The Valley of Heart's Delight
J.F.PARKINSON
Father of Palo Alto 
Santa Clara County, California
(see other resources for J F PARKINSON family at the bottom of this page)
SURNAMES: Roseberry, Gray, Morris, Scofield, Maza, Weaver,
A prominent Mason who is so identified with the early history of the
town that he well deserves the title of the Father of Palo Alto, is J.
F. Parkinson, of **616 Cowper street
**,
in which attractive throughfare he is a familiar figure--six feet,
three inches tall, and weighing 240 pounds. His life-story is
intimately the history of Palo Alto, for he built the first residence
here, put in the first lumber yard, incorporated the first banck, and
drove the first spike in the great railway he had promoted.
He was born in Marshall County, W.Va., on December 2, 1864, when
his father, Dr. Benoni Parkinson was serving in the civil war with the
rank of a major. He had just finished his course of study as a
physician and surgeon, at the Waynesburg, Pa., Medical College, when
the war commenced, and he lost no time in enlisting, registering from
West Virginia. He served as army surgeon throughout the great struggle,
and had four enlistments and several promotions to his credit. He was
the son of John Parkinson, a native of Virginia, a contractor on the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, when it was built through the Cumberland
Mountains. The Parkinson family, dating back to both England and
Scotland, settled the Old Dominion and the Keystone State, active in
business and in the professions, especially as lawyers and doctors.
Dr. Benoni Parkinson was married in Virginia on October 14, 1862, after
which he went to the front. He was born on March 3, 1836, and died in
Palo Alto on February 7, 1899, after residening in this city for six
years. His bride, before her marriage to Dr. Parkinson. was Katherine
Mary Gray, and was born in Grewene County, Pa., on November 28, 1840.
Her parents were Francis and Sarah (Roseberry) Gray, and the Grays and
the Roseberrys were both English settlers in Virginia. She died in
Washington, Iowa, in 1880, highly esteembed by all who knew her.
When J. F. Parkinson, who was the eldest in a family of seven children,
was six years old, his parents removed with him to Washington County,
Iowa, in 1870; and then Dr. Parkinson gave up the practice of medicine
and embarked in the lumber trade. He also helped to organize a number
of banks in Iowa and the Middle west, and he owned a number of farms in
Iowa, and our subject helped to run them during school vacations, and
also helped in his father's lumber yard. He attended the public schools
in Washington, Iowa, and he completed the courses at Washington
College, having previously taken a business course at Burlington. Then
he went to the University of Michigan, where he pursued a classical
course; but he was taken with hemorrhage of the lungs, which led him to
quit college and to hurry west to California in the hope of regaining
his health. Thirteen relatives of his mother from Pennsylvania and
Virginia had crossed the plains to California in 1852, lured by the
prospects for gold, and a cousin, Mr. Morris, was still living at
Woodland, in Yolo County, in 1888, and welcomed our subject to the
Golden State. This cousin's widow and sons are still living in Yolo
County, although Asa Morris, Jr., the well-known cattleman, was killed
in an automobile accident in July, 1921.
J.F.Parkinson who was then twenty-three years old, had fallen in love
in Iowa, and he had come out to the Coast not merely to regain his
health, but to look for employment and secure a prospective home. His
betrothed, Miss Helen M. Scofield, was born in Washington County, Iowa,
and was a daughter of William Scofield, the Washington, Iowa, attorney,
and a cousin of General Scofield of New York, and Sarah (Maza)
Scofield, a native of Ohio. Miss Scofield, it happened, had preceded
our subject to California, and had been spending the winter of 1884-85
with her folks at San Jose, while she also put in a year at school in
San Jose, and hence young Parkinson went to San Jose for employment,
believing that his intended wife would like to live there. He found
something worth while in the service of J.P.Pierce, presidnet of the
Pacific Manufacturing Company, at Santa Clara, commencing work at the
modest salary of sixty-five dollars per month; but he rose to a
commanding position, with the largest salary granted anyone in that
county. He worked for the Pacific Manufacturing Company in charge of
their lumber yeard at Santa Clara from 1888 to 1892; and during this
time he had not only met with Gov. Leland Stanford, but he had become
acquainted with the plans for the building of the Leland Sanford, Jr.
University.
