San Francisco County
Biographies
CHARLES BAUM
Charles Baum ranked with the leading and honored citizens of San Francisco. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, January 13, 1815. At the age of twenty years he came to the United States, landing at New York, and thereafter going to Alabama and later to Georgia until an opportunity offered to enter the employ of a Spanish export house in Havana, Cuba. On a business trip for this firm to Vera Cruz, his ship was wrecked, but he was one of the survivors and, landing in Mexico, he there remained until the gold excitement in California brought him to this state. With a number of others he bought a vessel, The Dolphin, and arrived at San Francisco on May 24, 1849.
Mr. Baum became the first Argentine consul at this port and remained such until illness compelled him to give up all active business in the year 1881. He was one of the first Custom House brokers in this city and maintained this office to the time of his retirement from all business. Together with J. Mora Moss of Philadelphia he formed the American-Russian Commercial Company, which engaged in trade between California and Alaska and England, dealing in ice and furs. The ice business was discontinued with the invention of making ice artificially, but the fur business was actively maintained until the sale of Alaska to the United States, the franchise of the company having been granted by the Imperial Russian government. For many years Mr. Baum was a director in the San Francisco Savings Union, later known as the Savings Union Bank and Trust Company, during the period that James de Fremery and Albert Miller, respectively, were the bank’s presidents.
Mr. Baum was an expert linguist, which made him a valuable business consultant in the early days when San Francisco was probably the most polyglot community in the country. He was a very loyal and devoted citizen, for he appreciated the fact that, while his home surroundings in his mother country were most comfortable, the opportunity to test his own worth really came to him here. He was a man of the highest principles and lived up to them, as perhaps best expressed by a motto of his own writing, as follows:
WATCH
When at HOME your TEMPER;
In COMPANY your TONGUE;
ALONE your THOUGHTS.
On the 17th of June, 1856, Mr. Baum married Miss Eliza Schleiden, daughter of Waldemar Schleiden, who was the first Mexican vice-consul here and who had come to San Francisco with
his family in July, 1849. Mrs. Baum was born in the city of Mexico, December 28, 1839. Mr. and Mrs. Baum had six children, of whom two sons died in infancy. The others were: Dr. Rudolph Baum, who passed away in San Francisco, June 10, 1910; Agatha, who died in 1909; Alexander R., an attorney; and Virginia, who became the wife of Dr. Gustave Dresel and died in 1894. Mr. Baum’s useful life ended after some years of illness on October 19, 1888. He was a member of the Bohemian Club and a life member of the Society of California Pioneers.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Byington, Lewis Francis, “History of
San Francisco 3 Vols”, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.,
Chicago, 1931. Vol. 2 Pages 399-401.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S SAN
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