Descendants of Richard Sutton of Roxbury, weaver

Seventh Generation

(Continued)


131. Emily Anna Sutton (Richard , Richard , Richard , William , Richard , Richard ) was born about 1830 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She died 1 after 1901 in (prob.) San Francisco, California, USA.

"Tewksbury Found a Gap and Filled It
Jacob Tewksbury, M.D., who came to the Bay Area from Argentina, owned much of the land now occupied by Chevron, USA. He found that sewing up land was more profitable than sewing up people. Though much of his acquired property was marshland, the enterprising Tewksbury constructed levees extending across the waterway, which began a silting process that was assisted by the deepening of channels around Mare Island. When the silt was sufficient to make the island accessible by foot at low tide, Tewksbury petitioned the government to have the waterway declared land, making it available for private ownership.
Macdonald "Discovered" Point Richmond...
In 1895, Augustin Macdonald, who was on a duck hunting trip, took a hike up Nicholl Nob and "discovered" Point Richmond. Noting the breathtaking beauty of the spot, he also noticed the deep water off what we now call Ferry Point, and recognized its potential as the westernmost terminus being sought by Santa Fe Railway Company. And, on July 4, 1900, Santa Fe's first Ferry, the "Ocean Wave" initiated service to San Francisco from its Ferry Point Terminal by carrying a large crowd of revelers over from San Francisco. Santa Fe's tracks, leading through the tunnel to Ferry Point, provided the first 'solid land' connection between Point Richmond and the mainland. Mrs. Emily Tewksbury, who by 1901 was a wealthy widow, made use of her husband's legacy by selling several acres of his previously underwater land to Standard Oil Company. Soon a fast growing refinery completed the closure of a waterway that had served as a shortcut from San Francisco to San Pablo Bay."
[Dona Roselius, Point Richmond History Association, 139 1/2 Washington Avenue, Point Richmond, CA 94801, phone: 510.235.1336]

"Tewksbury Found a Gap and Filled It
Jacob Tewksbury, M.D., who came to the Bay Area from Argentina, owned much of the land now occupied by Chevron, USA. He found that sewing up land was more profitable than sewing up people. Though much of his acquired property was marshland, the enterprising Tewksbury constructed levees extending across the waterway, which began a silting process that was assisted by the deepening of channels around Mare Island. When the silt was sufficient to make the island accessible by foot at low tide, Tewksbury petitioned the government to have the waterway declared land, making it available for private ownership.
Macdonald "Discovered" Point Richmond...
In 1895, Augustin Macdonald, who was on a duck hunting trip, took a hike up Nicholl Nob and "discovered" Point Richmond. Noting the breathtaking beauty of the spot, he also noticed the deep water off what we now call Ferry Point, and recognized its potential as the westernmost terminus being sought by Santa Fe Railway Company. And, on July 4, 1900, Santa Fe's first Ferry, the "Ocean Wave" initiated service to San Francisco from its Ferry Point Terminal by carrying a large crowd of revelers over from San Francisco. Santa Fe's tracks, leading through the tunnel to Ferry Point, provided the first 'solid land' connection between Point Richmond and the mainland. Mrs. Emily Tewksbury, who by 1901 was a wealthy widow, made use of her husband's legacy by selling several acres of his previously underwater land to Standard Oil Company. Soon a fast growing refinery completed the closure of a waterway that had served as a shortcut from San Francisco to San Pablo Bay."
[Dona Roselius, Point Richmond History Association, 139 1/2 Washington Avenue, Point Richmond, CA 94801, phone: 510.235.1336]

Our Lady of Mercy changes with the times
FATHER Martin P. Scanlan called Point Richmond a "wild, scattered place" in the letter he wrote to his archbishop in 1902. He was trying to convince the archbishop of San Francisco, Patrick William Riordan, that even though the land had been more or less a gift, the location for the church in the newly created parish was wrong.
"The present site for the church I fear is not at all central," he wrote -- and to make matters worse, he added, "An opera house is to be erected on the opposite corner to our place. That, of course, would render our present location even more undesirable than at present."
What Scanlan was writing about was the new subdivision that A.S. McDonald had created. He divided 550 acres into 5,000 city lots. Lots on McDonald Avenue were selling for $180.
Scanlan proposed that the new church be built "down to the valley" where the new community was already spreading out, populated with workers from the new Standard Oil refinery and Santa Fe Railroad terminus. He estimated that church and land wouldn't cost more than $8,000.
The archbishop was not convinced. The diocese had been given the property at the corner of Richmond Avenue and Santa Fe for a nominal $10 in gold coin by Emily Tewksbury two years earlier. The widow Tewksbury, whose husband, Jacob, was responsible for building the dikes that changed Point Richmond from an island to a peninsula, had previously sold Standard Oil its refinery site for $68,000.
And so it came to be that Our Lady of Mercy is now in its 100th year in Point Richmond.
[Nilda Rego: Days Gone By, Contra Costa Times, 17 Nov 2002]

