William H. Perry (businessman)

[2] At the age of twenty-one he made his way with William Welles Hollister and a party of some fifty men and five women, with a collection of cattle, sheep and horses, from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Los Angeles by way of Salt Lake City and San Bernardino.

He walked into a store and asked the merchant for "the cheapest suit of clothes you have, and my face must be my security for payment until I get a start."

[8][9] In less than a year after his arrival in Los Angeles, Perry opened the first furniture store in the city, selling some articles that he made himself and some that were shipped from San Francisco.

The building, which has a symbolic "Masonic eye" below the parapet, is now part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

[10] On September 18, 1899, Perry's lumber yard was destroyed by a "Disastrous Fire in the Heart of a Busy Manufacturing District", as the headline in the Los Angeles Times put it the next day.

"[11] The flames quickly spread to the Los Angeles Farming and Milling Company next door, which was leveled.

Firebrands from the conflagration were carried aloft by the wind, and dropped on rooftops east of Alameda Street almost as far as the Los Angeles River.

The best hydrant in the district, the one at Alameda and Commercial streets, could not be utilized at first, on account of the intense heat from the burning flour mill.

[12] After being told by a fellow worker that the man he had just spoken to was the company president, young William went to the main office to hand in his resignation.

But the president, William Hayes Perry, was so impressed by Mulholland's attention to the job that he promoted him to foreman.

[14] Perry was elected to the Los Angeles Common Council, the governing body of the city, on December 7, 1868.