California Biographies 

Source:
History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California
by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo. 
Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura
Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917

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

J. R. BLACK is one of the highly prosperous men of Ventura County. Good judgment and 
foresight opened to him the door of success and his friends and neighbors say he has never 
neglected an opportunity in a business way and has been equally public spirited in behalf of 
every movement to promote the best interests of his community.
He was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, August 3, 1872, a son of James Lucian and Eliza 
Black, and all his education was acquired in Virginia schools. At the age of fourteen his parents 
removed to Pettis County, Missouri, and he remained there working on his father's farm for six 
years. Coming out to Ventura County, he familiarized himself with local conditions during the 
next 32 years as an employe on the Robert Dunn ranch in the Santa Clara Valley.
He then took up a government claim of hill land consisting of 320 acres. It was in the midst of 
the oil district, and sixty days after he had filed his claim he sold the tract for $16,000 to oil 
promoters. He used part of the proceeds in purchasing 400 acres adjoining his claim, also in the 
Santa Clara Valley, and of that large estate he now has forty acres in apricots, ten acres in 
lemons, while the rest is devoted to beans, alfalfa and barley.
Mr. Black is a stockholder in the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Santa Paula and Fillmore. He 
is a member of the Woodmen of the World, is a republican in politics, and belongs to the 
Christian Science Church. Near Fillmore on the ranch he now owns March 15, 1896, he married 
Lelia V. Conoway, daughter of one of the pioneers of Ventura County. They are the parents of 
two children : Mrs. Lucile Smith of Los Angeles; and Nadine, who is a student in the high school.