San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JOHN DANIEL LAGGAS
One of the old-time residents of
Stockton is John Daniel Laggas, who is also a veteran of the Civil War. He was born in Poros,
Greece, September 26, 1842. His father
Daniel was a sailor, as were all of his sons, the father having been a
boatswain in the Grecian Navy. John D.
is the third-born of five children and the only one in California. He attended the local school in his native
place and when fourteen years of age, as was the custom with the young men in
that seaport town, he went to sea, following the life of a sailor until he came
to the port of New York, January 23, 1865, when he volunteered and enlisted in
the United States Navy, for which he has come to have a great admiration. He served on the gunboats Periwinkle and
Stepping Stone and the monitor Miantonomah, in which he crossed the Atlantic to different
foreign ports in Russia, France, Spain, Italy, England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
and Belgium and saw all the kings and queens of Europe, except in Turkey and
Greece, which they did not visit. On his
return to the United States he went on the receiving ship Potomac, from which
he was honorably discharged as petty officer in January, 1868.
Mr. Laggas then came on the clipper
ship Davy Crockett around Cape Horn to San Francisco, arriving that same
year. He then ran on the Golden Age from
San Francisco to Panama until he came to Sacramento, where he was steamboating between
the capital city and Red Bluff for several years, becoming mate. In 1879 he came to Stockton and continued
steamboating and was pilot with the California Navigation Company, Hamilton
& Gray Company, and Cornwall, Brooks & Peters Company, continuing until
1921, when his ill health necessitated his retirement, and now resides with his
family at 1115 South Center Street, a place he built in 1880.
Mr. Laggas’ marriage occurred in
Sacramento, January 20, 1875, when he was united with Miss Mary Sexton, born in
Michigan Bar, Sacramento County, a daughter of Charles and Margaret (Fulton)
Sexton. Her father crossed the plains in
an ox-team train in 1850, arriving in California September 9 of that year, the
day California was admitted into the Union.
He followed carpentering and helped build the dome as well as to place
the ball on top of the dome of the capitol building. He died in 1914 aged eighty-seven. Mrs. Sexton crossed the plains in 1852. She was the mother of eight children, all
living up till 1922, when one of her sons died.
Mrs. Laggas was the oldest of the family, receiving her education in the
Sacramento public schools. Mr. and Mrs.
Laggas had five children as follows:
Mrs. Ellen Tucker of Stockton; Mrs. Florence Jameson of Berkeley; Andrew
died at the age of four and a half years in 1884; Jessie is Mrs. Seppi of Stockton, and Alice, also Mrs. Seppi,
died at twenty-three years of age in 1914.
Mr. and Mrs. Laggas have seven grandchildren and two
great-grandchildren. Mr. Laggas is a
member of San Joaquin Lodge No. 19, F. & A. M.; Truth Lodge No. 55, I. O.
O. F., and with his wife is a member of the Rebekahs. He is a member of the Foresters and of
Rawlins Post No. 23, G. A. R., while Mrs. Laggas is a member of Rawlins Post
No. 20, W. R. C. He is a staunch
Republican and is proud of having cast his first vote for General Grant, as
well as having had the honor of shaking hands with President Lincoln.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George H., History of San
Joaquin County, California , Page
1562. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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