Samuel Merritt

Early years Merritt was born in 1822 in Harpswell, Maine, within Casco Bay. As the youngest of five children of Stephen and Joanna (Purington) Merritt, in addition to schooling, he learned some fishing, helped to build ships, and helped in other functions of a mariner. In 1844 he graduated from the Medical School of Maine at Bowdoin College. After practising medicine in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for three years, Dr. Merritt, at Daniel Webster's urging, decided to join the California gold rush. He 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.

According to the Port of San Francisco, the brig Reindeer arrived on 5 May 1850, 153 days from New York, with assorted cargo for Merritt. Because of a fire in San Francisco days prior to his arrival, he sold his consignment quickly for a handsome profit. Moreover, he chartered his brig for $800 a month, carrying passengers and cargo to and from Humboldt Bay, which started his trading business. Meanwhile, he continued through the 1850s his medical practice near the San Francisco berths, with his physician's office listed for six years at Room No. 7 in the Express Building at the corner of Montgomery and California Streets. built to his model designed specifically for the coastal lumber trade. When he was called back to Bath, Maine, in 1862 to settle his brother Issac's estate, he contracted for three more sailing ships (Deacon, 1863; Vidette, 1865; Oakland, 1865), all built to his design for trading. After running each ship for a handsome profit, he sold the ships themselves at prices greater than their costs.

In 1852 Merritt began a series of lucrative real estate transactions in San Francisco.

Later years As mayor of the rapidly growing town of Oakland (1867-1869), Merritt knew that it was crucial to establish the West Coast railhead of the Pacific Railroad in Oakland itself to secure its future economic viability. To achieve this goal, he and his contemporaries resolved complicated and long-standing disputes over tideland ownership through legal maneuvers, negotiated with railroad companies, and navigated a series of compromise waterfront arrangements in spring 1868. "They secure to Oakland the terminus of the greatest work of the age, the Pacific Railroad". As the compromise ordinance was approved on April 1, cynics called it an April Fool's Day trick.

In 1867, he donated 155 acres (627,000 m2) of tidal water from the headwaters of Indian Slough to the Bay. As part of his mayoral waterfront compromises in Spring 1868, Lake Merritt is historically significant as the United States' first official wildlife refuge, designated in 1870 at his urging. It also has been listed as a National Historic Landmark since 1963, and on the National Register of Historic Places since 1966.

In May 1868, Merritt was appointed as a regent by Governor Haight to the founding Board of Regents of the then-nascent University of California. He served as a regent until June 1874. 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. The committee concluded that Merritt had profited financially from selling an inferior building to the university at an exorbitant cost, at $24,000 over its reasonable value. Even though the Board of Regents had enacted a resolution against self-dealing in the construction of campus buildings in June 1872, Merritt in his capacity as chair of the regents' building committee had awarded the contract for the construction of the original College of Letters building (North Hall) at the Berkeley campus to his preferred contractor, Power and Ough—who then obtained most of the needed lumber and cement from a lumber company in Oakland owned by Merritt.

In early August 1890, 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.

Death and legacy

Dr 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.

He left plans for a hospital and nursing school to be built in his name after his death. In 1909, Samuel Merritt University and Merritt Hospital opened.