USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > A history of the city of San Francisco; and incidentally of the state of California > Part 7
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done the same in Santa Barbara.
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From this day it
will require fifteen hundred troops to keep California, at least, or a different line of conduct to conciliate, which I think the Commodore will pursue. My present object is, that the State Department should know that the Californians were friendly, as I believe they were, but proper methods were not taken to con- ciliate them. Had the officers left in command at different towns in the country had the kind and friendly, yet firm man- ner of Commodore Stockton, I am firm in the opinion that the people would not have risen. During my imprisonment many Californian officers told me this, and said that the strict mili-
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tary discipline pursued, and ignorance of their customs, forced them to take up arms.
SEC. 44. Effect of Conquest. The conquest made a great change in Yerba Buena, which had been in- ferior in population to the village of Dolores, three miles distant, but now suddenly became the chief town north of Monterey, with the expectation that it would soon surpass the capital in importance. There was the utmost confidence that the United States would continue to hold the bay, with the shores and country eastward and northward. Yerba Buena had become predominantly American in its population; it was the only American town; it was the chief seaport of the large region in which the Americans were most numerous, and in which the large extent of unoccupied fertile land would certainly at no distant time attract many American settlers. These considerations con- curred, with its superior advantages as a harbor, to make it a preferred resort of the vessels that came to the coast on business connected with the war. It was evident that the American government could not hold the country until the establishment of peace without maintaining a considerable military force on its land and a considerable naval force in its waters; nor after mak- ing of peace without a considerable. American popula- tion. These forces and this population would, it was believed, bring most of their trade to Yerba Buena, which thus became a place of great expectations.
One of the first acts of American authority was the appointment by Captain Montgomery of Washington
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A. Bartlett, one of the lieutenants on the "Ports- mouth," to the office of alcalde of Yerba Buena, to supersede Noe, the Mexican alcalde residing at Dolo- res. The Mexican dominion and the supremacy of Dolores disappeared together. Under military au- thority exercised by a naval officer, the chief magis- trate of the town took a Spanish title and undertook to administer Mexican law as modified by American ideas and personal whims. There were neither stat- utes nor precedents to guide the court in its judg- ments, which were, however, probably as nearly just as those precise and pretentious tribunals occupying the same relative position in later times.
SEC. 45. Mormons. Three weeks after the hoisting of the American flag, the "Portsmouth " and the town were agitated by the report that a strange ves- sel, with decks black with people, and evidently not an American war-ship, had sailed into the Golden Gate and was pursuing her course towards Yerba Buena cove. Captain Montgomery immediately got ready for fight, but as the strange ship came round Clark's point, he saw that his preparation was un- necessary. The number of women and children on deck proved that there was no hostile intention, and there was nothing to indicate a warlike character. But who were these people who seemed to have dropped from the sky? They carried the American flag, but no such load of people had ever been seen on the coast before. There was no report that an immi- grant vessel was coming, and the government would
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surely not send out women and children to a country engaged in war.
The general curiosity was soon gratified. The ship was the "Brooklyn." It had left New York under a pretense of being bound for Oregon, on the sixth of February, with two hundred and thirty-eight emi- grants, all, save perhaps a dozen, Mormons, who, un- der advice or instructions from the leaders of their church, had selected San Francisco bay as their des- tination, with the expectation that they would find on its shores a place where they could build up a large and prosperous colony, and where no government or mob would be strong enough for many years to dis- turb them on account of their religion. They were dismayed by the news that the American flag floated over California, and by the fear that the men among them would be called upon to enlist to support a do- minion to escape from which they had undertaken a long voyage, with the intention of settling in the wil- derness. However, they made no public declaration of their feeling, and it was too late to change their destination.
