Yolo-Placer-Tulare County CA Archives Biographies.....Fingland, John (Jr.) 1870 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ca/cafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com December 10, 2005, 1:48 pm Author: Tom Gregory JOHN FINGLAND, JR. No man is better or more favorably known in railroad and business circles in Yolo county, Cal., than John Fingland, Jr., of Woodland. His father, John Fingland, was born at No. 7 Lethan Hill, Dumfrieshire, Scotland, and went to sea when he was fifteen years old. Three years later, at eighteen, having sailed around Cape Horn, he landed at San Francisco. That was in the spring of 1850. For a time he mined with indifferent success in Placer county, at Forest Hill Divide, at Mormon Island and in other diggings. Then he turned to carpentering and until 1873 was connected with contracting and building in different California towns. In the year mentioned he went to Visalia and there contracted and built until the outbreak of the Mineral King excitement in Tulare county, when, with others, he sought fortune in that field and met failure and defeat, as did many another too venturesome ore hunter. After that he went into the meat trade at Penryn, Cal. From there he eventually moved to Roseville, where he is now living, aged eighty-one years. He married Miss Armethea C. Murphy, born in Rhode Island, who came early to this state, where she lived until 1908, when she died. Of their six children four sons and one daughter are living. The oldest of the children of John and Armethea C. (Murphy) Fingland, John Fingland, Jr., was born at Auburn, Placer county, Cal., July 31, 1870. From his fourth to his sixteenth year he spent at Visalia, and there his education was begun in the village school. In 1885 the family moved to Penryn, and there in the public school he continued his studies up to the time he began to help his father in the building business, in which he was employed until 1891. Then he entered the service of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company as assistant station agent at Penryn, and while there he also learned telegraphy. In 1893 and 1894 he was assistant agent and operator at Newcastle, and after that he was night operator at Cascade, Summit, Cisco and Truckee, then relief agent at Penryn, Loomis and Newcastle. After several years passed in those places, in 1897 he was appointed agent at Loomis, a position which he held until 1907, when he was transferred to Woodland, where he has been the railway agent since, with a prospect of remaining indefinitely, for which fact the business community is glad, for a more obliging, yet businesslike, agent is not to be found at any station in the entire Southern Pacific system. In politics Mr. Fingland is a Republican. He is a member of the O. R. T., a Knight of Pythias, and was made a Mason in Woodland Lodge No. 156, F. & A. M. He married, in Loomis, Cal., Miss Edna Smyth, a native of Horseshoe Bar, Placer county, Cal. Additional Comments: Extracted from HISTORY OF YOLO COUNTY CALIFORNIA WITH Biographical Sketches OF The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been Identified With Its Growth and Development From the Early Days to the Present HISTORY BY TOM GREGORY AND OTHER WELL KNOWN WRITERS ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA [1913] File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/yolo/bios/fingland128gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/cafiles/ File size: 3.7 Kb