Santa Clara County
Biographies
JOHN B. BEAUMONT.
One of the
thoroughly self-made men of Santa Clara County is John B. Beaumont, who has been
for the past twenty‑eight years engaged and interested in the manufacture and
sale of lumber in Chicago and Michigan. He is now interested, with his
son, J. M. Beaumont, in the drug business, in San Jose, besides which he is
engaged in horticulture, owning, and taking an especial pride in, two model
fruit farms, one of ten acres, on the Stevens Creek road, the other, of five and
one‑half acres, on Saratoga Avenue. On the Saratoga Avenue place he has planted
seventy-six pear, and six hundred and thirty prune trees, which are in full
bearing. On the Stevens Creek road place are a few almonds, walnuts, figs, and
olives, besides three hundred peach trees in full bearing, one hundred and
fourteen Bigarreau cherry trees, four hundred apricot trees, five hundred vines
of table grapes, ninety-five egg plums, and four hundred and twelve prune trees,
just coming into bearing. Mr. Beaumont's horticultural ventures, it will be
seen, have passed beyond the experimental stage into that of assured success.
Mr. Beaumont was born in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1816. His father was born in 1766, in England, coming to America at a very early age, and removing from Canton, Massachusetts, to Connecticut toward the close of the last century. Mr. Beaumont, Sr., built, in 1808, a cotton and woolen factory at Middletown, Connecticut, continuing in that business all his life. He died there in 1865. His brother, James Beaumont, with whom he came to America, built the first cotton and woolen factory in America, located at Canton, Massachusetts, which he operated during his lifetime, dying at Canton at the age of ninety years. James Beaumont was also the inventor of the glazed cotton wadding now so generally in use. The mother of J. B. Beaumont was Miss Bethsheba Hubbard, a daughter of Decico (?) Jeremiah Hubbard, of Middletown, Connecticut, a family descended from the original Puritan stock of New England. She died at the age of eighty-eight years, and is buried by the side of her husband, in Middletown.
J. B. Beaumont attended the usual local schools until his eighteenth year, when he went to Philadelphia, there introducing, with a company, the micaceous brown sandstone of Connecticut. In 1839 he was married to Miss Kesiah Roberts, a native of Philadelphia, and removed immediately to the West, settling in Alton, Illinois. Of this union there were born two children, Joseph M., now in the drug business in San Jose, and Mary E., who married Edward R. Earle, of Sterling, Illinois, now deceased, and who resides with her parents in San Jose.
Mr. Beaumont was a member of the second lodge of Odd Fellows organized in Illinois, and of Wildey Encampment, of the same order, the oldest in Illinois. He is Republican in politics and believes in the fullest protection of American industries. He has a beautiful home at the corner of Second and Market Streets, San Jose, where he will probably pass the evening of his life surrounded by all the blessings which the word " home " suggests.
Mr. Beaumont never received a dollar of financial aid from any source whatever, but accumulated his property and wealth by personal energy and enterprise.
Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888.
Pg. 598-599
J. M. BEAUMONT.
This gentleman commenced business in San Jose, at Nos. 13 and 15 West Santa Clara Street, Knox Block, November 11, 1885, having bought the drug store of B. J. Rhodes & Co., who established the business. Mr. Beaumont was born in Alton, Illinois, in 1839, his parents, J. B. and K. E. (Roberts) Beaumont, having removed from Philadelphia to Illinois in 1832, and being among the pioneers of Illinois. At that time Alton was perhaps the largest town on the Mississippi River above New Orleans. Letters for St. Louis came addressed to St, Louis, " near Alton, Illinois." Mr. Beaumont remained at Alton until his twenty-first year, attending the public schools of that town, finally graduating at a private boarding-school at Farmingham, Massachusetts. He afterward attended a mercantile college at St. Louis, Missouri, graduating in 1857. He was for three years bookkeeper for the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company, at St. Louis, after which he went into the lumber business with his father, in 1863, in Chicago, remaining four years; later he was in the same business at Big Rapids, Michigan, until 1885. He came to California in August of 1885, and in the following November bought the drug-store which he now owns.
Mr. Beaumont has been associated with his father, J. B. Beaumont, since 1863, first in the lumber, and later in the drug business. Theirs is the leading drugstore in San Jose, and under the thorough and energetic management of its present proprietors is likely to remain at the front, its location, near one of the principal business corners of this growing city, being a most fortunate one.
Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888.
Pg. 599
HIRAM C. MORRELL
was born in Waterville, Kennebec County, Maine, April 25, 1835. His parents, Ephraim and Achsa (Clifford) Morrell, were both natives of Maine, and are still living in Waterville. They had a family of eight children, six of whom are living, four sons and two daughters. Hiram was the fifth child. He was raised in Waterville, and educated in the High School there. He lived on his father's farm till fifteen years old. He then went into a store and clerked about a year and a half, when he went into a machine shop, but afterward went back into the store. In 1854 he came to California and mined for about a year on the north fork of the American River, in Placer County, and was interested in mines there for three or four years after that. He then went into the saw-mills of that county and sawed sugar-pine lumber for about three years. From there he went to Humboldt Bay, where he ran an engine in a saw-mill for one winter. Next he came to Santa Clara County in 1860, and ran a saw-mill for Howe & Welden, where the Forest House now stands, near Alma; was there one season, when he went into the employ of McMurtry & McMillin in the same capacity; was with them four years, on the Los Gatos Creek. In April, 1867, he bought his present place and moved there, where he has since resided. Mr. Morrell has been engaged in lumbering for a great many years. He now has timber land and a saw-mill in Santa Cruz County, sawing lumber for Santa Clara County.
He was married, November 15, 1864, to Clarissa R. Burrell, daughter of Lyman J. Burrell, deceased. They have five children: Lizzie M., Clifford H., Jesse B., Minnie C., and Albert E. His ranch contains 250 acres, of which 100 acres are set to fruit, fifty being in fruit and fifty in vines, all in good bearing condition. He has some apple trees thirty years old; has thirty acres in grain, and the rest is timber and pasture land. Mr. Morrell has been a member of Santa Clara Lodge, No. 52, I. O. O. F., for twenty years.
Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888.
Pg. 599-600