San Diego County Biographies

JOHN H. QUINTON

Submitted by Kathy Sedler

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is a native of Buffalo, New York, and was born June 26, 1847.  His father, John 
Quinton, was born in Scotland in 1810, and came to New York in 1829. He was a 
pattern-maker by trade, but sailed on the lakes as a sea captain for eighteen 
years. He resided in Canada for some time, and owned one of the farms on which 
the city of Kingston now stands. Mr. J. H. Quinton's mother, Bridget (Calahan) 
Quinton, was born in 1810, and was married to Mr. John Quinton in 1839 and had a 
family of five children, three daughters and two sons. His brother George 
enlisted in the Twenty-first New York Volunteers, was wounded in the second 
battle of Bull Run by a hall which passed through the left arm, and after a few 
months in the hospital was again reported for duty. When the second engagement 
at Fredricksburg was fought, an artillery engagement, the company was guarding 
the battery, when a stray shell passed, a small piece striking him in the neck, 
killing him instantly, the only one killed in the company at that time, and the 
only engagement they were in, as they were soon afterward mustered out. His loss 
so grieved his father that it hastened his death. The remainder of the family 
are still living. Mr. Quinton was the fourth child and received his education in 
Buffalo, New York. In 1863 he went to Canada and drove a private mail for Hon. 
T. C. Street, a member of the Canada Parliament. He remained there two years, 
when he went to the oil regions at Petroleum Center, where he stayed some time 
and was very successful. He then returned to Buffalo, where he engaged in 
blacksmithing, which business he continued until 1869. He also learned the 
engineering business and went South; from there he went to Maysville, Kentucky, 
where he became a blacksmith for the Maysville & Lexington Railroad Company. He 
then went to Vicksburg. Mississippi, and was an engineer on a wrecking-boat 
engaged in raising machinery and boilers out of boats sunk during the war. From 
there he went to Memphis to escape the yellow fever, and ran on a tri-weekly 
packet between Memphis and Osceola. He opened a blacksmith shop in Osceola, 
Arkansas, where he worked for two years, when he came to the mouth of the Red 
River, where he was detained two weeks on account of low water. The fare was $30 
deck passage from the mouth of the river to Shreveport, Louisiana; the boat was 
delayed at Alexandria, 210 miles away, on account of low water, and there was no 
way to get through but to go on foot, and thirty-two passengers went through in 
this way, Mr. Quinton being one, who made the trip in eight days. The Texas 
Pacific Railroad was then running to Longview. Mr. Quinton came to Mineola, 
Texas, and built the first hotel in the place, where he remained until the road 
was finished to Dallas, in 1872. He rode into Dallas on the first train and 
engaged in building, all the inside work of the court-house being done by him. 
When building got dull he then engaged in blacksmithing at that place until 
1887, when, on account of ill health, he came to San Diego and opened a grocery 
store on National avenue, between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth streets. Mr. 
Quinton was a lieutenant in the Lamar Rifles in Texas under Governor Hubbard. He 
was married, August 15, 1875, to Miss Eugenia Johnson, daughter of James 
Johnson, a planter of Mississippi. She was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 
1858.
 
SOURCE:  An Illustrated History of Southern California:  Embracing the Counties 
of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower 
California… Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890.  p.-  169-170