Santa Cruz County Biographies

OTTO STOESSER

Submitted by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        Otto Stoesser is a leading merchant in Watsonville, a pioneer of the 
State, and a resident of this county since 1853. Careful business habits, 
frugality, and thrift have enabled him to accumulate a competence, as the 
assessment roll reveals the fact that he is one of the wealthy men of the 
county. His career from poverty to affluence, his struggles and triumphs, his 
reminiscences, and the experiences he underwent during his early residence in 
this State, would make a readable and interesting volume.
        He was born in Gaggenan, by Rastad, near Baden Baden, in the Grand Duchy 
of Baden, Germany, November 18, 1825, and came to the United States in the 
sixteenth year of his age, arriving in New York June 25, 1846: He first went to 
Norfolk, Virginia, where he worked as a laborer for one year and a half, and 
from that time until 1850 pursued a sort of roving life, stopping and working in 
each of the following towns for a brief time: Wilmington, North Carolina; 
Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Danville,  Pennsylvania. His last employment was 
with John Hagan, at No. 308 Market Street, Philadelphia, where he remained until 
February 22, 1850. February 27 of that year he embarked on the ship Zenobia, for 
San Francisco, and, after a long and tedious voyage around the Horn, stopping 
four or five days at the harbor of Valparaiso, he arrived at his destination on 
the thirteenth day of August of the same year.
        He found his first employment in this State with Mr. M. L. Wynn, a 
manufacturer of Wynn's Golden Syrup, but, being anxious to make his "pile," he, 
shortly after the admission of the State into the Union, went to the Southern 
mines and worked at Burns' Diggings, near Agua Frio. He did not meet with 
success, because, to quote his own words, " I was too green." He returned to San 
Francisco on Christmas day of 1850 nearly flat broke. The "pile" which he had 
expected to make did not materialize, and the "pile" which he had was diminished 
to a sum total of $4.85. He was determined to accept the first job that he could 
get, and this happened to be the position of cabin boy, called in those days 
flunkey, on board the steamer Columbus, bound for Panama. He came to San 
Francisco on the return voyage of the vessel, arriving in March, 1851, and then 
went to the mines, working at Long Bar, on Feather River. Later he went to the 
Rich Bar mines, but this trip proved to be a wild-goose chase, and, becoming 
thoroughly disgusted and discouraged, he and his party sold their traps and 
started back to San Francisco.
After he returned he was in the same predicament in which he had found himself 
before shipping as a cabin boy, and began to hunt for a job. He went to the post 
office expecting a letter from home, but he had not yet reached the end of the 
chapter of his disappointments. He dejectedly walked along Dupont Street, but 
had not proceeded far before he noticed this sign in a restaurant window, 
"Wanted, a Dishwasher." He got the position, and worked industriously for ten 
days. Having secured enough funds to pay for his board for a while, he notified 
Mr. Wilson, the proprietor, to get another man. On the same day that he quit, he 
got a position as second pastry baker -with Perry Brothers, on Kearny Street. 
Twenty-four days after he secured this employment, the establishment was burned. 
This was on June 22, 1852, the date of the big fire in San Francisco, which 
reduced to ashes nearly two-thirds of the city. A few days later Mr. Stoesser 
was baking pastry for Meiggs & Dunion, on Merchant Street. He remained with them 
for ten months and then went to work again for Mr. Wynn at "Wynn Fountain Head," 
on long wharf. He remained here for ten months, making all the candy that was 
sold from this factory, which at this time was the largest on the coast. March 
2, 1853, he quit work at Wynn's and was induced by Doctor Vandeburgh to go to 
Santa Cruz and engage in merchandising; so he bought a stock of goods and went 
to Santa Cruz on the l0th of March, on the steamer Major Tompkins, Captain Hunt 
commanding, and landed on the beach near where the bath houses now stand, and 
with the doctor opened a store on Front Street, near the old Santa Cruz House. 
They remained in. Santa Cruz only one month, when they packed their goods in 
three wagons belonging to Hiram Imus and son, and started for Watsonville, which 
place they reached late in the evening of April 10 or 11, 1853. Doctor 
Vandeburgh's interest in the business they established here was bought out two 
or three months later by Mr. Stoesser. He has been merchandising here ever 
since, and has accumulated extensive property. He is a stockholder in the Pajaro 
Valley Bank, and owns a farm of one hundred and fifty acres near town. He has 
been the city treasurer of Watsonville ever since the town was incorporated, in 
1868.
        He was married, in 1862, to Elizabeth Doran, of Watsonville. The fruits 
of this union have been three children, two of whom are living, Julia M. and O. 
D. Stoesser, the latter an intelligent young man twenty-three years old, who 
assists his father in the management of his business.
 
HISTORY OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.-  E. S. Harrison, 
Pacific Press Publ. Co., San Francisco, 1891