Emily married 1 Dr. Jacob Merrill Tewksbury son of Dr. Jacob Tewksbury and Charlotte Nelson on 31 Aug 1848 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Jacob was born 2 on 7 Feb 1814 in Oxford, Maine, USA. He died 3, 4 on 4 Feb 1877 in San Francisco, California, USA, Æ 62.

Dr. Jacob M. Tewksbury studied medicine with his father and attended a regular course of lectures in the medical department of Bowdoin College where he was graduated in 1836. He practiced for a few years in both Oxford and Wiscasset, and then removed to Buenos Aires, where he was a physician and dental surgeon, the 1st to use chloroform there along with Diego de Alvear.He later removed to San Francisco, arriving there on 26 September 1849. San Francisco was then no more than a hamlet of a dozen adobe and wood buildings, and perhaps an hundred tents. Jacob and Emilia lived there to witness the growth of a great city, and to acquire wealth and fame.

"Samuel Henry TEWKSBURY, M.D., physician and surgeon of Portland, Me., was born in Oxford, Oxford Co., Me., March 22, 1819. His father, Jacob TEWKSBURY, born at West Newbury, Mass., May 27, 1782, studied medicine with Drs. BRICKETT and CHASE of Newburyport and received his diploma from the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1802. He commenced practice as a physician and surgeon in Oxford, then a part of Hebron, Me., where he was continuously engaged in the duties of his profession until near the time of his death, which occurred Feb. 27, 1848. He married Nov. 25, 1809, Charlotte NELSON, who died March 29, 1869. . . .
His eldest son, George F., graduated at Bowdoin College in the class of '33 at Massachusetts Theological Seminary at Andover in 1837, and is now a Congregational clergyman at Lyman, Me. His second son, Jacob M., graduated in the Medical department of Bowdoin College, in the class of '36, practiced medicine in Oxford and Wiscasset, Me., for two years, in Buenos Ayres, South America until 1849 when he went to San Francisco, Cal., where he acquired . . . wealth. . . ."
[History of Cumberland Co., ME, (Philadelphia, PA: Everts and Peck, 1880), pages 121-122]


