Baker Hamilton & Pacific Company

I've had an old book laying variously, either on my coffee table or my bookshelf, for about 15 years now. The book is titled "Baker Hamilton and Pacific Company, San Francisco, Catalog No. 8".  The book is 11 1/4" x 9 3/4" x 3 3/4". It has a tabbed index in the front, 3548 numbered pages, and then about 300 mail order blanks in the back. The book was given to me by my brother-in-law. He gave it to me because he knows that I am a builder and tinkerer, and that I would get buried in the pages. Somehow he saw the humor in me having such a book.

The book is completely intact, with the exception of a 2 inch tear on one page that I did myself. The reason that this book has suddenly become important to me is that it is 110 years old this year. There is no print date that I can find in the book, but I have found through a little research that it was printed in 1913, in Baker Hamilton's own facility, for the year 1914.

As all of you already know, the founders of The Baker Hamilton Company were gold miners that came to California in 1849 to mine gold. Livingstone Low Baker and Robert Muirhead Hamilton soon became discouraged by the trials and tribulations of gold mining and decided that they could profit best by cashing in on selling tools to the many hundreds of people with gold fever. They opened a hardware store in a tent on Mormon Island. You could visit Mormon Island, but alas, it is now under water behind the Folsom Dam. Baker and Hamilton were much ridiculed by the miners for passing up the opportunity to get rich quick mining gold, yet they soon became very successful and very wealthy selling hardware.

They expanded and opened a new store in the blossoming town called Sacramento.

http://stiletto.com/t-about.aspx A great youtube video with a Scott Joplin piano roll. About the history of Stilletto.
http://wx4.org/to/foam/sp/san_fran/7th/street2.html A collection of China Basin railyard photos that include the Baker Hamiltion building.

I started the post ten years ago on the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Baker Hamilton & Pacific Company. I didn't finish it because I was trying to find out what happened to the company and why it ended. So far I still have no idea. However, I ran across a news article dated May 23 20023 that said they were replacing the historic sign on the Baker & Hamilton building at 7th and King Street in San Francisco. The sign has been there for seventy years. It even survived the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. 

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/historic-san-francisco-sign-to-be-replaced-18112494.php