Sacramento County
Biographies
WILLIAM
MELVIN
WILLIAM MELVIN (now deceased) was for many years one of the best-known residents of Sacramento, having been identified with the city from the mining days until the time of his death. He was a native of Belfast, Ireland, born in 1819, who came to this country with his parents when he was twelve years of age. The family located at Rochester, New York, where the father conducted a blacksmithing, wagon and carriage-making shop, and there William Melvin learned his trade on arriving at a suitable age. In 1854 he came to California via New York and Panama, footing it across the Isthmus. Landing at San Francisco, he came at once to Sacramento, and obtained employment with the firm of Pike & Young, corner of Fourth and L, with whom he remained until 1857. He then went back to Rochester, New York, and in the following year brought his family out to Sacramento. He went into business for himself on Fourth street, between I and J, afterward removing to the present location of the shop in 1881. In 1884 he took his son Herbert G. Melvin into partnership, and the firm so continued until his death. He was married in Rochester, New York, to Miss Honora Ann Geegan, who died in 1865. By that marriage there were four children, of whom three are living, viz: Herbert G., Margaret, wife of David Faulkner, of Sacramento, and Nettie J. The deceased child, William Montgomery, was aged about twenty-one at the time of his death. Mr. Melvin was a member of the American Protestant Association. He was one of the oldest members of the Neptune Hose Company, in the volunteer fire department; was for a long time its foreman, and was a prominent member of the Exempt Fireman’s Association. He was a stanch Repulican in his political affiliations, but after the celebrated “Short-Hair Convention,” as it was facetiously called, to which he was a delegate, he never took an active part in party organization. His death occurred on the 1st of June, 1887, and was mourned by a large circle of friends.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of
Sacramento County, California. Pages 724-725. Lewis
Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.