San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JAMES R. JOHNSON
A young contracting engineer of
outstanding capabilities is James R. Johnson, whose specialty is the
installation of large pumping and irrigation systems throughout San Joaquin
County. He installed the irrigation
systems on the Anderson-Barngrover and the Grimsley ranches, both located in the Linden district of
the county; he has also had contracts for building bridges throughout the
county. In the spring of 1922 he
installed a system of irrigation on 2,000 acres devoted to orchard. He was born in San Jose, California, in May,
1886, a son of James and Frances (Severance) Johnson. The father was a native of Bangor, Maine, and
migrated to California via the Panama route in 1854. The mother was born in New York State and she
came via Panama in 1852. The family
settled in San Jose, where her father was a photographer; and he also owned a
fifty-acre prune and apricot orchard at Berryessa. He died at the age of sixty-eight years; the
mother still lives at San Jose and is eighty years old. Two sons were born to this couple, James R.,
our subject, and Frank S.
James R. Johnson began his education
in the Pala district school of Santa Clara County,
then entered the San Jose high school, and in 1909 was graduated from Stanford
University in electrical engineering.
Following his graduation he went to Schenectady, New York, and for two
years was identified with the engineering department of the General Electric
Company; then he returned to San Jose and purchased a ranch on Penetencia Creek Road and Capitol Avenue in the Berryessa district of the county. This was the old Start place on which there
was a rundown orchard, which within two years, he developed into a first class
producing orchard and then sold it to good advantage. In 1914 he removed to Stockton and engaged in
general engineering work.
On June 15, 1911, in San Jose, Mr.
Johnson was married to Miss Florence Fickett Grant,
born in San Jose, a daughter of J. T. and Hattie (Fickett)
Grant, the former a native of Kansas, who came to California in an early day,
and the latter a native of Stockton, California. J. T. Grant first farmed on Woodward Island,
then removed to Santa Clara County, and was the man that set out the famous Flickinger orchard at Berryessa;
later he returned to Stockton, where he now resides. Three children have been born to Mr. and Mrs.
Johnson: Grant, Barbara and James R.,
Jr. Mr. Johnson owns a forty-two acre
ranch at Linden, set to peaches and walnuts, on which there is a seven-inch
pump with a thirty-five horsepower electric motor. In politics he is a Republican and
fraternally he is a Royal Arch Mason, and with his wife is a member of the
Eastern Star of Stockton. Mr. and Mrs.
Johnson are members of the First Congregational Church of Stockton.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George H., History of San
Joaquin County, California , Pages
1471-1472. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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