San Joaquin County
Biographies
EDWARD RICHARDS HEDGES
EDWARD RICHARDS HEDGES, a
merchant of Stockton, of the firm of Hedges, Buck & Co., jobbers and
dealers in groceries and provisions, was born in Columbia, New Jersey, October
18, 1829, a son of Timothy Hudson and Harriet Lavinia (Richards) Hedges, both
natives of that State. He descended on the maternal side from Thomas Richards,
born in Dorchester, England, in 1605, of a family whose homes were situated in
Somerset and Devon. Thomas emigrated to New England in 1630, and located in
Hartford, Connecticut, where he died in 1638 or 1639. John, one of his sons,
born in 1631 was married to Lydia Stocking. Their son, John, Jr., born about
1653, inherited the estate of his uncle, Thomas Richards, in Newark, New
Jersey, and settled there. His son, John, born in 1687, was the father of
David, who was born about 1720. Thomas, the son of David, born in Columbia, New
Jersey, about 1769, was married to Miss Sarah Sayre, and their daughter,
Harriet L. Richards, born July 13, 1796, was the mother of the subject of this
sketch.
Grandmother Sarah Sayre was a daughter of
Deacon Ephraim Sayre, a soldier of the Revolution, and with other members of
the family among the captives taken by the English at the seizure of Germantown.
She died in New Jersey, aged ninety-eight. Her brother, David A. Sayre,
afterward of Lexington, Kentucky, a philanthropist of national reputation,
founded the Sayre Institution for young ladies, and built the first
Presbyterian church of that city.
The Hedges are also of English origin, and
have been settled on Long Island, New York, for several generations. The
founder of the family in this country is believed to be Sir Charles Hedges, who
upon his marriage to Sarah Rogers, a person of lower social rank, came to
America and settled on Long Island. T. H. Hedges, the father of our subject,
born in 1794, became a farmer and broom-maker, and moved with his family to St.
Louis in 1836, taking passage in Pittsburg on the first steamboat that went
down the Ohio to that city. He bought some land in St. Clair County, Illinois,
chiefly for raising broom-corn, and continued his broom-making industry, on an
extensive scale for those times, in St. Louis. He died on his place in Illinois
in 1840; the mother, born in 1796, survived him forty years, dying in Texas in
1880. Their oldest surviving child is Margaret, born about 1822, by marriage
Mrs. James F. Clark, of Jacksonville, Florida.
E. R. Hedges, the subject of this sketch,
was educated chiefly in St. Louis, finishing with a course in the “English,
Mathematical and Classical High School,” of that city, at the age of nineteen.
Some eighteen months later, March 8, 1850, he left St. Louis for California,
one of a small party of five young men, with two wagons and mule teams,
carrying about 2,500 pounds of supplies in each wagon. At Independence,
Missouri, they were joined by two others, who brought an interest in the
outfit, and continued with them to South Pass, where they detached themselves
from the original party on account of some disagreement. Mr. Hedges, with the
four original comrades, arrived in Hangtown, August 28, 1850, having lost some
of their mules through the industry of the Indians in night marauding.
Proceeding to Sacramento, they set out to engage in actual mining at Rough and
Ready. Mr. Hedges and two companions kept together and did fairly well at that
point. They then proceeded to a point above Downieville, and continued mining
until 1857, having meanwhile put in three flumes and sunk most of their gains.
They then went into trade in Amador County, having two stores at Iowa Flats and
Hoodsville.
In 1860 Mr. Hedges came to this city and
engaged in substantially the same line of business as at present. In 1864 he
formed the firm of Hedges & Howland, which was changed to Hedges & Buck
in 1867. In January, 1889, Mr. E. F. Parker bought an interest, the firm
becoming Hedges, Buck & Co., and later in the same year Mr. Buck withdrew,
Messrs. Hedges & Parker continuing the business without change of style.
Mr. E. R. Hedges was married in Stockton
in 1869, to Mrs. Alice (Davis) Nuttal, a native of Missouri. They have two
children: Hattie Lavinia and Bertha Priscilla.
Mr. Hedges is a prominent member of the
Masonic fraternity, having held the principal offices in the subordinate
bodies, and is both Grand Master of the Grand Council of Royal and Select
Masters of California, and Past Commander of Knights Templar of California. He
has held no public office. Having promised his mother when he left home that he
would not be a politician in any sense of the term, he has persistently refused
to accept any office of a political nature whatever.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County,
California, Pages 539-540. Lewis Pub. Co.
Chicago, Illinois 1890.
© 2009 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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Biographies
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