"No community by the name of Richmond existed before 1900, but the history of some of the area’s landowners prior to that time is worthy of note. Among a score of farmers who occupied the land were John Davis, who held over 300 acres, H. F. Emeric, who eventually owned over 700 acres, and George Barrett, with 457 acres. Two who have special significance are Captain George Ellis and Dr. Jacob Tewksbury. Captain Ellis bought hundreds of acres of swamp and tidal lands before 1860. From the landing he established, where he built two warehouses, most of the hay and grain grown in the area and any passengers destined for San Francisco embarked on one of his sailing barges, the twenty-eight-ton schooner, Sierra, or the thirty-one-ton sloop, Mystery. The captain’s land is now occupied by the Richmond Inner Harbor, the Ford Motor Company, the F & P Cannery and others. The high land in the Point Richmond area, Nicholl Knob, was originally an island, separated from the mainland by sloughs and marshland. At high tide the freight boats sailed through the channel from San Pablo Bay and through the site of the present Chevron refinery to Ellis Landing on San Francisco Bay. Soil washing down the hills and silt deposited by floods gradually began to fill this area. Jacob M. Tewksbury, M.D., who had come to Contra Costa County in the 1860s, had retired from his profession. Of all the early arrivals, he accumulated more land than anyone else. His total holdings came to 2,214 acres, making his wife, Emily, a very wealthy woman when he died in 1878. Owning contiguous tracts, Dr. Tewksbury constructed dikes, one at the mouth of San Pablo Bay, and the other starting at Ellis Landing. These dikes destroyed the usefulness of the channel, but the doctor succeeded in making Point Richmond a peninsula. Standing on top of Nicholl Knob one day in 1895, real estate entrepreneur A. S. Macdonald gasped at the realization of what lay before him. The railroad carrying freight to San Francisco was pulling its cars twenty-four miles farther than necessary. It didn’t need to go all the way to Oakland. It was wasting money every day, dozens of times a day. The point of land below him, if turned into a railroad terminal, would save the railroad an immense amount of money. Macdonald presented his idea to Collis P. Huntington of the Southern Pacific. Huntington was embroiled in numerous lawsuits at the time and failed to act on Macdonald’s suggestion. But in 1897, Macdonald turned to Robert Watt, a vice president of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad. On behalf of his company, which would soon become the Santa Fe Railroad, Watt paid John Nicholl $80,000 for fifty-seven acres on Point Richmond. Two and a half years later the Santa Fe started carrying passengers on its Ocean Wave on the forty-minute leisurely scenic ride across San Francisco Bay. Besides the ferry terminal, Point Richmond soon had a brick factory and a recreation beach, Kozy Kove. Here railroad workers and later refinery employees sought diversion from their ten- and twelve-hour workdays. Later additions at the beach were bathhouses and a dance pavilion with a bandstand. On the north side of the Knob, West Richmond Avenue and Washington Street became the center of activity of the boom town. First Mr. and Mrs. Critchett built their hotel there. The Langs constructed their drug store, and soon the Bank of Richmond was established on the same corner. Simultaneously, the railroad moved its shops there from Stockton. Then the lack of housing became so critical that A. S. Macdonald stepped in. With Santa Fe backing, he and his associates bought the 450-acre Barrett farm and subdivided it. Barrett’s farm was bounded by what is now Barrett Avenue on the north, Ohio Street on the south, First Street on the west and Twenty-third Street on the east. Macdonald would see to it that this property would one day become central Richmond. Meanwhile, the Pacific Coast Oil Company left its Alameda refinery and moved to Richmond in 1901. It became part of the Standard Oil Company in July 1906. An industrial achievement at the time was the oil pipeline from Coalinga and Kern County, which started delivering oil to Richmond in July 1903. By August that year the line was carrying 3,000 barrels a day. The tank farm we see today had its beginning in 1904 when the oil company built twenty-five steel tanks on 165 acres known as Point Orient, two miles northwest of Richmond. When the Santa Fe moved into the area, the company named the community at the base of the Point Richmond hills “Eastyard.” This differentiated that village from the hamlet near the ferry landing south of the tunnel. Eastyard, by 1902, had become the center of the oil industry west of the Mississippi River. The fledgling village got along very well without any school until the Santa Fe shop workers’ families arrived in 1901. Then the lack of instruction could be ignored no longer. A two-room school opened that year on a site donated by the Tewksbury estate. This school was an elementary school for six years before it became Richmond’s first high school. After only one year, the town financed a new high school which opened in August 1908. The growth of the community called for a second elementary school and one opened on the second floor of a barn at Sixth and Ohio streets. The one room had such a low ceiling that when the superintendent came to visit he could not stand erect. For that reason and because on warm spring days the stench rising from the stable below became too strong, the school closed there after one year, reopening at Fifth and Maine streets. Students from as far away as Orinda came to this high school. To better accommodate the children moving into the new subdivision around First and Second streets at Macdonald, a one-room school opened on the west side of Second a little north of Macdonald Avenue. In a concerted move to consolidate the one and two-room schools, two larger buildings were erected. For the west side youngsters, a six-room building opened on Standard Avenue, and for the east side children, a four-room facility was erected on Tenth Street between Macdonald and Bissell. In August 1905, Richmond’s 2,115 citizens incorporated their town. The easterly city limit became Twenty-third Street. Before long John Nicholl built the first City Hall. The site was in Point Richmond, one door removed from the corner of Washington Avenue and West Richmond Boulevard. A year before incorporation, in 1904, William S. Rheem, then head of the Standard Oil Company, and a group of his friends formed the East Shore and Suburban Railway. They planned this local streetcar line to serve the need for transportation to and from the Santa Fe passenger station. Service began, within Richmond only, on July 7, 1904. It ran out Ohio Street to Sixth, as Ohio appeared to be the main business thoroughfare. At Sixth Street the line turned north to Macdonald, on which it proceeded out to San Pablo Avenue. In 1905, the cars were running south along San Pablo Avenue to the county line. There passengers to or from Oakland and Berkeley changed cars to proceed further. No streets were paved in 1904; wading out through mud to board a car in winter was all too common an experience for men and women alike. Several branch lines served segments of the community. One ran from Macdonald and San Pablo Avenue out San Pablo to McBryde, where it turned east as far as Grand Canyon Park, an amusement and recreation park complete with bandstand and dance platform. Grand Canyon Park today is Alvarado Park. In 1910, F.M. “Borax” Smith combined his Oakland Traction Company (Key System) with the East Shore and Suburban, permitting travelers to remain in one car when crossing the county line. In its final year of operation, 1910, the Fast Shore and Suburban carried 2.7 million fare-paying passengers. By 