California Biographies

Source:
History of Napa and Lake Counties
San Francisco, Slocum, Bowen & Co., Publishers. 1881

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper 2011

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


John Bachelder

John Bachelder - Was born in New Hampshire, March 7, 1817. At the age of twenty he began life for 
himself. In 1838 he went to Boston, where he was book-keeper in the Middlesex Canal Depot. At the 
end of three years he became a partner in a similar business enterprise. In 1844 he began the dry goods 
business in Boston, which he followed for four years. In 1847-8 he invented the Bachelder improvement 
for sewing machines, which consisted of the yielding presser-foot and feeder. In 1852 he began cotton 
manufacturing at Lisbon, now Sprague, Connecticut, and continued in that business for sixteen years, 
and was also in the meantime interested in a woolen mill near Norwich, Connecticut. He came to 
California in 1873, and in 1875 began the manufacture of wind-mills, etc., at Napa, which he still continues. 
He was married in July, 1842, to Miss A. Wason. Their children are Herman, Emma L. and Charles S.