History of Saginaw County, Michigan; historical, commercial, biographical, profusely illustrated with portraits of early pioneers, rare pictures and scenes of olden times, and portraits of representative citizens of today, [Vol. 2]

BIOGRAPHIES OF REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS

5

CHARLES HENRY DAVIS
Charles H. Davis, the first of that remarkable group of men who owe
much of their success in life to Ammi W. Wright, was born at North Andover,
Massachusetts, August 25, 1848. His parents were Edmund Davis, a native
of Stratham, New Hampshire, and Sarah Folsom, of Gilmanton, the same
State. His father was born in the first year of the nineteenth century. The
mother was born in 1805. While sharing with her husband the hardships
and joys of farm life in those early days, they reared a family of nine children,
four daughters and five sons, of which Charles H. is the youngest. Edmund
Davis died in 1866, and was buried in his native town, while Mrs. Davis lived
to enjoy the fruitation of many years well spent, passing from this life at
the advanced age of eighty-five at the home of her daughter Mrs. Reuben
Kimball, in Saginaw, and was also interred at North Andover.
The boyhood days of Charles H. Davis were spent on this farm which
wras situated about two miles from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. While
attending to the minor duties which naturally fell to a small lad on the farm,
he went to the district school. At ten years of age he entered the grammar
school, in which he continued for about four years, and then advanced to the
Portsmouth High School, the instruction of which he received for a like
period to the close of the course. During these years at the High School
among his school-mates was Willis T. Knowlton, with whom he is now
associated in business, whose parents lived close by, the friendship and mutual
confidence thus formed continuing through life.
In the winter of 1864 he supplemented the knowledge which he had thus
gained with a full course in Eastman Business College, of Poughkeepsie, New
York, acquiring the theory and rudimentary practice of business. He then
returned to the farm for four years engaged with his brothers in market
gardening, the green produce and fruits which they grew finding a ready
market at Portsmouth, and to some extent in the resort colony at Rye Beach.
While thus making a modest start in active business life, his youthful
imagination was kindled by glowing accounts of the opportunities arising
in the West, and he formed the ambitious plan of sometime, when he should
come of age, seeking his fortune on the western frontier. He had heard of
the undeveloped wealth of the Michigan forests, and of the productive valley
of the Saginaw, and being fond of the "great outdoors" and woodland life,
he resolved to locate in the Wolverine State. Accordingly, in the fall of 1869,
lie landed in Saginaw City, an entire stranger in the place. In a few days he
was offered a job of scaling logs by Newell Barnard, but as he was unfamiliar
with this work he was obliged to decline it. Meanwhile he had been impressed by the great lumbering operations of Ammi W. Wright, in association
with James H. Pearson, of Chicago, and determined to secure employment
with him, if possible.
One day he mustered his courage and approached the big lumberman to
ask for a job, resolved to begin at the bottom and master every detail of the
business. Mr. Wright quietly sized up the sturdy figure of the young man,
and, evidently liking his appearance and confident manner, offered him work
of piling lumber in the yard at twenty dollars a month and his board,
remarking in his usual brusque yet kindly tone, "that his clothes were pretty
good for this rough occupation."
But when the young man appeared the next morning in his farm work
clothes, and began shoving lumber with strong arm and resolute will, his
employer observed that he was evidently not of that class of youths, of which
he had had some experience, who sought the easy, soft jobs in business. He
thereupon concluded that the young fellow was well worth watching. That