San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JOHN C. HANNAN
A native son of California whose
memory reaches back to its pioneer days, John C. Hannan, the president of
Hannan Patrol and Detective Agency, was born at Stockton, California, January
9, 1862. His parents, both natives of
Ireland, were John and Catherine (Collins) Hannan, both now deceased. The father was a ‘49er and he crossed the
Isthmus on this way to California and mined at Sonora, Tuolumne County. He died in 1862 and Mrs. Hannan was later
married to J. W. Maher; she lived to be eighty-eight years old and was the
mother of eleven children, dying March 31, 1913. By her first marriage the following children
are living: James B., John C., of this
sketch, Mrs. J. D. Gall and Mrs. Delia Douville, and
of her marriage to Mr. Maher: William J.
Maher, Mrs. Annie Hudson, Mrs. Maggie Knap and Miss Mamie Maher.
John C. Hannan attended a parochial
school at the corner of San Joaquin and Lafayette streets, Stockton, for a
short time but he was obliged to earn his living at a youthful age. He became a jockey when he was ten years old,
at that time weighing less than eighty pounds.
He rode running horses all over the state, riding for Judge C. E. Creaner, Wash Trahern and Judge
Terry, all well-known horsemen of Stockton in those days. When he grew too heavy for the saddle he went
to Nevada where he rode the range for a number of years, and also engaged in
mining, working in the Aurora gold mine in Esmeralda County, Nevada.
In 1885 Mr. Hannan returned to
Stockton and became an attendant at the State Asylum for two years, and for the
next twenty years was in business in Stockton.
In 1909 he started the Hannan Patrol and Detective Agency, an
undertaking that has proved very successful, and in 1913 George M. Clark became
his partner and is the manager of the agency.
The patrol consists of six men who patrol beats in the business and
residence section of Stockton at night and through their work many notorious
criminals have been taken up; they act in complete harmony with the sheriff and
the police department of Stockton. The
detective branch of the agency works all over the state as well as in the other
Pacific coast states, and number some competent men among their personnel.
While living in Nevada, Mr. Hannan
was married when only eighteen years of age to Miss Ethel Roscot,
a native of Minnesota. She passed away
on September 4, 1917, the mother of the late J. W. Hannan, prosecuting attorney
for the city of Stockton, who married Sadie McGintis
and had one son, Murel Hannan,
and Mrs. Harriett Kram, of Stockton. Mr. Hannan is a Democrat in politics and he
is affiliated with the Loyal Order of Moose; while in Nevada he served as
deputy sheriff of Mono County and as constable of Clinton, in that state. Blessed with an excellent memory, he can
relate many interesting experiences of the pioneer days, when his locality bore
little promise of its present progress and development. At times the town of Stockton was flooded
with water in many of the streets and people went about in boats. There were many Indians, Chinamen and
Mexicans here then and he remembers one time seeing 300 Chinamen get off the
boat and tramp in single file to the mines, and also 300 to 400 mules, leaving
daily in pack trains for the mountains.
In those days the Island country was all a wilderness and much credit is
due the Chinese for developing that rich soil.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
555. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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