Alameda County
Biographies
JOSEPH EUGENE BAKER.
Joseph Eugene Baker was widely known on the Pacific coast as editorial writer for the Oakland Tribune, remaining in that connection for sixteen years. He was born near Conyers, not far from Atlanta, Georgia, January 10, 1847, and in his boyhood accompanied his parents to Texas. He supplemented study in private schools by a course in a local, academy, which he attended to the age of sixteen years. Soon afterward he joined the Confederate service as a soldier in the Army of the Tennessee, in which his uncle, Brigadier General Alpheus Baker, commanded a brigade. He followed the fortunes of war with his command and during the progress of hostilities it was said that although a boy in his teens he took an active part in compelling the proper and humane treatment of Union prisoners.
After the close of the war he visited Mexico, then in the throes of the republican revolution against the misguided and unfortunate Emperor Maximilian. Being equipped with letters from both imperial and revolutionary authorities granting him free transit, he traversed the country at will and witnessed the fluctuations of the tide of war which ended in the tragic death of Maximilian at Querataro and the birth of the republic of Mexico under the presidency of Juarez. Subsequently he visited Brazil and ascended the Amazon river to the highest point which had then been reached by a white man, his purpose being to study the agricultural possibilities of that region. With the same purpose in view he went to Rio de Janeiro and explored the interior of southern Brazil. In 1868 he entered the employ of a St. Louis tobacco house, which he represented as traveling salesman in the central part of Texas until 1870. He afterward drove a herd of cattle from Texas to the Laramie plains of Wyoming and while enroute camped upon the present site of Oklahoma City. From the Laramie plains he drove a herd of cattle to Salt Lake City, where he remained until March, 1873. Subsequently he went to Pioche, Nevada, where he engaged in mining and afterward turned his attention to newspaper work. In 1877 he removed to Tybo, Nevada, where he became a smelter in a mining camp, while afterward he was connected with a weekly newspaper until the spring of 1879.
While with the Meadow Lake Mining Company he had with him a crowd of fellow workers who afterward became very distinguished, including. Judge Beatty, George Story Curtis, grandson of Justice Story of the United States supreme court, and Henry T. Creswell, one of the best known members of the San Francisco bar. His association with these distinguished men greatly influenced his future life and turned his thoughts into a literary channel, bringing him at last to a position as one of the best and most versatile and accomplished writers of California. From Pioche Mr. Baker went to Belmont and thence to Tybo, Nevada, and after working in a smelter there became interested in a small newspaper. During that period he read thoughtfully the works of Addison, Carlyle, Macaulay and other standard essayists and also spent many hours with Hume's History of England. In fact, his reading was broad and of a most excellent character. Possessing a wonderfully retentive memory, he gathered a store of material from which he could draw at will in future years, finding on almost every occasion something that applied to the subject matter in hand. In writing of this period of his career the Oakland Tribune said, following his death: "When the mining company operating the smelter at Tybo closed down Mr. Baker moved to Bodie, Mono county, which at that time was one of the richest quartz mining camps in this state, and he lived there and thereabouts for some time. During a winter spent in a mountain cabin near the shore of the lake Mr. Baker witnessed the slide of an avalanche of snow down the flank of the Sierran peak and with a deafening roar tearing a great gap through the forest of gigantic pines fringing the shores of the lake, grinding them into kindling wood on its way and moving with such tremendous velocity that when it struck the frozen surface of the lake the floe swept swiftly over the ice and ascended far up the flank of the mountain at whose base his own cabin was located, ripping out in its course the big pines by the roots and incorporating them in the wreckage it created. The scene was so extraordinary and impressive that Mr. Baker wrote an account of it for the newspaper, which revealed his great descriptive powers. It has been described as the most graphic description of an avalanche ever published, not in any sense equaled in vividity by any of the numerous productions of distinguished writers who have described in their works the great snow avalanches which have periodically swept down the flanks of the European Alps, carrying death and disaster into the valleys at their feet."
At a later date Mr. Baker was employed for a time as a writer on one of the Reno, Nevada, newspapers. He afterward removed to Bodie, California, and for a short time was connected with the Bodie Daily News and afterward had charge of the Bodie Standard until 1881. In that year he removed to Lundy, California, where he began the publication of a weekly paper. While thus engaged he was offered and accepted a position in a surveying party, which work took him across the mountains to the town of Sonora and it was during his residence there that he met the lady who afterward became his wife and the mother of his three children, a son and two daughters. He was editor of the Sonora Union Democrat until 1885, in which year he spent a few months on the local staff of the Chronicle and later on the local staff of the Examiner, where he remained until 1887, when he became city editor of the Alta California, which position he held until 1891. He then became managing editor of the Oakland Times, with which he was connected until the summer of 1892, when he took editorial charge of the Fresno Expositor. After a year spent in Fresno, California, he returned to San Francisco and engaged on the special staff of the Chronicle until 1893. He then became managing editor of the Oakland Times, but resigned in 1895 to become general overseer of the state prison at Folsom. He retained that office until June, 1900, when he tendered his resignation. He was for sixteen years editorial writer on the Oakland Tribune, which position he held at the time of his demise.
