Alameda County
Biographies
David V. Gelder, a cigar manufacturer and dealer of Oakland, was
born in Chicago, Illinois, January 2, 1870, son of John and Paulina (Samuels) Gelder.
The father, also a cigar manufacturer, followed that business in Chicago about
fourteen years and was there married. He came to this coast in May, 1887,
with his wife and six children, and two children have been born to them here,
the eight all living, in 1891. John Gelder
continues in the same line of business here, and has taken an active interest
in the labor movement in Chicago and Oakland. Grandfather Levi Daniel Van
Gelder was a man of scholarly attainments and
prominent in Masonic circles, being a well-known writer in that department of
literature. The grandparents on both sides have been fairly long-lived,
reaching the age between sixty-five and seventy, and
one great-grandmother lived to be ninety-seven.
Daniel V. Gelder, the subject of this sketch, was
educated in the public schools of Chicago, and learned his father's trade at an
early age, beginning while he was still going to school. Endowed with a
love of learning he has read a great deal of useful literature, and has thus
more than supplied the lack of a longer period of formal schooling. He
became virtually a partner with his father soon after their arrival here, and
on January 1, 1889, he went into business on his own account. He is now
located on the northwest corner of Fifteenth street and San Pablo avenue, where
he has succeeded in establishing a good trade.
Mr. Gelder was married in this city, June 22, 1890,
to Miss Carrie Samuels, born in Quincy, Illinois, in November, 1870, a daughter
of Julius Samuels, now a merchant tailor of Oakland. Mr. and Mrs. D. V. Gelder have one child, born in 1891. Mr. Gelder is a member of Court United States, I.O.F. of
America.
Transcribed 1-26-05
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source:
"The Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 1, pages 694-695, Lewis Publishing Co,
1892.
© 2005 Marilyn R. Pankey.