They were mostly natives of New York and New England, and the men were all mechanics and farmers and well provided with the skill and the tools neces- sary for opening farms, building houses, and doing all the work of starting and maintaining a settlement in a wild country. Their leader was Samuel Brannan, who had been the publisher of the "Prophet," a Mormon paper in New York, and he brought his press,
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type and compositors with him. As head of the company, he was the custodian of its property. The disturbed condition of the country, the demand of the officials that the men should enter the military ser- vice, and the expectations, afterwards justified by the result, that the chief council of the Mormon church would abandon the project of establishing a large colony in California, induced those of the men who did not enlist and all the women and children to settle, temporarily at least, in Yerba Buena, which then be- came predominantly a Mormon town, for a brief period. The men who remained in town were no idlers, and the place soon showed signs of their activity in new houses and shops. Brannan had his press at work in September, finding occupation for some months in striking off official notices, proclamations, blank deeds and alcalde grants. About the end of October, the first news sheet appeared; it was called " an extra in advance of the 'California Star,'" and contained a copy of General Taylor's official report of the battles in Texas on the eighth and ninth of May. On the ninth of January the " California Star" commenced its career as a weekly paper.
The Mormons made little effort to gain converts, said little about the popular dogmas of their sect, did not then recognize polygamy in their creed, and generally maintained harmonious and even cordial re- lations in business and society with their neighbors. The men were industrious, intelligent, and public- spirited; the women chaste, and the children well-
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behaved. The " Brooklyn " immigrants and their de- scendants now make up a small, but respectable portion of the Californian population, and have generally abandoned their former creed.
SEC. 46. Change of Name. The year 1847 was an eventful one for Yerba Buena. In January a decree was published by the alcalde (there was no town council), changing the name to San Francisco, "to prevent confusion and mistakes in public documents, and that the town may have the advantage of the name given in the public maps." There were other motives not mentioned by Alcalde Bartlett. A rival town had been laid off on the northern shore of Carquinez strait, a place which had many advantages for commerce, by Thomas O. Larkin and Charles D. Semple, who in wealth, political influence, general in- telligence, and business capacity were among the first Americans on the coast. They had purchased the land from M. G. Vallejo, and named the town Francesca, after his wife. The name was well devised, suggestive of the bay, new, and not too long; but it was unfortunate in one respect, it did not prevent the appropriation of "San Francisco" by another place. Bartlett and his advisers were aware that while everybody knew about San Francisco bay, few had heard of the village of Yerba Buena, or would re- member it. The name had a foreign look, and would not be naturalized into English spelling or pronuncia- tion, until after much effort. It would not do to let the prospective town at Carquinez make the impres-
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sion in the Atlantic states by the mere similarity of its name, that it was the chief town on San Francisco bay. The remedy was very simple, change Yerba Buena to San Francisco. There were no popular prejudices to be overcome, no voters, or councilmen to be consulted. The power of the alcalde was mo- narchical, and his decree was final. It was issued with- out the previous approval of the editor of the " Star," and he refused for several weeks to recognize the new name; but the people appreciated the policy of the change, and the refractory journalist had to submit. One reason why the people were pleased was, that Larkin and Semple were worried. They protested, but protest was useless. The thing lrad been done, the right to the name was secured, and San Francisco was a genuine lively little town; while Francesca, existed only upon paper, and in the anticipations of its friends. The names were so much alike that who- ever spoke of Francesca would be supposed to refer to San Francisco; and its projectors took Benicia, a second baptismal name of Señora Vallejo, as the title of their place. Not long after this Captain Folsom, of the United States quartermaster's department, hav- ing considered the advantages claimed for Benicia, selected San Francisco as the point where the military stores of the United States should be kept, and thus contributed materially to strengthen its position.
In February, meetings were held to send assistance to the Donner party, who were starving in the mount- ains. The sum of fifteen hundred dollars was col-
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lected, and the relief party from San Francisco arrived in time at the famine camp near Donner lake to ren- der effective service, though thirty-six out of eighty in the original party had died. This was the first of many liberal subscriptions made by San Francisco to relieve distant suffering.
SEC. 47. Stevenson's Regiment. On the sixth of March the ship " Thomas H. Perkins" arrived with the first detachment of Stevenson's regiment of vol- unteers, who had been enlisted in the interior of the state of New York, under special instructions to ac- cept only those men who would promise to make their homes in California after the war, and who, by their good character and skill in the industrial arts, would be valuable settlers in a new country. When the " Perkins " left New York, on the twentieth of Sep- tember, no news had been received there of what had been done on this coast since the declaration of war; but there was no doubt that the navy had possession of San Francisco at least, and that place was made the destination of the voyage. Stevenson's men as a class became permanent, many of them worthy, and some of them prominent, citizens of California; thus justifying the wisdom of the cabinet in devising its plan of enlistment and selecting the agents who ac- cepted the men.
The arrival of the "Brooklyn " and "Perkins" with their immigrants, the business brought to the town by them, and the general confidence felt in its future, excited a desire among the residents to se-
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cure lots for homes, business and speculation. The few who had studied law seriously doubted whether American officials could give valid titles to land with- out any express authority from congress ; and indeed legally the country had not yet become part of the American dominion by treaty, without which Mexican authority could not be formally terminated. The sale or gift of town lots to accommodate settlers certainly did not come under the military powers arising from the war. Nevertheless, the citizens were willing and anxious to take all the chances. They urgently de- manded some kind of a paper from the government officials showing that they had done all they could do to obtain a title, trusting that congress and the courts would not deprive them afterwards of the property in their possession and made valuable by their labor and enterprise. It was represented to General Kearny, then military governor, that the sale of lots was not only advisable to help in building up the town and attracting immigration, but also to provide funds with which the expenses of the town government should be paid. In accordance with the general solicitation, General Kearny, on the tenth of March, claiming to act by authority vested in him by the president of the United States, who had no such authority and never undertook to confer it on his subordinate, issued a de- cree granting to the town all the beach and water lots between Clark's point and Rincon point, except such as should be reserved for government uses by the sen- ior navy officer stationed at San Francisco, under con-
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dition that these lots should be sold at auction for the benefit of the town.
SEC. 48. O'Farrell's Survey. Within a week after the date of this decree, Edwin Bryant, who had suc- ceeded Bartlett as alcalde on the twenty-seventh Feb- ruary, issued a notice that the water lots would be surveyed immediately, and would be sold on the twenty-seventh of June. Jasper O'Farrell, an Irish civil engineer, was selected to make the survey, which so far as the water lots were concerned, consisted in marking them off upon paper. George Hyde, having succeeded to the position of alcalde, postponed the sale till the twentieth of July, when two hundred water lots, forty-five by one hundred and thirty-seven and a half feet in size, out of four hundred and fifty were sold at prices varying from fifty dollars to six hundred dollars each, most of them being near the former figure. The lots between Clay and Sacra- mento, reserved for the possible uses of the govern- ment, were sold six years and a half later, and brought twelve thousand dollars each on an average-more than one hundred times as much as in 1847.
