In 1880, OJH Sr. was about 24 years old. I'm fairly certain that by this time, he had moved to San Francisco (or Oakland). I was searching around on Ancestry last weekend and found three separate listings for him in the SF City Directory from 1879-1881. The results made me laugh -- and give me a sense of the go-go boom years in San Francisco with everyone scrambling to figure out how to capitalize on the gold rush.
All three listings share the same address: 328 Montgomery, Room 20.
Room 20 must have been bustling. All three list Omar J. Humphrey as "Secretary" but each has a different business name. The three are Lodi Mining Co. (with headquarters in Esmerelda, NV), Paul's Dry Process Co. (I looked this up on Wikipedia and it seems to be a process for refining metal ore), and William Penn Mining Co. (with headquarters in Lyon Country, NV).
I love this! What an enterprising young man! It also shows his early interest in mining -- which I'm sure drove him to Alaska a little later in life.
I would love to find how he first got to San Francisco. I know that his father (James Joseph Humphrey of Yarmouth, ME) captained ships bound for Asia so it may have been on one of those trips, but I have yet to find a source.
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