| Notes |
- S. B. Smith, public administrator, now residing in Sacramento, is one
of the worthy citizens that England has furnished to the new world,
his birth occurring in Somersetshire on the 29th of March, 1835. His
father, Samuel Smith, a native of England, was a hat manufacturer in
the country of his nativity, and after coming to the United States,
engaged in business. He died in Beloit, Wisconsin, at the age of
seventy, and his wife, who bore the maiden name of Mary Ann Jeffries,
and who also was born in England, died in Beloit, at the age of
seventy-two years.
S. B. Smith spent his early childhood in the place of his
nativity, and there worked in the hat factory, which was owned by his
grandfather and of which his father was the foreman. In 1851 he
crossed the broad Atlantic to the new world, and took up his abode in
Beloit, Wisconsin, where he partially learned the patternmaker's
trade. Subsequently he removed to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and in 1856
became a bookkeeper for a lumber firm at that place. Four years later
he left the Mississippi valley for the Pacific coast. Journeying
westward to Nevada City, he secured employment there as a ditch agent,
and in the spring of 1862 he continued on his way to the Salmon river,
in Siskiyou county, California. The year 1863 witnessed his arrival
in San Francisco, where he became the foreman of the Street Railroad
Company. He entered the employment of that corporation in a very
humble capacity, but his marked ability won him rapid advancement.
Subsequently he went to Fort Point, as the foreman of the labor gang
of the United States engineering department, and in 1869 became a
resident of Sacramento, where he opened a store known as the Chicago
C. O. D. Auction House, that he successfully conducted until 1876,
when he sold out and went east, and in October of the same year
returned to Sacramento and purchased a half interest in an auction
house, with which he remained for ten years. In the fall of 1886 he
was elected public administrator, on the Republican ticket, for a term
of two years, and has ever since been engaged in the settlement of
estates and other business of similar character by appointment of the
judges of the superior court, and in 1897 was re-elected to the office
of public administrator for the full term of four years. He has
probably handled more estates than any other man in the country, and
his reputation for honesty and fidelity is irreproachable.
On the 3rd of January, 1856, in Beloit, Wisconsin, was
celebrated the marriage of Mr. Smith and Miss Helen Mar Gates, a
native of New York, who died at Sacramento, at the age of sixty years.
She was the mother of six children, four of whom are yet living,
namely: Mrs. F. I. Whitney, who has one child; Mrs. L. E. Thorp, who
also has one child; Dottie, at home; and Samuel A.
For forty-two years Mr. Smith has been a member of the Odd
Fellows order and has passed all the chairs in the grand and
subordinate lodge and encampment. In 1856 he joined the new
Republican party, which took an advanced stand in favor of many
political reforms and in opposition to the further extension of
slavery. He has since been identified with that party, believing it
to contain the best elements of good government. His long residence
in Sacramento has made him widely known, and throughout his honorable
business career he has won the confidence and good will of his fellow
townsmen in an unqualified degree.
Source:
|
1835 - 1921 (85 years)
