San Francisco County
Biographies
ALMON AMES
ALMON AMES, the present Assemblyman representing the
Fifty-sixth district, was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin,
September 29, 1855, son of Washington and Margaret (Carson)
Ames. His father, a native of Vermont,
was brought up to blacksmithing, and was the chief blacksmith in Milwaukee
for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. About 1850 he owned a large
forge at Akron, Ohio,
and was a well established and widely known manufacturer of edged tools. In
1838 he settled in Ohio, where he
married a lady of Scotch-Irish descent, born about 1824. They had six sons and
three daughters; one son and one daughter died in infancy. The living are:
George E., general agent and director of the Union Iron Works, and has three
daughters and one son--Laura, Kittie, George and Addie; Mary A., now the wife of J. C. Harlow, State Printer
for Nevada at Carson; Joseph A., real estate and mining broker at Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, having as children Eugene, Robert and four daughters; Nancy J., now
Mrs. Cady, of Omro, Wisconsin; Robert Carson also of Omro, who spent several
years on this coast, coming in 1867; was City Gas Inspector of San Francisco
four years 1881-4. And was interested in Utah and Montana machinery department,
managing the branch in Butte, Montana, 1884-9, when on account of ill health he returned East; and
William E., now in the lumber business in northern Wisconsin, and
has four children--William and three daughters. Mr. Washington Ames died
June 29, 1890, in Omro, at the age of seventy-eight years.
Mr.
Ames, of this sketch, completed his education at a normal school, taught one
year of public school in his sixteenth year, and at seventeen was an assistant
in the engineering corps of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Company for
about a year. He learned the machinists’ trade at Houghton,
Michigan, on Lake Superior,
sending about two and a half years there. Came to Pioche, Nevada,
in 1873, and worked as a machinist and engineer. In the spring of 1881 he came
to San Francisco and for about two
years was foreman of the machine shop of the Pacific Iron Works. Next for six
years he was a commercial traveler for the Pacific Rolling Mills. In 1859 he
became manager of the Ajax Rustless Teredo-Proof Armor Pile Company, based on a patent of his own
invention. He is also the inventor of a lathe for turning masts and spars,
which belongs to the same company.
In
his social relations Mr. Ames is a member of Durant Lodge, No. 259, F. & A.
M., and of Lincoln Lodge, No. 6, K. of P., of Virginia
City, Nevada. He was a delegate
to the State Convention of September 12, 1890; was nominated without
solicitation on his part for his present position, and was elected by a vote 1,
987 to 945, and in the Assembly he was chosen chairman of the Alameda
county delegation. In 1879 he was Journal Clerk of the Nevada Assembly.
Miss
Hattie Henderson, now Mrs. Almon Ames, was born in
Douglas Flat, Calaveras county, California,
October 30, 1858, a daughter of William and Jane (Logan)
Henderson. Her father, born in Scotland,
came to California early in the mining period, and was
killed in 1878, in the mines at Gold Hill, Nevada,
at the age of about fifty-nine years. Mrs. Ames’ mother, a native of Nova
Scotia is living at Berkeley,
now aged sixty-two years. The parents were married in Nova Scotia
and came around the Horn to California
for their wedding tour. Here Mr. Henderson engaged in mining. Mrs. Ames has two
sisters and one brother: Cassie Jane, born in 1860; Alice in 1866, in Virginia
City Nevada; and William Daniel, a clerk in Berkeley.
Mr. and Mrs. Ames were married November 11, 1880, at Gold
Hill, Nevada.
Transcribed by Kim Buck.
Source: "The Bay of San
Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages 533-534,
Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
© 2006 Kim Buck.
California
Biography Project
San
Francisco County
California
Statewide
Golden
Nugget Library