Sacramento County
Biographies
WILLIAM ANDREW FOUNTAIN
WILLIAM ANDREW
FOUNTAIN, elder brother of James B. Fountain, and senior member of the
business firm of Fountain Bros., brick-makers, is the oldest living son of
Joshua Fountain, a native of the State of Delaware, born near Milford in 1811,
and Prudence Rebecca (Walton) Fountain, who emigrated to Beard’s Prairie,
Michigan, in 1835, where the subject of this biography was born the following
year (1836). As stated elsewhere in this volume, the family soon removed to Van
Buren County, Iowa, where grandfather Andrew Fountain,
who was a farmer, died in 1844. In the spring of 1850, our subject, at that
time just twenty-four years of age, his father, his uncle Loyd Rollins, a
daughter of the latter, and three young men, made up a party to cross the
plains overland to the “land of golden promise.” They left home on the 9th
of April, crossed the Missouri River at Council Bluffs on the 29th,
the north side of the Platte, and via Fort Hall, arrived safely at Grass Valley
on the 15th of September following. They wintered there, and in the
spring of 1851 started for Gold Lake mining district. Abandoning that project
they mined on the Feather River during that summer, at Bidwell’s Bar and at
Oregon Gulch until November, 1852, when our subject came to Sacramento and
worked for his father, who had started a brick-yard on Eighth and O streets.
(For full particulars of locations, which were changed from time to time to
accommodate the advancing requirements of a growing city, see sketch of Joshua
Fountain, the pioneer brick-maker.) In 1859 Mr. Fountain started business on
his own account, taking a contract to make brick for the building of the
Hesperian College at Woodland. In the summer of 1862 he took a contract to make
brick for the wine-cellar, residence and other buildings, for Mr. Bell, at Gold
Hill, Placer County, and in 1862 and 1863 had a contract for constructing a
portion of the levee near Freeport. In 1863 and 1864 he burned a kiln of brick
at Auburn, and also made the brick for the court-house and jail at Woodland
that year. In 1865 and 1866 he bought a farm lying between Elk Grove and
Georgetown, and was engaged in farming for two years, but in the meantime he
burned a kiln of brick at Elk Grove. In 1867 the present firm was established.
(For full particulars see sketch of J. B. Fountain.) Mr. Fountain has always
taken an active interest in local politics since the organization of the
Republican party, to which he belongs, but has never
been willing to accept any official position. He is a member of the Sixth
Street Methodist Episcopal Church, and has had his residence on the corner of
Fifteenth and P streets for twenty-three years. In 1877 he was associated with
Hon. John Q. Brown in street contracting, cobbling and graveling the principal
streets, and they continued the business for several years. The latter
gentleman was afterward mayor of the city for six years, and is now president
of the San Francisco Board of Trade. July 28, 1859, Mr. Fountain was married to
Miss Abbie Louise Brewster, a native of Massachusetts, the daughter of Mr.
Charles Brewster, a florist. Her death occurred September 13, 1879. The family
consists of six daughters, viz.: Henrietta, now Mrs. Charles Lowell; Clara, now
Mrs. Charles Hockell, Grace, Anne, Lizzie and Abbie. In 1881 he was again
united in marriage to Miss Helen Powers, an earnest Christian woman, a native
of New York State. Her death occurred April 23, 1888. Of their private affairs,
the home life, of the tender interests which cluster around the family altar,
it is not our province to speak, but we must be permitted to say that the
influence of such homes are far-reaching; the influence of such lives will ever
remain a monument to enduring memory.
Transcribed by Vicky
Walker, 11/29/07.
Source: Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated
History of Sacramento County, California. Pages 796-797.
Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Vicky Walker.