Joseph Fyfe Has Made Permanent Impress on Lumber Industry

In the withdrawal from active business duties, on October 1, of Joseph Fyfe, the venerable head of the Stockton Lumber Company at Stockton, one of the oldest as well as one of the most highly respected. Iumbermen in the state passed from a eareer of constructive usefulness to one of honored and. contented retirement.

Mr. Fj'fe has been in the retail lumber business longer, perhaps, than any other man in California. More than 50 years ago Mr. Fyfe came to Stockton

IosEpH FyFE and became connected with the concern of which he afterwards became the executive head,

Under the arrangement just carried into effect for the consolidation of the Stockton Irumber Company and the Simpson-Gray Lumber Company und.er the rnanagement of Charles G. Bird, Mr. Fyfe will retain an advisory connection with the enterprise and will give his successors the benefit of his long experience and his ripe judgment.

Few men have been more 'actively associated with the business life and development of Stockton during the last fifty years than Joseph Fyfe. He has been a member of the city council, organizer and president of the city street_ car syitem, bank president and director, and has interested' himseff in many other lines of community development.

Mr. Flfe was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, only a few miles from the birthplace of Robert Burns. Early in life he entered the employ of one of the ship- yards on the Clyde River, the largest in the world., and there learned the details of the lumber business which stood him in such good stead. for the rest of his life. hetter known to the people of Stockton as Oak Park.

A brother preceded him to San Francisco and. his mother being dead and the home ties not binding, it was on the brother's invitation that he decided to come to California. Ile reached San Francisco in 1869, but came on to Stockton the next year, where he procured. a position as bookkeeper in the firm of which he later became the head.

Back in Scotland, there was Iiving a boyhood sweetheart, Annie Morton Bruce. She, too, came to California and she and Mr. Fyfe were united in marriage in St. John's Episcopal church in San trbancisco on-the 5th of June, 1873.

He also helped to organize and for years was a member of the Stockton Hook and Ladder Company, a volunteer organization which fought the ffres in the city before the clays of the paid fire department. He was the last president of the organization before its place was taken by the new department.

I-.late in the eighties, a mule car line was put into dperation on Center street. Mr. Fyfe and three associates be-

Competition Makes A Storekeeper Either A Merchant Or A Bankrupt

c:ame interested in the introduction of electric transportation into Stockton. So in 1892 they bought out the old concern and inaugurated the Stockton Electric Railway Company. I\[r. Fyfe was president of the company for many years and was acting in that capacity when the corporation and its property was disposed of to the Southern Paeific in 1906.

Mr. trlfe also assisted in the organization of the San Joaquin Valley Bank and was for twenty-ffve years a director or ofiicer of the institution. In 1916 he retired from