In every place where Mr. Baker resided he made many friends and his friendships comprised invariably the brightest men in each community, by whom he was held in the highest respect for his native ability, sterling integrity, great mentality and strength of character. He always took an active interest in politics and as a stanch democrat ranked among the leaders of the party in this state and in Nevada. "But," said one of his closest friends and greatest admirers in speaking of Mr. Baker's career, "he was not a hidebound democrat. He was a democrat with sound discrimination, which was exemplified by the support he gave Judge Beatty during his two candidacies for a position on the bench in Nevada and when he was a candidate for the chief justiceship of the supreme court of this state, to which he was elected and which position he has since held with ability, honor and distinction. But while he was an ardent democrat, Mr. Baker was not an office seeker. When Governor Budd was elected he appointed Mr. Baker to a position at the Folsom state prison, which he accepted and held during Governor Budd's term. It was the only public office he ever held and that came to him unsolicited and unsought."
Following the death of Mr. Baker, which occurred at his home in Oakland on the 19th of March, 1914, papers in this and adjoining states commented upon his career and from these the following excerpts have been made: "Baker was ever loyal to the craft. He believed the newspaper was the greatest power on earth and the paper he attached himself to was dominant authority in the locality where it was published and if it was not he generally aided in making it such. Baker was brusque but kind. His friendship rang true. He ranks with Frank M. Pixley, Arthur McKewen and John P. Irish as a leader among editorial writers of this generation. He was direct, powerful and caustic in his style and he was a general in command of the English language." Another said: "In the death of Joseph Baker of the Oakland Tribune California newspaperdom loses one of its strongest and most trenchant writers. Baker was no ordinary man. His erudition covered a wide field. His memory was a veritable storehouse of facts, on which he was able to draw for any subject at any time." The Woodland Democrat writes : "He was one of the ablest editorial writers in the state and was such a careful student of public questions that his ambitions were regarded with the greatest respect by his contemporaries. Although editor of a republican paper he was a democrat of the old school and throughout his whole life he was an ardent supporter of democratic principles, having a record for loyalty, devotion and integrity that is stainless and unblemished. His journalistic career was brilliant, full of years and honest achievements, and his private virtues were worthy of emulation." The personal note is touched in the words of a writer in the Contra Costan, published at Richmond, California: "In the death of Editor Joe Baker this writer feels that he has lost a good friend, but there are thousands of others who feel the same way, for he had friends everywhere by the countless hundreds. We seldom ever went to Oakland that we did not drop into the Tribune office and chat a few moments with Colonel Joe, and they were always bright moments, for he was a good man and a man of noble instincts and fine traits of character. It was a pleasure and a privilege to know him and to be counted among his friends. He was a broad and liberal-minded man, with a big brain, a big heart and lots of soul." Still another said: "Baker was as big of heart and mind as the great west which developed him. That he worked in the mines in commonplace positions even into his young manhood might seem strange in one so extraordinarily gifted intellectually, but while thus employed he was burning the candle into the morning hours, putting away for future use a treasure store of information that finally brought him distinction and honor in the profession he so splendidly adorned. His paragraphs were as fresh and clean as the fine manhood he typified, while his more profound observations were as logically powerful as they were entertaining and instructive."
A well merited tribute to his memory was paid by the Oakland Observer in the following: "An American man of the old school is dead. The customary phrase is 'a gentleman of the old school'—and few ever held in ampler measure the finer qualities of the gentleman than Joseph E. Baker—but, as the tribute to his memory from all his associates is not perfunctory, I think it is better to speak of him in the more enviable and descriptive words, 'an American man of the old school.' Baker was an American of the period when men were needed. He was embrued in the Civil war. He was a pioneer and adventurer into far places. He had the Ulyssean spirit that has made this nation. He sought the sources of the Amazon. He was in Mexico during the days of Maximilian. He trekked to the west in the times that we know now only through the record of Remington. He lived the life of the frontier American. In journalism he was vigorous, sometimes intemperate, but always true to his convictions, right or wrong though they might have been. But his adversaries always respected his manly qualities, as he always respected the manly qualities of his adversaries. In his enmities he was severe and uncompromising; in his friendships sincere and unreserved. He belonged to the type that made his country—the basic type of initiative, courage and vigor. He is a type that cannot be replaced; it remains only as an inspiration to the coming generation. We mourn to see another gap in the ranks of the Old Guard of real Americans, but our sorrow is subordinated to the pride we possess in what these men have done. Baker would not have us sentimentalize over him. He deserves the plain, untearful tribute of respect that the soldier accords to the comrade who falls in the van of the charge."
Past & Present of Alameda County, California – Vol II, S. J. Clarke Publ. Co., 1914
p. 97
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler