Solano-San Francisco-Santa Cruz County CA Archives Biographies.....Gray, Samuel C. 1816 - 
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/ca/cafiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com February 3, 2007, 10:32 pm

Author: Lewis Publishing Co. (1891)

SAMUEL C. GRAY, one of the earliest of California pioneers, is also the pioneer
living resident of Benicia, having come to this city in June, 1849. He was born
in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1816. At the age of sixteen he became clerk in a
wholesale straw-goods house in Baltimore, and at twenty-one was accountant in a
wholesale boot and shoe establishment in the same city, remaining there eleven
years. He came by the Panama route to California, arriving at the time already
stated. Coming at once to Benicia he engaged in merchandising until 1861, when
he was elected County Treasurer and held that office for three years. In 1867 he
removed to San Francisco, where he was a member of the firm of Gray, Jones &
Co., proprietors of the Santa Cruz tannery for twelve years; the company then
dissolving, he returned to Benicia. He now has extensive real-estate interests
in this place, which will probably be enhanced in value with the general
development now in progress around the bay of San Francisco, especially in water
front property. He is the President of the Electric Light and Motor Company, and
Secretary of the Building and Loan Association of Benicia.

  He was married in 1847, in Middletown, Connecticut, to Miss Lucy Wetmore, a
native of that place. After a little more than a year's residence in Baltimore
they came to California, where their five children had been born; four of these
are now living, three in Benicia and one in San Francisco. They are: Dr. Edward
Gray, whose sketch appears elsewhere in this volume; Arthur, born in 1853;
Theodore, born in 1855, and living in San Francisco; and Lucy Gertrude, born in
1866. One son, Franklin Henry, died in 1852, in infancy. Mr. Gray's first wife
died in 1879, and in 1887 he was married to Miss Frances Garretson, a native of
Racine, Wisconsin, and daughter of N. H. and Jane Frances (Howard) Garretson,
the parents being natives of Connecticut. Mr. Gray is a zealous member of the
Episcopal Church, with which he has been affiliated for the past thirty years.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from

Memorial and Biographical History of Northern California.

Illustrated, Containing a History of this Important Section of the Pacific Coast
from the Earliest Period of its Occupancy to the Present Time, together with
Glimpses of its Prospective Future; Full-Page Steel Portraits of its most
Eminent Men, and Biographical Mention of many of its Pioneers and also of
Prominent Citizens of To-day.

"A people that takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will
never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote
descendents." – Macauley.

CHICAGO
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
1891.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/solano/bios/gray649gbs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/cafiles/

File size: 3.3 Kb