Butte County
Biographies
HENRY S. BRINK
HENRY S. BRINK.--The city of Biggs is
justly proud of her fellow citizen, Henry S. Brink, the senior member of the
firm of H. S. Brink and Son, who, despite fire and panics, has attainted
success in his line and is today the proprietor of one of the oldest blacksmith
shops in Butte County, while he himself enjoys the reputation of an
exceptionally able smith. He was born at
The
widowed mother was left in very straitened circumstances at the death of her
husband in the army, and at nine years of age H. S. Brink set out from home to
make a living for himself. First he drove three horses on a Scotch harrow, and
later he went to
First he began with A. F. La Shelle, for whom he worked from June 10, 1881, to November 6, 1883, when he bought out his employer. In the great fire of March 4, 1884, he lost everything he had--of more than five thousand dollars value--with only five hundred dollars of insurance, and at a time when he was a thousand dollars in debt, was married and had a baby boy six weeks old; but he started up again with renewed courage and vigor, and when the fire swept everything away at two o'clock in the morning he was at work by seven o'clock in an improvised shop on the smoking embers of his former smithy. Now his shop is 30x65 feet in size and adjoins the hardware store, another shop 30x60. He has thus persisted against many discouragements, but has been able to pay every obligation with one hundred cents on the dollar. Nine years after the fire, came the panic of 1893, which also proved very disastrous to him. Through it he lost at least ten thousand dollars by reason of his customers' inability to pay.
H. S. Brink and Son deal in hardware and handle a full line of agricultural implements of the International Harvester Company and the John Deere make. They added an undertaking branch to their business in 1893, and they carry a stock of coffins and do undertaking.
After embarking in business at Biggs, Mr. Brink was married to Miss Lena Smith, a young lady whom he met at Sacramento, and they have four children: Elmer F., a partner in H. S. Brink and Son, graduated from the Business College and married to Miss Jessie Boulware, of Butte County, they reside in Biggs, and have five children; Leon, a graduate of the Pharmaceutical Department of the State University, and now clerks in Dr. B. Caldwell's drug store at Biggs, where he resides with his wife, who was formerly Miss Charlotte McKenzie, of Chico; Edna A., the wife of Dr. F. B. Rice, is likewise a university graduate and resides at Fresno; and Henry S., Jr., a graduate of the State University at Berkeley and of the Ordnance School at Berkeley and Benicia, and now in the Ordnance Department with the American Expeditionary Forces in France.
For many years an influential Republican in the councils of that party and a familiar figure in county and state conventions, Mr. Brink has of late years become converted to Socialism, and stands, as he ever has, uncompromisingly for what he thinks is right and best in government. He is a man of rigid honesty, unpurchasable and irreproachable.
Transcribed by Sande Beach.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 784-785, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Sande Beach.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies