Payot, Henry (January 15, 1838 - November 21, 1921)

Henry Payot (January 15, 1838 - November 21, 1921) was an American artist, lithographer, stationer, bookseller and publisher active in San Francisco during the Gold Rush and thereafter. He was born in South Carolina to French parents, but in 1851 (at the age of 13) struck out west to make his fortune in the Gold Rush. Arriving in San Francisco, he found employment with lithographers Quirot and Company. In the 1860 census he is listed as a stationer, with a Swiss-born wife Louisa and a daughter Henriette (if these dates are to be believed, he became a father at the age of fifteen.) By that year, Payot was publishing La ruche littéraire, a weekly French-language newspaper; he would be prominent in the activities of the French Mutual Benevolent Society, an immigrant society in support of San Francisco's French expatriot communmity. Certainly by 1866, Payot was well established enough to employ servants (a maid in his employ ran afoul of the law, stealing some sixty dollars' worth of Mrs. Payot's underclothing) Between 1867 and 1869 he was established as a bookseller under his own name, specializing in education. He would eventually establish his own litho-engraving business (Payot, Upham and Company.) He was successful enough to afford several world tours; he would give lectures about his trips to Japan, Rome, Spain, and elsewhere. By 1907 he was a San Francisco supervisor and member of the board of education. He was also, by all accounts, an accomplished hunter.