Samuel Merritt was a physician and the 13th mayor of Oakland, California, from 1867 to 1869.
16 Facts About Samuel Merritt
1.
2.
Samuel Merritt was a shipmaster and a very successful businessman.
3.
Samuel Merritt died in 1890 at age 68, with a reputation as the richest man in Oakland.
4.
Samuel Merritt borrowed heavily from his brother Isaac, bought the 140-ton brig Reindeer, filled it with general supplies, and embarked on his voyage in 1849 as the navigator.
5.
Samuel Merritt went back to Bath, Maine, a center for shipbuilding, to visit family in 1853, and commissioned two new barks, built to his model designed specifically for the coastal lumber trade.
6.
In 1852 Samuel Merritt began a series of lucrative real estate transactions in San Francisco.
7.
Samuel Merritt bought land in what is the city of Oakland and moved there in 1863.
8.
Lake Samuel Merritt is historically significant as the United States' first official wildlife refuge, designated in 1870 at his urging.
9.
In May 1868, Samuel Merritt was appointed as a regent by Governor Haight to the founding Board of Regents of the then-nascent University of California.
10.
Samuel Merritt resigned from the board after a two-month investigation by the California State Assembly's public building committee which held him responsible for the young university's very first corruption scandal.
11.
The committee concluded that Samuel Merritt had profited financially from selling an inferior building to the university at an exorbitant cost, at $24,000 over its reasonable value.
12.
In 1880 Samuel Merritt undertook a four month voyage in Casco to the South Seas, visiting the Hawaiian islands and Tahiti.
13.
In early August 1890, Samuel Merritt sailed to Sausalito one last time in his yacht Casco, but he was too weak and had to return to Oakland in a steamer.
14.
Dr Samuel Merritt died in August 1890 at age 68, in his Oakland residence in the block bounded by Madison, Jackson, Fourteenth and Fifteenth streets, with an estate of over $2,000,000 and the reputation of being the most affluent man in Oakland.
15.
Samuel Merritt was buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.
16.
Samuel Merritt left plans for a hospital and nursing school to be built in his name after his death.