John Wilson
The steps are long and weary that mark the immigrant’s path from penury to prosperity and from self-sacrificing labors to contentment and competency. In the arduous struggle not a few are overcome by disaster and disappointment, but some there are who reap the reward of their painstaking efforts and enjoy the rich fruition of their unwearied efforts. It has been the privilege of Mr. Wilson to work his way upward from adversity to a fair degree of success. His early years in America were filled with toil and the keenest hardships, but ever the rosy-hued rainbow of hope flung its glittering banner before him and from each disappointment he rose with new courage to resume the difficult duties of the day.
Ireland is the native land of Mr. Wilson, and 1861 the year of his birth. He was the youngest in a family of eight children that gathered about the fireside of his parents, John and Eliza (Blair) Wilson, both of whom passed their entire lives in the Emerald Isle. The father was a farmer all of his life, and when death came to him July 8, 1881, he was still maintaining a small farm in the country which had been his life-time home. With the exception of John Wilson and a brother who was killed as the result of a railroad accident, all of the children are residents of Ireland, four daughters and two sons.
Until he was twenty-three years of age John Wilson remained in his native land, the years counting little toward the betterment of his welfare, for when he came to the United States in 1884 he was literally penniless. The vessel on which he sailed from Ireland landed him in the metropolis of New York, and for ten months thereafter he followed any honest employment that would provide him with the necessities of life. During this time he was enabled to lay by enough to pay his transportation across the country to California, going to Humboldt county and remaining there for five years. One year later he came to Sonoma county, and for about fifteen years he was employed as a farm hand before he purchased and undertook the responsibilities of a ranch of his own. The property which he selected consisted of two hundred and twenty acres of fine land near Santa Rosa, for which he paid $7,000. This was a part of a tract of four hundred acres for which the previous owner had paid $8,000 which shows the rapidity in the rise of real-estate values in a few short years. Shortly afterward Mr. Wilson sold the ranch at a profit of $4,000, and the present owners would not part with it today for $44,000. Subsequently Mr. Wilson bought twenty-five acres of the Coffee tract located three and a-half miles north of Santa Rosa, and here he makes his home. As rapidly as possible he is improving the ranch, at present having four acres in prunes, besides which he has two acres in pears, the remainder of the land being in barley and pasture. During the early years of his residence here he made a specialty of raising horses for the market. Politically Mr. Wilson is a Republican in national politics, and in local matters he stands for the best man.
History of Sonoma
County, California
History by Tom Gregory : Historic Record Company, 1891
Los Angeles, Ca. 1911
Transcribed by Roberta Hester Leatherwood
May 7, 2012 Pages 782-785
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