He could easily foresee that there was plenty of room for a good-sized
town in front of the proposed University site, and he resigned his
position with the Pacific Manufacturing Company, and resolved to open
up a lumber yard at Palo Alto which was then called University Park. He
had saved considerable money, and so was able to commence in a small
way, hauling his first load of lumber from Santa Clara on March 1,
1892. By the first of January, 1893, he had transacted $70,000 worth of
business. He then started a hardware store in connection with his
lumber yard, and then a plumbing and tinning establishment, and later
still he built the first planing mill in Palo Alto. After that he
started another lumber yard and hardware store at Mountain View, and
still later he opened a hardware store and lumber yard at Sunnyvale,
when that now thriving town was known as Encinal.
His business expanded so rapidly and steadily during those years that
he prospered exceedingly, and with C.C. Spalding, W.E. Crossman and Mr.
Richards of San Jose, Mr. Parkinson orgaized the first bank of
Sunnyvale. He also organized, in 1892, the Bank of Palo Alto, on a wire
from Iowa, from his father, who was the main stockholder. The
bank was capitalized at $100,000, and Judge J. R. Welch of San Jose
drew up the articles of incorporation and became the bank's first
vice-president. Stock to the amount of $80,000 was taken by Dr.
Parkinson and an uncle George R. Parkinson, both of whom became
well-known residents of Palo Alto, where they died.
At that time, Mayfield was the nearest trading center, and had the only
school and the only post office; it opposed every energetic forward
movement proposed at University Park, and insisted on the people having
children at the latter place sending them to the Mayfield school. Mr.
Parkinson resolved that University Park must organize its own school
district, and he set resolutely about to accomplish the task. In 1892
he gave, free of charge, all the lumber needed for the first school
house in Palo alto, which was built at the corner of University and
Bryant streets, and in the fall of that year, the school house was
opened for the twenty-five or more pupils. Mr. Parkinson also donated
$250 for the building of the First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto,
the first chuch edifice in town, and he donated liberally toward the
building of all the succeeding churches in Palo Alto.
He became a good friend of Governor Stanford, and he was thus enabled to do much toward carrying out his laudable enterprises.
Timothy Hopkins owned and laid out the townsite of what was at first
called University Park, and when ambitious folks petitioned to have the
name changed to Palo Alto, they were influenced by the Spanish name of
Governor Stanford's extensive stock farm of 8,600 acres, included in
the present site of the University, meaning "high tree," and referring
to the large sequoia on the San Francisquito Creek at the extreme
northerly point in Santa Clara County.
It seems that the Cornell, Fitzhugh, Hopkins Company of San Francisco
owned sixty acres southwest of the old town of Mayfield and they
plotted it and called it Palo Alto, and began to sell lots. Governor
Stanford lost no time in enjoining them from the use of Palo Alto as a
name, and this led to much litigation and hard feelings. The matter was
finally compromised by then Senator Stanford renamed the sixty-acre
plot College Terrace, and this is now an
addition to the town of Mayfield. Thereupon, Mr. Hopkins, by and with
the consent of those who had bought lots in University Park about 1894,
petitioned the board of county supervisors to call University Park
-Palo Alto; and the first post office was established in Palo Alto with
Mr. Parkinson as postmaster. He was elected a member of the Palo Alto
School Board and he served for eight years.
Mr. Parkinson organized the Palo Alto Mutual Building and Loan
Association, and became its first president. He also helped actively to
establish the first newspaper in Palo Alto, the "Times," and afterwards
himself owned the Palo Alto "Citizen," which in time was consolidated
with the "Times." He owned the first water-works, supplied by two
artesian wells and before the town was incorporated he laid four-inch
water mains. He built the city line of street railway in Palo Alto, and
also got franchises for the Santa Clara County Interurban Electric
Line. He then obtained franchises for a road extending from Palo Alto
through Mayfield, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and San Jose,
and afterwards bought out J.H. Henry lines from Santa Clara to Alum
Rock. In this project, he was bitterly fought by the southern Pacific
Railway, which bought these lines and renamed them, calling the now
popular line the Peninsular Railway. When this was built, Mr. Parkinson
drove the first spike in its construction, on January 4, 1906.
More personal eperiences of Mr. Parkinson are full of interest even for
the stranger. In 1906 he was elected mayor of Palo alto, and soon
afterward his automobile turned turtle, and he was so severely injured
that he was in bed for four years. A week after he was injured, the
earthquake shook everything topsy-turvy in Palo alto, and when some of
the groceries and meat markets commenced to profiteer and charge two
and three times the regular price for what they had, fear made the
public panicky lest starvation might confront the town. Thereupon Mr.
