Thomas O. Larkin

Thomas Oliver Larkin
Thomas O. Larkin grave relief at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park
Born	September 16, 1802 Charlestown, Massachusetts
Died	October 27, 1858 (1858-10-28) (aged 56) Colusa, California
Parent(s)	Thomas O. Larkin and Ann Rogers

Thomas Oliver Larkin (September 16, 1802 – October 27, 1858) was an early American businessman in Alta California, and was appointed to be the United States' first and only consul to Mexican Alta California. After the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, Larkin moved to San Francisco, and was a signer of the original California Constitution.

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 Amariah Childs, a renown spice mill owner and banker in Lynn, Massachusetts.

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.