James McMillan Shafter

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James McMillan Shafter
From San Francisco Examiner (August 30, 1892)
California Superior Court Judge for San Francisco County
In office
June 1889 – January 1, 1891
Appointed byRobert Waterman
Preceded byJeremiah F. Sullivan
Member of the California Senate
from the San Francisco district
In office
January 1861 – January 1865
Preceded byArchibald C. Peachy
Succeeded byA. L. Tubbs
5th Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly
In office
January 14, 1852 – January 3, 1853
Preceded byFrederick W. Horn
Succeeded byHenry L. Palmer
13th Secretary of State of Vermont
In office
November 1842 – July 1849
Preceded byAlvah Sabin
Succeeded byFarrand F. Merrill
Member of the Wisconsin State Assembly
from the Sheboygan 1st district
In office
January 5, 1852 – January 3, 1853
Preceded byAlbert D. La Due
Succeeded byDavid Taylor
Member of the Vermont House of Representatives
from the Townsend district
In office
October 1, 1841 – October 1, 1843
Preceded bySamuel F. Thompson
Succeeded byNathan Fisher
Personal details
Born(1816-05-27)May 27, 1816
Athens, Vermont, U.S.
DiedAugust 29, 1892(1892-08-29) (aged 76)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
Cause of deathDiabetes
Political party
Spouse
Julia Granville Hubbard
​
​
(m. 1845; died 1871)​
Children
  • Payne Jewett Shafter
  • (b. 1846; died 1934)
  • James Chester Shafter
  • (b. 1851; died 1929)
  • Chester Hubbard Shafter
  • (b. 1854; died 1863)
  • Julia Ruth (Hamiltony)
  • (b. 1859; died 1936)
Relatives
EducationWesleyan University
Yale Law School
ProfessionLawyer

James McMillan Shafter (May 27, 1816 – August 29, 1892) was an American lawyer, politician, and pioneer of Wisconsin and California. He was the 13th Secretary of State of Vermont and the 5th speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly (1852). Later in life he was a California state senator and superior court judge. Near the time of his death, his large dairy ranch in Marin County, California, was described as one of the largest ranches in the world—over 23,000 acres.[1] His name was abbreviated in different ways over the course of his life, including J. McM. Shafter, Jas. M'm. Shafter, and other permutations.

Biography[edit]

Born in Athens, Vermont, Shafter attended public schools and then graduated from Wesleyan University ni 1837. Two years later, he graduated from Yale Law School and was admitted to the Vermont bar in 1840.[1][2] He went to work as a lawyer in Townsend, Vermont, where he remained for three years before moving to Burlington, Vermont.[1]

While living in Townsend, he was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in 1841, and he was then elected Secretary of State of Vermont, serving from 1842 until resigning in the summer of 1849, in order to seek out new opportunities in the west.[3][4]

In 1850, he moved to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1851. During the 1852 legislative session, Shafter served as speaker of the Assembly.[5] In the fall of 1852, he was the Whig Party nominee for United States House of Representatives in Wisconsin's 3rd congressional district, but he lost that election to Democrat John B. Macy.[6]

In 1855, he then moved to San Francisco, California, where he practiced law with his brother, Oscar L. Shafter.[2][7] In 1857, a complex real estate litigation resulted in the Shafter firm winning a victory for their client of 75,000 acres of farm land at Point Reyes in Marin County.[8] The client sold the property to the Shafters.[9] They leased it to dairy farmers who provided milk and butter to an ever-growing San Francisco and prospered.[10] The Shafter families owned most of Point Reyes from 1857 to 1919, when the land was sold in parcels.[11]

In 1862, Shafter served in the California State Senate and was its President pro tempore.[12] Shafter also served in the California Constitution Convention of 1878 and was on the University of California Board of Regents ex officio as President of the California State Agricultural Association. In November 1885, he was appointed one of the original trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.[13][2][14]

In March 1888, Shafter survived a gunshot at close range.[15] His son, Dr. James Shafter, had sued for a divorce and the wife's brother, angry at the proceedings, confronted the elder Shafter in the San Francisco City Hall.[16] The brother fired four times at point blank range but missed his mark.[15]

In 1889, Governor Robert Waterman appointed Shafter as judge of the San Francisco County Superior Court to fill the vacancy from the resignation of Jeremiah F. Sullivan.[17][18][19]

Personal life[edit]

James McMillan Shafter was the fourth of six children born to William Rufus Shafter and his wife Mary (née Lovell). His older brother, Oscar L. Shafter, served as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. Through another brother, Hugh, he was an uncle of U.S. Army major general William Rufus Shafter, who was a recipient of the Medal of Honor for actions in the American Civil War.[20] The Shafters were descended from James Shafter, an orphan who may have been born in England or shortly after his parents emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 18th century. Its unknown if his parents' name was actually "Shafter" or if the orphan James just took that name after their death.[21]

In 1845, James McMillan Shafter married Julia Granville Hubbard (September 11, 1821 – February 11, 1871) in Montpelier, Vermont, who had studied at Troy Female Seminary.[22] They had at least four children: Payne Jewett Shafter,[23] James Chester Shafter, Chester Hubbard Shafter, and Julia Ruth Shafter.[24]

At the time of his death, in 1892, Shafter left an estate worth about $1,000,000 (about $33,000,000 adjusted for inflation to 2023).

