THE FRIEND & TERRY LUMBER COMPANY

 

THE FRIEND & TERRY  LUMBER COMPANY, Sacramento.  Directly after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848, the valley of Sacramento became in consequence the scene of greatest activity, and the lumber interest became important.  In the early '50's among the most prominent lumber firms here were those of L. P. Simpson, David Ingalls, Z. Gardner, Bell & St. John, Randall & Peckham, and Samuel Perkins.  Mr. Simpson's yard was located on the northeast corner of Second and M streets, and there in 1852 were two young men at work as employes who afterward became the most prominent lumber firm in the city - Wallace E. Terry and Joseph S. Friend.  Mr. Friend came from Gloucester, Massachusetts, but had a keen eye to business in New York City before coming to the coast, while Mr. Terry came from the Empire State.  Upon becoming acquainted with each other in working together, these two talented and enterprising young men determined to start into business on their own account.  Accordingly, in 1853 they rented sufficient ground opposite the Simpson yard, and established business there, under the firm name  which they have ever since had.  Seven years afterward they bought ground on the south side of M street, between Front and Second, and moved upon it.  Their business proved to be a success from the start, and incidentally led to a number of operations in other departments of trade.  In 1855 they were commissioned by parties in San Francisco to buy hides, tallow and wool for export to New York, and during the next four years a large amount of money passed through the hands of this firm for that purpose alone.  Men were sent out in every direction to gather up and purchase these commodities which had received very little attention in the past, in fact had often been cast aside in mining camps as being potentially worthless.  Later, deer and bear skins, horns, old copper and lead were added to the first articles thus collected for shipment "the Horn around," and nearly every "prairie schooner" returning from the mountains brought in more or less of them, with perhaps enough lumber to make up a full return freight.  At first the sum of $1 each measured the value of dry hides, but in a year or two English buyers entered the field and a lively competition carried the price up to $5 and $8 apiece, at which figures there was no profit for the New York house, and the business languished.  In the meantime lumber business was steadily increasing in importance and volume.  When the Central Pacific Railroad was in process of construction (1861-68), this firm furnished most of the material used.  Many million feet of Oregon and redwood lumber, timber, piles, ties and telegraph poles were brought up the river by sailing vessels, and with the powerful aid of steam derricks quickly transferred to waiting cars for the busy, hungry "front."  Some of these vessels were of the deep-water class, in which Friend & Terry were interested, and often brought full cargoes from Puget Sound and Coast Mills through to Sacramento direct, without any halt at San Francisco.  At this day, with the river bottom on top, such a thing would be impossible, and such "white-winged" crafts are now chiefly and painfully conspicuous by their entire absence from the once "port" of Sacramento.  In 1868 Friend & Terry acquired a leading interest in the Boca Saw-mill, with a large acreage of timber lands in Nevada and Sierra counties, Mr. L. E. Doan holding the remaining interest.  Boca (Spanish, mouth) is located at the mouth of Little Truckee River, at an elevation of 5,530 feet above sea level.  In winter it was noticed that ice formed upon the pond, which had been made to furnish water-power for the mill, to a thickness of twelve to twenty inches, and in the following year an ice-house of 8,000 tons capacity was erected and filled with the finest quality of natural ice.  This was the first regular crop of merchantable ice harvested in the State of California, and the genesis of a complete revolution which was soon to follow in the trade.  The entire product of this first year and the following three years was sold to the American-Russian Commercial Company, J. Mora Moss, president, which had exercised an absolute monopoly of the business for years, bringing ice from Sitka and perhaps one or two other points in Alaska, and retailing it at from 5 to 12 cents per pound, where a better quality is now furnished to consumers at from 3/4 to 1 1/2 cents a pound.  The ice works at Boca have been added to from time to time, and have assumed large proportions.  Other companies have established plants in that vicinity, but ten to fifteen miles either west or east from Boca takes one beyond the limits of the peculiar belt in which ice can be profitably cultivated or successfully harvested.  Importations from the north ceased years ago, and railroads have taken the transportation of ice from ships - probably forever.  For fifteen years they imported Eastern pine, which was largely used in pattern-making, etc., and also eastern oak and other hard wood, which was used in construction and repairs upon river steamboats, etc.  They also imported sash, doors and blinds.  This necessity is now superseded, as Oregon pine and native woods have taken the place of Eastern lumber.  Upon the death of Mr. Friend in 1871, the business was conducted by Mr. Terry alone for several years, during which time he took an active part, financially and otherwise, in the establishment of new gas works, woolen mills, box factories, street railways, insurance companies, and other enterprises of more or less importance to the city and to the county at large.  