Alameda County Biographies

JAMES HUTCHISON

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 
 
Was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, May 24, 1824, and there served three years apprenticeship 
with his father to the trade of nurseryman, residing with him until he attained the age of 
eighteen years.  After passing four years in several nurseries in different parts of the �land 
of brown heath and shaggy wood,� he crossed the border to England, and entered the service of 
the Earl of Limerick at Dutchen Park, Hampshire, as head gardener, which position he occupied 
eighteen months.  He now returned to Scotland and became foreman of the Princes Street Gardens, 
Edinburgh, and held that appointment six months, when he commenced to entertain the idea of 
emigrating.  In the spring of 1847, he sailed for the United States, and first locating in 
Westchester County, New York, there followed his calling for three years.  Mr. Hutchison now 
moved to New Jersey, where he took charge of a most extensive private garden until March 1852, 
about which time he sailed from New York in the steamer Pioneer, via the Straits of Magellan, 
and landed in San Francisco, August 20, 1852.  He immediately found occupation in a garden at 
the Presidio, but at the end of two months changed to conducting a flower establishment at the 
corner of Lombard and Kearny Streets, where he remained nearly a year.  In the fall of 1853, 
purchasing land in Alameda, he there embarked in the nursery business, and laid the foundation 
of his present enterprise.  In 1863 he came to Oakland, established himself at the corner of 
Ninth Street and Broadway, and in 1864 purchased the land at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street 
and Telegraph Avenue, comprising three acres and a half, where he has planted an extensive 
nursery.  In 1877 he acquired his present property at the corner of Washington and Fourteenth 
Streets, Oakland, where he has a fine conservatory and floral seed and nursery depot.  Married 
in Alameda 1855, Miss Elizabeth L. Sanborn, a native of Crown Point, New York, and has no issue.
 
History of Alameda County, California�, Oakland, M.W. Wood Publ., 1883 p. 912-913