His father was John Gilkey Ames, a ship builder and coast trader, and his mother, Abigail Dodge.

His account of this reads as follows: "On the day on which we completed our sixteenth year, a wise father turned us out into the world with the parting words: 'Jud, you are now old enough to take care of yourself, and I think there is enough of the Yankee in you to insure your success.

Soon after his arrival in Louisiana, he turned his attention to newspaper work and established, at Baton Rouge, the new capital of that State, a paper which he called The Dime Catcher, and devoted his energies to the support of General Zachary Taylor's candidacy in the presidential campaign of 1848.

In 1850, he made a trip to Honolulu, and it was probably immediately upon his return that he learned of the need to establish a newspaper in San Diego's New Town.

The first issue of La Estrella de Los Angeles appeared May 17, 1851, and thus it became the pioneer newspaper of the Southwest; Ames's San Diego Herald came out on May 29, just twelve days later.

[2] Ames had at first the backing of several politicians who had in view the ultimate division of the State and the construction of the first transcontinental railway with San Diego as its terminus.

The 1854 enlargement made it a seven-column sheet, and Ames then claimed that the Herald had the largest general circulation of any paper in California.

Ames took no active part in the campaign of 1851, but two years later he cast in his lot with the Democrats and supported John Bigler for Governor.

He was always somewhat independent of politics, and particularly disliked and opposed President Franklin Pierce, probably because of his veto of an appropriation for the improvement of the San Diego River.

The Herald achieved its greatest journalistic feat by publishing a series of letters from one of Walker's officers, all grossly colored to favor the filibusters; but toward the last, when the hopelessness of the expedition was clear to all, Ames denounced it.

He told a plausible story to the effect that he was an old friend of Ames', that they had met at the wharf in San Francisco when the steamer for Panama was on the point of sailing, and concluded an agreement.

There had been no time to put this in writing; but Walton seemed to know Ames and the Herald so well, and was altogether so glib and plausible, that Robinson was convinced and allowed him to take possession of the office.

In July, 1853, he was appointed and served for a time on the staff of David B. Kurtz, major-general of state militia, as an aide with the rank of captain.

For the next seven years, the Herald was published on the second floor of a building at the northwest corner of the Old Town plaza, and during this time, it reflected more accurately than before the conditions of the Spanish-American life of the community.

During the whole of his residence in San Diego he was a notary public, part of the time the only one, and this made a small addition to his income and helped bind up his interests with those of Bigler and Gwin.