Contra Costa County Biography

CHARLES AXEL SMITH

Transcribed by Sally Kaleta, December, 2006.

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

          
               High in the list of those who by their greatness of achievement 
in industry and commerce have added luster to the brilliant star of American 
enterprise is Charles Axel Smith, of the C. A. Smith Lumber Company, of the C. 
A. Smith Lumber & Manufacturing Company of Marshfield, Oregon, of the C. A. 
Smith Timber Company, and of the Coos Bay Lumber Company, holding probably 
twenty billion feet of standing timber in Oregon and California. He was born in 
the province of Ostergotland, Sweden, December 11, 1852. At the age of fourteen, 
with his father and sister, he came from his native land to the United States 
and settled, as has been largely the case with immigrants from his native 
country, in Minnesota. He attended the public schools of Minneapolis from 1869 
to 1871, and from 1872 to 1873 he was a student of the University of Minnesota. 
While attending school he lived with John S. Pillsbury, who had served several 
years as Governor of Minnesota, working during his spare time in the winter and 
being employed in the Governor's hardware store in Minneapolis during his summer 
vacations. Because of his ill-health, he reluctantly abandoned his ambition for 
a complete university education, and became a regular employee in Governor 
Pillsbury's hardware store until 1878. At that time, with the help of Governor 
Pillsbury, he went to Herman, Minnesota, then a new town on the line of the 
Great Northern Railway. He here built an elevator and opened an implement store 
and lumber business, conducting the enterprise for six years under the name of 
C. A. Smith & Co., with Governor Pillsbury as an equal partner. In addition to 
this enterprise, retail lumber yards were opened by Mr. Smith at Evansville, 
Bandon, and Ashby, Minnesota. During these six years, Mr. Smith was successful, 
clearing in the Herman business for his firm $50,000, and in his other ventures 
$40,000, an equal half of this sum being his individual profits. In 1884, 
Governor Pillsbury, who had loaned a considerable sum of money to loggers who 
were unable to pay their debts, asked Mr. Smith to buy their logs and 
manufacture them into lumber. To this Mr. Smith agreed, and organized the lumber 
manufacturing firm of C. A. Smith & Co. The first purchases of logs, as well as 
all handled by the firm until 1891, were sawed at custom mills at Minneapolis. 
Then they bought a mill, which, however, burned down six weeks later. Another 
mill was shortly thereafter purchased. In 1893, when the business was 
incorporated as the C. A.  Smith Lumber Company (Minnesota), it began its 
corporate career by building the largest, most expensive and complete mill up to 
that time erected in the Northwest, a mill which, in a few years later, broke 
all records in turning out in eleven hours with three band-saws and a gang 
approximately six hundred thousand feet of lumber, seventy-one and one-half 
thousand feet of lath, and one hundred thirty thousand shingles. It also made a 
weekly average of one million ten thousand feet a day of twenty hours. With his 
business in Minneapolis firmly established, Mr. Smith was not blind to the fact 
that the future must be looked after if lumbermen would survive the day when the 
now almost depleted forests in Minnesota would be shorn of their standing 
timber. He then began investment on the Pacific Coast, first by the purchase of 
a redwood tract in Humboldt County, California, and later by the accumulation of 
a huge acreage in southwestern Oregon and then by the buying of a large stand of 
sugar and Western yellow pine in El Dorado County, California. While the 
California properties have been allowed to stand for future needs, Mr. Smith 
early in 1907 began the erection of a model lumber-manufacturing plant at 
Marshfield, on Coos Bay, Oregon. As Mr. Smith's timber was all tributary to 
tidewater, and as he well appreciated the economy of ocean freights, he looked 
about for the establishing of a distributing plant that could handle the product 
of his timber holdings as the manufacturing plants were gradually installed. 
After investigating thoroughly, in the spring of 1908 he purchased a tract of 
land on Suisun Bay, forty miles from San Francisco, and established what is 
known as the Bay Point plant and the prosperous village of Bay Point at that 
place. At Bay Point Mr. Smith has probably one of the most complete and model 
lumber, milling, and ware-housing plants in the United States. The Marshfield 
sawmill and the Bay Point planing-mill points are equipped with every modern 
device known to the industry. Mr. Smith has been a forerunner amongst the 
lumbermen for labor-saving devices in the manufacturing and handling of his 
product. Naturally the question of transporting the manufactured material from 
Marshfield to Bay Point necessitated the building of steamers. Of such, Mr. 
Smith has two in his service, the "Nann Smith" and  the "Adeline Smith," named 
for his daughters. These vessels were constructed on Mr. Smith's own plans, and 
every stick of lumber is handled by electric cranes at the Marshfield end in 
packages, each package averaging fifteen hundred to two thousand feet, such 
packages being stowed on shipboard intact, and at Bay Point being removed by 
electric cranes in the same manner. By this device, which has brought Mr. Smith 
much renown, he is able to load, transport and discharge a vessel's cargo of a 
million and three-quarter to two million feet of lumber every  five days, the 
distance traversed in that time being about eight hundred and fifty miles. As a 
lumberman, Mr. Smith has always been prominent, and has been signally honored in 
the highest councils of the industry, having served as vice-president of the 
National Lumber Manufacturers' Association, a member of its board of governors, 
and as adviser and director of the Mississippi Valley Lumbermen's Association.  
Despite his vast private interests, Mr. Smith has found time to be a patron of 
the arts, a spirited public citizen, a philanthropist, a church supporter, and 
an active participator in public affairs.  In 1896, he was presidential elector 
from Minneapolis, destined to carry to the national capital that State's vote 
for McKinley and Hobart.  He also was a delegate to the Republican National 
Convention which nominated McKinley and Roosevelt.  He has been an officer in 
the General Council of the Lutheran Church in America.  He has served many years 
as a regent of the University of Minnesota, one of the highest offices in the 
gift of the governor of a State.  Mr. Smith, while an American of undivided 
allegiance, is greatly interested in the welfare of the Scandinavian people in 
this country and the fatherland.  He took a prominent part in the relief of 
famine sufferers in Norland, and has made substantial gifts to Scandinavian 
schools and churches in this country.  In recognition of the services he has 
rendered the sons of Sweden in the United States and elsewhere, he has been 
signally honored by the King of Sweden, having been created Knight Commander of 
the Second Degree of the order of Vasa.  For several years Mr. Smith occupied 
the post of Swedish consul in Minneapolis.  On February 14, 1878, Mr. Smith 
married Miss Johanna Anderson.  Of this marriage have been born three sons 
(Oscar, the eldest, accidentally killed when seventeen years of age, and Vernon 
A. and Carroll W., holding responsible position with the C. A. Smith 
corporations) and three daughters (Nann, now Mrs. Frederick A. Warner, Adeline, 
and Myrtle, now Mrs. Philip Rodgers, of Honolulu).  The family home is located 
in Berkeley, California.
 
Source: "The History of Contra Costa County, California," Elms Publ. Co., 1917, 
p.585-587.