San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JOHN M. POSEY
Not many Californians, perhaps, can
boast with modest pride of a family tree so interesting as that of John M.
Posey, the well-known San Joaquin County realtor, which links him and his near-of-kin
to the truly good and equally truly great.
Himself a native son, he was born on September 27, 1863, in the northern
part of the San Joaquin Valley, on the ranch of his father, Jeremiah Posey, a
pioneer of the Lodi district and a native of Alabama. He had previously married Miss Eliza Lucas, a
native of Georgia and a member of the family of the distinguished Robert Lucas,
twice Governor of the Buckeye State; and after their marriage they had removed
to Texas, and from the Lone Star State had crossed the plains together to
California. Upon their arrival on the
coast, Mr. Posey traded a span of mules for 150 acres of land along the river
in the northern section of San Joaquin County, and this he farmed to grain, and
many are the good stories coming down through him about those settler
days. There were no fences then in that
part of the county, and cattle roamed at will; and the Indians came down from
the mountains to help harvest the crops.
The grain was hauled to Carson City and Virginia City, Nevada, over toll
roads, the tolls being $125 for the round trip, which required two weeks to
make. Elks, too, were plentiful, and
John Posey well remembers seeing a couple of them, one day, when he was a
little child playing on the Dodge place.
From all accounts, no better parents ever lived than these worthy
pioneers who rounded out their useful, self-sacrificing lives with honor and
success not accorded to everyone, and left behind, as a precious legacy to
their descendants and also to society generally and the patriotic American
proud of his country’s founders, the glory of an untarnished name. Three children still live to represent the
family: Margaret has become Mrs. Aldrich
and resides at Lodi; near her is Agnes, better known as Mrs. Foster; while the
one surviving son is the subject of this review.
Left an orphan when a mere baby,
John M. Posey was reared on a neighboring farm, where he went to work when old
enough to be serviceable as a husky farm-hand, but attaining his twenty-first
year, he started out to make his own way in the world. He went to Oregon and settled in the Rogue
River country, and there, for four years, he farmed 160 acres. Returning to the San Joaquin Valley, he
purchased another 160 acres near Lodi, known as the Dunbar ranch, which he
proceeded both to cultivate and to make his home; and this he sold in 1914,
after he had first raised grain there, and then planted an orchard and vines.
Since then Mr. Posey has bought,
developed and sold numerous ranches throughout the San Joaquin Valley, his
comprehensive knowledge of California agricultural conditions enabling him to
judge with unusual intelligence and clearness, and to be the safest kind of a
mentor to others as well desiring to entrust their important interest to his
unbiased decision and unimpeachable integrity.
His present real estate holdings consist of about 235 acres lying to the
west of Lodi, 100 acres of which are in bearing vines; and he has a tract of
eighty acres near Lafayette which is highly improved. In 1914 Mr. Posey established a real estate
business, by means of which he devotes his time and energies largely to the
buying and selling of extensive ranch properties, and he has become a most
potent and welcome factor in both the development and the upbuilding
of Lodi and the immediate vicinity.
Mr. Posey’s marriage on April 5,
1890, at Medford, Oregon, united him with Miss Lena Stimson, a native of the
good old state of Maine, and seven children, all natives of San Joaquin County,
have been born to them. Charles is a
partner with his father in the J. M. Posey Land Company; Nellie has become Mrs.
Fore and resides at Lafayette; Stella is Mrs. McKenzie, and lives near Acampo;
Donna is also married, having become the wife of Raymond Northrop, and resides
near Mrs. Fore; J. Everett is operating one of his father’s ranches; Margaret
and Jennie are in school. Mr. Posey is a
member of the Native Sons of the Golden West, affiliated with Lodi Parlor, and
he belongs to the Knights of Pythias. Mrs. Posey passed away in 1907, leaving
behind a blessed memory.
