San Francisco County
Biographies
WALTER FITCH PRICE, real-estate and insurance agent and
dealer in wood and coal at Eighth and Wood streets, Oakland, was born in
Rochester, Minnesota, August 22, 1858, a son of James Keeler and Cornelia Hoyt
(Fitch) Price, both natives of Connecticut, and there married. The parents
immigrated to Minnesota about 1855, being among the early settlers of Olmsted
county, where James K. Price, by trade a hatter, became a farmer. On the
outbreak of the Rebellion he enlisted in a Minnesota regiment, serving to the
close of the civil war and receiving his discharge as a Sergeant, From 1866 to
1870 he was in business in Rochester, Minnesota, dealing chiefly in
agricultural implements, and then in Owatonna for about two years. In 1872 he
came to California and engaged in the fruit business in San Francisco. From
1875 to 1881 he was salesman in a wholesale house in that city, with his
residence in Oakland since 1875. He was born in 1827. Mrs. J. K. Price is also
living, in 1891; and her father, by occupation a farmer, lived to the age of
ninety. Several others of the immediate family of Mrs. Price reached old age.
Walter
F. Price, the subject of this sketch, was educated in the public schools of
Rochester and Owatonna, Minnesota, and began to learn the printer’s trade at
the age of twelve. On arriving in San Francisco in 1872 he continued in that
line, and at seventeen years of age was a journeyman printer with the Pacific
Press Company of Oakland, serving as foreman before he was twenty. He then
bought an interest in the firm of Butler & Bowman, printers and publishers,
the style being changed a few months later to Butler, Bowman & Price. To
supplement the limited education of his boyhood, especially in mathematics, he
attended night school and took a business college course. In February, 1883, he
sold out his interest and moved to Sprague, Washington Territory, and filled
the position of chief clerk of the construction department of the Northern
Pacific Railroad Company for about a year, the change of occupation being of
great benefit to his impaired health.
Walter
F. Price was married in Santa Rosa, June 5, 1884, to Miss Emily I. Surryhne,
born in Michigan, March 27, 1863, a daughter of Edward and Eliza (Van Dusen)
Surryhne, both living in 1891, the father being by occupation a vineyardist and
fruit-grower of Sonoma county. Returning to Oakland in 1884 Mr. Price has since
been engaged in his present business as a dealer in wood, coal, hay and grain,
besides real estate and insurance. He is also secretary and treasurer of the
Oakland branch of the Minneapolis Building and Loan Association, and of the
Oakland Improvement Association. He is a member of Harbor Lodge, No. 253, I. O.
O. F., and of Oakland Lodge, No. 141, K. of P. He is a Republican in politics,
leaning of late to the American party, by whom he was nominated for Councilman
of the First Ward in 1891, simply as leader of a forlorn hope.
Mr.
and Mrs. Walter F. Price have four children: Estelle May, born June 7, 1885;
Walter Fitch, Jr., August 2, 1887; Hazel Pearl, February 2, 1889; Kittie Angie,
in November, 1890.
Transcribed by Elaine
Sturdevant.
Source: "The Bay of San
Francisco," Vol. 2, Page 564-565, Lewis Publishing
Co, 1892.
© 2006 Elaine Sturdevant.