California Biographies Mendocino and Lake Counties, California Transcribed by Peggy Hooper This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm Source: History of Mendocino and Lake Counties, California With Biographical Sketches History by Aurelius O. Carpenter And Percy H. Millberry Illustrated, Complete In One Volume Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1914 JAMES PULLEN. � A representative of an honored old pioneer family of Mendocino county, Mr. Pullen has been identified with the west ever since, at the age of about eighteen, he arrived on Little river, where his father bought a tract of raw land and put up a crude but substantial cabin for the family. It was on the 4th of July, 1864, that they arrived in this country, making the trip via the Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco, thence in a small sailer to Petaluma, where they took a Concord stage to Little River. The former home of the family had been in Maine, where he was born in China, Kennebec county, August 22, 1846. and where he had attended school during about six years of boyhood. For some time before coming west he had earned a liveli- hood by work on farms in Maine. After his arrival in the west he secured a position with the Little River Lumber Company, and for ten years held an important place in the engine-room of the sawmill on Little river, where in 1865 his father, Charles Pullen, a millwright, had erected the first mill ever constructed on that stream. Removing to Salmon creek in 1874. James Pullen, with others, bought the Salmon creek sawmill, located eight miles up the creek, and this he successfully managed until 1900. The company did business as the Salmon Creek Lumber Company, of which he was made president as well as manager. The product was hauled by rail to Whitesboro and there loaded on schooners, the cargoes being sent principally to San Francisco and San Pedro. The mill was equipped with a double circular saw with a capacity of thirty thousand a day. When all of the available timber was cut he sold the mill. In 1900 he spent a season in Nome, Alaska, but not finding the country to his liking he returned to Mendocino county and located in Greenwood, where he lives, retired, looking after his varied interests. In the twenty-six years he conducted the Salmon Creek mill he manufactured lumber from two thousand acres of large redwood timber. The marriage of Mr. Pullen occurred July 31, 1884, uniting him with Miss Elvira Randlett, who at the time was making her home with an aunt and an uncle at Oakland, Alameda county. A member of a pioneer family of California, Mrs. Pullen was born in Placer county, this state, January 31, 1854, and in 1862 was brought to Mendocino county by her parents. Here she attended the common schools and was trained to skill and economical man- agement in housewifely arts, becoming well qualified to manage a home of her own with thrift and intelligence. Recently Mr. and Mrs. Pullen erected a comfortable residence in the village of Greenwood and here they enjoyed the fruits of former years of labor. Their standing in the community is deservedly high.