Stanislaus County Biographies

J.H. Shedd

Submitted by Debbie Combs

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J.H. Shedd, a rancher south of Borden, was born in Orleans County, Vermont, in 
1836, the son of Alvin Shedd, a native of New Hampshire, but one of the early 
settlers of Vermont.  At the age of six years our subject lost his father by 
death, and at the age of thirteen years he left home to live with his uncle, Mr. 
Shedd, with whom he remained until sixteen years of age, and was then 
apprenticed to learn the trade of shoemaking.  After about four years he was 
taken sick, after which he gave up his occupation as he could not bear the 
position of confinement.  After a lingering illness of about one year, he came 
to California, partly for his health.  He then went to the mines in Tuolumne 
County, and after three years in the pure mountain air he had practically 
recovered his health.  He then came t the plains in the San Joaquin valley, in 
1861, and followed ranching until the fall of 1863, when he and a company of 
three men started into the Owens river valley, now Inyo County.  He took up land 
and began farming, and there remained until August 1872.
Mr. Shedd was married in 1869, in San Joaquin County, to Miss Elizabeth M. 
Salman, a native of Wisconsin.  In August, 1872, he sold his ranch and came to 
Stanislaus County, and in 1873 bought his present ranch of 320 acres, which he 
has sine increased by purchase to the amount of 1,600 acres, the main portion of 
which he sows yearly in wheat.  Mr. Shedd farms upon a broad plan, and uses the 
most modern machinery.  In his boyhood days in Vermont the hand sickle was used 
in cutting the grain, while now he uses the combined harvester, and with a 
motive power of twenty-four horses he cuts and threshes the grain, and leaves in 
his wake a row of well-filled sacks all ready for the shipper.  Mr. Shedd keeps 
thirty head of working stock and fifty head of cattle.  Mr. And Mrs. Shedd have 
five children: Albert E., George M., Lelia A., John F. And Dee Truman.  He has 
always been a Republican, but is not a seeker of office preferment, and belongs 
to no secret orders.
 
Memorial and Biographical History of the counties of Fresno, Tulare and Kern, California Chicago, 
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1892p. 496