold of horse-training on his own account. September 23, 18___,
with the help of Mr. Hesse, he bought out the
Broadway Boarding and Livery Stables, established some ten years
before. Under his superior management colts are thoroughly and quickly
broken to work, without whipping or cruel treatment, vicious and unmanageable
horses and mules made gentle, and bad habits entirely
broken up, while in the livery business his turnouts cannot be
surpassed. He has a good patronage, while in his special lines the public
regard him as an expert.
Transcribed
by 11-17-06 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: "The Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages 174-175, Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
©
2006 Marilyn R. Pankey.
California Biography Project
San Francisco County
California Statewide
Golden Nugget Library