The association of our subject,
through is mother and her forbears, with the famous Robert Lucas, is naturally
a matter of great satisfaction to Mr. Posey and his patriotic family, as it
will always be a matter of real interest to the student of California history
and the scribe delving into the annals of San Joaquin County; for the history
of the Lucas family in America is a story of pioneer settlements and frontier
life, a tale of Indian wars and boundary disputes, a story with chapters
generations long, with ever the same pioneer background and ever the same
pursuit of the border-line of civilization from England in the Cromwellian days to the middle of the American Continent
two centuries later. In England, the Lucas
family had been Quaker; and when the tide of westward civilization set toward
American shores there cross the Atlantic one Robert Lucas, who arrived in 1679,
and took part in the founding of William Penn’s colony. Bucks County, Pennsylvania, was his habitat;
and here generations sprang forth to carry on the great work he had begun. Here Edward Lucas, the grandfather of
Governor Robert Lucas, already referred to as related to John E. Posey’s
mother, was born, reared and married to Mary Darke, a
descendant of one of Cromwell’s soldiers; and in their home in Jefferson
County, Virginia, on the 10,000 acres which Edward Lucas bought from Lord
Fairfax. William Lucas, father of
Robert, was born about 1743. As he grew
into manhood, he met and married, at Shepherdstown, Miss Susannah Barnes,
likewise of Jefferson County; and it was Joseph Barnes, her brother, who a few
years later according to local tradition, successfully propelled against the
current of the Potomac River a steamboat of his own invention, long before
Fulton’s “Clermont” had ploughed the waters of the Hudson. Having cast off his Quaker proclivities,
William enlisted in dead earnest for three years of service in the American
Revolution; and it is still told in the family how at the muster of Captain
William Lucas’ company later, when off on frontier duty, a proclamation by
Governor Thomas Jefferson of Virginia was read, warning all who had sworn
allegiance to England to leave the country.
It was in these eventful times and
stirring environments that Robert Lucas was born on April 1, 1781, destined to
make his way, in 1800, to Ohio, under the influence of the restless spirit
manifest at the close of the Revolutionary War, which impelled men from older
regions to push out as settlers into untrodden
territory. In Ohio, he rose to the rank
of Major-General of Militia. When the
War of 1812 broke out and again involved his country in a dispute with a
foreign power, calling for additional or renewed display of patriotism, Robert
Lucas was commissioned captain in the 19th U. S. Infantry, on March
14, 1812, and on the 20th of February of the following year he was
made lieutenant-colonel; but on June 30, feeling a more imperative call for his
services at home, he resigned his enviable commission and served as brigadier-general
of the Ohio State Militia in defense of the frontier, continuing that arduous
and responsible duty from July 25 until September 19, subject to untold
privation and exhausting fatigue, and exposed hourly to every conceivable kind
of danger. In 1814 he was a member of
the Ohio Legislature, and in 1832 he presided over the Democratic National
Convention that nominated Andrew Jackson for a second term.
General Lucas served twice as
Governor of Ohio, first from 1832 to 1836, first taking the oath of office on
December 7, 1832, and then, when his first record was well known to the people,
he was the first Territorial Governor of Iowa, filling that difficult role at
the outset of the new commonwealth, from 1838 to 1841. He was an active Freemason, a man of strong
impulses, but of strict integrity.
This distinguished relative of the
Posey’s cannot fail to interest Californians, and especially so because of the
Golden State’s relation to the two commonwealths he once ruled. He was a typical western man, as his
biographer, John C. Parish, has declared, and believed in the development of
the west and its resources. Throughout
his career in Ohio his efforts to establish roads and perfect a great canal
system for that state were particularly marked.
In Iowa the legitimate successor of the canal, the railroad, claimed his
interest. In 1850, when even
Californians were awakening, despite their paramount interest in gold, or
perhaps because of it, to the necessity of better means of transportation to
the west, enthusiasm over railroads toward the west ran high in Iowa, and
Robert Lucas actively participated in the conventions. Thus in his last days we find him, always a
pioneer, exerting his best energies toward the development of three great
pioneer movements: education,
temperance, and railway communication.
