Santa
Clara County
Biographies
GEORGE WILBERT MOSHER
When George Wilbert Mosher
started out on a contracting and building career he was obliged to live up to a
standard indicated by six feet two and a quarter inches of physical stature,
and to a weight of two hundred and twenty-five pounds. How well he has succeeded
is apparent to all familiar with his life on the coast, and especially with his
success as one of the foremost builders of Palo Alto. Coming here in 1892 to
work on the Stanford University, he began to contract and build here in 1892,
erecting the Mensanita Hall, the Boys’ Preparatory
School, the Stanford Pharmacy, and remodeled the Bank of Palo Alto. In all he
has put up about three hundred houses within the city limits, ranging in price
all the way from a thousand to six thousand dollars. He has taken a foremost
interest in the establishment of societies and aids to the builder, and was one
of the organizers, and is at present a director, of the Building & Loan
Association. Building as understood and practiced by him amounts to an art, and
has been studied with reference to substantiality, appropriateness, connection
with surroundings, and artistic effects. He is a master workman, understanding
every department of his interesting and constantly improving occupation.
Born near Windsor, Hants county,
Nova Scotia, March 3, 1863, Mr. Mosher is the sixth of seven sons and two
daughters, his parents being Reuben and Ann (Crossley)
Mosher, the latter of whom died in Nova Scotia in September, 1890, at the age
of sixty-two years. Reuben Mosher was also a native of Nova Scotia, and lived
and died on a farm in Hants county, his death
occurring in July, 1899, at the age of eighty-seven years. Mr. Mosher also
owned a plaster quarry in Hants county, which he
operated in connection with his farm, shipping plaster all along the eastern
coast. George Wilbert had little upon which to depend in his youth, and his
life included more work on the home farm than education in the public schools.
The necessity for earning his living at an earlier age than most boys led him to
adopt the ship carpenter’s trade at Avondale, where he worked for about five
years, and from where he removed in 1880 to Portland, Me., where he engaged in
contracting for ceiling and planking ships all over the coast of Maine. In
March, 1884, after acquiring a wealth of shipbuilding experience on the
Atlantic coast, he began to look around for larger and less worn fields of
activity, and arrived in California the same summer.
Mr. Mosher’s western experience
began in the building department of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company at
Santa Cruz, where he remained for seven years, and later was the foreman of
construction. From Santa Cruz he came to Palo Alto, of which he has since been
a resident, and where he has represented the most vigorous and ambitious
building tendencies of the coast. He brought his wife with him to California,
formerly Helen McNealy, a native of Nova Scotia, and the mother of one child, Allene, who is living at home. Mr. Mosher is a Republican
in politics, and for the past eight years has been a trustee of Palo Alto. He
is a member of the Citizens’ Alliance, and also of the executive committee.
Fraternally he is associated with the Knights of Pythias
and Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and is a director in the Fraternal Hall
Association. Mr. Mosher is a man of strong and leading characteristics,
generous and large hearted, and in sympathy with every effort to improve the
lot of the citizens of his adopted and prosperous town.
Transcribed By: Cecelia M. Setty.
Source: History of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast
Counties, California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages 1172-1173. The
Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2016 Cecelia M. Setty.