The Valley of Heart's Delight
DENNIS W.
HERRINGTON
City Attorney, San Jose, California
Bio-Pen Pictures
SURNAMES: HAZELTON,WORTH, DAVIS
This gentleman, one of the early pioneers of Santa Clara County, is a native of Indiana, born near Paris, Jennings County, December 23, 1826. Mr. Herrington left the parental home at the age of thirteen, removing to Madison, Indiana, where he worked at his trade, carpenter and joiner, until the age of nineteen. He had the misfortune to lose the use of his right arm at this age, and was compelled to give up his trade. He immediately entered the Asbury University at Greencastle, Indiana, where he remained the greater part of four years. On the thirteenth of March, 1850, he left school and started, with an ox-team, from Greencastle for California, arriving at Placerville on the tenth day of August of the same year. During the first six months in California he worked in the gold mines, after which he went to Sacramento, living there and at Sutterville from May, 1851, until December, 1853. At this time impaired health compelled him to make a change, and he started for Los Angeles, but, on reaching Santa Clara, in January, 1854, decided to remain for a time, and has been at this place and in San Jose ever since.
From 1855 to 1861 Mr. Herrington followed the occupation of teaching, when he took up the study of law. He was admitted to the Bar in 1862, and has been engaged in the practice of law ever since. He was a member of the State Legislature in 1863; was elected district attorney in 1865, holding this office until 1867, and was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1878-79, which formed the present Constitution of California.
In 1858 Mr. Herrington married, in Santa Clara, Miss Mary Harriet Hazelton, a native of Ohio, who had removed with her parents, Hiram and Martha E. Hazelton, at an early age, to Michigan, coming thence to California in 1852. From this marriage there are six children: Irving, justice of the peace and real estate agent in Santa Clara; Rachel, now a teacher in the Santa Clara public schools, having graduated from the State Normal School in 1883; Leona, wife of Theodore Worth, of Bradley, Monterey County; Clarence, now studying law in his father’s office in the city of San Jose; Howard, now engaged in the painting business in Los Angeles County; and Bertram A., now teaching in the public schools at San Miguel, having graduated from the State Normal School in 1887.
Mr. Herrington is a member of the Masonic Order, and also of Santa Clara Lodge, No. 52, I.O.O.F. He has been city attorney of San Jose since 1879. In politics he is a Republican, having belonged to that party since 1861.
The parents of Mr.
Herrington were Joseph and Rachel (Davis) Herrington. His father was a native
of Maryland, removing, when an infant, with his parents to Pennsylvania, and
later to Indiana, where he died in 1859. His mother was a native of Tennessee.
She died in 1861, aged sixty-nine years. Both parents are buried at Paris,
Jennings County, Indiana.
Pen Pictures From The
Garden of the World or Santa Clara County,
California,
Illustrated. - Edited by H. S.
Foote.- Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888. p. 93-94
Transcribed by Kathy
Sedler
[Similar biography of this same person on
pages 524 & 525 of this book.]