Yuba County
Biographies
JAMES RILEY
GARRETT
JAMES
RILEY GARRETT. The wholesale and retail merchandising
business of the J. R. Garrett Company of Marysville stands forth as one of the
most substantial and influential of its kind in the state of California. It is by far the largest in Marysville, and
has greater facilities for handling and shipping grain, provisions, groceries
and general produce than any other concern in the Sacramento valley. At its head is a man who has worked his way
up without missing any rounds of the ladder, and whose splendid achievement
goes hand in hand with profound respect on the part of his fellowmen. He came to the west with the special
attributes of the merchant, and rightly knowing this has made his specialty pay
through persistency of purpose and minute attention to details.
J. R. Garrett was born on a farm
near South Trenton, Oneida county, N. Y., July 19,
1837, his family having been established in New York by his paternal
grandfather, Peter Garrett, whose youthful ambitions found an outlet in running
away from his home in England, and in some way procuring passage on an
American-bound ship. He lived on a New
York farm for the remainder of his life.
His son, Samuel Garrett, was born in Oneida county, N. Y.. and in early life married Jane
Morton. The spirit of unrest being
handed down from father to son, Samuel Garrett left Oneida county
in 1844, going via Erie canal to Buffalo, from there taking a schooner to
Milwaukee, Wis. With wagons and ox teams
he moved his family to near Harvard, McHenry county,
Ill., where he took up raw land in the wilderness and proceeded to establish a
home for those dependent on him. His
death in 1862 left much to be desired in the way of provision for the support
of his family of seven children, and seeing no particular advantage in
remaining in Illinois, the mother, her five daughters and two sons planned to
cross the plains in the spring of 1864.
As James R. was the oldest he superintended the preparations and drove
one of the wagons, the train being a large one, and including people from all
walks of life. The season was a dry one,
hay and provisions being exceedingly high, so that the first season they spent
in California they had to pay as high as $50 a ton for hay, and four and a half
cents a pound for barley.
Uninterruptedly, James Riley Garrett
has spent his western life in Marysville, which gave him work as a teamster for
about fifteen months, and then furnished other occupations, from all of which
he succeeded in laying aside a part of his income. By August 1, 1866, he was able to buy an
interest in the mercantile firm of E. W. Whitney & Co., his partners being
Messrs. Freeman and Mathews. A year
later he reached out still further and bought into the business of W. M. Bell
& Co., operating under the firm name of Bell & Garrett, and several
years later the firm name was changed to Garrett & Elder. Soon after the death of Mr. Bell in 1885 Mr.
Garrett became sole owner of the business, and in 1895 incorporated the J. R.
Garrett Company, with a capital stock of $200,000 paid up, and he became president
of the company. In August, 1902, the
fine large warehouses of the company burned to the ground, but with
characteristic energy and progress Mr. Garrett added 60x160 feet to the
original property of the concern, and now has the largest and best equipped
warehouses in the valley and probably the best in the state. The partitions are of brick, floors cement,
and all doors are absolutely fire proof.
No expense has been spared to make the buildings secure from fire and
pleasant for employees, attention having been paid to sanitation, light and
general furnishings. The equipment
includes elevators and electric lights.
The largest warehouse measures 160x160 feet, another one is 80x100 feet,
and the third is 30x80 feet. Yet another
warehouse, at the railroad tracks, for storage and forwarding, measures 100x50
feet. It will thus be seen that the
capacity is enormous, yet it is at times barely adequate for the calls for
goods which come in from all over the country, from Sacramento to Ashland, Ore.
In 1903 Mr. Garrett erected one of
the substantial residences in the city located between E and F streets, at a
cost of $12,000. His home is presided
over by his wife, formerly Mary E. Bandy, a native of Wisconsin, and who, like
himself, underwent the experience of crossing the plains in an ox train. Mr. Garrett is a member of the Marysville
Chamber of Commerce, and in politics is a Republican. Friends and business associates unite in
according praise to this generous and high-minded merchant, not only for his well-merited
success, but for the many fine personal traits which endear him to the
community. His position as an employer
of labor cannot be over-estimated, nor can the innumerable acts of kindness
which he is known to have performed during his long and dignified life. Personally he is a genial and approachable
man, one of the most public-spirited and generous of Marysville, and he numbers
among his warm friends many of the foremost men in the state.
Transcribed by
Doralisa Palomares.
Source:
“History of the State of California and
Biographical Record of the Sacramento Valley, California” by J.
M. Guinn. Pages
630-631. Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1906.
© 2017 Doralisa Palomares.
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Library's Yuba County Biographies