Parkinson, although an invalid, drove around in his buggy and saw the
extortioners, and through his prompt and firm measures, he stopped the
profiteering, and the result was that Palo ALto got its provisions at
prieces prevailing before the great disaster. This act was generally
applauded and the mayor of Palo Alto was exalted not only in his own
city, but newspapers West, East, North and South, and even editorials
in English papres. Owing to the accident referred to, and its serious
consequences, Mr. Parkinson sold his business and remained mayor only
until the adoption of the new special charter; and then he sought to
regain his health. Later, he endeavored to promote new ventures.
Parkinson's Addition to Palo Alto comprises Alba Park and Ravenswood,
and his object in boosting the latter place was to promote a harbor for
Palo Ato at the same time that he made it a manufacturing center. He
was on the point of realizing his dream, and had sold his holdings at
Ravenswood to a New York man, J.E. Eisenhuth, the first builder of
gas-engine automobiles in the United States, when the World War came
on, and through a combination of unfortunate circumstances, which grew
out of the war, what otherwise would have been his crowning
achievement, and what would have made him a wealthy man, his bondsmen
foreclosed on him, and he lost $500,000. He has regained his health,
however, and he is bravely making a second start. He is the president
of the American Lumber Company, of Sonoma County, a corporation having
a capital of $150,000 and a sawmill at Cazadero; and they bid
fair to expand as rapidly as did some of the earlier associated in his
long business career.
If anyone in Palo Alto is entitled to the whole-souled esteem and good
will for which mortals sensibly crave, it would seem to be Mr.
Parkinson and his good wife, to whom he was married at Washington,
Iowa, in 1888, for together they have done much to help build up Palo
Alto. Mrs. Parkinson was one of the ladies who organized the Palo Alto
Woman's Club, and she gave the first book towards establishing the Palo
Alto Public Library; and she worked as hard as any of the organizers
when the ladies of Palo Alto took turns in serving as Librarian. It was
Mr. Parkinson who convinced the idea of enlisting Andrew Carnegie's
magnificent cooperation in the providing of a library building; and
when committees were appointed and correspondence conducted without any
results, he went to New York and saw Mr. Carnegie personally, and was
instrumental in getting the $10,000 with which the present library
building at the corner of Bryant and Hamilton streets was built in
1904.
The influence of Mr. Parkinson's forceful character and clear-minded
foresight has in a way permeated the very spirit of Palo Alto, which is
known far and wide for its progressive ideas and its municipal
utilities. Mr. and Mrs. Parkinson are living in the house at 616 Cowper
street which he built in early days, sold and then bought back again.
They have had five children, and all have reflected creditably upon the
family name. Katherine M. is the wife of S.E. Weaver, a newpaper man in
New York City. Robert Roseberry is vice-president of the local American
Legion and a manufacturer of Safety First step-ladders at Palo Alto. He
was in the Engineer Corps and served nineteen months in France. Benoni
S. Parkinson is the Tynan Lumber Company, at Salinas as the
superintendent of their yard; and John F. Parkinson Jr., is a student
at Stanford University. Katherine, Robert and Benoni are already
Stanford graduates. Sarah Gray, in her fifteenth year, is a student in
the Palo alto high School. Mr. Parkinson is well up in Masonry and, as
might be expected, enjoys the popularity and esteem due him.
Transcribed by Marie Clayton, from Eugene T. Sawyers' History of Santa Clara County,California, published by Historic Record Co. , 1922. page 427
PARKINSON/GRAY GENEALOGY ----
ARTICLE ON J F PARKINSON FROM PALO ALTO WEEKLY
**(TRANSCIBERS NOTE- PARKINSON home address is given in the P.A. Weekly article as 1101 University Ave, however the Palo ALto Directory of 1921-22 shows Jack (student), J.F.(lumberman) and wife Helen, and Robert PARKINSON all living at the 616 Cowper address as mentioned in Sawyers bio above. The resident of 1101 University Ave in the 1921-22 Palo Alto directory is Mrs. Annie G. Beach, housewife, Clifton F., clerk, Miss Elzabeth, student, and Miss Marian F., nurse)-Cferoben
PALO ALTO HISOTRY AND GENEALOGY
SANTA CLARA COUNTY- The Valley of Heart's Delight
October 24, 2004
Carolyn Feroben
July 19, 2005