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Bio-Sawyers
SURNAMES:  CAREY, MONROE, CHANDLER,


A successful agriculturist who has also proven that he can make good in quite another field of useful endeavor, is Jeremiah J. O'Brien, the rancher and manufacturer, at Wayne Station on the Oakland Road, who was born in Santa Clara County on the old Gish Ranch, just north of San Jose, first seeing the light there on June 6, 1870. His father, Jeremiah J. O'Brien came out to California in the '50s, a native of County Cork, Ireland. endowed with the best qualities which have always made an Irishman a desirable settler and citizen; and he mined for a while near Virginia City before coming further, into Santa Clara County. He had married Miss Katherine Carey, obtaining thereby one of the best of helpmates, and he leased the old Alviso Ranch, of approximately 400 acres, north of San Jose, which he handled in model fashion. Later he leased the old Gish Ranch, where Jeremiah was born. and afterward he bought the twenty acres under that name devoted to the culture of pears.


Our subject attended the Orchard school, when it stood on the bank of the Coyote Creek, and then remained with his parents until he was twenty years old, when he became foreman of the old R. D. Fox nursery, of approximately 700 acres devoted to raising ornamental and fruit trees, and there he continued progressively active for ten years. Then he took up farming for himself, leasing in all 260 acres, and so well did he prosper that ever since he has been committed to ranching. He manages the De Rosa Ranch of eighty acres on Capitol Avenue, and also a ranch on Gish Road. In 1918 he purchased 1,100 acres one and a half miles from Cottonwood, in Shasta County; and 300 acres of this ranch is under the Anderson ditch and is very successfully devoted to the raising of alfalfa.

Mr. O'Brien's ranching in Santa Clara County is carried on largely for the raising of fruit and vegetables, and he is also the owner of a plant for the manufacture of berry-baskets, which he runs on a gross percentage basis. The factory is situated on his ranch, and there from ten to twenty workers turn out about 5,000,000 berry baskets a year, each being of the wooden tray type. In this enterprise, as in everything he undertakes, Mr. O'Brien's natural honesty dictates the policy to be pursued—a square deal for the customer—with the inevitable result that he has customers, and plenty of them.

At San Jose, on January 7, 1903, Mr. O'Brien was married to Miss Maude Monroe, a native of Loyalton, Sierra County, Cal., and the daughter of Charles Colin and Frances (Chandler) Monroe—the former of Scotch descent and an early settler in California. Two children have sprung from this union—Wayne Henry is a sophomore in the University of Santa Clara, and Jerold is a pupil in the Orchard grammar school. For the past sixteen years Mr. O'Brien has peen a member of the board of trustees of the Orchard school district and for the past twelve years has served as its clerk. He is also the deputy county assessor of the third supervisorial district. In 1911 he purchased a home place of an acre and a half at Wayne Station and, having built there a home, he has lived there ever since. He is a member of the Native Sons of the Golden West, and is a past president of the Palo Alto Parlor, now called the Garden City Parlor of the N. S. G. W.

From Eugene T. Sawyers' History of Santa Clara County,California,  published by Historic Record Co. , 1922. page 1481

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