San Joaquin County Biographies


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



JAMES R. JOHNSON.
 
        A young contracting engineer of outstanding capabilities is James R. 
Johnson, whose specialty is the installation of large pumping and irrigation 
systems throughout San Joaquin County. He installed the irrigation systems on 
the Anderson-Barngrover and the Grimsley ranches, both located in the Linden 
district of the county; he has also had contracts for building bridges 
throughout the county. In the spring of 1922 he installed a system of irrigation 
on 2,000 acres devoted to orchard. He was born in San Jose, Cal., in May, 1886, 
a son of James and Frances (Severance) Johnson. The father was a native of 
Bangor, Maine, and migrated to California via the Panama route in 1854. The 
mother was born in New York State and she came via Panama in 1852. The family 
settled in San Jose, where her father was a photographer; and he also owned a 
fifty-acre prune and apricot orchard at Berryessa. He died at the age of 
sixty-eight years; the mother still lives at San Jose and is eighty years old. 
Two sons were born to this couple, James R., our subject, and Frank S.
        James R. Johnson began his education in the Pala district school of 
Santa Clara County, then entered the San Jose high school, and in 1909 was 
graduated from the Stanford University in electrical engineering. Following his 
graduation he went to Schenectady, N. Y., and for two years was identified with 
the engineering department of the General Electric Company; then he returned to 
San Jose and purchased a ranch on Penetencia Creek Road and Capitol Avenue in 
the Berryessa district of the county. This was the old Start place on which 
there was a run�down orchard, which, within two years, he developed into a first 
class producing orchard and then sold it to good advantage. In 1914 he removed 
to Stockton and engaged in general engineering work.
        On June 15, 1911, in San Jose, Mr. Johnson was married to Miss Florence 
Fickett Grant, born in San Jose, a daughter of J. T. and Hattie (Fickett) Grant, 
the former a native of Kansas, who came to California in an early day, and the 
latter a native of Stockton, Cal. J. T. Grant first farmed on Woodward Island, 
then removed to Santa Clara County, and was the man that set out the famous 
Flickinger orchard at Berryessa; later he returned to Stockton, where he now 
resides. Three children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson: Grant, Barbara 
and James R., Jr. Mr. Johnson owns a forty-two-acre ranch at Linden, set to 
peaches and walnuts, on which there is a seven‑inch pump with a 
thirty-five-horsepower electric motor. In politics he is a Republican and 
fraternally he is a Royal Arch Mason, and with his wife is a member of the 
Eastern Star of Stockton. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson are members of the First 
Congregational Church of Stockton.
 
History of San Joaquin County, California � Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 
1923
p  1471        
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler.