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CREATED:20250628T122500Z
DESCRIPTION:Discover the Golden Legacy of Captain William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr.  
 by Sue Bailey Thurman \n\nWITH THE NAME OF William Alexander Leidesdorff, 
 we begin the documentary history of pioneers of Negro origin in California. 
 \n\nNo 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\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/06/28/18877663.php
SUMMARY:Honorable William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr. Birthday Bash - Historic Folsom District
LOCATION:Historic Folsom District \nLeidesdorff St.\nFolsom, CA. 95630
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/06/28/18877663.php
DTSTART:20251025T213000Z
DTEND:20251025T233000Z
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