California Biographies, Santa Cruz County
HON. J. B. MAHER. 

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

Source:
History of Santa Cruz County, California 
Pacific Press Publishing Company
San Francisco, Cal. 1892
By E. S. Harrison 

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

HON. J. B. MAHER. 

In point of years of active association with the lumber industry Mr. Maher has the distinction of being the oldest dealer 
now engaged in the business at Santa Cruz. When he came to California during the year 1884 and settled in the city 
where he still resides, he turned his attention to the buying and selling of lumber as offering an excellent field of labor in 
a growing community. Few men had preceded him as lumbermen in the region and he was a pioneer along the line of 
his specialty. From the first he was able to earn a fair livelihood. Encouraged by the start, he decided to continue in 
the enteri3rise and devoted his time to building up a larger trade. It soon came to be known that all of his orders were 
filled with the utmost promptness possible and also that he endeavored to secure the best grades of lumber obtainable. 
The Casino at the beach was constructed of lumber furnished by him under a contract and many other structures in the 
city and surrounding country were built of lumber purchased from him, so that this name is associated with many local 
building enterprises of importance. 

On a farm in Columbia county, Wis., where he was born in 1852, J. B. Maher passed the years of boyhood and mean- 
while acquired the habits of industry and self-reliance that characterize his manhood. Ever since he was sixteen years 
of age be has been interested in lumbering, for at that age he went into the woods as an employe of a lumberman. Later 
he acquired a knowledge of mill-work. For a considerable period he worked in the Wisconsin woods, but in 1875 he 
started for the west, going first to Idaho. For some years he engaged in freighting in that state, Oregon and Washing- 
ton. His principal work was the hauling of freight to mining camps, and he drove the first large freight teams from Wood 
river in the Salmon river district to the mines of Idaho. The wages were excellent, but the work exhausting and the sur- 
roundings unsatisfactory, so he was led to remove to California in 1884, since which year he has made Santa Cruz his 
home. 

The Democratic party has received the ballot of Mr. Maher in local and general elections ever since he attained the right 
of franchise on reaching his majority. On that ticket he was elected a member of the city council of Santa Cruz. In his 
work as councilman he displayed no partisanship, but ever made manifest a desire to aid the general welfare of the city, 
and his service of fifteen years in the position reflected credit upon his patriotic spirit and intelligent civic pride. As the 
Democratic nominee in 1908 he was elected a member of the state assembly, and there, as in the council, he manifested the 
same devotion to the common welfare characteristic of his private life. Although not an office-seeker, he has excellent 
ability for service along public lines and the positions he has filled are conspicuous for his faithful work therein. During 
1890 he was united in marriage with Miss Zena A. McClosley, member of a Santa Cruz family. Fraternal relations have 
brought him into membership in the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and 
the Knights of Pythias, and he had held official chairs in both branches of the Odd Fellows.