San Joaquin County
Biographies
JAMES GUILFORD SWINNERTON
JAMES GUILFORD SWINNERTON. Judge of the Superior Court of San
Joaquin County, was born in Platteville, Wisconsin, November 21, 1844, a son of James and Rhoda (Marden)
Swinnerton. His father, born in Ohio about 1820 was married in Illinois, and
afterward settled in Hazel Green, Wisconsin, where he carried on the business
of carpenter and builder until he came to California in 1849. He crossed the
plains, and went to mining at which he remained engaged until 1852, when he
went East, returning with his wife and four children, again across the plains,
in 1853. Settling in Shasta City he mined in that vicinity until 1856, when he went to
farming, near Quincy in Plumas County, where he remained so engaged until disabled by
advancing years. He is living with his son, S. M. Swinnerton, an attorney of San Luis Obispo. His mother died in San Jose in 1886, aged about fifty-three. Grandfather James
Swinnerton, a native of Vermont, moved to Ohio, where he was
married to a Miss Carpenter, a near relative of Senator Matt Carpenter of Wisconsin. He lived to about the age of eighty-two and she was
eighty-five at her death. Two brothers, Anselm and Henry Swinnerton, were of
the early emigration and settled in the Plymouth colony, where they and their descendants continued to
reside for some generations. Great-grandfather Swinnerton, also named James,
moved to Vermont, where he died. Some curious investigator of family
records has found an Anselmo Swinnerton in the army of William the Conqueror of
England. If not from him they are probably descended from some one just as
good!
The subject of this sketch, educated at
first in the public schools, entered the University of the Pacific in 1862,
taking a full course, and was graduated from that institution in June, 1867. He
began reading law in that year, in the office of Bodley & Rankin of San Jose, and was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of
California in April, 1870. He then went to practice his profession in Eureka,
Humboldt County, where he remained until 1879, serving as city
attorney during two years of that period. In 1879 he came to this city and
formed a law partnership with James H. Budd under the style of Budd &
Swinnerton. In 1884 he was elected to the bench of the Superior Court and took
his seat January 1, 1885, for the term ending December 31, 1890.
Judge Swinnerton is a member of Stockton
Lodge, No. 11, I. O. O. F., and of the organization since 1868. He is also a
member of the San Joaquin Valley Society of California Pioneers, and of the
Knights of Pythias since 1884, being now vice-chancellor of the Grand Lodge of
that order in this State. He belongs also to the Stockton Turn-Verein, largely
with a view to perfect himself in German. A poem from the pen of Judge
Swinnerton is given in this volume on page 76.
He was first married in Eureka, in 1871, to Mrs. Jannette Allen (Burnside) Wise.
Mrs. Swinnerton died in Eureka in 1877, at the age of thirty-one, leaving one child,
James Swinnerton, born in 1875. Judge Swinnerton was again married in Eureka
in 1878, to Mrs. Laura (Barnes) Bransford, a daughter of Dr. Thomas L. Barnes,
of Ukiah, who is still living in that city, aged over seventy. Mrs. Swinnerton
is the mother of three children by her first husband: Edgar M., born in 1868; Herbert M., in 1872; Pearl,
in 1874.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County,
California, Pages 342-343. Lewis Pub.
Co. Chicago, Illinois 1890.
© 2009 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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