J. A. (Jackson Alpheus) Graves

author

J. A. (Jackson Alpheus) Graves

1852–1933

A California pioneer, lawyer, banker, and memoirist, he wrote with the eye of someone who had watched the state change from frontier communities to modern cities. His best-known book looks back on seven decades of life in California, mixing personal stories with local history.

1 Audiobook

Out of Doors—California and Oregon

Out of Doors—California and Oregon

by J. A. (Jackson Alpheus) Graves

About the author

Born in 1852, Jackson Alpheus Graves came to California with his family in 1857 and grew up during the state's early years of rapid change. He was educated at St. Mary's College, worked in a San Francisco law office, and moved to Los Angeles in 1875, where he built a long career as an attorney.

Graves later became a leading figure in business as well, serving in top roles at Farmers & Merchants Bank of Los Angeles. His professional life connected him to law, banking, agriculture, and petroleum, and those experiences gave him a broad view of Southern California as it developed.

He is remembered today chiefly for My Seventy Years in California, 1857-1927, published in 1927. In it, he recounts his boyhood, legal career, outdoor life, and the people and industries that shaped California, leaving behind a vivid first-person record of the state's growth before his death in 1933.