1907, Richmond had enough industrial plants to give work to all who wanted it. A chemical plant, a shipyard and the Richmond Manufacturing Company hired hundreds of men. The Berkeley Steel Company the Richmond Pottery Company, and four large brick works required hundreds more. Around Point Molate, the California Wine Association built “Winehaven,” an immense brick winery and storage warehouse. They carved out the world’s biggest vat in the rock formation under the building. Once the tank was formed, they faced it with glass-like cement two feet thick. Today it is a navy fuel depot. Around Point San Pablo a whaling station received whales that were towed in through the Golden Gate, cut them up and pressed the blubber. This plant continued in operation until 1957. With all the industrialization of the community, Richmond was in dire need of hospital facilities. The nearest was in Berkeley until 1908. That year two brothers, Dr. C. L. Abbott and Dr. U.S. Abbott, opened Richmond’s first hospital. They built the three-story Abbott Sanitarium. In 1910, the Pullman Car Company opened its plant in Richmond and refurbished railroad and sleeping cars until the 1950s. Nineteen ten was also the year the Richmond Independent newspaper commenced publication. The Southern Pacific at first offered only a wooden shelter to passengers at its Barrett Avenue crossing. In 1905 the railroad built a small station and in 1915 replaced it with a more modern facility. A combined Amtrak and BART station accommodates passengers at the same crossing today. The Mechanics Bank, organized in 1907 with its first office at Eighth and Macdonald, took over the assets of a family-owned independent bank, the Iverson Banking Company, founded in 1905. In 1915, new stockholders joined the Mechanics Bank. One of them, E. M. Downer, was elected second vice president. In 1919, Downer purchased the controlling interest and became the bank’s president. He was self-taught, having come to Richmond from Pinole, where his previous experience included being the Southern Pacific telegrapher, Pinole’s city clerk and later its mayor. He also had published the town’s weekly newspaper with the help of a partner. Downer, always sensitive to the needs of both individuals and corporations, succeeded in making his bank a necessary part of the community. Under his guidance and that of two succeeding generations of Downers, the institution has prospered. Today it has ten branches, with its head office at Hilltop Mall Road. In 1913, two men organized the Richmond-San Rafael Transportation Company. Proposed by Raymond Clarke and financed by Oliver Olson, the company first operated with only the 133-foot-long Ellen, making its first run on May 1, 1914. The little vessel carried automobiles and foot passengers, as well as livestock penned in corrals on deck. Three months later authorities condemned the Ellen. The Charles Van Damme replaced her, and in 1920 the City of Richmond was added to the service. By 1924 the company had added the larger ferry, City of San Rafael. It served the public until completion of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge in 1956. The Richmond Municipal Natatorium, on Richmond Avenue at Garrard Boulevard, has been open to the public since 1926. The John Nicholl Company, a corporation administering the estate of John Nicholl, gave the community the land for the facility and Richmond bonded itself to build one of the finer indoor swimming pools in the East Bay. The pool is 60 feet by 160 feet and uses a mixture of fresh and salt water. A person important to Richmond formed the Parr Terminal Company to bring new industry to the waterfront, thereby increasing employment opportunities for the town’s citizens. Fred Parr had both vision and energy when he founded the firm in 1927. Mainly through his efforts, the Ford Motor Company opened its assembly plant in 1931, building 400 cars a day. Between 1931 and 1941 Ford assembled 390,000 cars and trucks in Richmond and then built jeeps during World War II. Other industries followed Ford to the new port, among them the Felice and Perrelli Canning Company. The year before Pearl Harbor, Henry J. Kaiser and S. D. Bechtel received a contract to build thirty freighters for Great Britain. Construction began in January 1941 on seven shipways. They opened Yard #2 in April 1941, building ships for the United States government. One month after Pearl Harbor they opened Yard #3, and later Yard # 4, to build frigates, pint-sized Liberty ships and landing ships. Kaiser Shipyards hired and trained men and women to weld, rivet, and learn other shipbuilding skills. What was to become known as Kaiser’s speed and style was exemplified by its building the first ship in nine months. In that time twenty-four thousand piles had been driven in the marshy soil and 674,000 cubic yards of material moved in, thirty necessary buildings constructed and the first ship completed. By the middle of 1944 the Richmond yards had turned out 519 cargo vessels, troop transports, frigates and LSTs. Then Kaiser started putting together the larger and faster Victory ships. The Robert Peary, built in record breaking time, was launched in four days, fifteen hours and twenty-six minutes after its keel was laid. By the end of the war, Kaiser’s four Richmond yards had built 747 ships. The City of Richmond faced an enormous problem when the yards brought in 90,000 workers during 1941 and 1942. Because of an extreme shortage of housing, the first arrivals slept in cars or parks, rooms in private homes and dormitories. The housing authority initiated the largest housing program in the country in January 1941 when they spent $35 million for 31,743 units. At the end of World War II, Richmond’s central district was still on Macdonald Avenue between Fourth and Twenty-third streets. The Central Valley Bank stood at Sixth Street. Richmond Hardware’s large store commanded the corner at Seventh, Penney’s was at Eighth, and the Mechanics Bank head office was on the corner of Ninth Street. The handsome Don Hotel and Macy’s Department Store both operated a block away at Harbor Way and Nevin Avenue. The start of an exodus of Richmond residents became obvious in 1948 and merchants in the core area counted decreasing sales each successive year thereafter. By 1955 some stores had gone out of business; in 1956 the city’s progressive merchants paid for a survey to find out where they could expect the new business center to locate. The answer came clearly: outer Macdonald Avenue. Montgomery Ward moved into the area soon after, and ever since Macdonald Avenue east of Twenty-third Street has been the center of retail activity for Central Richmond. In 1975 Hilltop Mall opened, drawing customers from areas far beyond Richmond. A number of other industrial and commercial activities thrive in Richmond’s fifty-five square miles (San Francisco contains forty-nine square miles). Among them are the Safeway Stores and United Grocers distribution centers; the United States Bulk Mail Distribution Center at Point Isabel; Chevron’s refinery cracking unit completed in 1984 at a cost of over half a billion dollars; the Port of Richmond’s new computerized container-handling facility and on the site of the early California Cap Works, which made blasting caps, the University of California Field Research Station. Encouraged by Richmond’s excellent port and rail facilities, additional industries have come to take advantage of them: Black and Decker, Eastman Tag and Label Company, Gar Wood, General Chemical, Hall-Scott, Montgomery Ward, Pacific Vegetable Oil and the Texas Company. Richmond Harbor is busier, in terms of waterborne tonnage leaving its docks, than any other in San Francisco Bay."
[George Emanuels, 515 Curtin Lane, Sonoma, CA 95476, "California's Contra Costa County: An Illustrated History," Diablo Books, 1993]

