San Francisco County
Biographies
SAMUEL HOUSTON MELVIN, M.D.
SAMUEL HOUSTON MELVIN, M.D.,
President of the California College of Pharmacy--the Department of Pharmacy of
the University of California--and President of California State Board of
Pharmacy, was born in Florence, Washington county, Pennsylvania, April 22,
1829, a son of James and Matilda (McMillan) Melvin. The father was born in
Cecil county, Maryland, in 1804, a son of William and
Margaret (McCaig) Melvin, both natives of Ireland,
who had settled first in Maryland, and about 1812 in Washington
county, Pennsylvania.
Both lived to an advanced age, he being eighty and she over seventy at death.
James Melvin received a good education and followed the course of teacher for
many years. His wife, born in Ireland,
a daughter of William and Caroline McMillan, was a niece of General Robert
Patterson of Philadelphia, and came to America
under his auspices. Her parents died in Ireland
at an advanced age. Mr. And Mrs. James Melvin moved in 1834 to Steubenville,
Ohio, where Mr. Melvin filled the office of County
Auditor for two terms and was a
Justice of the Peace twelve years. Mrs. Melvin died at the age of forty-four,
her only surviving child in 1891 being the subject of this sketch.
His father passed his seventy-eighth birthday, dying in this city in 1882.
S.
H. Melvin was educated in Steubenville, Ohio,
and took up the study of medicine under Dr. James Sinclair of that city. He was
graduated at the age of twenty-three at a local institution known as the
Medical Hall Institute of Steubenville. He then engaged in the practice of
medicine with his preceptor, but after fifteen months’ experience he abandoned
it and embarked in the wholesale drug business in Steubenville,
with Dr. T. S. Hening, under the firm name of Hening & Melvin. In 1858 Dr. Melvin withdrew from the
firm and removed to Springfield, Illinois,
where he followed the same business, building up the largest trade in that line
in Central Illinois. There it was his fortune to become
the near neighbor and personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, who honored him with
kindly appreciation and the offer of official position after his election to
the Presidency. His business engagements made it advisable to decline personal
preferment, but in the capital of Illinois
he found ample scope for the exercise of self-sacrifice and patriotism during
the ensuing Rebellion. In that trying period the General Assembly of Illinois
organized a Home for the Friendless in Springfield,
and Dr. Melvin was chosen its President, holding the position from 1862 to
1874. During his term of office not less than 1,400 persons were sheltered by
the institution. In the war period he rendered valuable service to the Sanitary
and Hospital Associations and all organized efforts toward sustaining the
Government and aiding the sick and wounded soldiers of the Union army. Upon the
assassination of President Lincoln, he was one of the eleven delegates sent
forward to escort the remains to Springfield,
and upon the organization of the Nation Lincoln Monument Association he was
chosen one of the directors.
Dr.
Melvin was one of the incorporators and directors of the First National Bank of
Springfield, Illinois.
In 1867 the Springfield Savings Bank was incorporated, and Dr. Melvin was
elected its president, holding the position until 1874. Its business increased
rapidly, the number of depositors and volume of deposits were the largest in
the city. In the panic of 1873 it was kept running largely through the personal
exertions of its president, and all demands met in full. In 1869 the
Springfield Board of Trade was organized, and of that also he was elected the
first president and held the office four years. In 1869 he was chosen president
of the Gilman, Clinton & Springfield Railroad Company. That corporation met
with so much opposition and so many reverses at the outset that most of its
directors despaired of the success of the enterprise, but the president took
hold with such determination and tact that he enlisted the resources of the
Pennsylvania Railroad in its completion and with such effect that its 110 miles
of road were graded, equipped and in running order in less than a year. In 1870
he was elected president of the Springfield & St. Louis Railroad, and soon
afterward of the Keokuk & Kansas City Railroad, both of which enterprises
were interfered with by the stringency of the money market after the panic of
1873.
Early
in 1875 Dr. Melvin first came to this coast, and after a few months*
investigation went back to Springfield and returned with his family, settling
in Napa valley on a stock ranch, of which he was half owner with General G. B.
Rutherford. His partner dying in 1876, that enterprise was wound up, and Dr.
Melvin went into the fruit-canning and general commission business in San
Francisco, in which business he continued until 1885.
In 1879 he established the Clinton Pharmacy of East Oakland for two of his
sons, who are practical pharmacists. Successively a physician, merchant,
banker, board of Trade and railroad president, and president of benevolent and
patriotic societies, he is now and has been President of the Department of
Pharmacy, University of California,
since 1889, and is also President of California State Board of Pharmacy. In
1888 he was candidate of the Republican party for
Mayor of Oakland, and was defeated by seventy-three votes, failing to hold the
party strength by reason of his opposition to the rum traffic, and his
pronounced antagonism to certain corporate interests.
Dr.
S. H. Melvin was married in August, 1853 to Miss Sarah Amanda Slemmons, born in Cadiz, Ohio,
March 30, 1834, a daughter of Samuel and Susanna (Osborn) Slemmons.
The father, for many years a merchant in Cadiz, and an elder in the
Presbyterian church, died of cholera in Ellsworth, Kansas, in 1868, at the age
of sixty-seven. The mother died also of acute disease, at about the age of
fifty. Grandfather Samuel Osborn, a pioneer farmer and Presbyterian elder of
Harrison county, Ohio,
died in 1885, aged about ninety.
Dr.
And Mrs. Melvin are the parents of six children: Samuel Slemmons
Melvin, born in Steubenville in 1854, educated in the military school of
Chester, Pennsylvania, became a locomotive engineer, was married and died
without issue in Springfield, Illinois, in 1884; James Breed Melvin, a graduate
of the high school at Springfield, Illinois, married to Miss Genevra Gates, a native of Solano county, California, has
four living children; James Gates, Maud Harvey, Robert Garland and Annie Jane,
and is at present engaged as bookkeeper with Allison, Gray & Co. of San
Francisco; Charles Stuart Melvin, a graduate of Lafayette College at Easton,
Pennsylvania, in 1884, married to Miss Georgiana Hauxhorst,
a native of San Francisco, California, is now bookkeeper for the San Francisco
Savings Union; William Patterson Melvin, educated in the public schools of
Springfield, Illinois, and business college of Oakland, is now secretary of the
Oakland Electric Light and Motor company, married to Miss Ella May Mason, born
in Oakland, a daughter of W. E. And Bianca Mason of this city, has one child,
Raymond Stuart; Mary Lincoln Melvin, the wife of A. A. Dewing, teller in the
Pacific Bank of San Francisco, has one child, Ralph Melvin Dewing; Henry
Alexander Melvin, a graduate of the University of California of the class of
1889, is an attorney at law and Justice of the peace of Brooklyn township,
which includes the eastern part of this city.
Dr.
And Mrs. Melvin became members of the Presbyterian church
in early life, but on coming to this coast they joined the Congregational
church. Dr. Melvin was an Elder in the Presbyterian church
for several years, and is now a Deacon of the Pilgrim Congregational church
of Oakland.
Transcribed 1-30-06 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: "The Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 2, Page 293-295, Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
©
2006 Marilyn R. Pankey.
California Biography Project
San Francisco County
California Statewide
Golden Nugget Library