But the water lots could not be occupied, and this sale gave little satisfaction to the purchasers or im- mediate benefit to the town. The people needed solid ground for homes and shops, and so O'Farrell was instructed to enlarge the bounds of the town. He did so, and made the first careful survey, covering an area of about eight hundred acres. His map included the district bounded by the lines of Post, Leavenworth
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and Francisco streets and the water front; and south of Market street, it showed four full blocks fronting on Fourth and eleven full blocks fronting on Second street. There were besides a few fractional blocks. O'Farrell disliked many things in Vioget's little sur- vey, but some he could not change. Kearny and Dupont streets were too narrow, but these could not be widened without an expense of several thousand dollars, which nobody wanted to incur. It was con- sidered indispensable, however, that the acute and obtuse angles of Vioget's lots should be corrected by making the streets cross each other at right angles. and to do this, a change of two and a half degrees was necessary in the direction of some of the streets. This transferred the situation of all the lots, and was subsequently called "O'Farrell's swing" of the city. All the lot-holders save one Bennett, who had a place between Kearny and Dupont on Pacific, accepted the change. He refused to be swung out of any of the lot originally granted to him; and his title to a strip covered by the swing having passed to a Mr. Barth, was sustained by a judgment of the twelfth district court in 1859. For years, on account of the swing, buildings were to be seen at various places projecting a little beyond the general line of the street, but nearly all, if not all, have now conformed to O'Far- rell's lines. The corner of Kearny and Washington streets was the pivot of the swing, and the main mon- ument or starting point was established there. The new map gave to the streets the names which they
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now have, and they were doubtless adopted with the approval of the alcalde. They provided that all the people of the future metropolis of the coast should be reminded every day of Montgomery, Stockton and Dupont, of the navy; of Kearny, Mason, Fremont and Taylor, of the army; of Sutter, Howard, Brannan, Bry- ant, Folsom, Harrison, Hyde, Leavenworth and Jones, of the early residents of the city. Vallejo and Larkin, prominent citizens of California, were also immortal- ized.
The first delineation of Market street was made by O'Farrell, who correctly appreciated the importance of making the main streets in the southern part of the town agree in general direction with the route followed by people going from Yerba Buena cove to the Mis- sion. The extension of the streets running with the cardinal points to Mission creek would have been a source of much inconvenience for many years. The lots south of Market street were made four times as large as those to the northward, smaller lots there not being considered desirable property.
SEC. 49. Sale of Lots. In August, of the seven hundred fifty-vara lots, about four hundred had been sold at sixteen dollars each, including the expense of deed and recording; and of the one hundred and thirty hundred-vara lots, about seventy had been sold at twenty-nine dollars each, and the remainder were of- fered for sale at the same rate. There was an express condition in the conveyance of every upland lot that the purchaser must erect a house on the land and en- close it with a fence within a year, but this would
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have required the construction of nearly eighty miles of fencing, and of more houses than there were adults in the town, and neither men, money nor lumber for so much work could be had. The purchasers had got the deeds and possession, and were willing to take their chances that the lots would not be confiscated for non-fulfillment of the conditions. Not one was so confiscated.
SEC. 50. Census of 1847. Under instructions from the governor, Lieutenant Edward Gilbert, of Steven- son's regiment, took a census in August, 1847; and re- ported a total population, exclusive of officers and soldiers, at San Francisco, which then did not include the village of Dolores, of four hundred and fifty-nine persons, of whom more than half were natives of the United States, and about forty each of Spanish Cali- fornians, Indians and Kanakas. In the seventeen months ending on the first of August, 1847, one hun- dred and fifty-seven houses-one fourth adobe houses, and the remainder shanties-had been erected in a town which had only thirty houses before. The cen- sus-taker considered it within the scope of his office to argue the prospects of his town as compared with the rival places, and his conclusion was that the latter would be left behind in the race. The following ex- tract from his remarks is worthy of repetition here, as indicative of the opinion prevalent in the town, and as predictions which have been abundantly verified :
In conclusion I cannot suppress a desire to say, that San Francisco is destined to become the great commercial emporium
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of the North Pacific coast. With the advantages of so fine a harbor, and the enterprise of so hardy and intelligent a race of pioneers, it can scarcely be otherwise. Notwithstanding these conclusions are so obvious, I have heard it asserted that Mon- terey is destined to outstrip it. That Monterey can never sur- pass San Francisco, I think the following view will clearly establish; 1. San Francisco has a safer and more commodious harbor than Monterey; 2. The waters of the bay afford an easy method of communication, and a facile means of transportation between the town and the hundred lateral valleys which sur- round the bay, and which are destined soon to become granaries and hives of plenty; 3. It also has a ready means of communica- tion by water with large and rich valleys of the San Joaquin, the Sacramento and the American Fork, as all of these rivers are tributaries to the bay. So far as my information goes, Monterey, although it has a fine country at its back, has none of the facilities for reaching and transporting the products of that country which San Francisco possesses in regard to the country that surrounds it. This, it seems to me, allowing all other things to be equal, would give to San Francisco an insuperable advantage.
