Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1893 — San Francisco's Samson. [ARTICLE]

San Francisco's Samson.

Edward T. Berry has been a piano mover in this city continuously the seventeen years past, says the San Francisco Examiner. Berry is a big man, standing six feet, stocking clad, and weighing 260 pounds. He is so well proportioned as not to appear so hea'vy. He is a native son, having been born forty-two years ago in Del Norte County, near where Bouge River meets with the sea. Del Norte was a wilderness then, and Berry grew up a sportsman and an angler, pursuits which made him strong of limb and sound of wind. When a youth he went in for athletics somewhat, and was the premier wrestler of Northern California until he was apprenticed tc a tanner and currier. That trade did not suit him, and he tried horse training, a profession in which his strength first became noticeable. Teaming followed, and as one of its most lucrative branches Berry took up the moving of fine furniture. His daily work is to move from fifteen to twenty pianos up and down stairs, sometimes several flights. Berry manages one end of the piano, while two men can barely handle the other. The strong man also takes the lower end in going up stairways, often being compelled to sustain the whole weight of instruments of the “grand” form, which weigh between 1,200 and 1,500 pounds. He estimates his daily lifts of dead weight to be fifty, and the weight lifted each time to average 1,000 po'untls. As the weights must be sustained for a length of time, the feat becomes the more remarkable. That so many years of service at such tasking labor has not broken him down Berry believes is due to the fact that he has always been regular in his habits, sleeping long hours and refraining from drinking. He claims nothing for himself as to strength, but along Kearney street and among expressmen generally he is considered the Samson of the profession. Berry has never tested his strength to the uttermost, but thinks that with suitable harness he might lift a ton and a half. Without such aids he would not care to lift more than 1,500 pounds, and would avoid such a lift if possible.