In November, 1879, a part of his business was incorporated into a joint stock association under State law, as the Friend & Terry Lumber Company, with Mr. Terry as president.  The main office and yards continue to be on Second street, between M and N, under the personal management of E. J. Holt.  They have also an extensive yard at Twelfth and J streets, and are largely interested in Oregon redwood and sugar-pine mills.  Mr. Terry was born in 1832, in Cortland County, New York. His father, Dr. Marsena Terry, who is still living, at the advanced age of eighty-seven years, was for a long period a prominent physician of Steuben County, New York.  In 1836 or 1837 he settled at Sheridan, Chautauqua County, that state, and later moved to the vicinity of Bath, Steuben County, where the subject of this sketch grew up.  He attended the academy at Prattsburg and the Wesleyan Seminary at Lima, New York, taught three terms of school at Campbell, and read law in the office of Barnes & Bonham, at Bath.  In January, 1852, while he was in Judge Barnes' office, his brother-in-law, E. C. Thompson, returned from California, with favorable reports;  and as he was organizing a small party to come again to this State, Mr. Terry concluded to come with them.  One of the company was DeWitt C. Alden, a merchant of Bath.  They sailed on the new steamer Sierra Nevada, on her first trip to the Isthmus, where they were detained eleven days, and thence to San Francisco, being forty-two days on the way.  From Panama they came on the old steamer New Orleans, with a thousand on board, - twice as many as there was properly room for.  The party proceeded on through Sacramento to Coloma and Georgetown, near which latter place they engaged in mining for six months.  The experience here was very rough for a young man brought up as a student in the luxurious East.  In September the company dissolved.  Thompson returned East, where he has since amassed a fortune in dealing in mining lands, and Mr. Terry came to Sacramento.  After recovering from an attack of typhoid fever, he started a school at Washington, across the river, where he soon collected some thirty pupils; but the great fire of November, which for a time absolutely ruined Sacramento, broke up the school, as about half the number of his pupils resided in Sacramento.  He next became clerk in the office of L. P. Simpson, the lumberman on Second street, and there he met Mr. Friend, as before stated.  Mr. Terry became interested in the New England sawmill about nine miles above Auburn, a mill which cut 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 feet of lumber per year; and it was this fact that induced him and Mr. Friend to form a partnership in the lumber business, although they had virtually no cash capital.  In 1879 A. M. Simpson, of San Francisco, an early and very successful lumber merchant, mill and ship owner, and Messrs. Holt & Son of Humboldt County, with extensive holdings in Redwood district, became interested with Mr. Terry in the lumber branch of his business, and the present joint stock company was formed.  Reference should here be made to the Pioneer Box Company of which Mr. Terry is also president, with Mr. H. P. Martin as superintendent.  The business was originally started in 1874 by Mr. Matthew Cooke, the distinguished etymologist, and ten years later was incorporated by the present owners, who have just erected new and additional works of large capacity on the river front near T street, an indication of growth and prosperity.  Enormous quantities of sugar-pine and fir lumber are here converted into crates, fruit baskets, boxes and packing cases of every description.  The very latest machinery and appliances are used for this purpose, and spur railroad tracks are employed at both factories and warehouses to facilitate operations.  The subject of this sketch seems to regard his twenty years' experience in the ice business as being fairly conspicuous above successes in any of the other industries with which he has been prominently identified, probably because in that line much greater obstacles and more determined opposition have been encountered.  As president of the Boca Ice Company he was largely instrumental in forming the present Union Ice Company, which incorporated in 1882 and selected Lloyd Tevis and W. E. Terry as president and vice-president respectively.  The organization was really a consolidation of the six principal ice companies in California, and the fact that during a prolonged and bitter war for supremacy, strong animosity had arisen, made the task of uniting them very difficult of accomplishment.  Mr. Terry has never sought political preferment; and the only occasion when he consented to hold office was in 1857, as alderman.  Formerly he was a Douglas Democrat, but for many years he has been a Republican.  He is a thorough business man, a genial companion and an affectionate husband and parent.  He is respected and honored by all who have the pleasure of his acquaintance.  Mr. Terry was married at San Francisco in 1860, by Rev. Starr King, to Miss Laura A. Morrill, a native of Maine.  Their children are:  Mae A., Laura E., Joseph E., and Wallace Irving.  The last mentioned is now attending the State University at Berkeley, senior class, while the elder son has recently been promoted to the position of manager for the Friend & Terry Lumber Company.