San Francisco County
Biographies
GEORGE H. PAYNE
GEORGE H. PAYNE, of the firm of E. M. Derby & Co.,
lumber dealers, of Oakland, was born in Southampton, Long
Island, New York, August 21,
1838, a son of Charles and Hannah (Hopping) Payne. The ancestral Payne was
among the early settlers on that island, near Maritches,
and the family is now numerous and widespread. Grandparents Payne lived to an
advanced age, and granduncle “Bill” Payne, of local celebrity as a great
hunter, also reached an old age. Charles Payne the father of George H., entered
early on a fearing career, and became a captain of a whaler, but in middle life
abandoned that pursuit and became a farmer, dying December 24, 1876, at the age
of seventy-nine. The mother died ten years earlier, at the age of sixty-nine.
The Hopping family were early settlers at Wainscot, in
Easthampton, Long Island, where
grandfather Daniel Hopping (in his youth, a soldier of the Revolution) followed
farming, and lived to the age of about sixty. His wife, by birth a Miss Miller,
was over seventy.
George
H. Payne, the subject of this sketch, received a common-school education,
supplemented by an academic course in the Southampton
Academy, and remained an inmate of
his father’s house until the age of twenty-two. In 1860 he came to California,
by way of Panama, arriving in San Francisco September 17, and soon found a
position as bookkeeper in a produce house in that city. About a year later he
became clerk and manager of a general store in Ellensburg, Curry
County, Oregon, and in 1863 resumed his
former position in San Francisco,
remaining with the house until the spring of 1865. He then became clerk and
manager of the lumber yard of E. M. Derby in Alameda,
and was admitted to partnership January 1, 1874, under the style of E. M. Derby
& Company. Mr. Derby having been killed by a railroad accident, September
30, 1883, Mr. Payne became head of the firm, with out change of style, two sons
of Mr. Derby being associated with him. The “Brooklyn” lumber yard, the
headquarters of the firm, purchased June 1, 1886, was established many years
ago in Brooklyn, now East Oakland, by James P. Larue,
the pioneer lumber dealer of this section. It was a water frontage of 1,000
feet and extends back about 200 feet, with the tracks of the Southern Pacific cutting
off the front section from some detached portions of the yard to the north.
Their branch in Alameda is about 300 by 200 feet, and in
both they employ about thirty men and twenty-one wagons, doing very
considerable share of the lumber business of Oakland and Alameda.
The firm has also an office at 22 California Street,
San Francisco. Mr. Payne is past Senior
Warden of Oak Grove Lodge, No. 215, F. & A. M., and a member of Alameda
Chapter, No. 7 R. A. M. He is also a member if San Leandro Lodge, No. 231, I. O. O.
F., and has passed through all the chairs in that lodge. He is a Republican in
Politics, and was a delegate to the State Convention of his party at Los
Angeles in 1886.
George
H. Payne was married in Easthampton, Long
Island, in 1863, to Miss. Mary M. Osborne, born there, a daughter
of Mulford Osborne a farmer, who lived to the age of
seventy. The mother of Mr. Payne was still older at her death. The Osborne’s
also are among the early settlers of Long Island, and
several members of the family have been locally prominent.
Transcribed by Kim Buck.
Source: "The Bay of San
Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages 594-595,
Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
© 2006 Kim Buck.
California
Biography Project
San
Francisco County
California
Statewide
Golden
Nugget Library