SEC. 51. Leading Town. Although Monterey was still the political capital of the territory, and had twice or thrice as many people as San Francisco, the latter was the point where the enterprise and surplus money of the American population collected. Its superiority as a place of business was so clear that the "Californian" which had been established at Monterey in the previ- ous August as a weekly paper, was in May moved to San Francisco, which now had two papers, while no other town in the territory had one, although half dozen others had more inhabitants.
SEC. 52. Shipping in 1847. The inland commerce of San Francisco in 1847, was scanty. A twenty-ton
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sloop belonging to Sutter, and manned by half a dozen Indians, ran regularly to and from New Helvetia, taking about three weeks usually for a round trip, and having frequently little freight; but there were times when one vessel could not accommodate the demand, and then a smaller sloop, that usually plied to other points on the bay, would run up the Sacramento river. Another sloop was employed between San Francisco and the Mormon settlement on the Stanislaus. The ocean shipping was more important. In the year end- ing March 30, 1848, there were eighty-six arrivals by sea; including four naval vessels, sixteen whalers, and eight vessels from the Hawaiian Islands. The others were from various ports of California and Oregon. About a dozen of these were regularly employed in the coasting trade.
The first square-rigged vessel to enter San Pablo bay, was the brig " Francisco " of one hundred tons, which on the twenty-second of August, 1847, took a cargo of lumber to Benicia. The first steamer to paddle the water of San Francisco bay, the "Sitka," a steam launch brought from Sitka on the deck of a Russian vessel to be used in collecting hides and other freight at the various landings, was tried in October and found too weak to face the combined forces of wind and tide. She succeeded in getting to Sacra- mento, but an ox team, which left after she did on her return, arrived at Benicia in advance of her. When she reached her home port, her engine was taken out, and she was converted into a sloop.
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SEC. 53. Puff for California. Business, after hav- ing been active for the year succeeding the commence- ment of the war, became dull towards the close of 1847. No more troops were landed or transhipped, the war vessels were sent away to doubtful points, no more immigrants arrived by sea, the expected im- migration by land did not exceed a dozen persons, and those who came said that few would follow till the close of the war.
The residents having bought their lots, and incurred debts in the expectation of a steady and rapid growth of the town, were now oppressed by fears of several years of dullness. After much consultation they agreed that they must make an effort to attract im- migrants, war or no war, by circulating information about California in Missouri, and adjacent states, and by providing facilities for sending letters across the continent at intervals of not more than a month during the spring, summer and fall.
In accordance with this plan, an extra number of the " California Star" was published in the latter part of March, 1848, with special reference to circulation in " the States," and it had an article six columns long by Dr. V. J. Fourgeaud, on " The Prospects of California," setting forth her attractions and resources in highly laudatory and in some respects exaggerated terms, but with much correct information, and many judicious remarks. This first publication, designed mainly to be sent overland, was received with general favor, and liberal orders were given by the people of
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town and country for copies. On the first of April, the day on which the paper was dated, a courier was dispatched with two thousand copies, and some letters -the latter paid fifty cents each-across the conti- nent, with the promise that he should reach Indepen- dence, then the border of civilization in the Mississippi basin, within sixty days. It was arranged that an- other paper, with other information for immigrants should be printed on the first of June, and should be sent to Missouri in the same way, but it never ap- peared. Before the time for its publication arrived, gold mining, which had been mentioned incidentally in the extra edition of April 1, as a rumor that com- mandod no credit and had no importance, had taken such dimensions that nobody thought about any effort to attract emigrants. The diggings had provided an advertisement that overshadowed everything else.
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