Santa Cruz County Biographies

JAMES BOSWORTH PEAKES

Submitted by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        The life of an old soldier is filled with excitement and interesting 
incidents. There is no one who has participated in active service during the 
Rebellion that has not had personal experience enough of an interesting 
character to make a readable volume. J. B. Peakes had three and one-half years 
of army life, during which time he was engaged in many red-hot encounters, from 
which, as Job of old exclaimed, he "barely escaped by the skin of his teeth." 
Mr. Peakes was born at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, October 18, 1841, of 
Scotch and English ancestry. Six years later he moved with his parents to Maine, 
where he attended school, and was just on the threshold of manhood when the War 
of the Rebellion was inaugurated.
        He enlisted in the First Maine Cavalry in 1861, and, as above noted, was 
at the front for three and one-half years. During this time his regiment saw 
more service and lost more men than any other cavalry regiment in the Federal 
forces. The muster roll showed that during the war four thousand two hundred men 
were recruited for this regiment.
        The first engagement in which Mr. Peakes participated was at Middletown, 
in the Shenandoah Valley, under Banks. Without going into details of the 
engagement, it is enough to say that he was with a detachment which held the 
entire Confederate forces in check until Banks made his escape. So warm had been 
the conflict that every horse belonging to the troops had been shot.  He, with 
thirty others, was captured here, and confined at Lynchburg and Belle Isle, and 
the hardships endured are best told by the fact that he weighed one hundred and 
fifty-six pounds when confined and eighty-five pounds when released. His 
appearance must have suggested a patent-medicine advertisement, "before and 
after taking." If his pictures could have been made before and after prison 
life, they would have been the strongest commentaries upon the hardships endured 
in these prison pens that could have been published.
        He was at the first battle of Fredericksburg, after which he was 
detailed as an orderly under General Kilpatrick. He was at Gettysburg; Deep 
Bottom, and the firing of the Petersburg mine, and participated in some lively 
skirmishing before Richmond. Within about five miles of Richmond his regiment 
was surprised by superior Confederate forces, and in four minutes lost forty men 
and seventy-two horses. In addition to this his regiment was engaged in a large 
number of battles while he was on General Kilpatrick's staff. He was captured a 
second time and confined in Libby Prison for seven days, when he was paroled. 
The last capture was by guerrillas, and he was condemned to be shot, but saved 
from this fate by the intervention of a member of the band more humane than the 
rest.
        When the war terminated, he went to Boston and engaged in contracting 
and building until 1872. For the four years following this date he was in the 
hotel business, and in 1876 came to Santa Cruz, California, and assumed the 
management of the Kittridge House, where he remained for twelve years. He took 
charge of the Pacific Ocean House, but sold out after eighteen months' 
management of this hostelry, and now has charge of the Pope House, a public 
summer hotel and family resort of Santa Cruz. That he believes in the future of 
Santa Cruz is shown by his real-estate investments here, comprising about fifty 
choice lots in this city.
        Mr. Peakes was married, April 9, 1867, to Miss Olive S. Dyer, of Bangor, 
Maine, a charming and estimable lady, who has been and is prominent in social 
circles of Santa Cruz. They have one son, W. D. Peakes, a young man who assists 
his father in the management of the hotel.
 
HISTORY OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.-  E. S. Harrison, 
Pacific Press Publ. Co., San Francisco, 1891