Thomas O. Larkin - Early Years

Early Years

Larkin was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of Thomas O. Larkin and Ann Rogers, and a grandson of the Deacon John Larkin who provided the horse for Paul Revere's famous ride. Larkin's mother was widowed three times - her first husband was named Cooper and her third husband was named Richardson.

At the age of 15, Larkin went to Boston to apprentice as a bookbinder but decided against the business. In 1821 he sailed to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he worked as a clerk and experienced a disastrous partnership with a dishonest merchant. He visited Bermuda in 1822 and relatives in New England in 1824. In 1825 he opened a store in Duplin, North Carolina. The fortune he made on the store he lost on a sawmill operation, and in 1830 he returned to Massachusetts, destitute. Here he learned that his half-brother, John Bautista Rogers Cooper, needed his assistance with a business in California, and in September 1831 Thomas left Boston on the ship Newcastle. After a stopover in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), he landed in San Francisco, in April 1832.

Aboard ship, he met and developed an intimate relationship with Mrs. Rachel Hobson Holmes, who was coming to California to join her husband, Captain A. C. Holmes, a Danish seaman. They traveled together from San Francisco to Monterey where they both boarded at the Cooper house. When Rachel learned she was carrying Thomas’ child, she discreetly moved to Santa Barbara while Thomas remained in Monterey, working with his brother. At Santa Barbara, Rachel gave birth and awaited a dreadful reunion with her husband, but within a few weeks, she learned that her husband had died a year before while at sea en route to Lima.

Meanwhile, Larkin worked as a clerk for John B. R. Cooper until early 1833, when he was able to start a small store of his own and build a "double geared" flour mill, the first of its kind on the West Coast. He was able to invest again in a sawmill, this time in Santa Cruz. He sailed to Santa Barbara and there was reunited with Rachel. They were married there, on board the American bark Volunteer, 1833-06-10. The U. S. Consul for the Sandwich Islands, John Coffin Jones, performed the ceremony and years later when it was discovered he did not have the authority to perform the service, they had to be remarried.

In 1835 he built his wife a house in Monterey that mixed New England and California architectural styles and which is today known as Larkin House. He built the first wharf for ships and was commissioned to rebuild the Monterey Customs House. He engaged in trade with Mexico, the Sandwich Islands and China.