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c "James M'm. Shafter". San Francisco Chronicle. October 10, 1890. p. 10. Retrieved September 30, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ a b c "Judge Shafter Dead". Los Angeles Herald. Vol. 38, no. 142. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 31 August 1892. p. 1. Retrieved July 19, 2017. Judge Shaffer leaves an estate valued at about a million dollars.
  3. ^ "Ferrand F. Merrill". Burlington Free Press. July 12, 1849. p. 2. Retrieved September 30, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ "Regents of the University of California". University of California History, digital archives. Retrieved July 19, 2017.
  5. ^ 'Wisconsin Blue Book 1881, p. 184.
  6. ^ "Official Vote on Members of Congress". The Weekly Wisconsin. December 8, 1852. p. 3. Retrieved May 23, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ Life, Diary and Letters of Oscar Lovell Shafter, Associate Justice Supreme Court of California, January 1, 1864 – December 31, 1868 (1915). p. 237-240.
  8. ^ "Point Reyes Station, California: 1857-1919: The Shafter Empire". SeeCalifornia.com. Retrieved July 18, 2017.
  9. ^ Tippin, Brenda L. (May 2016). "History Lesson: Past and Present: Pt. Reyes Morgan Horse Ranch" (PDF). National Park Service. p. 27. Retrieved July 18, 2017. Senior partner Oscar Lovell Shafter was, at that time, considered the foremost title lawyer in California
  10. ^ Pranka, Carol A. (Spring 2014). "Good as Gold: The Marin-Sonoma Artisan Cheese Cluster, a Ph.D. dissertation" (PDF). University of California, Berkeley. p. 20. Retrieved July 18, 2017. soon after a group of San Francisco lawyers, led by brothers Oscar and James Shafter and son-in-law Charles Webb Howard, acquired much of the land in the Point Reyes area
  11. ^ "Big Marin Estate Sold to Operator". Healdsburg Tribune. No. 27. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 4 December 1929. p. 1. Retrieved July 19, 2017. The sale was made by Mrs. Julia Shafter Hamilton, daughter of the late Judge James McMillan Shafter, who bought the tract in 1876.
  12. ^ "Election History". JoinCalifornia.com. Retrieved July 19, 2017.
  13. ^ "Leland Stanford Jr. University". Sonoma Democrat. No. 6. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 28 November 1885. p. 1. Retrieved August 15, 2017.
  14. ^ Kyle, Douglas E. (2002). Historic Spots in California: Fifth Edition. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 192. ISBN 0804778175. Retrieved July 19, 2017.
  15. ^ a b "Hon. J. McM. Shafter had a narrow escape from a violent death last Thursday". Marin Journal. Vol. 27, no. 52. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 8 March 1888. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  16. ^ "A Narrow Escape, Judge James McM Shafter Barely Escapes Assassination". Sacramento Daily Union. Vol. 59, no. 9. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 2 March 1888. p. 4. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  17. ^ "The Pacific Coast, Appointment of a Successor to Judge Sullivan". Daily Alta California. Vol. 80, no. 164. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 13 June 1889. p. 5. Retrieved July 19, 2017.
  18. ^ "Judge Shafter Dead". Sacramento Daily Union. Vol. 84, no. 9. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 31 August 1892. Retrieved July 19, 2017.
  19. ^ "Died. Shafter". Sausalito News. Vol. 8, no. 30. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 2 September 1892. p. 2. Retrieved July 18, 2017.
  20. ^ Forbes, Charles Spooner; Cummings, Charles R. (1897). The Vermonter: The State Magazine, Volumes 3-6. C.S. Forbes. p. 271. Retrieved July 18, 2017. An uncle of the general, the late Oscar L. Shafter...became a judge of the (California) Supreme Court.
  21. ^ Nelson, Todd (February 22, 2022). "Humble Beginnings of the Shafter Dynasty (part 2)". Medium.
  22. ^ Fairbanks, Mary J. Mason (1898). Emma Willard and Her Pupils: Or, Fifty Years of Troy Female Seminary, 1822-1872. Mrs. Russell Sage. p. 189.
  23. ^ "Death at Wedding". Marin Journal. Vol. 16, no. 25. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 31 August 1876. p. 2. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  24. ^ "Looking Backward, Notes of Happenings in Marin County Twenty-Eight Years Ago as Told in the Journal". Marin Journal. No. 8. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 19 February 1920. p. 7. Retrieved July 20, 2017. His two sons, Dr. J. C. Shafter, of San Francisco, and Payne J. Shafter, of Olema, and his daughter, Mrs. A. F. Hamilton, of San Francisco, were at the bedside when death came.
Vermont House of Representatives
Preceded by
Samuel F. Thompson
 Member of the Vermont House of Representatives from the Townsend district
October 1, 1841 – October 1, 1843 		Succeeded by
Nathan Fisher
Wisconsin State Assembly
Preceded by
Albert D. La Due
 Member of the Wisconsin State Assembly from the Sheboygan 1st district
January 5, 1852 – January 3, 1853 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly
1852–1853 		Succeeded by
California Senate
Preceded by
Archibald C. Peachy
 Member of the California Senate from the San Francisco district
January 1861 – January 1865 		Succeeded by
A. L. Tubbs
Preceded by
Richard Irwin
 President pro tempore California State Senate
1862 		Succeeded by
A. M. Crane
Political offices
Preceded by Secretary of State of Vermont
1842–1849 		Succeeded by
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