ANDREW CHRISTESON

 

 

 Andrew Christeson.  One of the men who has risen far and high under the exacting discipline of the transportation service is Andrew Christeson, former vice president of Wells, Fargo and Company, now vice president at San Francisco of the American Railway Express Company.  For a number of years he has been one of the best known executives in an organization so closely identified with the historic period of the work, Wells, Fargo and Company.  In his official capacity he directs the services of thousands of men, yet his first position in the express business was that of wagon driver.

 

     Mr. Christeson was born in Denmark, February 16, 1861, son of C. L. and Ingeberg Christeson.  His parents lived all their lives on a Danish farm.  Andrew Christeson acquired a liberal education in the schools of his native country,and was a youth of fourteen when he came to America in 1875.  His working experience having been on a farm in Denmark, he found employment on farms in New York State, and later in Michigan, and from there went on west to Iowa where he took up a homestead in Buena Vista County.  He performed the hard work of improving and developing a farm, and after selling his land and improvements, sought a different sphere for his energies and talents.

 

     At Fort Dodge, Iowa, he did his first work in the express service as wagon driver for the American Express Company.  In the meantime, he had supplemented his native education with several terms of school in America, and his energy and ambition brought him steady promotion in his new line of work.  He became a railway express messenger, served three or four years as agent for the American Express Company at Creston, Iowa, and next became route agent or traveling auditor for the company headquarters in Burlington, Iowa.

 

    It was in the late '80s that Mr. Christeson formed his first connection with Wells, Fargo and Company.  He was made assistant superintendent at Denver, Colorado, was next advanced to superintendent at St. Paul, and a year or so later was transferred in the same capacity to Lincoln, Nebraska.  He was also superintendent for the company at Houston, Texas, and a few years later was made manager for Wells, Fargo and Company at Kansas City, Missouri, at what was officially known by the company as the central department, a position that put him in charge of all the company's business between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.

 

     In 1899, two years later, Mr. Christeson came to California as manager of the Pacific department of Wells, Fargo and Company.  In 1906 he was advanced to the responsibilities of general manager, and in 1908 became vice president and general manager.  During the World war, when all the express companies were consolidated with the American Railway Express Company, Mr. Christeson's jurisdiction as vice president was extended over the ten states lying west of a line commencing on the Canadian border at the Montana-North Dakota line and extending Southward through Denver and along the Easterly State line of New Mexico, thence to El Paso including the territory of Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands, as well as a number of agencies in British Columbia.  He also became president of Wells, Fargo and Company, organized and incorporated under laws of Mexico in 1909.

 

     He has been identified with a number of the interests of the Wells, Fargo organization, being a director of the Wells, Fargo and Nevada National Bank, and since its consolidation with the Union Trust Company, in various business enterprises, and also is a director of the Remedial Loan Association, a semi-philanthropic society to assist the poor in realizing on their securities and keep them out of the hands of the pawnbrokers.  Mr. Christeson is a member of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, the Pacific Union Club, the Bohemian Club, the Commonwealth Club, the Commercial Club and is a Mason.  He is a republican, but has had little part in practical politics.  His second wife was Carrie B. Flora, who died July 2, 1921. July 14, 1923, at Redwood City, Mr. Christeson married Martha Smith Davis, who was born in the State of California.  By his first wife, Sarah Burnham, he has a daughter, Alice Christeson Crawford, wife of Joseph M. Crawford, general manager of the Norfolk and Western Railroad, Norfolk, Virginia.