San Joaquin County
Biographies
JAMES RUTHERFORD OWEN
JAMES RUTHERFORD OWEN, a
rancher of Dent Township, was born in Tennessee, January 19, 1832, a son of
George P. and Elizabeth (Davis) Owen. The mother, born in August, 1807, died in
January, 1888; the father, born in May, 1808, is still living. Grandmother
Owen, by birth a Pr ston, (sic) died comparatively young, and Grandfather Owen,
who had moved from North Carolina to Tennessee, was not quite sixty at his
death. Great-grandfather Owen was an emigrant from Wales. Grandfather Aaron
Davis and his wife, whose maiden name was Jones, moved westward from Tennessee,
and what age they reached is not known.
The subject of this sketch remained on his
father’s farm till he was over twenty-one years of age. From 1853 to 1855 he
peddled through Kentucky for wages--cotton thread used for family weaving into
home-made cloth. In 1853 Mr. Owen was married to Miss Catherine Hunt, a native
of Tennessee, born November 29, 1831, daughter of Louis Tyrus and Ailsey
(Blankenship) Hunt. The father lived to be seventy-three and the mother
sixty-five years, both dying in Tennessee. Her grandmother Blankenship, a
native of North Carolina, died in Tennessee, aged 100 years.
In 1855 Mr. Owen bought 160 acres of land
and went to farming, in which he continued until he left for this coast in
1869. He left home November 7, 1869, for California, where he arrived by
railroad November 19, and went to work on a ranch for wages. He raised a crop
on a rented place of 200 acres near Waterloo in 1870, and the following year
moved to Linden, where he put in a crop about one mile south of the village. In
1872 he moved to his present location, where he rented the Brooke ranch of
1,500 acres, about three miles east of Farmington, which he still holds. In
1884 he bought 610 acres of Mr. Brooke and an adjoining forty acres from
another party, about one mile and a half southwest of his home. He farms about
2,000 acres, mostly in wheat and barley, having no less than 1,200 acres in
these grains. He has a small fortune invested in agricultural implements and
farming stock. From 1873 to 1881 he paid considerable attention to sheep
raising on shares with Mr. Brooke, having as many as 2,500 head, but found
wheat-growing to be more profitable.
Mr. and Mrs. Owen have nine children, viz:
Henry Taylor, born July 15, 1854, married in Stockton, in September, 1886, to
Miss Mary Douglass, has one child, Essie May; Charles Madison, born February
13, 1856, has twice married--by his first wife, Edna Jane Spencer, a native of
Missouri, deceased, he has one child, Verna, born in 1882; he is now living in
Fresno with his second wife. The third child of Mr. and Mrs. Owen is Partelia
Jane, born May 18, 1857, now Mrs. James D. Blair, who has three children--Elmer
J., Emily Etta and Eva Alice. The fourth child, George Milton, born May 31,
1859, died July 27, 1862; Myra Elizabeth born January 27, 1861, now Mrs. David
Bryson of Linden, the mother of one child, Nellie, born in 1888; John Hamilton,
born October 15, 1862, of the firm of Long & Owen, merchants of Farmington
since 1884, who was married April 4, 1886, to Miss Sarah Griffin, a native of
Stanislaus County; they have two children, Alva George and a baby girl, Lizzie.
Mary Alice Owen born January 15, 1865; Willie Sydney, born May 6, 1867; Walter
James, born in California, near French Camp, August 30, 1870; and Thomas
Jefferson, born in the present home, November 17, 1872.
Mr. Owen was a Justice of the Peace and
Assessor in Tennessee, 1859 to 1861, both offices being united in that State.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County,
California, Pages 269-270. Lewis Pub.
Co. Chicago, Illinois 1890.
© 2008 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County
Biographies
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County
Genealogy Databases