Merced County Biographies

M. M. FINLAYSON

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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


        A building contractor who has had a varied experience in his field of 
endeavor on the Pacific Coast is M. M. Finlayson of Los Banos, California. A 
native of New Zealand, he was born on January 5, 1878, and reared on a farm up 
to the age of twelve. Since then he has traveled extensively, going to the South 
Sea Islands and through Canada. Mr. Finlayson began working at his trade in 
Gore, New Zealand, continuing for five years in heavy construction and on 
business blocks. Going to Vancouver, with a force of sixty men he remodeled a 
number of business blocks and constructed five new ones. Coming to San Francisco 
in the fall of 1906 he helped to rebuild that city after the great fire and 
earthquake. His first work there was on the second brick building in Chinatown; 
he built a sixty-room hotel on Howard Street; worked on the Ferry building and 
remodeled the front of it; did work on Yerba Buena Island, and erected a 
hospital at Fort Berry for the U. S. government; built a number of school 
buildings for the City of San Francisco, also a number of fire houses; and two 
churches. During the World War he built several cantonments, having 300 men 
under his supervision at the Presidio in San Francisco. Going to Aberdeen, 
Wash., he was engaged in the work of building twenty-two wooden vessels of 4000 
tons each, laying the keels, sterns etc. Returning to San Francisco he worked in 
the shipyards for the Government, making steel masts and spars.
        Completing his work in the bay metropolis, Mr. Finlayson came to Los 
Banos on October 2, 1919, and soon became associated with Frank Burke in the 
contracting and building business; after the death of Mr. Burke, he carried on 
the business alone and in Los Banos he erected the Odd Fellows Block, city water 
works building, three units of the Los Banos High School, Sischo's garage, West 
Side Hotel, Guyer Hotel, Oberon Hotel, Bank of Los Banos three-story building, 
many of the fine bungalows seen in and about Los Banos and on the West Side, as 
well as a number of homes and dairy barns and buildings. He has drawn plans for 
many of his buildings, having had a wide and varied experience in the building 
line.
        Mr. Finlayson married Sybil Maclean, a native of Michigan, and daughter 
of Dr. Daniel Maclean, dean of the California Medical College in San Francisco, 
and they have a son, Thomas Gray Finlayson. Mr. Finlayson is a graduate of the 
Armour Architectural Institute of Chicago; and is a Mason, belonging to Los 
Banos Lodge No. 312, F. & A. M.
 
History of Merced County, California � Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 1925
page 801-802