A Timeline of Thomas Price & Son's Happenings, according to local records and documents:
1863-1870
Thomas Price Assayer with Kellogg, Hewston & Co. 416 Montgomery Street Dwells on Taylor between Filbert and Greenwich.
Langley’s San Francisco Directory for the Year Commencing October 1863Thomas Price Assayer with Kellogg, Hewston & Co. and Professor City College Dwells at 508 Taylor.
Langley’s San Francisco Directory for the Year Commencing October 1864Thomas Price Assayer with Kellogg, Hewston & Co., commission merchant and Professor City College office on California Street, Dwells at 508 Taylor.
Langley’s San Francisco Directory for the Year Commencing October 1865Thomas Price Professor Chemistry Toland and City Colleges and dealer ores office on Battery Street, Dwells at 715 Post.
Langley’s San Francisco Directory for the Year Commencing October 1867Thomas Price Professor Chemistry Toland and City Colleges and assayer San Francisco Assaying and Refining Works, Dwells at 715 Post.
Langley’s San Francisco Directory for the Year Commencing October 1868Thomas Price assayer San Francisco Chemical Works, and Professor Chemistry Toland Medical and City College, Dwells at 715 Post.
Langley’s San Francisco Directory for the Year Commencing October 1869Thomas Price, Occupation: Assayer, Real Estate: $10,000, Personal Estate: $2,500, Birthplace: Wales
1870 Ninth Federal Census San Francisco, California, San Francisco County
1887
Thomas Price Assayer 524 Sacramento Street.
Our Review of the leading enterprises of San Francisco would not be complete without some allusion to what is undoubtedly the most complete establishment of the kind west of Chicago, and most probably in the country. We refer to the well known establishment of Professor Thomas Price, located at 524 Sacramento Street. Here will be found the most costly and elaborate apparatus, and in the different departments thirteen assistants are employed. The business naturally divides itself into three departments, the bullion, the metallurgical, and the chemical...
The Bullion Department. This department includes the receiving of bullion, melting, assaying and refining. The bullion is received in all shapes, crude and otherwise...Attached to the bullion department is a complete and separate assay office...Now that the U.S. Mint is closed for its annual settlement, the bullion department is kept busy. Miners will be enabled to get returns from Professor Price more promptly than from the Mint, and bullion may be deposited in the same manner.
Metallurgical Department. The metallurgical department is fitted with an extensive ore floor, with crushers and pulverizers, for the crushing and sampling of ores...There are special furnaces for smelting rich ore and other products...
The Chemical Department. This consists of a chemical laboratory...A particular specialty is made of analysis of food, drink and poisons, and all industrial products...Investigations will be undertaken of chemical processes of any kind...
All of these departments are personally supervised and conducted by Professor Price and numerous skilled assistants, chief of whom is his son, Arthur Price, who has studied his profession in the leading chemical schools of England and Germany. The appliances and apparatus are all of the best in each department, and the whole establishment is conducted on a scale commensurate with its importance. While a large portion of the work is that connected with the assaying, refining, sampling, testing, etc., of ores and bullion, as may be seen, all matters relating to sanitary and industrial chemistry are carefully attended to.
The business of this establishment extends all over the Union, and Professor Price has the agency of several large English companies. A native of Wales, Great Britain, he has resided here for 25 years, and is thoroughly identified with the city of his adoption and her best interests. Prompt, honorable, energetic, he has in his son a most valuable coadjutor, and their immense patronage is the result of their own energy and application.
1889
Thomas Price & Son Assay Office 524 Sacramento Street
...Its location in a city, near to the greatest mining region of the world, its long and eventful career and unusually complete facilities combine to make this business one of paramount importance among the industries of San Francisco. The premises comprise the old Pacific Mail building situated on the corner of Sacramento and Leidesdorff streets...
This important enterprise was inaugurated in 1862 by Professor Thomas Price with whom is now associated his son Mr. Arthur F. Price. These gentlemen have devoted their lives to chemical and scientific investigation relating to this branch of the business and are thoroughly posted in its every detail. They employ a score or more of skilled and competent workmen, who receive salaries proportioned to their knowledge and experience. Business is carried on all over the Coast and extends to Australia and China. The proprietors of this leading assay office are not only expert chemists and metallurgists but active progressive business men as well, standing high in esteem and respect of all in the community socially and commercially.
The Industries of San Francisco, California. Cosmopolitan Publishing Company, San Francisco, 2 volumes in 1, 1889, p. 125; 1887, Compiled and Published by Thompson & Co, pp. 83-4.Thomas Price was born in the country of Brecon Wales, on the thirteenth day of March 1837. After having been well-grounded in the primary branches he entered the Normal College at Swansea, where he received the education which determined his future course in life. He subsequently entered the Royal School of Mines in London, and, in both these institutions, he enjoyed the advantage of studying under some of the most distinguished professors of the day. At the conclusion of his college career, he settled in Swansea and engaged in the business of assaying and as professor of analytical chemistry, and obtained a very wide experience in those branches of science. In 1862 he came to San Francisco and engaged in the business of purchasing silver, gold and copper ores and shipping them to Swansea for reduction. In connection with this business he traveled over every portion of the Pacific Coast, visiting and examining all the principal mines.
At the conclusion of the late civil war the demand for copper ore practically ceased, and Professor Price was engaged to superintend the assaying and chemical department of the San Francisco Refinery, an institution which has since gone out of existence.
About this time he was appointed to the chair of chemistry and toxicology in the Toland Medical College, and at a later period this institution conferred upon him the degree of M.D., he having devoted considerable time to the study of medicine.
