Cleveland Lincoln Dam

Cleveland Lincoln Dam, Secretary of the Board of Public Works of Oakland, was born in San Francisco county, October 26, 1864, a son of Alphonso and Lucy Ellen Dam. The father, born in Enfield, Maine, June 27, 1826, came to California by way of Cape Horn in 1849, arriving in San Francisco August 9.  He went to mining, which he followed with little interruption for about a dozen years, and continued interested in mines and mining properties in this State and in Nevada until his death in 1874.  The mother, a native of Gorham, Maine, came to this coast in 1852, and was married, in 1852, in San Francisco, where she resided until the family settled in Oakland in 1868.  Since that date she has been prominent in various charitable and benevolent enterprises of this city, and still takes an active interest in the same.

     The paternal ancestry of C. L. Dam, the subject of this sketch, runs back to the period of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (sometimes referred to as Van Dam:  see Bryant's History of the United States): was one of the first board of nine, afterward increased to twelve men, among whom Van Dam is again mentioned chosen as popular representative in 1647, to promote the interests of the people as distinct from those of the New Netherlands Company, too well provided for by Governor Stuyvesant and his council.  J. J. Dam or Van Dam was of the "citizen" class in the board of nine men, three of whom were "merchants," three "citizens" and three "farmers."  The next most historic personage of the name was Rip Van Dam, born in Albany about 1662, colonial governor of New York from July 1, 1731, to August 1, 1732, who died about 1736.  The prefix Van, which seems to have been occasionally dropped from the first, has entirely disappeared from use in this century.  Doctor Leader Dam, grand-uncle of our subject, was a prominent educator in Boston in the early part of this century; and an uncle, Andrew Jackson Dam, was a hotel keeper of New York city, of some prominence in his line.  Neither of these revived the Van, though both showed some interest in tracing the descent of the family from the old Knickerbocker stock.  Grandfather Samuel Dam was engaged in a large way, for those days, in the ship-timber industry in Maine, shipping the product of the forests from Enfield to Bangor, Maine.  He lived to be over eighty years of age.  The maternal ancestry of C. L. Dam connects him with the Loring and Soule families, the latter being of pilgrim stock and the former of a somewhat later New England immigration.  Ignatius Loring, his maternal great-grandfather, was owner of Jewel Island in Casco bay, Maine, and his wife, Abigail Soule, was a direct descendant of Soule, the pilgrim, a brother of the better-known Pierre Soule, who returned from England to France.  They were of the Huguenot emigration from that country.  The founder of the American Soules came out with Governor Bradford.  The maternal grandmother, born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1783, lived to an advanced age, and other members of the family were also long-lived.  The only living child of Mr. and Mrs. Alphonso Dam besides the subject of this sketch is Henry J. W., born in San Francisco, April 27, 1856.  He received a superior education, entering the University of California in 1871, and graduated from that institution in the class of 1875.  He then embraced the career of a journalist, first in the office of the Chronicle, and was afterward connected with some others of the San Francisco papers.  In 1883 he was appointed Executive Secretary of Governor Stoneman, and at the close of his administration, in January, 1887, he went to New York city, where he worked one season as a writer for the Times of that city, making a specialty of descriptions of Eastern watering places and summer resorts, his work in that line attracting considerable attention and favorable notice.  In the fall of 1887, he went to London as correspondent of the same paper; and in 1890 was Paris correspondent of the New York Herald.  In 1891 he is again in London, where a play written by him and produced at the Vandeville theater, has added to his fame as a versatile and capable writer.

     C. L. Dam was educated in the public schools of this city to the age of fifteen, when he became private secretary to the manager of the Pacific Gaslight Company, in San Francisco, retaining that position until the company closed out in 1880.  He then went into mercantile business as bookkeeper and salesman for Gage, Shattuck & Co., with whom he remained until 1889. He was appointed April 9, 1889, to the position of Secretary to the Board of Public Works, which he still fills to the satisfaction of the board and of the general public.  He was the candidate of the Democratic and American parties for the office of County Clerk in November, 1890, and received 7,221 votes out of a total of 16, 592 cast for that office, which is a very good illustration of his personal popularity in a county which polled a Republican majority in most cases of over 3,000 votes.  He is a member of Oakland Parlor, No. 50, N.S.G.W.

 

Transcribed 11-8-04  Marilyn R. Pankey