Albert Adams Pennoyer

 

Albert Adams Pennoyer, of Taft & Pennoyer, dry-goods merchants of Oakland, was born in Brooklyn, New York, August 13, 1848, a son of Richard L. and Julia N. (Adams) Pennoyer.  The mother born in Westport, Connecticut, about 1823, a daughter of Isaac and Sarah (Nash) Adams, is living, in 1891.  Grandfather Isaac Adams, of a collateral branch of the historic Adams family of Massachusetts, was a farmer in Connecticut, where he died at an advanced age.  His wife died in middle life, leaving a family of seven children of whom one was accidentally drowned in young manhood, and six lived to a good old age, four being living, in 1890.  Richard S., the father of A. A. Pennoyer, was for twenty years of the firm of J. Q. Adams & Co., dealers in house-furnishing goods in Brooklyn, New York.  He died in Westport, Connecticut, in 1879, age about sixty-seven.  William Henry Pennoyer, a prominent business man of New York city, now deceased, was a cousin of Richard S. Grandfather Henry Pennoyer, died in the middle life, of yellow fever, in New Orleans, while on a business trip to that city from his home in the East.  The Pennoyers are thought by some to be of the Huguenot immigration, and by others of Welsh extraction who settled at different points on the Atlantic coast from Rhode Island to South Carolina.

 

A.A. Pennoyer was educated in the public schools, and the Polytechnic of his native city.  At the age of seventeen he entered the store of Howard Sanger & Co., a wholesale “notion” house of New York city, where he remained until 1872.  He then engaged with a partner in the business of manufacturing druggists’ sundries, under the style of Thompson & Pennoyer, but sold out to his partner before the close of the year.  He was afterward variously employed until April, 1875, when he went to Chicago, where he was engaged as a salesman by J. V. Farwell & Co., dry-goods merchants, to December 26, 1877.  He then came to Oakland, arriving here December 31, 1877, and filled different situations until August 1, 1880, when he became a partner of H. C. Taft, under the style of Taft & Pennoyer.  (See Sketch of Mr. Taft in this volume.)

 

Mr. Pennoyer was married in this city, June 14, 1883, to Miss Virginia Edmands, born in Ohio, May 3, 1860, a daughter of Henry and Catherine A. (Kellogg) Geddes, Edmands, but brought up in Newton, Massachusetts, by her stepfather, the late General John Cushing Edmands, whose name she legally assumed.  Her mother is still living, as is also her maternal grandmother, born about 1815.  The children of Mr. And Mrs. Pennoyer are:  Richard Edmands, born December 25, 1885, and Albert Sheldon, April 5, 1888, Paul Geddes, born October 30, 1890, all natives of this city.