Page, Daniel D.

Born: 1790-03-05 Parsonsfield, Maine

Died: 1869-04-29 Washington, DC

Daniel D. Page was a farmer, store clerk, baker, businessman, and public servant. As a child he attended public schools during the winter and helped his father farm during the summer. At age fifteen, he traveled to Portland, Maine and obtained a job at a general store, where he also received some training as a baker. He took these skills to Boston, Massachusetts and established his own bakery, which became successful. While there, he married Deborah Young and, shortly after, the couple set out westward. Page constructed and piloted some of the flatboats they used in their travels from Boston, and used the flatboats to construct his family's new home in New Orleans, Louisiana. After operating a prosperous tobacco business for some time, he and his wife relocated to St. Louis, Missouri in 1818. Despite hardships along the way, he soon established successful grocery and bakery businesses. In 1829, voters elected him as the second mayor of St. Louis, a position he held until 1833. He built the first steam flouring mill in the city in 1833, and devoted himself fully to various businesses until 1855. He was one of the incorporators of the Pacific Railroad when it received its original charter in 1849, and owned $33,000 worth of stock in the company. He was also an investor in the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad and served as a member of its board of directors. With his son-in-law, Henry D. Bacon, he organized the St. Louis banking house of Page & Bacon in 1848. After the bank failed in 1855, Page retired from the business world.

Missouri Republican, Annual Review: History of St. Louis, Commercial Statistics, Improvements of the Year, and Account of the Leading Manufactories &c (St. Louis: Chambers & Knapp, 1854), 7; Walter B. Stevens, St. Louis: The Fourth City 1764-1911 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1911), 1:343; William Hyde and Howard L. Conard, eds., Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis (New York: Southern History, 1899), 3:1688; L. U. Reavis, St. Louis: The Future Great City of the World (St. Louis: Gray, Baker, 1875), 579-82.