Butte County
Biographies
MARK
STILLER
MARK STILLER.—A leading business man whose cleverness and energy, together with his application of integrity and the golden rule to everyday transactions, have enabled him to realize to a large extent his ambition, and whose attainments will be pleasing to his many fellow citizens and friends, not the least among whom are to be numbered the kiddies of Oroville, is Mark, better known throughout the county as “Mike” Stiller, the outfitter who was born in Russia thirty-eight years ago. When he was a year old, his father died, and when he was only twelve years of age his mother passed away. He had sisters, but no brother, and so, to a great degree he commenced the world alone.
As a boy he read stories of other lands, and especially of California and the Golden West, and looking upon the map he was told that when one arrived at San Francisco he could not go any further. He naturally concluded, therefore, that it was the jumping-off place, and this fact alone interested him very much; so that as a boy of ten or twelve he dreamed of San Francisco as the end of the world. Soon after this he left home for London, starting out on his own hook, and there and in other parts of England he lived for years. He tried his hand at many different kinds of work, from working in a public house to writing for the newspapers.
In 1903, he came to the United States and traveled in practically every state of the Union; and here he did many kinds of work, applying himself to whatever he could get to do that would earn for him an honest living.
After two years of such wandering, Mr. Stiller arrived in California, and three years later, on May, 1908, he reached Oroville, and opened a very small store with a capital of three hundred dollars, all paid up. His first location was on Montgomery Street where his rent was ten dollars a month, and his lights cost seventy-five cents for the same period; and in eight and a half years he has advanced sufficiently away from his starting point of three hundred dollars for capital to now own a stock worth twenty thousand dollars, and be doing a mail order business amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a year. This mail order service reaches every corner of the state; and in thousands of farm houses and miners’ cabins will be found one of Mike Stiller’s catalogs, facilitating the relation of town and country. In the same way Mr. Stiller has extended his business to Nevada and Oregon.
A kind of second Sears-Roebuck Company, Mike Stiller has put Oroville on the map, and in a way that it never was before. No less than thirty thousand copies of his catalogs are printed each fall, and by this means he has advertised Oroville more than any other man or business house has found it possible to do.
As has been stated, when Mr. Stiller started in Oroville his expenses were about ten dollars a month, and now they are over six hundred dollars. His store, at the corner of Huntoon and Montgomery streets, is most modern and up-to-date, and one of the finest shops in Northern California. His first window space extended for about three feet; now he has an eighty-five foot front of French plate glass and proportionately large show windows. There are displayed clothing, gents’ furnishings, and all that one might expect to find at a first-class general outfitter’s. The Stiller mail-order house has proven an establishment in which the proprietor finds his natural element, and where he most enjoys the management of business. His success is due to fair treatment of his customers, for he has a strong sense of what is right, wishes to do his full duty, and makes it an aim to like those with whom he has business relations.
The warm-heartedness and geniality of this excellent citizen are nowhere better attested than in his relation to the young folks of the community. Every little tot in Oroville knows him by his first name Mike, and each year in May he gives entertainment to a thousand kiddies, affording them amusement and refreshment. This sort of spirit has made him one of Oroville’s leading citizens, a strenuous advocate of everything making for the upbuilding and development of the town.
A live member of the Oroville Chamber of Commerce and also the Business Men’s Association, Mike Stiller is naturally prosperous, and owns a string of houses in Oroville, and an attractive olive grove near by.
Transcribed by
Marie Hassard 06 December 2009.
Source: "History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C.
Mansfield, Pages 1305 -1306, Historic Record Co, Los
Angeles, CA, 1918.
©
2009 Marie Hassard.
Golden Nugget Library's
Butte County Biographies