James McCoy was born in County Antrim, Ireland, on August 12, 1821.

He came to America in 1842, joined the Army in 1846 and in 1849 became a member of Magruder’s Battery and accompanied it to San Diego in 1850, where he was stationed at San Luis Rey from 1851-1853. Sergeant McCoy and his troops helped protect the countryside during the Mexican-American war and had some experience in Indian warfare.
After discharge from the Army in 1853, he remained in San Diego, working odd jobs, including surveying and carrying mail between Yuma and Tucson, Arizona.

In 1859 he was elected County Assessor and began raising sheep near Cuyamaca.
In 1861 he was elected Sheriff, and then re-elected five times and served until 1871. At that time, the County extended all the way to the Colorado River.

A popular man who spoke fluent Spanish, he was a big man “over six feet tall” and Ephraim Morse said that during at time “there are only two men in San Diego that don’t occasionally get drunk and they are James McCoy, the sheriff, and myself.”

On April 27, 1869, he married Winifred Kearny and they moved into a newly built two-story house in Old Town San Diego. The “McCoy House” still stands in Old Town State Park and is open to the public.

He wa President of the San Diego Board of Trustees 1869-1871, when San Diego did not have a mayoral form of government.

While City Trustee he was deeply involved with Charles P. Taggart and others in the Tide Lands speculation, over which a political controversy raged. The “Tide Landers” won at the polls, but the courts finally decided the City had no title to the tide lands.

Elected to the California State Senate in 1871, he served until 1874. While there he worked on getting a railroad to San Diego, improving mail service, and getting land cessions to San Diego.

In 1871, at the urging of some San Diego developers, he quietly introduced a bill in the legislature to permit portions of Balboa Park to be sold to private parties. San Diego residents learned of the plan and rallied to preserve the park as a public trust.

In 1887, McCoy and others laid out the subdivision of Moreno, east of Mission Bay.

McCoy died in his home in 1895.