Siskiyou
County
Biographies
HERBERT E. STEVENS
One of the great secrets of the
successful operation of the immense plant of the Feather River Lumber Company
at Delleker is the good judgment which has been exercised in the selection of
the managers of the various departments.
This is particularly true of the box factory, the superintendent of
which, Herbert E. Stevens, has had years of practical experience as an
executive and is directing the operation of the factory in a very capable and satisfactory
manner. Mr. Stevens was born in Lincoln
County, Kansas, on the 26th of May, 1883, and is the eighth in order
of birth of the nine children who blessed the union of Thomas Jefferson and
Amanda (Jenkins) Stevens. In the fall of
the same year the family moved to Red Bluff, Tehama County, California, where
the father engaged in farming. Thomas J.
Stevens, a native of Ohio, served in the Civil War as a member of an Ohio
regiment, together with four of his brothers.
Following the cessation of hostilities between the north and the south
he removed to Kansas, where he was married and where he engaged in agricultural
pursuits until coming to California in 1883.
He attained the age of seventy-three years, having long survived his
wife, who died in 1886.
Herbert E. Stevens received a public
school education and as a mere boy he spent his summer vacations in working for
the Sierra Lumber Company. When
seventeen years old he started out to make his own living, going to Igerna,
Siskiyou County, where he went to work for the Coggins Brothers Lumber Company,
with which concern he remained for three years.
Thereafter he was employed for a similar period by the La Moine Lumber
& Trading Company and then entered the service of the Montague Lumber &
Box Company, which seven years later sold out to the Algoma Lumber Company of
Algoma, Oregon, eleven miles above Klamath Falls, where Mr. Stevens spent seven
years at the mill and factory. He had
been advanced to the position of box factory foreman when in 1918 he resigned
and went to Susanville, California, where for seven years he served as foreman in
the box factory of the Lassen Lumber & Box Company, followed by two and a
half years with the Fruit Growers Supply Company. In 1928 Mr. Stevens left Susanville and after
a brief period of employment with Beach & Sons at Placerville, he came to
his present position in August, 1929.
The box factory of the Feather River Lumber Company at Delleker is one
of the largest, if not the largest, box shook factories in California. It runs day and night, with two shifts of
men, and during the month of July, 1930, shipped out one hundred and thirty
cars loaded with box shooks, which were sent to fruit
growers and shippers all over California.
This mill employs eighty men and is equipped with the most improved
machinery and appliances.
On September 26, 1908, in Montague,
Siskiyou County, California, Mr. Stevens was united in marriage to Miss Ellen Colly, of that place, and they are the parents of two
children, Herbert Jefferson and Edna Ellen.
Mr. Stevens is a member of the Order of Hoo Hoos, a lumbermen’s
fraternity. He is nominally a
Republican, but gives his support to those candidates who, in his judgment, are
best qualified for the offices they seek.
He is a man of high personal worth who has won a host of loyal friends
and is generally respected by all who know him.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
Wooldridge, J.W.Major History of Sacramento Valley
California, Vol. 3 Pages 394-395. Pioneer Historical
Publishing Co. Chicago 1931.
© 2010 Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's Siskiyou County
Biographies