George W. Hotchkiss

Hotchkiss was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on October 16, 1831. His parents were Ellas Woodward and Almira Woodward Hotchkiss. He had four brothers and four sisters. He was the sixth child in the family. Hotchkiss was of English and Welsh ancestry. His ancestors were Huguenots. They emigrated to Switzerland and from there went with the Plymouth colony to America settling at Guilford, Connecticut.[1][2]

Hotchkiss attended the Lancasterian School in New Haven for his initial training as a child. He later went to the Russell Military Academy of New Haven as a teenager for two years.[1][2]

Hotchkiss left the Russell Military Academy in June 1848 just before he was 17 years old. He went to work as a clerk and bookkeeper in a lumber yard working for his brother Thomas, a lumber dealer in New Haven. Prompted by the gold rush, Hotchkiss then went to California in the spring of 1849.[3] The 154-day trip from the East coast involved going around Cape Horn of South America where the voyage ended in San Francisco with many other forty-niners. He worked for a general store in Sacramento for about a year as a clerk. Hotchkiss then opened the first trading post in Greenwood valley near Sacramento in the spring of 1850. He returned to Connecticut in the fall of that year and was hoping to return to California from profits of an investment he made in a dam on the American River. This never materialized and in the spring of 1851 he went west to Port Dover, Ontario, Canada. There he joined his brother-in-law Henry Wheeler as a lumber dealer for the Albany, New York, market.[4]

Hotchkiss purchased Wheeler's business at Albany in 1855. He added grain commodities and continued the business until 1862 when merchants of the United States were compelled to stop their Canadian operations due to the American Civil War. Hotchkiss then went to Buffalo, New York, for a short break from business. He then took the job as the manager for a company there that had the first barge line on the Great Lakes that operated to Saginaw, Michigan. He moved to the nearby city of Bay City, Michigan, in the fall of 1862. The firm out of Buffalo was Noyes & Reed and they had three rebuilt steamboats in their fleet of barges used for hauling large quantities of lumber. The railroad lines were soon built on the south side of Lake Erie that took all the lumber traffic then and barges were no longer needed. Hotchkiss joined with Andrew H. Hunter in late 1863 to form Hunter & Hotchkiss, a lumber dealer. Their successful lumber dealer business was joined by William Mercer and they then formed Hunter, Hotchkiss, and Company. They towed log booms from Tobico bay and the Rifle river to Bay City to turn into lumber. Hotchkiss & Mercer contracted in 1866 to build a 17-mile plank road from Bay City to Midland, Michigan. They built a sawmill about halfway between the cities in the town of Williams, Michigan. The loss of two rafts of logs on Saginaw bay and bad weather caused them to go bankrupt.[5]

Hotchkiss then took employment in the editorial department of the Saginaw Daily Courier in 1869, which was his first job in journalism.[1][6] He was associated with another writer, and they started the Lumberman's Gazette in 1872.[1][6][7][8] Hotchkiss in 1875 became the editor of the Lumberman's Gazette.[9] He published it as the world's first lumber journal.[3][10][11] He was also an editor for The Bay City Journal at intervals from 1871 to 1876.[12] Hotchkiss went to Chicago in 1877 as an assistant editorial writer for the Northwestern Lumberman. While with them he prepared a Lumberman's Handbook of Inspection and Grading, which sold over 40,000 copies nationwide.[1][6]

Hotchkiss married Elizabeth St. John on August 18, 1856. She was from Ellsworth, Connecticut. They had a son and a daughter.[2]

In 1856 Hotchkiss joined and became very involved in the Masonic Order, serving as secretary in two of its chapters and was one of the Order's oldest members in Illinois. He was also a member and recorder of the Knights Templar. In religion he was a Presbyterian and a member of the Second Presbyterian Church in Evanston.[13][14]

Hotchkiss, at the age of 90, and his wife, celebrated their 65th anniversary at their home in Evanston, on August 14, 1921.[7]

He was in later life said to be "the oldest living lumber man" and the "last of the 49ers."[11]

Hotchkiss lived the last 48 years of his life in Evanston, Illinois. He retired a few years after a 78-year career as a lumberman. He was the editor of the first lumber journal, the Lumberman's Gazette, and was considered the "father" of all lumber periodicals in the lumber world since then.[7][8]

Hotchkiss died at the age of 94 on March 1, 1926.[15]

• John Mason Loomis—noted industrialist in the lumber business during the 19th century