Alameda County
Biographies
EBENEZER HERRICK DYER
The most conspicuous and lasting service
rendered the state of
California
by Ebenezer Herrick Dyer is his promotion of the beet sugar industry. He formed
not only the first company for the manufacture of beet sugar, but was one of
the company that built the first factory, which was not a success, and promoted
the company that built the second factory, which was the first success
financially of the kind in the United States. He not only has accomplished more
than any other one man in this line, but has trained his sons and nephews to
carry on his work, and they are recognized as the leading contractors for
erecting beet sugar factories in America. After a life of exceptional activity,
Mr. Dyer is living in his beautiful home in Alvarado, his ten acres providing a
delight to the eye, and satisfaction to the palate, and his mind at rest after
his strenuous and ably adjusted career.
Mr. Dyer was born April 17,1822, in
Sullivan, Hancock county, Me., in which state his father conducted extensive
lumbering interests. He is a descendant of the earliest settlers in New England
and of English ancestry. His grandfather, Ephraim Dyer, was a soldier in the Revolutionary
war. At the age of twenty-two he went to Baltimore, Md., where he traveled for
a year and supplied goods to country merchants. Later he engaged in the stone
and lumbering business with success, shipping granite to many parts of the
United States, and laying the foundation for a permanent and paying business.
Unfortunately he met with great loss in a contract for building a stone bridge
with ten large piers across Franklin bay in Maine, connecting Sullivan and
Hancock. The ice washed the bridge away, and he received but a small portion of
the contract price. This loss crippled him financially, and after selling out
his business he came to California, arriving in San Francisco in May, 1857. In
August, he returned for his family, and the following May was again in the
west, soon after locating in Alvarado, where he engaged in the sheep business
with his brother, Ephraim Dyer, who came to California in 1850. Public spirited
and given to political activity, he was elected county surveyor by a majority of
seventeen votes in a Democratic community, and was therefore free to exercise a
knowledge which he had acquired after much study in the east. So well was his
service received, that his re-election followed and he served four years in
all. When Abraham Lincoln was elected he was appointed deputy United States
surveyor, under Surveyor-general E. F. Beal, and for the following twelve years
surveyed for the government from Arizona to the Oregon line, and from the ocean
to Utah. This was before the railroad had penetrated the west, and he camped at
one time where the town of Reno has since sprung into existence. His
experiences during the early days would fill the pages of a large sized book,
and ofttimes (sic) were very thrilling. However, Mr.
Dyer was a man of good sense, and while the Indian wigwam was a familiar sight,
and the Indians were inclined to resent the approach of the white men, he
treated them always with great consideration, appealing to their friendliness
with gifts and favors. During his surveying trip he had ample opportunity of
investigating land conditions, and of buying up land which promised exceptional
fertility. Therefore, with D. O. Mills, Governor Stanford and others, he bought
thirty sections of land of the Western Pacific Railroad, paying $2 an acre, and
later selling the same at a great increase of value. He purchased his present
home ranch of one hundred and forty acres in 1860, paying $30 an acre, and has
since made this his home. At times he has owned other farming properties, buying
and selling as occasion offered.
In the latter part of the ‘50s Mr.
Dyer began to see signs of promise in the beet sugar industry, and devoted his
time and energy to a solution of the beet sugar manufacture. So sure was he of
his ground that he proceeded to form a company to build a beet sugar factory on
his land, the company consisting of General C. I. Hutchinson, Hon. T. G.
Phelps, Benjamin Flint, W. T. Garrett, Mr. Risdon of the Risdon iron Works, W.
B. Carr, Ephraim Dyer, Edward R. Carpentier and H. G.
Rollins. In due time the first sugar factory on the Pacific coast began the
process of converting sugar from beets, but after three or four years of
experiment the plant closed down and was universally acknowledged a failure.
The machinery was moved to Santa Cruz county by a
company, which later failed. Prior to the removal Mr. Dyer sold out his stock
for whatever he could get and later organized a new company and went to
Brighton and bought the machinery of a factory which had failed. Moving the
same to his farm, he formed what was known as the Standard Sugar Company,
composed of San Francisco capitalists, and of which he became the general
manager, and soon after operations had begun it was demonstrated that the
concern had a much more hopeful prospect than its predecessor. The factory was
a success from every standpoint, but its career of usefulness terminated
abruptly at the end of seven or eight years through a boiler explosion which
wrecked the plant, entailing great loss to the projectors. Still Mr. Dyer was
not discouraged, but renewed his efforts with a courage and singleness of
purpose which could have but one result. That public confidence was in his
favor was again apparent when he formed the Pacific Coast Sugar Company, of
which he was general manager, and under his direction new buildings were
constructed and new machinery installed, and the factory operated for about a
year. At the end of that time the company sold the controlling interest to a
newly organized company known as the Alameda Sugar Company, and Mr. Dyer
retired from the management, though owning stock in the new company. Later he
formed the existing company of E. H. Dyer & Co., with the object of
building beet sugar factories wherever they should be deemed practicable. The company
consisted of himself, one son, Edward F., and nephew, Harold P. Dyer, all of
whom are thorough masters of the art of making beet sugar, and as chemists and
mechanical draftsmen they have given the subject of building factories more
attention than any others similarly employed in the country. Mr. Dyer himself
assisted with the building of five factories under the new company, but since
then the young men of the company, with headquarters at Cleveland, Ohio, have
carried on the work alone, having built two factories in Utah, one in Colorado,
two in Canada, one in Minnesota, two in Idaho, two in Michigan and one in
California. Of interest is the fact that the first complete drawings for a
sugar factory were made by Edward F. and Harold P. Dyer, and from these
drawings the first complete machinery ever made in the United States for the
manufacture of beet sugar was made. After several years’ experience in the
business these young men went to Germany to gain a further knowledge of the
process, spending much time and money in securing needful information. On one
occasion they paid a thousand marks for the privilege of going through a
factory and observing German methods.
Mr. Dyer still owns about a thousand
acres in Alameda and Orange counties. All is farming land, insuring to its
owner a comfortable yearly income. Mr. Dyer married first, Marion W. Ingalls, a
native of Sullivan, Me. She came to California in 1858, and died in 1863,
leaving three children: Abitha M., widow of Dr.
Clinton Munson, one of the leading physicians of Tacoma, Wash.; Ellen F.; and
Edward F., who is now at the head of the factory building business. For a
second wife Mr. Dyer married Olive S. Ingalls, a sister of his first wife, and
of this union twin sons, Hugh T. and Guy S. (the former of whom is general
superintendent of three sugar factories in Utah, and the latter is engaged in
building sugar factories) and a daughter, Nina I., have been born. Mr. Dyer is
prominent in fraternal circles, and was one of the early members of Crusade
Lodge No. 93, I. O. O. F., of Alvarado. He was chief patriarch of the first
Encampment of Alameda county, and has been a member of
the organization since 1847. He has been an active member of the Republican party since its organization and in 1876 was a delegate to
the national convention from the Third Congressional District of California.
His name is forever associated with the development of one of the great
industries of the west, and with the possession of those leading
characteristics which raise men above their fellows and place them in the realm
of invention and progress. Perseverance in a given direction has been one of
his greatest aids to success; clear mindedness, practical common sense, and the
recognition of a need, have guided him whither it was best that he should go.
He has ever been fair and honorable in his dealings, and merits the esteem in
which he is held in the business and social world of California.
Transcribed By: Cecelia M. Setty.
Source: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages 307-309. The Chapman
Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2014 Cecelia M. Setty.
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