James McMillan Shafter was the fourth of six children born to William Rufus Shafter and his wife Mary (née Lovell). His older brother is Oscar L. Shafter. Through another brother, Hugh, he was an uncle of U.S. Army major general William Rufus Shafter, who was a recipient of the Medal of Honor for actions in the American Civil War.[2] The Shafters were descended from James Shafter, an orphan who may have been born in England or shortly after his parents emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 18th century. Its unknown if his parents' name was actually "Shafter" or if the orphan James just took that name after their death.[3]
Born in Athens, Vermont in 1816, Shafter attended public schools and then graduated from Wesleyan University ni 1837. Two years later, he graduated from Yale Law School and was admitted to the Vermont bar in 1840.[1][4]
In 1855, he then moved to San Francisco, California, where he practiced law with his brother, Oscar L. Shafter.[4][9] In 1857, a complex real estate litigation resulted in the Shafter firm winning a victory for their client of 75,000 acres of farm land at Point Reyes in Marin County.[10] The client sold the property to the Shafters.[11] They leased it to dairy farmers who provided milk and butter to an ever-growing San Francisco and prospered.[12] The Shafter families owned most of Point Reyes from 1857 to 1919, when the land was sold in parcels.[13]
In March 1888, Shafter survived a gunshot at close range.[17] His son, Dr. James Shafter, had sued for a divorce and the wife's brother, angry at the proceedings, confronted the elder Shafter in the San Francisco City Hall.[18] The brother fired four times at point blank range but missed his mark.[17]
In 1845, James McMillan Shafter married Julia Granville Hubbard (September 11, 1821 – February 11, 1871) in Montpelier, Vermont, who had studied at Troy Female Seminary.[22] They had at least four children: Payne Jewett Shafter,[23] James Chester Shafter, Chester Hubbard Shafter, and Julia Ruth Shafter.[24]
At the time of his death, in 1892, Shafter left an estate worth about $1,000,000 (about $33,000,000 adjusted for inflation to 2023).
^Forbes, Charles Spooner; Cummings, Charles R. (1897). The Vermonter: The State Magazine, Volumes 3-6. C.S. Forbes. p. 271. Retrieved July 18, 2017. An uncle of the general, the late Oscar L. Shafter...became a judge of the (California) Supreme Court.
^ abc"Judge Shafter Dead". Los Angeles Herald. Vol. 38, no. 142. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 31 August 1892. p. 1. Retrieved July 19, 2017. Judge Shaffer leaves an estate valued at about a million dollars.
^Tippin, Brenda L. (May 2016). "History Lesson: Past and Present: Pt. Reyes Morgan Horse Ranch"(PDF). National Park Service. p. 27. Retrieved July 18, 2017. Senior partner Oscar Lovell Shafter was, at that time, considered the foremost title lawyer in California
^Pranka, Carol A. (Spring 2014). "Good as Gold: The Marin-Sonoma Artisan Cheese Cluster, a Ph.D. dissertation"(PDF). University of California, Berkeley. p. 20. Retrieved July 18, 2017. soon after a group of San Francisco lawyers, led by brothers Oscar and James Shafter and son-in-law Charles Webb Howard, acquired much of the land in the Point Reyes area
^"Big Marin Estate Sold to Operator". Healdsburg Tribune. No. 27. California Digital Newspaper Collection. 4 December 1929. p. 1. Retrieved July 19, 2017. The sale was made by Mrs. Julia Shafter Hamilton, daughter of the late Judge James McMillan Shafter, who bought the tract in 1876.
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