NAME, Years Elected to City Council
James W Shanklin (d 1902) served on the City Council in 1875, representing the third district.
POLITICAL AFFILIATION
BIO
Shanklin resided at 1009 Madison St.2 Shanklin apparently was a bit of a city pest after retiring from being the Surveyor General of California. News items appeared about discrepancies he found in planning ordinances. (He might have found a home with #oakmtg people if he were alive today.) cared greatly about Horace Carpentier's shady dealings at the waterfront and did some careful study of the business and determined that the title was not vested "in fee simple in the Oakland Water Front Company." An editor of the San Francisco Chronicle at the time thought that this might have mattered but that there was too much "stupidity and inertia" in Oakland for anything to change.4 He also told the city that there was an old ordinance that said any street parallel to and inclusive of Broadway were public streets that meant that the city could build wharves on them, whether or not Carpentier said they were his.5
OTHER POSITIONS IN CITY GOVERNMENT
1876- Board of Education1
Surveyor General of California3
REFERENCES
1. Bishop's Oakland Directory, 1876.
2. Bishop's.
3. "FUNERAL OF LATE J. W. SHANKLIN." San Francisco Chronicle: Mar 2, 1902.
4. "OAKLAND'S WATER FRONT." San Francisco Chronicle: May 23, 1892.
5. "J. W. Shanklin's Claim." San Francisco Chronicle: June 3, 1892.
