James H. Lyndon, son of Samuel and Polly (Carline) Lyndon, was born in Grand Island County, Vermont, May 6, 1847, where he lived with his parents until seventeen years of age, and attended the common district schools.  In 1863, when sixteen years old, he went to Burlington and enlisted in the Fifth Vermont Infantry, but was rejected by the inspecting officer on account of his age.  The next year he went to Massachusetts and enlisted in Company I, Twenty-first Massachusetts Infantry.  He, with some 300 recruits for the regiment, was sent to Galoups Island, in Boston Harbor, where they remained about six weeks, when they left for Annapolis, Maryland, to join their regiment, which was attached to the Ninth Army Corps, commanded by General Burnside.  They remained in Annapolis until the middle of April, when they were ordered to join their regiment at the front.  Marching by way of Washington city, they joined their regiment in the Second Brigade, Second Division of the Ninth Corps, near the Rapidan, just before the Battles of the Wilderness.  He participated in these battles, and in those of Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor, in which latter engagement his regiment suffered a heavy loss.  After the battle of Cold Harbor the Ninth Corps was ordered to City Point, where the Army of the Potomac invested Petersburg for several months.  After the capture of several of the outposts, with heavy losses, the city of Petersburg fell, after a siege of several months.  From Petersburg the Army of the Potomac followed Lee’s army for several days, the Ninth Corps going as far as Farmville, which they reached on the eighth of April, 1865, and the next day General Lee surrendered his army to General Grant, which practically closed the war.

            The Ninth Corps lay at Farmville about a week, when it was ordered to City Point, where, after a week or ten days, transports were furnished them and they were sent to Alexandria, Virginia.  They remained just back of Alexandria, near Fairfax Seminary, until after the grand review of the armies of Grant and Sherman, in Washington city, in which he participated.  After this he went into camp again for two or three weeks, when his regiment was ordered home, and was mustered out at Reedville, Massachusetts, in August, 1865.

            He then returned to his old home in Vermont, and in 1866 attended the academy at Arburgh Springs, Vermont, for two terms.  In December, 1868, he left home for California, via Panama, and arrived in San Francisco January 23, 1869.  He came at once to Los Gatos, where his brother John was engaged in business, and began to clerk for him in his store, where he remained till 1871.  In 1872 he bought his brother’s store and ran it for a year, when his brother bought an interest in it, and a year afterward he sold his interest to his brother John and went into the hotel business, keeping the hotel known at that time as the “Ten Mile House,” now the Los Gatos Hotel, where he remained until 1875; he then sold out and again went into his brother’s store as a clerk, and remained with him until 1883, when he sold his store.  He then engaged in the lumber business near the depot in Los Gatos, which business he still follows.  He is a Republican in politics, and is a member of the Ridgely Lodge, I. O. O. F., a member of the A. O. U. W., and Past Post Commander of E. O. C., Ord Post, No. 82, G. A. R.

            Mr. Lyndon was married August 12, 1873, to Anna J. Murdock, a native of Ontario, Province of Quebec.  They have five children, viz.:  James Lloyd, born June 9, 1875; William Welden, June 14, 1878; Frances Ray, September 4, 1881; Clarence Hardy, March 15, 1883; Anna May, November 2, 1884.

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.
Pg. 303-304

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
Proofread by Betty Vickroy

also another bio found in  Sawyers, History of Santa Clara Valley

LOS GATOS


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