Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Frank Kanning Mott was the 35th mayor of Oakland, California. Mott was born in San Francisco on January 21, 1866, but his family moved to nearby Oakland when he was two years old. His father, who worked for the Central Pacific Railroad, died when he was 11. To support the family, Mott quit school and worked as a messenger boy for Western Union and then as a telephone operator, the first ever in Oakland, according to his obituary in the Tribune.