Prominent among the representatives of the bar of Santa Cruz, is Judge George F. Stanley, who as lawyer and police judge is well-known. He was born in this city on the 4th of June, 1869—a fact that has given him a great advantage, for he has always been in close touch, understanding and sympathy with Californian institutions. His father was John R. Stanley, a native of Massachusetts, and he married Miss Mary O’Donnell, a daughter of green Erin’s isle. Five children were born to the worthy couple and of this family, two are still living, Judge Stanley and his brother, John R. Stanley. The father came around the Horn in a whaling ship, in ’49, and in the early ’50s he came to Santa Cruz, whence he went into the mountains, where he ran a sawmill.
George F. Stanley, attended the public schools of Santa Cruz and Chestnut Woods Business College, from which he was graduated in 1883, and later he was first assistant professor in the same college. In 1886 he left Santa Cruz and went to Butte, Montana, to join the well known mining firm of Mantle & Warren, taking charge of their office work. Later, going to Bonner, in the same state, he conducted there both a hotel and store, in which he was successful.
Coming back to the coast, Judge Stanley was in the chief deputy county clerk’s office at Seattle, Washington, and while there studied law. He was admitted to practice law in California, after which, in 1903, at Santa Cruz he began practice in which he ably continued until 1918, when he retired from private practice to become police judge of Santa Cruz. He has specialized in probate court practice and he still does some probate court work.
Judge Stanley has been long enough in Santa Cruz to have acquired a fund of first-hand anecdote about the past; and what he cannot tell of events hereabouts before and since the advent of the railway is hardly worth relating. Actuated by a high sense of honor and of justice, he has won creditable place at the bar and on the bench and as a citizen and public official his record is worthy of emulation.
Source: History of Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties, California : cradle of California’s history and romance : dating from the planting of the cross of Christendom upon the shores of Monterey Bay by Fr. Junipero Serra, and those intrepid adventurers who accompanied him, down to the present day. Chicago: S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1925.