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DESCRIPTION:Discover the Golden Legacy of Captain William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr. 
 \nby Sue Bailey Thurman\n\nWITH THE NAME OF William Alexander Leidesdorff, 
 we begin the documentary history of pioneers of Negro origin in California. 
 No nationality or racial minority migrating to the state could wish to have 
 a more distinguished antecedent. Born in the Virgin Islands, the gifted son 
 of William Leidesdorff, a Danish sugar planter, and Anna Marie Spark, a 
 native woman having Negro blood, Leidesdorff found his way to California as 
 early as 1841.\n\nHe left the Virgin Islands as a youth, journeying to New 
 Orleans, to engage in maritime trade. With time, his fortunes increasing, 
 he became a master of vessels, sailing between New Orleans and New York. 
 However, he soon felt the lure of the West, and selling his personal 
 effects in New Orleans, bought the 106-ton schooner, “Julia Ann,” in 
 which he would make the now famous trading voyage to the Pacific. After 
 long months in passage he brought his vessel into San Francisco Bay, 
 landing at the point known as Yerba Buena Cove. Leidesdorff came ashore and 
 the sleepy little town that awaited him was never the same again.\n\nFor 
 the intrepid newcomer threw himself into the making of California history, 
 finding the innumerable demands of a community experiencing birth pains 
 completely to his liking. Among the several business ventures claiming his 
 attention, he has the distinction of launching the first steamboat to sail 
 on San Francisco Bay.\n\nBancroft, the recognized historian of the period, 
 refers to this event in Volume 4 of his celebrated History of California: 
 “In maritime annals of this period, the appearance of the first steamer 
 in California’s waters merits a passing notice. The steamer had no name 
 but has ever since been called the ‘Sitka.’ Her dimensions were: 
 length, 37 feet; breadth of bow, 9 feet; depth of hold, 3 1/2 feet; 
 drawing, 18 inches of water, and having side wheels moved by a miniature 
 engine. She was built by an American at Sitka, as a pleasure boat for the 
 officers of the Russian Fur Company and was purchased by Leidesdorff, being 
 brought down to San Francisco in October, 1847. \n\nShe made a trial trip 
 on November 15 and returned later to Santa Clara and then to Sonoma. 
 Finally on the 28th of November she started on the great voyage of her 
 career to Sacramento, carrying ten or a dozen souls, including George 
 McKinstry, L. W. Hastings, and the owner as far as Monterey. She returned 
 to Yerba Buena and was wrecked at her anchorage in a gale but was saved, 
 hauled inland by oxen and transformed into a launch or schooner.\n\nFROM 
 “SITKA” TO “RAINBOW”\n\n“As the “Rainbow” she ran on the 
 Sacramento River even after the discovery of gold. A notice of arrival from 
 Sitka is even found in the San Francisco, California Star, October 23, 
 1847, also a notice of the steamer at Sonoma, November 25, when there was a 
 celebration with toasts to the rival towns of Sonoma and San Francisco, 
 December 1, 1847.”\n\nBut the owner of the “Sitka” had engaged in a 
 half dozen other fascinating pursuits since becoming a California citizen. 
 He was naturalized in 1844, and obtained thereafter a grant of 35,521 acres 
 of land, to which he gave the name the “Rio De Los Americanos” ranch, 
 located on the left bank of the American river. The decree confirming the 
 boundary of this tract reads:\n\n“Beginning at an oak tree on the bank of 
 the American river, marked as a boundary to the land granted to John A. 
