San Francisco County
Biographies
EDWIN
P. PECKHAM
EDWIN P. PECKHAM, a prominent citizen of Alameda, was born
in Newport, Rhode Island, February 13, 1822. During his youth he was educated
at Tower’s Academy in that city, and then was employed as clerk for Thomas
Sturgis, an old friend of his father’s, who was a wholesale merchant and
importer doing a large business at No. 6 Smith street. His father, Thomas J.
Peckham, was a wholesale and retail ship-chandler at Newport, and he assisted
him in that business. He was next employed by David Dows & Co., in their
flouring mill in New York city. Then, for about four years from the age of
twenty-two he was engaged in business for himself, in the grocery trade, until
a general depression forced him to abandon it along with many others.
March
1, 1850, he sailed from New York to California, by way of the Isthmus, where
the cholera was raging; one night he had to sleep in the same room where there
were victims suffering from that dire disease, three of whom died. He was
delayed at the Isthmus a month, waiting for a steamer, which on arrival proved
to be the California. This brought him to San Francisco early in April, landing
him at a building occupied by Sherman Ruckell, at the corner of Montgomery and
Clay streets. It cost him half an ounce to be brought ashore in a lighter.
After landing he first made his way to the house of an acquaintance named L. S.
Dyer, who was keeping a lodging house at the corner of Sacramento and Stockton
streets. Sacramento street was then nothing but a large gulch or ravine. Meals
were $1 each and lodging $2 a night, the lodger furnishing his own blankets.
Two months afterward he went to Sacramento, paying $60 for passage fare.
Proceeding to Auburn ravine, he mined there and also on the North Fork of the
American. After visiting the Southern mines just opening in Calaveras and Tuolumne
counties, he began prospecting on French Gulch, which emptied into the Cosumnes
river. Prices of all necessities were incredibly high. Saleratus, considered a
necessity, was literally worth its weight in gold, selling pound for pound,
being balanced against each other on the scales! Onions, $2.50 apiece! The
prices of other things at that time were almost proportionately high, as often
noticed elsewhere in this volume.
Quitting
the mining districts, Mr. Peckham returned to San Francisco and entered the
ship-chandlery business, in partnership under the firm name of Peckham &
Davis. Leasing a lot on Clay street of Mr. Sharon, they erected there the first
building on that street below Front. After conducting their business there from
1852 to 1856, they sold out and entered the real-estate business in January,
that year, in the Montgomery Block, up town. About this time the reign of
terror began, in the days of the famous Vigilance Committee, and business was
so depressed that even this firm had to abandon their trade. Davis was elected
Sheriff the year afterward, and Mr. Peckham followed the business of brokerage
and commission, being also Notary Public until March, 1863, when he joined the
San Francisco Stock Exchange, of which he has ever since been a member. He was
elected its president in 1872, 1878-‘80, 1886-‘87. Since 1884 he has been a
resident of Alameda. For the past four years he has been a member of its Board
of Trustees, In 1855 he was elected Alderman of the Third Ward of San
Francisco, and during his term of office the celebrated Van Ness ordinance was
passed.
Politically
Mr. Peckham has always been a Democrat. He has ever enjoyed excellent health,
having never yet seen a sick day in California.
He
was married in 1844, in Newport, Rhode Island, to Mary H. Holloway, who died in
Alameda October 14, 1889, of heart disease, after having been the mother of two
sons and one daughter. The two sons are deceased.
Transcribed by Elaine
Sturdevant.
Source: "The Bay of San
Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages
563-564, Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
© 2006 Elaine Sturdevant.