Calaveras
County
Biographies
LOUIS DAVIDSON
There are not many California
pioneers of 1850 remaining in the state.
Most of them have died; others have moved away. Louis Davidson, one of the oldest merchants
in Mokelumne Hill, is one of the few citizens of that
town who have lived in the sate half a century.
Mr. Davidson is a native of Prussia and a son of Hersh
and Gertrude (Gerson) Davidson, both of whom were
born and passed their days there, his father dying in his seventy-eighth year,
his mother in her seventy-fifth year. Hersh and Gertrude (Gerson)
Davidson has four sons and a daughter.
One of their sons, Meyor Davidson, is a cloak
manufacturer at San Francisco.
Louis Davidson was educated in
Prussia and reared in the Hebrew faith.
He came to New York at the age of sixteen years and secured a position
as a clerk in a store, handling general merchandise, and later was given charge
of a mercantile house at Elmira, New York.
In 1850 he sailed from New York, en route for California, and had a
somewhat rough passage at the outset. He
and his companions crossed the Isthmus of Panama on foot and had to wait long
for a vessel bound for San Francisco. He
had managed to save eight hundred dollars and it cost him the whole amount to
land on California soil. He came direct
to Mokelumne Hill and opened a primitive store in a
tent, in which a few articles of merchandise were displayed on a line, somewhat
as clothing is hung out to dry.
Mokelumne
was then a lively mining town and he sold goods right along at a paying profit
and was able to add to his stock; but he was obliged to give credit, more or
less, and in that way lost some money.
In 1856 the business part of the town was burned and his enterprise was
completely wiped out of existence. At
two o’clock p. m. on the day of the fire he was on the stage going for new
stock. He conducted business in a tent,
while building a new store on the site of his old one, and was prosperous until
1873, when his store was again burned.
He at once built the store in which he has since carried on his trade,
and his career has been one of almost uniform success. His store is not now large enough to accommodate
his large stock, and he constantly draws upon an extensive reserve stock stored
in several large warehouses nearby.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
“A Volume of Memoirs and Genealogy of Representative Citizens of Northern
California”, Pages 178-179. Chicago Standard Genealogical Publishing Co. 1901.
© 2010
Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's Calaveras County Biographies