 Sutter, and running thence South to the line of Sutter’s two leagues, 
 thence easterly by lines parallel to the general direction of the American 
 river and at a distance of as near as maybe two leagues therefrom: thence 
 along the southerly bank of said river and boundary thereon to the place of 
 beginning.”\n\nWith such vast holdings he continued to establish himself 
 as a business man of amazing acumen when he bought a lot on the corner of 
 Clay and Kearny and built the town’s first hotel, which with prophetic 
 insight, he called the “City Hotel.” Later, extending his import-export 
 trade (particularly in tallow and hides), he built a warehouse on the 
 corner of California and Leidesdorff streets, the latter being the short 
 street on the waterfront of the Embarcadero of the day, which was named for 
 him.\n\nHe had a flair for politics, and in 1845 was appointed Vice Consul 
 to Mexico by Consul Thomas Oliver Larkin, serving under the jurisdiction of 
 Commodore Stockton, then military governor of California. In this capacity 
 Leidesdorff gave aid to Fremont and the Americans raising the Bear flag in 
 the historic rebellion at Sonoma in 1846. His official report of this 
 incident to Consul Larkin, not published until 1939, remains an important 
 document of the period.\n\nA bachelor to the end of his days, Leidesdorff 
 nevertheless established himself in a commodious home on the corner of 
 California and Montgomery Streets, a step from the present high-storied 
 Russ Building, and from this vantage point won international fame as one of 
 the city’s most genial hosts. Whenever government officials, American or 
 Mexican, came to town, Leidesdorff’s home, the largest and most 
 impressive in the area, was always chosen as the scene for lavish state 
 entertainment. He had the urbanity of a seasoned diplomat, politician, and 
 man of affairs. His cuisine offered the finest foods and wines and he could 
 boast the only flower garden in all Yerba Buena.\n\nOn the local level, he 
 held civic positions of honor and trust. He was a member of the town’s 
 first council; he was town treasurer, and one of the three members of the 
 first school board which supervised the building of the first public school 
 erected for children in the community.\n\nIn a lighter vein, he found 
 occasion in the field of sports, to indulge the lively spirit of 
 speculation and daring which he brought with him into California. Among his 
 last ventures, in 1847, was the staging of the state’s first horse race, 
 on a “meadow” near Mission Dolores, especially improvised for this 
 unprecedented event.\n\nLeidesdorff died of brain fever in 1848 at the 
 early age of thirty-eight. In his death he was accorded the highest 
 recognition a bereaved community could tender a beloved and honored 
 citizen. Flags hung at half-mast from all military barracks and vessels in 
 the port. Minute guns were fired as the funeral procession made its way 
 through the winding streets to Mission Dolores, where with imposing 
 ceremonies his body was laid to rest.\n\nBut the Leidesdorff story did not 
 end here. For years afterward, the history of the man was linked with the 
 history of his estate. At the time of his death, his property was 
 encumbered with debts amounting to some $50,000, but the discovery of gold 
 in that same year, later increased its value to nearly a million 
 dollars.\n\nJoseph Libby Folsom, captain in the U. S. Army and at one time 
 collector of the port, set himself the task of finding the Leidesdorff 
 heirs and securing from them the right and title to their kinsman’s 
 California estate. He journeyed all the way to the Virgin Islands in search 
 of Anna Marie Spark, the mother, who still lived in the islands with her 
 other children. Folsom paid her the sum of $75,000, which gave him absolute 
 title to the whole of the Leidesdorff property. The various business 
 transactions that followed in the ultimate sale and disposition of this 
 property became a cause celebre straight through to the end of the 
 century.\n\nBut Folsom himself lived only a short time to enjoy the wealth 
 obtained from the Leidesdorff estate. He died at Mission San Jose, in July, 
 1855, at the same age as Leidesdorff, at the time of his death. His 
 memorial was the town of Folsom, which stood on the site of “Rio De Los 
 Americanos” ranch, and the old Montgomery Block in San Francisco, built 
 by Halleck in 1863, on a very small portion of the property owned by 
 Leidesdorff, and later by Folsom.\n\nThere is magic in the names of the 
 streets in San Francisco. “Larkin,” “Stockton,” “Sutter,” 
 “Leidesdorff,” “Folsom.” Streets, which as “men in the flesh” 
 were once closely associated. Some of them run parallel or across each 
 other, as the blending of a dream. They serve to remind the city of those 
 men who gave it its beginning. Robert Ernest Cowan connects two of them in 
 a brilliant comparison of Leidesdorff and Folsom, published in the 
 Quarterly of the California: Historical Society, June, 1928:\n\nBoth men 
 were ambitious, venturesome, clear in vision, wide in mental perspective, 
 firm in their conviction, and capable in their many undertakings. Both had 
 an unbounded faith in the future of the beloved city, wherein they had 
 lived and toiled and died.”\n\nGreater tribute may not be given the first 
 pioneer of Negro origin who came to San Francisco, made his contribution 
 and passed on. But the citizen of today—of whatever racial, creed or 
 national origin, migrant like himself—may walk “The City’s” streets 
 with dignity, knowing that Leidesdorff helped immeasurably to establish 
 this right, a hundred years ago.\n\nPioneers of Negro Origin in California 
 by Sue Bailey Thurman.\nSan Francisco : Acme Pub. Co., ©1952.\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2023/09/23/18859138.php
SUMMARY:2023 William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr. Birthday Celebration
LOCATION:Downtown San Francisco\nLeidesdorff St. 
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2023/09/23/18859138.php
DTSTART:20231023T183000Z
DTEND:20231023T200000Z
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