Location: E. Southerland at Pearsall St., near Tin City
County: Duplin
Original Date Cast: 1949
Thomas Oliver Larkin, the only United States consul to the Mexican territory of Alta California, was born on September 16, 1802, to Thomas and Ann Larkin of Charlestown, Massachusetts. He learned the book-making trade in Boston but was unhappy with the work, chafing against the authority of others. In 1821 Larkin and a friend moved to Wilmington, North Carolina. They worked in a variety of fields, but their business ventures were unsuccessful. In 1824 Larkin opened a store in Wilmington that he operated for less than a year. He then moved to Rockfish in Duplin County where he opened a new store, served as a justice of the county court, and as a postmaster.
Dissatisfied with life in the South by 1831, Larkin boarded a ship bound for Monterey, the capital of Mexican California. Following the eighteen-month journey, he worked for a time for his half-brother but within a year opened his own store. The dry goods and grocery store was a success and he expanded with flour and sawmills and with trade to other Mexican communities and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). He later opened a branch store in Santa Cruz and began speculating in land.
In 1843 Larkin was appointed U. S. consul to California and he went on to play an important role in the War with Mexico during the presidency of James K. Polk. Following the war, he moved to San Francisco and represented that city in the 1849 California Constitutional Convention. Benefiting from the economic boom that followed the 1849 gold rush, Larkin continued to invest in land speculation. He died of typhoid fever on October 27, 1858. He is buried at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California. Larkin’s house in Monterey, the first two-story house built in California, is a National Historic Landmark.
References:
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, IV, 22-23—sketch by James D. Gillespie
Thomas O. Larkin, First and Last consul: Thomas Oliver Larkin and the Americanization of California (1962)
Thomas O. Larkin, Chapters in the early life of Thomas Oliver Larkin: Including his Experiences in the Carolinas and Building of the Larkin House at Monterey (1939)
National Park Service, National Historic Landmarks website:
http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=120&ResourceType=Buildi…
Robert J. Parker, “A Yankee in North Carolina: Observations of Thomas Oliver Larkin, 1821-1826,” North Carolina Historical Review (October 1937): 325-342