Upon the death of William C. Ralston, the San Francisco Refinery, of which he was the master spirit, closed its doors and its business, and Professor Price then opened an establishment of his own as chemist and assayer, and, having the confidence of all with whom he had dealings, he soon found himself at the head of a successful and lucrative business, in which he is still engaged.
During the many years Professor Price has spent on this coast, he has examined mining properties in all the principal mining States and Territories, extending his researches even to North Carolina. He is now under engagement to visit and examine the gold fields of South Africa, for the working of which an enormous mining plant has been constructed under his supervision. In this connection we may mention a high compliment paid to Professor Price... by Baron Albert Grant, in an address delivered by him to the stockholders of the Lisbon-Berlyn (Transvaal) Gold Mining Company, of London. In the course of his remarks the Baron said:
A man may be the most able and theoretical person possible, but unless he has had practical experience of mining, there are contingencies peculiar to every mine which are not reproduced in another, and which he alone can solve by the light possibility of previous actual experiments. Therefore we applied to a friend of mine, Professor Price, of San Francisco, for his assistance, and his knowledge as to the class of machinery that we should order to work the great property this company owns. Professor Price’s name as anyone who knows about mining will say, will be a guarantee that the best knowledge of the subject, as well as the most straightforward conduct in any negotiations entrusted to him, will be represented in his person.
I believe it is said of him by Americans who know him well. That anything he writes, anything he says, may be implicitly confided in, and that, I think, many of you who know perhaps about mining-and perhaps know too much-is not the common experience with other American experts you come across; I am sorry to say it is not mine. Professor Price is an exception, and is a man of vast experience. To my mind he is a perfect representative of straightforwardness and honesty, and I have no hesitation in entirely recommending my colleagues to confide in his judgment as to the character of the machinery, and the manufacturers who should be entrusted to make it...
The quartz mill forwarded from San Francisco has reached London, according to latest accounts, and the Baron has bought 1,600 head of oxen to transport it from the African Coast to the gold fields. Sarles and Davis, the California mill men, have already left London for South Africa, and Professor Price, we understand, will probably soon follow to make a thorough examination of the mines of that country, concerning which so little is yet known to the world. Professor Price has been very prominent in the hydraulic system of mining in California, and it is more than probable that the powerful “monitor” which have reduced mountains in this State may yet be brought into active operation in the mines of South Africa. We trust that the Professor may have a pleasant voyage, that he may meet with financial and scientific success and soon return in health and safety to his numerous friends in San Francisco. That his report will be an interesting one there can be no doubt.
The Bay of San Francisco; The Metropolis of the Pacific Coast, and its Suburban Cities. A History Illustrated. V. 1 pgs. 422-424 2 Volumes. The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892
1912
Price in this city, October 13, Thomas Price beloved father of Arthur F. Minnie E. and Annie, Price and Mrs. J.P. Turner, a native of Wales, aged 77 years.
San Francisco Chronicle, October 14, 1912Thomas Price well known Chemist and Geologist Succumbs at Age 77 As Consulting Mining and Poison Expert Was Known Throughout the World
Thomas Price, the noted chemist geologist and pioneer resident of San Francisco, died at his home 2503 Broadway about 5:30 P.M. Sunday. The deceased was 77 years old...
Price was born in Brecon, Breconshire, Wales in 1835, the center of a great mining and smelting district. He was educated at Normal College, Swansea, Wales, at which institution he was afterward appointed professor of chemistry. Leaving Wales in 1862, he came direct to the Pacific Coast making San Francisco his home.
He was professor of chemistry and toxicology at the old Toland Medical College, and afterward with Dr. Lane and Dr. Gibbons Sr., organized the Medical College of the Pacific, which later became Copper Medical College.
His opinion being so much in demand by mining and manufacturing companies he gave up regular teaching and lecturing and engaged in business as a consulting chemist and metallurgist. As a consulting geologist of extraordinary ability he was known all over the United States and Mexico, and was connected with most of the large mining companies in Montana, Arizona, Mexico and even so far east as North Carolina. He was consulting chemist to the famous Eureka, Nevada, Mining Company and the Dupont Powder Company.
Known as expert witness: He was probably better known to the public as an expert witness in prominent murder and poisoning cases. In the examination of blood-stained weapons and articles used in poison cases his evidence frequently resulted in conclusive proof and conviction. He was the chief witness in the Soder case, which happened a few years ago, through his evidence regarding a minute stain on a knife, which was proved by him to be human blood. He was called in the Botkin case, the Dr. Milton Bowers murder case, and many other cases of national prominence.
Many old residents will remember him in connection with an explosion resulting in much loss of life that occurred in the storehouse of the Wells Fargo Express Company in 1866. For days the matter was a mystery until Price, after examination, found the cause of the explosion to have been nitro-glycerine-a little known explosion at that time.
Became Famous in a Day: He became famous in a day throughout the United States when, after the local Fire Department was at its wits end to put out a fire on the steamer Elmbank, which had come from Japan with a cargo of sulphur, without taking her out to the dumping grounds and sinking her, he put the fire out by a very simple method and saved the vessel.
He obtained several whisky barrels which were handy, filled them with marble dust, poured sulphuric acid over the dust, conducted hose from the barrels to the hold of the ship, battened the hatches down and soon the fire was smothered by the carbonic acid gas which was generated in the barrels.
He is survived by one son, Arthur F. Price, and three daughters, Mrs. J.P. Turner, Miss Minnie and Miss Anna Price.
The funeral will take place from the residence, 2503 Broadway at 2 o’clock Wednesday, and the interment will be made at Cypress Lawn Cemetery. The public is invited to the funeral, but the interment will be private.
San Francisco Chronicle, October 15, 1912
