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Like many wealthy Midwesterners, James Wilmarth Scoville (born 10/14/1825 in Pompey, NY-d. 1893), a banker, real estate developer and philanthropist, and his wife, Mary Scoville (born c. 1827 in NY), migrated to Pasadena, CA, to avoid the extremes of Midwestern climate. Scoville, who developed a reputation as a charitable and fair businessman, attended the Methodist Episcopal Cazenovia Seminary in Cazenovia, NY, in 1845. He married Mary A. Huggins on 11/28/1853, and lived thereafter in the Chicago, IL, area. According to the US Census of 1870, Scoville and his family lived in Cicero, IL, where he had built up considerable wealth in the real estate market. (He controlled $100,000 worth of real estate, and a personal estate of $5,000.) Scoville has been credited with developing the Ridgeland section of Oak Park, IL. (See Halley's Pictorial Oak Park, [Oak Park, Il, William Halley, Publisher, 1898], p. 20.) They continued to reside in Cicero in 1880, along with their son, Charles Burton, Sr., (born c. 1855 in NY, at that time, a bank clerk), her mother, Julia Huggins (born c. 1803 in NY) and a Prussian servant, Hannah Namitz (born c. 1847). He and his wife first visited Pasadena in 1883, moving there permanently six years later. His first house was located on the 65 acres he owned near the Arroyo Seco on the northwest corner of Orange Grove Avenue and Colorado Street. Scoville built an agricultural operation in Pasadena, like many others, growing oranges. To power his farm, he dammed a stream on his property, building a turbine house above it. Scoville also built a timber-truss bridge crossing the stream to enable passage to all portions of his holdings. James Scoville died in 1893, but his wife continued to live until past 1920 in this residence at 11 North Orange Grove Avenue.

PCAD id: 8904