Biographies
EDWARD J. McEWEN
Two generations bearing the name of McEwen have been intimately identified with the commercial history of Sacramento and have engaged extensively in business affairs bringing them into direct and congenial relations with a large number of customers. Prior to his removal to California in 1876 and his settlement in Sacramento, the father, Edward McEwen, had made his home in New York state, where he was born at Brockport, Monroe county, February 18, 1855, and where he had received an excellent education ending with a course of study in the State Normal School. At the age of twenty-one years, having started out to earn his own way in the world, he came to California and secured employment as a moulder in the shops of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company at Sacramento. Later he decided that business affairs offered greater opportunities than the work of a mechanic, so he opened a retail grocery in partnership with John McMurray, At the expiration of two years he purchased the interest of his partner and continued the grocery alone, building up a permanent class of customers that gave him an important and extensive family trade. The long and successful commercial association of this business man with Sacramento did not end until his demise, which occurred October 13, 1906, and which brought to an honorable close a long period of constant identification with the grocery trade in the capital city.
The city of Sacramento is the native
place of Edward J. McEwen, who was born January 5, 1885, and is next to the
eldest of the three children of Edward and Maggie E. McEwen. Primarily educated
in the grammar schools, he later took a course in the city high school and at
the age of seventeen years he spent six months in the Atkinson Business
College. The first position which he held, that of clerk, brought him into the
city offices of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and already he was
gaining an accurate knowledge of the various duties of that place when the
death of his father rendered it expedient for him to assume the management of
the grocery in the interests of the estate until it was closed out, since which
time he has been bookkeeper for the Union Oil Company. The marriage of Mr. McEwen
occurred in Sacramento August 7, 1907, and united him with Miss Esther Borel, who was born in Marysville, and by whom he has a
daughter, Eleanor. The family are members of the
Catholic Church.
Transcribed by Sally Kaleta.
Source: Willis,
William L., History of Sacramento County,
California, Pages 1009-1010.
Historic Record Company,
© 2006 Sally Kaleta.