The Remillard brothers and members of their family were successful owners of brick manufacturing plants in Oakland and San Francisco, California from the 1860s to the mid 1900s. It was said they built the city of San Francisco twice: once before the great earthquake and fire of 1906 and then again afterwards. One building alone, the Palace Hotel, required 1.5 million Remillard bricks to complete. The three brothers who began the brick making company, and began the Remillard fortune, immigrated from St. Valentin (near Napierville), Quebec to California toward the end of the Gold Rush. Pierre-Nicolas “Peter” Remillard was born April 2, 1837, at St. Valentin, Quebec. In 1854 he came to California as an aspiring and self-reliant seventeen-year-old. He became involved in gold mining and saved what was later described in his obituary as a “snug sum” of money. In 1861, at the age of twenty-four, he moved to Oakland, where he became an employee of a brickyard. Within five years, he rose from hired hand at the brickyard to its owner and opened an office and yard at Clay and 2nd Streets and a brick plant in nearby Brooklyn. His brothers Hilaire and Edward also came from Quebec to join him in the enterprise. The business expanded and, in 1879, was incorporated as Remillard Brick Company. For a number of years, the Remillard brothers provided contracting service to the building trade in addition to manufacturing bricks. In 1882, the company established a large yard at Pleasanton. The Remillards supplied bricks for many important buildings including the old Palace Hotel in San Francisco and many large and important buildings in Oakland. For some forty years the Remillards were the only brick manufacturing company in Alameda County, supplied material for nearly every brick building in the county, and held a near monopoly on supplying bricks to the western states and Pacific Islands. In 1890, a yard was established at Greenbrae in Marin County and two years later in 1892, the Remillards established a yard that employed over 300 men at San Jose, Santa Clara County. Pierre-Nicolas Remillard married Cordule Laurin in January 1867 in San Francisco. He died suddenly on August 3, 1904 at his home on Adams and Perkins Street in Oakland, California from a heart attack. Although he had been in poor health for the previous year, he was able to go to his office until about three