They had the following children:

  206 M i Lucio Maritimus Tewksbury was born 1 on 14 Jun 1849 in a ship, at sea, en route from Buenos Aires, Argentina to San Francisco, California, USA. He died 2 on 26 Oct 1885 in San Francisco, California, USA.

Registered voter in California in 1872. Æ 21 in 1870
        Lucio married 1 Adelina Alvarado in 1879 in San Francisco, California, USA. Adelina was born about 1858 in (prob.) Chile.
  207 F ii Eneima Emilia Tewksbury was born 1 about 1850. She died after 1899.

134. Dr. Richard F. Q. Sutton , MD (Richard , Richard , Richard , William , Richard , Richard ) was born about 1834 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He died 1 on 14 May 1870 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of "liver complaint," an illness acquired during the Triple Alliance War. He was buried 2 on 14 May 1870 in Cementerio Británico, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Sutton, Dr. Richard, Los Galpones, (neighbor of Hammat & Graham between Lobos and Luján)
[M.G. & E.T. Mulhall, The River Plate Handbook for 1863]

Richard married 1 Josephine A. Boyce on 18 Jun 1859 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Josephine was born about 1836. She died after 1893 in (prob.) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

They had the following children:

  208 M i Richard Sutton was born about 1860.
  209 F ii Josephine A. B. Sutton was born on 12 Nov 1864 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

138. Francis Sutton (Frank) Livingston (Elizabeth Sutton Lord , Richard , Richard , William , Richard , Richard ) was born on 3 Aug 1838 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He died on 28 Aug 1915 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Francis married Elisa[beth] Gómez on 6 Feb 1868 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Elisa[beth] was born in 1848 in Chile.

They had the following children:

  210 M i Frank Carlos Livingston.
+ 211 M ii Eduardo Livingston
  212 M iii Alvaro Livingston was born on 15 Sep 1873 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

144. William (Samuel) Lord Livingston (Elizabeth Sutton Lord , Richard , Richard , William , Richard , Richard ) was born on 25 Nov 1849 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was christened on 10 Nov 1850 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

William married 1 Clara (Clarissa) Plummer on 10 Jun 1863 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Clara was born about 1851.

They had the following children:

  213 M i Alfred Edward Livingston was born on 5 Jan 1865 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was christened on 11 Jan 1866 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
  214 F ii Emma Ada Livingston was born on 10 Nov 1867 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was christened on 5 Mar 1868 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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