James Harvey Logan was the son of Samuel McCampbell and Mary Elizabeth (McMurty) Logan, both of Scotch ancestry and both natives of Kentucky. He was born on December 8, 1841 near Rockville, Indiana, United States, the seventh of eight children.
He attended the district schools until 1856. He then entered Waveland Collegiate Institute in Indiana and completed a four-year course in 1860.
Logan taught school for a year at Independence, Missouri, then started West as driver of an ox team for the Overland Telegraph Company. By the fall of 1861 he had made his way to California, where for a year he lived with his uncle, a physician, at Los Gatos. In December 1863 he commenced to read law at San Jose, in the office of C. T. Ryland, and in 1865 was admitted to the bar.
Three years later he moved to Santa Cruz, where he became deputy district-attorney almost immediately, served from 1870 to 1880 as district attorney, and for the next twelve years was a judge of the superior court in Santa Cruz County. In 1892 he retired from office because of failing health. Although he was comfortably successful in his profession, it was through his avocation that Logan attained his special distinction.
In 1880 he started an experimental fruit and vegetable garden at his home in Santa Cruz. He was interested in producing a cross between the Texas Early blackberry and the wild California blackberry (Rubus Vitifolius) and planted a row of the wild berry bushes between a row of the Texas Early and one of Red Antwerp raspberries. By 1881 he had secured several hundred seedlings of the blackberry. When the fruit came, he found he had made a successful cross between the blackberries, producing a new variety which he named the Mammoth. Furthermore, he discovered one plant which resembled a raspberry more than a blackberry, and when the fruit ripened he found that it had a flavor and character all its own. This fruit, since known as the loganberry, he described as a true hybrid, believing it a cross between the Red Antwerp raspberry and the wild blackberry.
He gave it to Professor Wickson of the University of California for free distribution. It is now extensively cultivated (by propagating cuttings) from British Columbia to California, and forms the basis of a substantial industry in canning and preparing fruit juice for the market. In 1916 evidence was reported tending to disprove the belief that the loganberry is a hybrid and to show that it is a true species, but in 1923 Judge Logan delivered an address reasserting his conviction that it is a hybrid. He died at his home in Oakland, California.
Logan married Mary Elizabeth Couson on August 1, 1910. They had a daughter, Gladys C. Logan.
