John Green was born in Ireland. At the age of 13 he came to New York where he was apprenticed to a drug firm. On June 13, 1856, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. The next year he came to California at the urging of a brother who lived in what is now East Oakland. At that time it was called San Antonio. He operated his own drugstore there but, wearying of the area, he loaded all of his possessions into an oxcart and came over the hills to Dublin. He, too, liked what he saw and decided to stay. He had set up his tent on a piece of land being disputed by Michael Murray and James Witt Dougherty, so Murray invited Green to move onto land near the Murray home. In 1862, when Michael Murray decided to move to San Francisco, John Green bought Murray's property for $6,000. Later, he settled with Dougherty in an out-of-court settlement of $900. Green built a general store at the corner of Dublin Blvd. (first called the Stockton Road and later the Lincoln Highway) and Donlon Way; At that time Donlon Way was the crossroad. The building is still standing and is still in use. Today it is a church rather than a store. An east-west freeway (1-580) has been built that skirts Dublin and the north-south freeway (1-680) has been moved east of where it used to run, but in those days Green's store was in an ideal spot. Stages between Martinez and San Jose and those between Oakland and Stockton could stop here to change horses and to rest and refresh the passengers.

One of Mr. Green's activities, besides farming extensively and being the "principal tradesman and businessman of the town," was training racehorses. He had his own private racetrack south of Highway 50 some years before Pleasanton built their racetrack. His trotter, Directum, was a world champion. Besides all this, he served as Postmaster and was an Alameda County Supervisor from Murray Township from 1863 to 1866 and from 1877 to 1882. He studied law, especially that which dealt with land grants. He had learned Spanish while he was in New York, so he was a real friend to the local Spanish and Mexican families who had legal problems. He also owned and farmed land north of Livermore and had a store there. The little community of Greenville where my uncle learned the blacksmith trade no longer exists, but the name lives on in the name of a sub-division there today; The 1890 Great Register of Alameda County Voters lists John Green's age as 62 and states that he was five feet, eight inches tall, had a fair complexion, blue eyes, black hair and had "a small scar on the small finger of his left hand." Through the years Green's store has had many owners. We recall the names of Kolb, Lawrence, Nielsen, Cronin, Reimers and Bevila- qua. In those days the store stocked all the necessities of life: flour and sugar in barrels, molasses and kerosene in jugs, overalls, lamps, tools, boots, bonnets, yardage, buggy whips, gloves, beans and rice in open sacks, etc. While Mr. Bevilaqua owned the store, he added a quick lunch window where passersby could buy hot dogs, sandwiches, coffee, and beer and he made a good business of it. His daughter, Elena, who later became Mrs. Banke, helped him in the store and also ran the library next door. The wives of most of the storeowners performed the latter services at one time or another. The building is still there. It is only a year younger than Old St. Raymond's Church and four years younger than the original Murray school, and only eight years younger than the Fallon home. These buildings are about all that is left of original Dublin. In 1899 John Green built a magnificent addition to the home that he had purchased from Michael Murray; the addition was two-storied plus an attic and was comprised of eleven rooms.