James Waddell

1854-1942

A pioneer resident of Rocklin was James Waddell, who arrived here in 1866. His father was John Waddell, who had come to California in 1850 and who conducted a small miners hotel at Pine Grove until his death in 1859 at age forty.

Mrs. Waddell then married John Conner, and in 1866 the Conner home (built 1862) was removed to what is now Rocklin where it remained until destroyed by fire in 1922.

Young James Waddell attended the Rocklin school until age fourteen, at which time he went to work for the railroad as a messenger boy (March 11,1869). He advanced step-by-step until he finally was made trainmaster and station agent at Rocklin and later Roseville. He retired in 1913 after forty-four and one-half years of active service on the Central Pacific and its successor, the southern Pacific Company Railroads.

At Ophir, in 1880, James Waddell married Mrs. Ida Euretta Cross of Waterford, New York. She was the Daughter of Steven C. Clow who had come to California in 1860. They had one child, Lottee (Mrs. V.E. Peck of Penryn) and three children of Mrs. Waddell's prior marriage; Myrtle E., Ida M., and James G. Cross. Mrs. Waddell died on January 1, 1916.

Mr. Waddell was a charter member of the Rocklin chapter of the IOOF and served as superintendent of the Masonic and Odd Fellows Cemetery since 1916. He was also a town trustee at two different times.

James Waddell, a Rocklin Pioneer, dies in 1942 at the advanced age of eighty-eight. He was buried in Rocklin Cemetery.

From: Rocklin: Past, Present, Future by Leonard M. Davis. Published by the Rocklin Friends of the Library, Rocklin Ca., 1981.