Butte County
Biographies
MICHAEL L. MERY
MICHAEL
L. MERY.--A first-class machinist who has had much to do with the raising
of the standard of technical work in this county, and a strong Progressive
Republican who has taken a lively interest in good citizenship and all
reasonable civic reforms, is Michael L. Mery, for
years the proprietor of the Chico Iron Foundry, and widely known throughout the
regions surrounding Chico, where he has long been an honored resident. Michael Mery was
born in Baden-Baden, Germany,
on April 4, 1851, the son of
Jacob Mery, who came of a historic family whose name
was originally Merie, and represented a fine French Hugenot lineage.
Jacob Mery, who was a farmer by occupation,
came to the United States with his family in 1854, and pushing as far west as
Toledo, Ohio, located there and prepared to establish a home; but he died three
months later, and the very same week his good wife passed away. Inasmuich as they
were the parents of seven sons and one daughter, of whom Michael was the youngest,
this was indeed a serious situation for the family, and particularly so for the
subject of our sketch, who was then only three years old., when he was taken to
Detroit. There he had a chance to attend
school for a couple of years and to receive a thorough drilling in the German
language; but not being particularly fond of book study, he was apprenticed to
a machinist to learn that trade, and so he passed another four profitable
years, and more.
In January, 1869, Mr. Mery
bade good-bye to his Michigan associations and went
South, visiting Louisville, New Albany,
Indiana, and even New Orleans,
at which place, on account of his evident skill, he found no difficulty in
getting profitable employment. He then
contracted to go to a sugar plantation as engineer, and in the beginning of
January moved to Rockport, Texas,
where he worked in the same capacity for a packing house. In the spring of 1870, he returned to St.
Louis and assisted in erecting the water works of that city; and
from there he went to Cairo, Ill.,
where he worked in the iron works. He
also worked for a while as a machinist in Houston, Texas,
leaving his position there to return to New Orleans, to
enter the machine shops of the New Orleans
and Jackson Railway. This proved a
stepping-stone to his return to the chief center of Missouri,
for in 1871 he went to East St. Louis and took an
important place of responsibility in the Ohio and Mississippi
machine shops.
In the fall of 1872, ripe with a varied
experience such as few American journeymen machinists could boast of, Mr. Mery came to California
and was immediately secured by the Marysville Foundry to take charge of their
expanding work. The next year he went to
Lake Tahoe and became engineer on the steamer
Emerald. In January, 1875, or more
specifically speaking, on January 10 of that year, he arrived in Chico
and started the Chico Iron Works in conjunction with his brother-in-law, J. O. Rusby, the firm being styled Rusby
& Mery. In
November of that year he made castings and melted the first iron in the county;
and he made casings for General Bidwell and for the Sierra Lumber Company. He sent his work into Oregon,
and, with the growth of his business, enlarged the capacity of his plant by the
erection of three other cupolas. His
largest casting was in one chunk of five tons, which he made for his own large
lathe—a machine that he eventually finished himself, with a swing of eight
feet. He made the pulley for the Indiana
Machine Shop at Oroville, with a diameter of seventy-two inches and a face of
twenty-two inches. For seven years or
more this favorable partnership continued, and then, in January, 1882, Mr. Mery bought out his brother-in-law. Three years afterwards, to the very month,
the entire establishment was destroyed by fire, and as he carried but little
insurance his loss was more than ordinary.
There his real grit and enterprise manifested themselves, for he
immediately rebuilt, putting in the very latest machinery, most of which he
himself designed and made. He built a
boring mill, a trip hammer, and a drop hammer, and made of his new iron works
such an unusually well-equipped plant that he commanded about all the work that
was to be had in that part of the state.
He had done the work for the same ten saw mills in the county before
they became the Sierra Lumber Company, and he continued to serve the mills
after they were absorbed by the Diamond Match Company.
Mr. Mery is also
an inventor and builder of pumps, and of a gas engine that has become widely
famous. It is known as the Mery double-acting gas engine, and was awarded first prize
at the California State Fair. As a
specimen of his ingenuity, he also built his own automobile.
In 1900, Mr. Mery
took a trip to Nome, Alaska,
when there was placer mining on the beach at that town. He took four plants with him, one being a
self-propelling dredger that could go up the stream. All this was packed with definite directions
as to where it was to be unloaded; but the crew disobeyed orders and went on to
the mouth of the Yukon River with the machinery in the
hold. At length the entire consignment was landed; but when
it was set up and put in operation, it developed that too much of the earth and
gravel would have to be disposed of, and that the yield of gold was not enough
to make it pay.
Mr. Mery
believes that the natural resources of this county are very considerable, and
that it is of the highest importance that these should be developed. He has spent thousands of dollars in
legitimate mining, with the feeling that he ought to devote some of his
earnings to advance the mining interests of Butte
County. He has been interested in a
fourteen-hundred-foot tunnel on an incline, with a drop of two hundred fifty
feet, to work toward the Monmouth Channel; and at last they have got to the
bottom of it. He has had considerable to
do, in fact, with local mining interests, and his work was the means of
bringing the Monmouth interests here about nine years ago. He made the castings with which the dredgers
were built; and in this connection an interesting story is told of Mr. Dixon,
of the Dixon Graphite Company, who inquired the name of the casting-maker. Mr. Mery admitted
with modesty that he had made the castings, and Mr. Dixon said that he never
saw better castings in his life. Mr. Mery was the first one to favor the bringing of mountain
water into Chico, and he sold the
stock to build the first cannery
On March 14, 1874, Mr. Mery
and Miss Sarah Seaward were married.
The bride was a New Yorker by birth, but was reared at Marysville, to
which town she came with her parents in 1853.
Her father was Thomas Seaward, a native of England,
who came to New York and married there, and afterward
made the trip to California by way of Panama. He was a pioneer brick-maker and
contractor. Mr. and Mrs. Mery have had six children:
Jacob L., a graduate of the University of California and a civil
engineer, is a contractor in Chico; Mabel Leonora is Mrs. W. A. Louis, of
Chicago; Jeanette Ruth has become Mrs. D. Guy Bennett, of Chico; Michael
Lawrence, Jr. is a machinist and a valuable assistant to his father; and
Corinne S. lives at home. The eldest
daughter, Anna is deceased.
Mr. Mery is a
member of the B. P. O. Elks, and of the Odd Fellows, belonging to both the
Encampment and the Rebekahs; and he was instrumental
in building the I. O. O. F. Building,
and also built the Elks Hall.
Few men, through scientific and technical
attainment, and by the sweat of the brow, have done more to advance the
permanent interests of Butte County,
and especially of Chico, than has
Mr. Mery; and it is pleasant to note the recognition
everywhere accorded him.
Transcribed
by Priscilla Delventhal.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 592-594, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Priscilla
Delventhal.
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