The Hume Family, Founders of Piedmont Avenue Elementary School

     George Hume brought his bride to a home on Brandon, at the end of Piedmont Avenue in the late 1860's.  It was this wife and her sister who, with the nearest school miles away, began having lessons for the small children in the family around the Hume dining table.  (see my previous blog about Piedmont Avenue Elementary School).
     George was a salmon fisherman from Maine.  His family had fished the Atlantic for two generations, but the salmon population was dwindling and they began looking for other fishing grounds.  The oldest brother, William, came west in the early 1850s and was astonished at what he found - rivers teeming with salmon.   He returned to Maine and told his family about the rich harvest to be reaped in western waters.  In 1856 he came back to California, this time bringing George with him.  The two of them gathered a crew and set up a profitable business, taking the salmon from the Sacramento River and salting them, enabling the meat to travel to the East Coast and San Francisco markets without spoiling.       
      In 1863, George went back to Maine and convinced Andrew Hapgood, a tinsmith to return to California with him.  It may have been on this trip that he returned with a wife, whose name we do not know except that before her marriage she was Miss Raymond, and they settled in Oakland.  However, as the catch on the Sacramento River began to dwindle, George and William moved north, to the Columbia River country, bringing Hapgood with them.                   
      It was on the Columbia River that Hapgood was able to make an important contribution to the operation by perfecting a method of canning the salmon.  No more salting, no more fresh salmon on ice spoiling on the long trip to be sold.  This was a market that was wide open and they both became extremely wealthy.
      George's house, located at the end of what is now Glen Eden street, was a neighborhood showcase.  The pillars that once marked the entrance on Brandon are still there, but the house was torn down and replaced by the bungalows that now line Glen Eden.
      Piedmont Avenue Elementary School sits on the corner of the old Hume property that the family sold to the city.