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


JAMES A. GISSON. Many of the prosperous farms and fruit ranches of Ventura County are 
owned by men who came to this state with practically no capital and have gained success by 
intelligently combining their individual enterprise and hard work with the splendid resources of 
soil and climate.
A case in point is furnished by Mr. James A. Gibson of Nordhoff. Born in Mercer County, 
Pennsylvania, September 10, 1861, he grew up and received his early education in the public 
schools of Lee County, Iowa, and at the age of seventeen took his place as an apprentice in a 
flour mill. He learned that business in all its details and eventually was promoted to head 
miller.
Then in 1888 he came to California. Locating in the Ojai Valley of Ventura County he bought 
twenty acres. His first work of development was the planting of five acres to naval oranges. He 
has obtained a great many fine crops of fruit from that planting, and in 1897 he extended his 
orange groves by the planting of ten acres in navel and Valencia oranges, and in the spring of 
1906 put out three more acres in oranges. He is one of the leading orange growers in that 
valley. In 1891 Mr. Gibson bought five acres in the foothills and seven acres near his home 
place, but as yet he has not developed that land.
He is a son of Essington and Julia Gibson. His father was born in Pennsylvania, was a carpenter 
and millwright, and in 1869 removed from Mercer County, Pennsylvania, to Lee County, Iowa, 
where he followed his trade for many years. In 1889 he followed his son to the Ojai Valley of 
Ventura County and has since lived there in comfortable retirement.
Mr. James Gibson is a republican. He married in Los Angeles June 30, 1916, Sarah Shearing, a 
native of Pennsylvania and a daughter of one of the coal producers and operators of that state. 
Mr. Gibson is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, No. 360, of Los Angeles.