STEPHEN FREDERICK BOVYER

Sacramento County

Biographies

STEPHEN FREDERICK BOVYER

STEPHEN FREDERICK BOVYER.--A representative California business man is Stephen Frederick Bovyer, the wide-awake and progressive manager of the Rickenbacker Sales Company at 1205-1207 K Street, Sacramento, in which city he was born, at the corner of Third and M Streets, on October 29, 1878, the son of Stephen T. and Elizabeth H. (Davis) Bovyer. His father was a pioneer who came to California in 1854, and was a carpenter by trade, which he followed for a time; later he was a captain on the boats plying between Sacramento and Red Bluff on the Sacramento River. He died on July 30, 1922. Mrs. Bovyer, devoted wife and mother, died in 1918.

Stephen F. Bovyer attended the local Sacramento schools, and at the age of twenty-three, attended a business college, which training was of especial advantage to him, for he had left the school room at the age of fifteen and gone into the shops of the Southern Pacific, where he worked for three years. For five years he was a pilot on the Sacramento River, and leaving the water he worked in the store owned by John G. Miller. He left there to join the Earl Fruit Company as private secretary to C. F. Holland, a post he filled with credit for six or more years. Next he was private secretary to Thomas H. Longton for four years, and next a branch manager for the Henderson-Longton Company, at Reno, Nev; then he was with the same company as city salesman in Sacramento for a year, and still later was in business for himself.

In March, 1920, Mr. Bovyer established the P. & B. Company and handled standard makes of automobiles, continuing as manager of that concern until he sold out to become the manager of the Rickenbacker Sales Company, one of the most effective agencies in northern California for the extension and safe-guarding of the interests pertaining to motoring, and one of the best-equipped headquarters for this high grade motor car. He has the coupe, the sedan, the phaeton and the sport roadster. This company is also the distributing agent for Sacramento County for the Castoline Oils, the most effective lubricating oil on the market. The company employs three salesmen and maintains its own service shop, and in several ways it points the way for others to follow. Mr. Bovyer was one of the originators of the Appleby Plan for the disposition of the so-called used cars in Sacramento City, a plan that has proved a great boon to the motor car dealers.

At Sacramento, on June 21, 1903, Mr. Bovyer was united in marriage with Miss Hattie Albertina Rounds, of San Francisco, a gifted lady and Native Daughter of the Golden West, and they both are deeply interested in the past as well as the future of Sacramento County. Mr. Bovyer is fond of hunting and of all out-of-door sports and is ready and willing to assist in the promotion of all worthy enterprises that will benefit his home city and state.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With Biographical Sketches, Page 902. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.