Jackson Gregory

Gregory, who had been practicing law since he was 20, settled in California the year after the 1849 Gold Rush.

In 1860 he was named a delegate from California to the Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina.

Western writer Jackson Gregory was born on 12 March 1882,in Salinas, California, the son of Judge Durrell Stokes and Amelia Hartnell Gregory. He spent much of his youth living on a ranch near Point Pinos Rancho (now Pacific Grove), where his father was part owner of a sawmill. The year after Jackson's birth, the governor of California appointed his father to fill a vacancy on the Superior Court of San Luis Obispo County. D. S.

He passed away on 12 June 1889, at San Luis Obispo, just a couple of days shy of his 64th birthday. Sometime after his father's death Jackson, along with his mother and two siblings, went to live with the family of Jackson Gregory Jr. , an uncle who lived in Alisal, California.

Jackson was a member of the "Earthquake Class" (1906) of the University of California-Berkeley. In his senior year he had been the editor of the campus magazine, "Occident", and the class annual, "Blue and Gold". After graduation he became a teacher and within two years was named principal of Truckee High School in Truckee, California.

Sometime during the Christmas break of 1910 Jackson married Lotus McGlashan in San Francisco. She was the daughter of a prominent lawyer and author, who had been instrumental in the development of the city of Truckee, Not long after their marriage Jackson became a newspaper reporter, working on papers in California, Illinois, Texas, New York and Cuba. He eventually returned to the Berkeley area to settle down and try his hand at writing. He began his career as a fiction writer by contributing short stories to the pulp magazines. After a dispute with a magazine editor left him and his wife without an income, he literally spent his last penny to mail the manuscript of his first novel to a publisher. By the time the publisher's telegram came with an offer of $1000 for his story, the power to their cottage had been cut off, there was no running water and they were existing off of borrowed groceries from neighbors and friends. On the strength of the publisher's telegram Jackson was able to borrow enough money to pay back his creditors, throw a party for those who had helped them out and visit his in-laws in Truckee. When it came time for the couple to return home, their funds were so depleted that Jackson had to borrow five cents to cover the cost of their return train tickets. He would go on to be one of America's more successful and prolific authors in the first half of the 20th century. Though the vast majority of his stories were about the American Old West, he did occasionally venture into other genres, like mysteries, fantasies or South Seas adventures. His writing formula was usually a successful combination of an abundance of action, adventure and suspense coupled with a dependable story line. His favorite settings were often areas of the American Southwest and Mexico that he grew up in or was familiar with (in his younger days he had actually been a cowboy, working on cattle ranches in Nevada).

Amelia Gregory died in 1916 at Berkeley.