But his life brought many disappointments. With all the intensity of his spirit he had
cherished longings and ambitions which in the nature of things could not be
fulfilled. He had been privileged to sow
the seed; it was given to others to reap the harvest. His years had been many and his services
great. He had seen a great state rise
from the wilderness north of the Ohio River, and had given it a third of a
century of his own life’s work. He had
guided the beginnings of the promising Territory of Iowa, and helped it to gain
admission as a new State of the Union.
Hardly less interesting from a human
standpoint was the companion of his arduous days. On March 7, 1816, Robert Lucas married Miss
Friendly Ashley Sumner, and shortly after he and his bride moved to Pike
County, and settled in the town of Piketon, which, for over a score of years,
was to be his home. Ninety years have
passed by; and yet the little village of Piketon, with the hills on one side
and the Scioto River on the other, has not grown a great deal. The present postmaster is a grandson of
Robert’s brother, Joseph Lucas; and there still tread the gravel paths of
Piketon, men and women who remember the tall, straight figure and stern face of
the Governor, and the delicious currant pies of his wife, Friendly. When Mr. and Mrs. Lucas first made this place
their home, he was thirty-five years of age, and lived in a house that still
stands on the main street of the town.
Later, when his brother-in-law and political rival was elected to the
State Senate, and for two years he could devote his time and attention strictly
to his private affairs, he built himself a house which was among the finest in
all southern Ohio. To this old-time
mansion, years have brought somewhat of change; but it still stands on the
Jackson Road two miles east of Piketon.
It was a large, two-story brick house with a hall in the center and
sitting-room and parlor opening on each side of the hall. Each room, upstairs and down, was provided
with a fireplace. Over the front door
was placed a stone, in which were cut the following words: “Virtue, Liberty and Independence.” Below the word Liberty appeared a
five-pointed star, while below the motto were carved the name and date: “R. Lucas, 1824.” Located on a farm of 437 acres, surrounded
with large trees and with sweet briar and eglantine growing in profusion about
the place, and over the walls, it was indeed a home of wonderful
attractiveness. The grove about the
house was the distinctive feature of the farm; and so, in honor of his wife,
Robert Lucas named his new home “Friendly Grove.” Here the Lucas family lived for fifteen
years, and here Lucas and his hospitable wife entertained in great state. Political friends came to discuss weighty
matters of public concern, and to laugh at the quick-witted sallies of Mrs.
Lucas. Methodist circuit riders stopped
here in their unending round of pioneer preaching, finding spiritual
improvement and incidentally nourishing their gaunt frames upon the ample and
delectable meals outspread by their hostess.
Mrs. Lucas had an ever-ready tongue, an unquenchable fund of spirits and
vigor, and a wide-spread reputation as a cook; and she was a general favorite,
particularly with those to whom these and her many other virtuous qualities
appealed. One of her pastimes was
horseback riding; indeed, it was a common sight to see her galloping over the
rough country roads of early Ohio on her coal-black horse “Nig,” or, with a big
basket swung from the pommel of her saddle, riding over the stretch of hills
that lay between Friendly Grove and Piketon on her way to do the shopping for
the family.
The home which Governor Lucas had
built south of Iowa City in 1844 was the home of his last days. Because of the plum trees before the house,
he called it Plum Grove; and here in the midst of his family, he quietly rested
from his long life’s work. He awaited
the approach of death with calmness, day after day entering on the margins of
old newspapers or on the backs of old documents expressions of his hope of
immortality and final salvation, interweaving an undying evidence of affection
for his family. On the last day of the
year 1852 he recorded a hymn full of hope and cheer in the pages of the journal
he had kept in the War of 1812. Five
weeks later, February 7, 1853, Robert Lucas died at Plum Grove, and on the
following day he was buried in the cemetery at Iowa City. Friendly A. Lucas outlived her husband more
than twenty years.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
706-711. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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