California Biographies, Alameda County 
Lowell J. Hardy

History of Alameda County, California
Publisher: Oakland, Calif : M. W. Wood

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

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

 


Lowell J. Hardy.�The subject of this sketch, whose portrait appears in this
work, was born in Watham, Massachusetts, July 3, 1817, and is the son of Nahum and
and Mary (Smith) Hardy, and there resided with his parents until the year 1839, when
he moved to Indiana, there teaching school in the city of Madison for one season,
when he returned to his native place, and there, July 14, 1842, married Miss Matilda
Sproul. He now embarked in farming, and was thus engaged up till the time of his
departure for California. Leaving home December 15, 1849, Mr. Hardy took passage
from Boston, sailing January 25, 1850, and after voyaging around the Horn, came to
an anchor in San Francisco Bay on August 6, 1850, the Rod Roy having been consid-
erably delayed on the voyage. Having comfortably located his family at a place then
standing at the corner of Clay and Stockton Streets, San Francisco, our subject himself
proceeded to the mines, where he remained four months. He next worked at the
carpentering trade at wages rating from eight to ten dollars per day, being so occupied
until the month of October, 1850, when he purchased one hundred and sixty
acres of the Peralta Rancho, but did not obtain legal title for some fifteen years.
This property is that on which a considerable portion of the western part of the city
of Oakland stands. Here Mr. Hardy has since resided, respected by all his fellow-citizens
as an honest upright man. In 1866 he commenced dealings in real estate, which
he still continues. He married in the year 1842, as we have said above, and was
unfortunate enough to lose his partner by death on October 4, 1865. His family .consists
of Eliza J. (now Mrs. Holland); Lowell J., Mellium H. Married, secondly,.
March 30, 1870, Mrs. Mary A. Dillon, a native of Philadelphia.