Biographies
JESSE O.
TOBEY
JESSE O.
TOBEY—An experienced executive having much to do with the public, who
appreciate both his personality and ability, is Jesse O. Tobey,
the division superintendent of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company of
Sacramento. He was born at Atkins, Ark., on September 9, 1881, the son of Ellis
and Mollie (Talkington) Tobey,
who came to Monterey County in 1887, the year of the great boom, particularly
in Southern California, and is living today, honored as pioneers who helped
make California the Golden. They were broad-minded and progressive; and thus it
happened that Jesse Tobey enjoyed the advantages of
good schooling in the grammar grades, and the high school of Parkville, from
which he was duly graduated with honors.
Taking up a
business career, Jesse O. Tobey was in the mercantile
trade until 1901, when he entered Vander Naillen’s
Engineering School, of San Francisco, where he successfully pursued a two-year
course. Then he accepted a position with the Northern California Power Company,
for general line work, and after that served as superintendent of hydroelectric
plants and canal systems. Then he was employed as electrical engineer in charge
of the Mammoth Copper Company at Kenneth, in 1906; but he resigned to come to
the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, at San Jose, as division foreman there,
a post he held for two years. While there, he was also
acting superintendent. He was then, in 1909, transferred to Sacramento as
superintendent of the power division; and ten years later he was made assistant
manager, a position he has filled with signal ability and satisfaction to
everybody. In 1921 the Sacramento district of the Pacific Gas & Electric
Company was enlarged to cover three former districts, making a geographic
division with headquarters at Sacramento, and Mr. Tobey
was made division superintendent with jurisdiction over the electrical and
street railway activities.
Mr. Tobey was married, in 1918, to Miss Stella E. Doane, of Sacramento. He is a member of Union Lodge No. 57,
F. & A, M., of Sacramento, and an Elk; and he belongs to the Sutter Club,
the Del Paso Country Club, the Sacramento Rotary Club, and the Sacramento
Chamber of Commerce. He is one of the original directors of the Capital
Building & Loan Association. In national politics a Republican, Mr. Tobey is a booster who does not allow narrow partisanship
to interfere with his warm support of the best measures advocated by the
majority of his fellow citizens in the community. He is fond of golf, fishing
and hunting.
Transcribed by Gloria Wiegner
Lane.
Source: Reed, G.
Walter, History of Sacramento County,
California With Biographical Sketches, Page
407. Historic Record Company,
© 2007 Gloria
Wiegner Lane.