Butte County Biographies

EMIL MEYBEM

Transcribed by Betty Wilson

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


  
           In reviewing the career of Emil Meybem one is 
impressed anew with the painstaking and cautious business methods which 
accompany the sons of Germany to this side of the ocean.  This prominent jeweler 
of Chico has built his own superstructure of success, basing his early claims 
upon the mastery of a trade which has claimed the attentive of at least one 
emperor and two European kings, and which has attained its greatest excellence 
in the quaint old town of Nuremberg, Germany.  Reference is made to the art of 
watch-making, which Mr. Meybem learned during a four-year apprenticeship in his 
native town of Eisleben, in the province of Saxony, Prussia, where he was born 
April 27, 1847.  His father, Wilhelm, a native of the same town, was a merchant 
tailor by trade and died when his son was ten years old.  His mother, formerly 
Bertha Ulm, was also born in Eisleben, and reared six sons and one daughter, of 
whom Emil is the oldest.
            Following the custom of his country, Mr. Meybem began to work at his 
trade when fourteen years old, and after completing it became a journeyman 
jeweler, traveling through Germany, England, Africa and Canada, and arriving in 
the United States February 14, 1886.  At Oroville, Cal., he worked at 
watch-making for about a year and in 1887 came to Chico, where he was employed 
by Hibbard & Sommer, whom he bought out in 1893.  Since then he has greatly 
enlarged his stock and building, and has added to that of jewelry and clocks of 
all kinds, a stock of music and sewing machines.
            Notwithstanding his early educational limitations, Mr. Meybem has 
become one of the greatest promoters of education in his adopted town.  In 1903 
he served as president of the board of education, and for three years past has 
served on boards of both the grammar and high school.  His ideas regarding the 
intellectual development of children are practical and well founded, and give to 
his opinion convincing weight in the community.  He was also one of the 
stanchest champions of the new high school.
            No citizen of Chico has a better standing in fraternal circles than 
Mr. Meybem.  He is a member and past master of Chico Blue Lodge, F. & A.M., past 
high priest of Chapter No. 42, past commander of Commandery No. 12 of Chico, and 
a member of Shrine of Islam at San Francisco, and has held six commissions as 
inspector of Masonry of the Fifteenth District.  He is a member of Lodge No. 
432, B.P.O.E., in which he is past exalted ruler.  In Chico Lodge No. 58, 
A.O.U.W., he is past master workman and past district deputy, and in Bidwell 
Lodge No. 124, Fraternal Brotherhood, he is past president and past district 
deputy.  He is also one of the directors of the Benevolent Protective Order of 
Elks Hall Association and the Masonic Hall Association.  Possessing broad 
sympathies and great generosity, as well as clear judgment and thorough 
knowledge of men and affairs, Mr. Meybem is readily a leader in matters which 
tend to promote the business stability of the town and to stimulate an interest 
in the time-honored fraternal institutions which have been a guide and 
inspiration to countless thousands of people.  Mr. Meybem married Bertha 
Nickolai, a native of Stuttgart, Germany, and to them have been born three sons 
and three daughters:  Emil, Willie, Eda, Alma, Daisy and Albert.
 
History of the State of California and Biographical Record of the Sacramento 
Valley, California; by J.M. Guinn, The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago (1906)
pp. 558-561