James Irvine (1827–1886) was born in County Down, Ireland on December 27, 1827, the second to the youngest of nine children. When Ireland's potato crop failed in 1845, James Irvine and his younger brother William were among those who left for the United States. The family name is Scottish, meaning that James would have been an Ulster Scot, or Scots-Irish. Irvine worked for two years in New York City. In 1848 Irvine went to join the California Gold Rush as a merchant and miner. In 1854, he purchased an interest in a San Francisco commission house on Front Street, operated by a relative, John Lyons. The business was renamed "Irvine &amp; Co., wholesale produce and grocery merchants". He began investing his profits in income-producing San Francisco real estate and soon became a wealthy man. Irvine also became a silent partner in the sheep-raising venture Flint, Bixby &amp; Company of brothers Thomas and Benjamin Flint, and their cousin Llewellyn Bixby. The purchase of the Rancho San Joaquin in 1864 and the Rancho Lomas de Santiago in 1866 marked the beginning of their operations in Southern California. In 1867, Irvine married Henrietta Maria (Nettie) Rice, the daughter of prominent Cleveland, Ohio, educator, writer, poet and State Senator Harvey Rice, who was a direct descendant of Edmund Rice. Nettie died in 1874, and Irvine married Margaret Byrne in 1880. He died March 15, 1886, and is buried in Colma, California.