James Stewart, a prominent citizen near San Bernardino, was born in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, in 1837, the youngest of seven sons of Archie Stewart. He left his native state at the age of eighteen, for Nebraska, where he homesteaded and proved up on 160 acres of Government land, and to this added eighty acres more. He was in Omaha when there were but twelve houses in the place. He sold out his interest in Nebraska and operated on the plains with headquarters at St. Joe, Leavenworth, then at Denver, and later at Salt Lake City, Georgetown, Colorado, and Idaho. He began as a stage driver and finished as a paymaster and superintendent of the Northern Overland Stage Line. Then the projection of the railroads put an end to stage routes and he resigned. He then came to
California and staged from Los Angeles to Prescott, Arizona, and on different lines to the Colorado River. After this he had charge of a line from Tucson to Tombstone, Arizona, and from Mineral Park, Arizona, to Pioche, Nevada, and other mail routes. He was in the stage business thirty years, and has seen as much of the real, practical side of human life, perhaps, as any other man in Southern California. He can tell some thrilling incidents of fording streams and rafting miners across, the burning of stations by the Indians, and of lives lost by their savage cruelty.
He was married in 1882, in Arizona, to Miss E. A. Holbrook, who was born in Boston and reared in San Francisco. He owns a fine ranch of 227 acres in Washington district, which he purchased twenty years ago for $5,000, and is giving his whole time and attention to raising and training horses.