Old Susanville Boy Gets Write-up

The San Francisco Daily News  of August 8, 1914 after decanting upon education and its application to the real affairs of life of some length, elects as an illustration an old Susanville boy, who has climbed in the commercial and social circles of San Francisco.

“Mr. Abraham Lincoln Peyser, president of S.N. Wood & Co., is as fine an illustration of the theories advanced alone could wish to meet.

Born in 1865 and brought up in Lassen County, 170 miles from a railroad, by all fair rules he should have been a grand rube performer; and far beat from the purpose of this chronicle to deny that once upon on a time he was–howbeit, this will an give an unneeded opportunity for the perpetration of his standard joke that Heaven lies about folks in their infancy, while everybody lies about them when especially successful in business.

“Coming well-heeled to San Francisco at 16 to attend college, he went broke seeing the sights, and remembering well the admonitory effectiveness of certain parental willow switches, he forthwith annexed a job in Loomis Plaza store and began that pursuit of knowledge which has resulted in landing him at the head of one the greatest mercantile establishments on the coast; making him one of the leading exemplars of highly ethical business methods; and at the same time producing that unusual combination–a thoroughly educated and polished man who never passed a day inside a college wall.”

Note: His father, Samuel Peyser came to Susanville in 1861 and was that town’s first Jewish merchant. In the 1880s he owned the Steward House Hotel in Susanville.

Tim