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


HUGH HENRY, a resident of California for over thirty years, has been steadily and surely 
progressing in the scale of material prosperity and influence and now ranks as one of the large 
property holders and successful agricultural producers of Ventura County.
Though his life has been spent in America since infancy, he was born in Glasgow, Scotland, July 
12, 1858, a son of Hugh Henry, Sr., and Jane (Watson) Henry. His father was born and reared in 
Ireland, went from there to Scotland, and in 1860 brought his family to the United States, 
locating on a farm in St. Lawrence County, New York. The senior Henry was a practical farmer 
and lived in New York State until his death in 1902 at the age of sixty-eight. His wife, Jane 
Watson, was a native of Scotland, and she died in St. Lawrence County, New York, in 1871.
The early environment of Mr. Hugh Henry was a New York State farm. For a number of years 
he alternated between that farm and its duties and the district schools, and the first regular 
wages paid him for work was as a farm hand. He also had his first independent experience in 
farming in St. Lawrence County, where he bought some land and con- ducted agricultural 
operations until 1883.
Mr. Henry came to California in that year and paved the way for independent operations as a 
farmer by working at monthly wages for various ranch owners. On March 10, 1885, he arrived 
in Ventura County where he spent a year employed on the Los Posas rancho, then four years on 
the Dixey Thompson ranch, following which he leased for three years the Jack Hill ranch at 
Montalvo. After that he leased 160 acres of the CoIonia ranch owned by the late James 
Leonard. In 1895 Mr. Henry bought twenty-eight acres of the Alvoid ranch, lying northwest of 
Oxnard, and has added to his holdings additional tracts of this very rich and valuable land in the 
beet sugar region around Oxnard. Thirty-six acres were bought in 1897, ten acres more in 
1899, and in 1913 twenty-eight acres. His ownership also extends to 107 acres southeast of 
Oxnard, now farmed by his son George. For many years Mr. Henry has been one of the 
practical and successful bean and beet growers around Oxnard, and practically all his land is 
developed to those crops.
Mr. Henry is a York Rite Mason of Oxnard, a member of the Mystic Shrine of Los Angeles, a 
Modern Woodman, has filled all the chairs in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and 
belongs to the Odd Fellows Encampment and the Rebekahs, is a member of the Baptist Church 
and politically votes the republican ticket. In St. Lawrence County, New York, January 18, 1878, 
he married Miss Mary Jane Beatty. They are the parents of three children. George, now thirty-
six years of age, is a progressive rancher in Ventura County. Anna Jane is still at home. Mrs. 
Elizabeth Marie Eastwood also lives in Ventura County.