Background
Lloyd Tevis was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky, in 1899. His father was a prominent attorney in his county, and for a time circuit court clerk.
Lloyd Tevis was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky, in 1899. His father was a prominent attorney in his county, and for a time circuit court clerk.
From 1842 to 1844 Lloyd studied law in his father's office.
Finishing his formal education at eighteen, Tevis read his clerk's office. After a close study of the law, he took a position as a salesman with a wholesale dry goods company in Louisville, Ky. He rose rapidly to a high place in the counting room. He is shown such ability in this position that he was offered a place in the Bank of Kentucky - all this before he was twenty-five. He left the bank shortly to enter the office of an insurance company in St. Petersburg. Louis. In the spring of 1849 he joined the gold rush to California, crossed the plains in a covered wagon, and tried his luck for nine months in the diggings. But having little success there, and being in any case, more disposed towards a commercial and financial career, he went to the Sacramento and as in the beginning of the day. Saving a portion of his salary, he made a profit for a few months.
In October 1850 he and a recent acquaintance, James Ben Ali Haggin, set up a law office in Sacramento. This noted partnership, which endured until Tevis' death, forty-nine years later, became, as years went on, more and more a partnership for business and finance rather than law. The association between the two men was cemented by the fact that they married sisters, daughters of Col. Lewis Sanders, a prominent ex-Kentuckian.
By 1853 Haggin & Tevis found their interests too large to be handled in Sacramento, and so removed to San Francisco. There Tevis became identified with some of California's greatest business undertakings. He was one of the principal owners of the California Steam Navigation Company and one of the early projectors of telegraph lines throughout California. He conducted the negotiations on which the State Telegraph Company was taken by the Western Union, and it is said that its profits and commissions on the deal amount to $ 200, 000. He was the leading projector of the California dry market and the California market in San Francisco; one of the promoters of the Southern Pacific Railroad and its president, 1869-70; president and principal owner of the Pacific Ice Company, and one of the first in California of illuminating gas.
In 1868, while the Central Pacific Railroad was being built, Tevis led the way in the Pacific Express Company to take over the express business on the line and threaten the East-and-West supremacy of Wells, Fargo & Company, then operating the Overland Mail stage, which was soon to be rendered obsolete by the railroad. Wells, Fargo stock declined greatly in price, and Tevis and his associates bought quantities of it. Wells, Fargo & Company was finally forced to buy the Pacific Express Company in 1869 at an immense figure, the Tevis faction becoming the controlling element in the older company. Joint operation was started in 1870, and was served by the President from 1872 to 1892.
He was a large stockholder in the Spring Valley Water Company, the Risdon Iron Works, and the Sutro Tunnel at Virginia City, Nev. He owned at one time 1, 300 miles of stage-coach in California, as well as street-car lines in San Francisco, thousands of acres of ranch lands, and enormous herds of cattle and sheep. He was one of the pioneers in the reclaiming tule or swamp lands in central California. He was owner or part owner of gold and silver mines in California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and South Dakota. These included the Homestake mine in the Black Hills and the Ontario in Utah, in both of which he had George Hearst for a partner. Tevis, Haggin, Hearst, and Marcus Daly owned the great Anaconda copper properties in Montana. The Hearst was sold to an English syndicate in 1897, and two years later (May 1899) the others their Johnny Rockefeller. Tevis is said to have received $ 8, 000, 000 for his share.
He died in San Francisco, survived by his wife, three sons, and two daughters.
Tevis married Susan G. Sanders on April 20, 1854. The Tevises were the parents of three sons and two daughters