My seventy years in California, 1857-1927

Jackson Alpheus Graves (1852-1933) and his family left Iowa in 1857 for a life as ranchers and farmers in Marysville and San Mateo, California. After graduation from St. Mary's College and a clerkship in a San Francisco law office, Graves moved to Los Angeles in 1875 and became one of the city's leading attorneys and bankers. My seventy years in California (1927) describes Graves's boyhood and education in northern california and Los Angeles as he found it in 1875: Democratic politics, the position of Hispanic citizens, conflicting land claims, railroad interests, the legal profession, social life, and farming. He offers anecdotes of thirty years of law practice in the city as well as his personal interests: hunting trips in Southern California and Oregon, a San Gabriel Valley ranch, a beach home on Terminal Island, and yachting to Catalina. After 1904, Graves's professional life centers on his work as vice president and president of the Farmers & Merchants Bank, and his book details the banking community and his interests in orange growing and the petroleum industry.