San
Francisco County
Biographies
HORACE
DAVIS
This is a name in California
familiar to the great body of our people, associated as it is in public life
and commercially as the head of the firm of Horace Davis & Co., one of the
oldest in the State as manufacturers of flour. Mr. Davis may feel proud of his
ancestry, which can be traced by the records back to 1630 in the old
Commonwealth of Massachusetts where he was born. His father, John Davis, was
elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1840, and represented that State in the halls
of Congress for a period of twenty-six years, ten in the House of
Representatives and sixteen years in the United States Senate. Mr. Davis is a
graduate of Harvard College and commenced the study of law in the Dane Law
School. Failing health compelled him to abandon the law, and, with a view of
regaining his health, he shipped as a sailor and gained a
knowledge of navigation. He followed the sea around Cape Horn on his way
to California, arriving in San Francisco in 1853. For a time he commanded one of
the steamships of the Pacific Mail Steamship company, and 1860 established the
Golden Gate Flouring Mills, a manufacturing establishment that has been blessed
by hardy yeomanry and most fastidious for the excellent quality of flour made
during all these years. In 1876 he was elected a member of the House of
Representatives and triumphantly re-elected the second term against much
factional opposition.
In 1875 he was united in marriage
with Miss Edith S. King, daughter of the lamented Thomas Starr King. He has led
an active, useful life, and helped to administer and promote many humane and
important institutions in this State. He was an active member of the Sanitary
Commission during the late war and did efficient service for the Union. In 1864
he was President of the Mercantile Library Association; from 1866 to 1876, ten
years, he was president of the Produce Exchange; in 1883-84 he was President of
the Chamber of Commerce and he is now President of the Savings and Loan
Society, one of the oldest and most reliable banking institutions in San
Francisco. An active career of one-third of a century in California has brought
no diminution of his physical or mental energies; his uniformly courteous and
genial temperament seem to have smoothed the furrows with which the plow of
time usually marks the brow when the half-century of life is passed. He has
accepted the position of President of the State University at Berkeley. The
Trustees of the Leland Stanford, Junior, University will find in him a valuable
coadjutor.
Transcribed By: Cecelia M. Setty.
Source: “Illustrated Fraternal Directory Including
Educational Institutions on the Pacific Coast”, Page 51, Publ. Bancroft
Co., San Francisco. Cal. 1889.
© 2012 Cecelia
M. Setty.
San Francisco County Biographies