California Biographies

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

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

Source:
History of the state of California and biographical record of the San Joaquin 
Valley, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from 
its earliest settlement to the present time.
Prof. James Miller Guinn , A. M.
The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1905
Notes: Missing Page: 865-866,983-984,1175-1176


JAMES C. PAINE. The president of the Malaga Packing Company, a corporation which has 
in no small degree advanced the fruit interests of Fresno county, James C. Paine is a citizen 
of great personal worth, and one whose forceful methods and business ability have won 
for him the respect of his fellow horticulturists. He is prominent as a vineyardist and fruit 
grower of the Fowler district, having a hundred-acre ranch which is one of the largest in the 
vicinity, finely developed and improved, fifty acres being given over to the cultivation of 
raisin grapes, thirty-five acres to various fruits, and the rest to general farming. 

A native of Tippah county, Miss., Mr. Paine was born May 4, 1853, a son of James W. and 
Eliza (Blackard) Paine. Both parents were natives of Tennessee, the father a son of Hardin 
L., a native of North Carolina. He was a farmer by occupation. About 1856 James W. 
Paine removed to Missouri and located in Dallas county. Upon the outbreak of the Civil war he 
removed to northeast Missouri, finally locating in Macon county. In 1886 he came to California 
and died here at the age of seventy-three years. His father, Hardin L. Paine, took his slaves to 
Texas upon the outbreak of the war and spent the rest of his life there. 

Reared to manhood on his father's farm in Missouri, James C. Paine received a thorough 
agricultural training, and on starting out on his own resources at the age of eighteen years 
sought his livelihood in the same occupation which had employed his boyhood years. He re- 
mained in Missouri until 1879, when he went to Tennessee and farmed until 1886. In the 
last named year he came to California. Locating in Madera county, he leased about three thousand 
acres of land and engaged in wheat raising for twelve years. In the meantime, in 1891, he had 
purchased his present farm in Fresno county. In 1898 he permanently moved his family upon 
it, since making this location his home. In 1903 he organized the Malaga Packing Company, in- 
corporated, of which he was elected president. The company purchased the property of the 
Malaga Co-operative Packing Company, which it now operates. 

In Tennessee Mr. Paine married Fannie Jeffries, a native of Mississippi, and the daughter of 
John Jeffries. The children born of this union are as follows : James S., Victor A., Lyman H, 
Jesse L., Harry F., John C, Sarah J., and Robert Treat. In his political convictions Mr. Paine 
is a stanch Democrat.