San Francisco County
Biographies
ELI
SHERWIN DENISON
ELI SHERWIN DENISON, the well-known news agent of the
Southern Pacific Railroad system, with headquarters in Oakland, was born in Onondaga county, New York, August 7, 1827,
a son of Harry and Lurana (Sherwin) Denison. The father, also born in that county, in 1800, was a
builder of turnpike roads in New York
State, before the advent of railroads, and moved to Illinois in 1852, settling on a farm in McHenry county, near Marengo, where he died of cholera in 1854. The
mother, a native of Oneida county, New York, survived him some years, dying at the same place at the
age of sixty. Grandfather John Denison, a native of Vermont, of Scotch descent, moved to Onondaga county,
New York, followed the vocation of a farmer and lived to the age
of ninety-six. Grandfather Joshua Sherwin, a farmer of Oneida county, New York, died about 1839, at the age of seventy-six, and his
wife, Lurana, lived to be over sixty.
Eli S. Denison, the subject of this sketch, was educated in Monroe
Academy at Elbridge, New York, and helped on his father’s farm in his youth. He left
home at the early age of thirteen to earn a living for himself, and after
several years of precarious struggle became a railroad man at the age of
twenty, being employed on the New York Central. In 1849 he went to Nicaragua as foreman of a gang of men engaged in constructing
thirteen miles of plank-road between Lake
Nicaragua and San Juan. After eight months so engaged he came to San Francisco in 1851 and went to mining on Feather river, remaining thus engaged at different points until 1859.
He had meanwhile made a trip to the East by the Panama route, going in 1851 and returning in 1852, when he
spent four years, to 1856, at Craig’s Flat or Morristown. In 1859 he went to work as baggage man on the Sacramento Valley railroad, from Sacramento to Folsom, continuing so employed until the winter of
1861-2. In the spring of 1862 he came to Virginia city, Nevada, and was engaged in quartz-mining there and at Marthaville in Alpine county, for about a year. Returning
to Sacramento, he went to work for the Central Pacific, his run being
from the city to the end of the road – a gradually lengthening trip, and was
present May 12, 1869 at the
driving of the golden spike at Promontory, the junction of the Central with the
Union Pacific. He took his present position as news agent June 1, 1869, and has been engaged in that business ever since. Since
1886 he has employed about fifty newsboys on the different roads of that
system. With three other capitalists he bought out, in 1890, what was known as
the Laundry Farm railroad, recognized under the style of the California
Railroad Company, of which he was chosen president. The road is chiefly used as
a means of reaching a valuable stone quarry, the product of which is coming into
extensive use for macadamizing roads and streets in the bay section of this county. In is also somewhat used in local excursions to
Laundry Farm for picnic and camping purposes.
Mr. Denison is prominent and active in politics, having been
a delegate to the national Republican Convention of 1884, and 1888, in Chicago; and at the State Republican Convention of Sacramento in
1890, he was nominated for State Senator from the
Sixteenth District. At this writing his party seems so well pleased with his
prospects of election that they consider it a foregone conclusion. Having spent
the most of his life in Oakland, he knows the needs of the community. He is a member of
the Union League; of Tehama Lodge, No. 3, F. & A. M., of Sacramento; and of Golden Gate Lodge of the Knights of Honor.
Mr. Denison was married in Sacramento, in 1868, to Mrs. Celia (Fern) Sloper,
a widow with one son, Harvey Sloper, who is now the
assistant of Mr. Denison in his business as news agent. The children of Mr. And
Mrs. Denison are the Misses Lurana and Mollie
Denison, residing with the parents in this city.
Transcribed
11-23-05 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: "The Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 2, Page 277-278,
Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
©
2005 Marilyn R. Pankey.
California Biography Project
San Francisco County
California Statewide
Golden Nugget Library