San Diego County Biographies
 
R. W. McGARVIE

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


one of the best known men in San Diego, was born in Lawrence County, 
Pennsylvania, May 24, 1861.  While quite young he went with his parents to 
Monroe County, Michigan, where both parents died when he was but eleven years of 
age. When seventeen years old he engaged with the Michigan Central Railroad 
Company, and remained in their employ four years, filling several responsible 
positions, as telegraph operator, station agent, etc., and was then transferred 
to the
General Managers' office in Detroit. In 1883 he went to St. Ignace, in northern 
Michigan, and started a semi-weekly newspaper, the St. Ignace News. After 
publishing it about a year he sold out and removed to Denver, Colorado. Here he 
sought employment with the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and remained with it 
a year. Early in 1885 he came to San Diego and was appointed station agent at 
Barstow, where he remained until February of the following year, when he was 
transferred to the general passenger and ticket office in San Diego. During the 
memorable "boom" in Southern California he gave up his position with the 
railroad company, opened a real-estate office and began selling corner lots. In 
this as in other things he was successful, and probably sold more land than any 
other man in San Diego. At the city election in the spring of 1889 he was a 
candidate on the regular Republican ticket for the office of city treasurer and 
tax collector, and received the largest vote of any man on the ticket. He was 
married in May, 1886, to Miss Ella Allsop, of Huron, Ohio.
 
SOURCE:  An Illustrated History of Southern California:  Embracing the Counties 
of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower 
California� Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890.  p.-  256