Tuolumne
County
Biographies
JOHN W. BARRETT
Iowa has given to California many
citizens who have attained prominence in different ways, and one of the best
known of these is John Walter Barrett, manager of the West Coast Lumber Company
at Carters, Tuolumne County. Mr. Barrett
was born at Dubuque, Iowa, December 19, 1844, a son of John and Mary (Guinan) Barrett. His
father and grandfather Barrett were both born at Baltimore, Maryland, and his
mother was a native of Paris, France.
The Barrett’s descended from an old English family and immigrated early from Liverpool to Maryland, and John Walter
Barrett, the grandfather of the present John Walter Barrett, fought for
American independence in the Revolutionary War.
The parents of Miss Guinan died of cholera,
and while she and her brother were en route for New Orleans she first met John
Barrett, whom she soon married. After
they were married they located at Galena, Illinois, where Mr. Barrett was
employed at lead-mining. He soon
acquired land and mining interests and owned considerable property in Iowa
across the river from Galena. He died of
typhoid fever in 1844 and left a wife and six children. He was in his twenty-ninth year at the time
of his death and his wife survived him many years, dying at the age of
sixty-eight. She was an estimable woman,
a life-long member of the Christian Church and exerted herself to the utmost to
bring up her children to good and useful lives.
Three of her sons are living at this time.
Mr. Barrett was educated in his
native town, learned the carriage-maker’s trade and worked at it for four
years. He then turned his attention to
mill construction and he became an expert millwright, and as such has achieved
great success. He came to California in
1866, arriving on the 10th of May, and located in San Francisco, and
since then has devoted much of his time to building sawmills on the Pacific
coast and has achieved a reputation second to no other in his field of
endeavor. He built the mill of the
company by which he is now employed at Carters, and as the manager of that and
the company’s other extensive interests there has achieved a notable business
success. The sawmill has a capacity of
one hundred and fifteen thousand feet per day, and the company owns in
connection with it sixty thousand acres of land heavily timbered with yellow
and sugar pines, and has a large department store, also under Mr. Barrett’s
supervision.
While not in the ordinary sense a
politician, Mr. Barrett has pronounced views on all political questions and is
active in the furtherance of such interests as he deems worthy of
advancement. He is a self-made man who
deserves the high position he has gained and fills it honorably and capably,
with great credit to himself and to the entire satisfaction of the corporation
he serves.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
“A Volume of Memoirs and Genealogy of Representative Citizens of Northern
California”, Pages 815-816. Chicago Standard Genealogical Publishing Co. 1901.
© 2011
Gerald Iaquinta.