08/23/2026
August 23rd- On this day we have three Birthdays. George Perkins, James Rolph and Pete Wilson.
George Perkins early years were spent working on the family farm, which he did not enjoy. His dream was to become a captain of a ship. At age 13, he applied for a position as a cabin-boy, but he was considered too young. Not to be deterred, George hid on the ship and was not discovered until the ship set sail. He was set to work as one of the cabin-boys. He arrived in San Francisco when he was 16. Perkins tried his luck at mining for several months, but was unsuccessful. He moved to a mining camp in Ophir where he drove a mule train and worked as a porter in a store. Perkins eventually became a clerk at the store and earned a salary of $60 a month. When business had slowed, Perkins bought the store. By the age of 20, Perkins grossed about $500, 000 annually through his trade in merchandise, produce and provisions.
Perkins was elected to serve as a term as a state Senator in 1869 and was re-elected in 1871. This was the turning point in Perkins’ political career as well as in his business career. While Perkins was in the Senate he met Captain Manor Goodall. In 1872, Perkins and Goodall formed the Goodall, Nelson and Perkins Steamship Company, which was renamed the Pacific Coast Steam Navigation Company. It was a very successful company. In 1873, Perkins was elected to fill the unexpired term of Senator Boucher, who passed away in late 1872.
In 1875, Perkins moved to San Francisco, leaving his brother to run the store. In addition to his store, Perkins also owned sheep and cattle ranches, was involved in mining and lumber interests. He was also a member of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, president of Arctic Oil Works as well as president of Starr and Company. He helped establish Bank of Butte County, and was a director for the California State Bank in Sacramento and First National Bank of San Francisco.
At the Republican State Convention of 1879, Perkins was selected as his party’s nomination for governor. His campaign for governor was successful garnering him 20,000 votes over the next closest candidate. Perkins was the first governor to work under the new state constitution. During his tenure, the State Normal School opened (which later became UCLA), and the University of Southern California was established. Perkins also pardoned numerous prisoners, personally interviewing each prisoner.
After his term as governor, Perkins returned to his business interests. However, in 1888, he was appointed as one of the directors of the deaf, dumb and blind asylum at Berkeley and was reappointed in 1891. In 1889, Perkins was appointed a trustee of the state mining bureau.
In 1893, Governor Markham appointed Perkins to fill out the unexpired term of U.S. Senator Leland Stanford, who had passed away. Perkins was re-elected to the U.S. Senate three more times. He retired from the Senate in 1915 and returned to Oakland.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-Peter “Pete” Wilson was born in Lake Forest, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. He attended Yale University on an ROTC scholarship, earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 1955, and subsequently served three years as a Marine Corps infantry officer. He earned a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall in 1962.
Wilson’s public service career began in 1966, when he was elected to the California Assembly. In 1971 he was elected mayor of San Diego. He remained mayor until he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1982 and reelected in 1988. He was elected Governor of California in 1990, becoming California’s thirty-sixth chief executive, and was reelected in 1994.
As governor, Wilson’s focused on reforms in the areas of health coverage for employees of small businesses, workers compensation, and education. In addition, he signed into law two major pieces of crime-related legislation–the “Three Strikes” law (25 years to life for repeat felons) and the “One Strike” law (25 years to life upon the first conviction of aggravated r**e or child molestation).
After leaving office, he spent two years as a managing director of Pacific Capital Group, a merchant bank based in Los Angeles. Wilson is currently a principal of the Bingham Consulting Group. He is also of counsel to Bingham McCutchen and a member of the Board of Advisors of Thomas Weisel Partners, a San Francisco merchant bank. He serves as a director of the Irvine Company, U.S. Telepacific Corporation, Inc., National Information Consortium Inc. and IDT Entertainment.
Wilson received the Woodrow Wilson Institute award for Distinguished Public Service and was awarded the Patriots Award by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. He is on the governing boards of the National D-Day Museum, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Richard M. Nixon Foundation, and the Donald Bren Foundation, and is founding director of the California Mentor Foundation.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————James Rolph grew up in the Mission District of San Francisco. He attended the local parochial school, Trinity Academy. He was a young entrepreneur, only fifteen years old when he started raising and selling pigeon meat. After graduating from high school, Rolph worked as an office boy for DeWitt, Kittle and Company, a shipping firm. In 1898, Rolph and George Hind opened a shipping business, Hind Rolph Shipping Company, which was very successful. In 1928, he became a partner in a new business venture–James Rolph Jr., Landis, and Ellis, a general insurance firm.
Rolph entered politics in 1911 when he was elected the mayor of San Francisco. He served as the city’s mayor for 20 years. On November 4, 1930, he was elected Governor of California, and on January 6, 1931, he was sworn into office. Rolph was criticized for many things, including signing legislation that caused taxes to fall unfairly on the poor, endorsing a brutal jailbreak lynching in San Jose, and openly ignoring prohibition laws. During his term as governor, Rolph instituted the California Sales Tax, then known as “Pennies for Jimmy.”
Rolph collapsed at the end of February, 1934. He was rushed to the hospital where he remained for several weeks. After he collapsed a second time in on May 3, Governor Rolph went to the Linfort Ranch in Santa Clara County, where he died on June 2, 1934.
Images and Biography is from the California’s Governors Library at: https://governors.library.ca.gov/list.html (https://governors.library.ca.gov/list.html)
