San Diego County Biographies
 
HENRY L. DAVIS

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 
Lumberman, San Diego, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1860, and was educated 
in New York city. At the age of twenty-three years he entered the shipping house 
of his father, Jonas Smith & Co., New York, as cashier, and in two years became 
a junior partner, of which he still remains. The business of the firm, which was 
established in 1840, is that of trading with foreign countries, confined 
principally to the East Indies, West Indies, and South America.  In 1887 they 
became interested in San Diego, through the medium of Mr. E. S. Babcock, Jr., 
who induced Mr. Davis to send the first sailing ship from New York via Cape Horn 
to the port of San Diego. This vessel, the James A. Borland, with a cargo of 1,200 
tons, consisting of coal, iron pipe, plaster, etc., arrived after a passage of 
158 days from New York. This inaugurated the opening of a new and economical 
means of transportation from the East. Several ships followed, including one 
steamer at intervals, which is now being continued. In August, 1888, Mr. Davis 
arrived in San Diego to look after the interests of his firm. He at once purchased 
several cargoes of lumber at Puget Sound, and dispatched his ships to bring it to 
San Diego, whereupon he established the Independent Lumber Company, and reduced
the price of pine lumber, ranging from $2.00 to $7.00 per thousand feet from the 
rates that were being exacted by the combination companies. This created strong 
opposition, but had the effect of forcing the combination companies to reduce 
prices materially, and which have never been advanced. These operations required 
facilities that would reduce the cost of transportation, and handling of lumber 
at the minimum of expense. Land was purchased on the water front, a bulkhead and 
dock built, in addition to the employment of the firm's ships, which thus 
provided means by which lumber could be sold slightly over actual cost and 
freight.
        In November, 1889, Mr. Davis erected a large warehouse upon his 
property, which complete facilities for shipping and receiving by rail and 
water. This was built for the purpose of warehousing goods shipped by sailing 
vessels from New York, as occasion might require, and for the storage of grain 
awaiting shipment by sea from San Diego, as return cargoes to the United 
Kingdom. Mr. Davis is also one of the owners of the Cedros Island Mining 
Company, located off the coast of Lower California, where the company have fifty 
men now employed and several vessels engaged in transporting gold ore to San 
Diego for reduction. The operations of this company, of which little is known to 
the outside world, are becoming so extensive as to require the erection of 
smelting works for the treatment of ore, and the purchase of a steamer for 
transportation, at a very early date.
 
SOURCE:  An Illustrated History of Southern California:  Embracing the Counties 
of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower 
California� Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890.  p.-  129