William Alexander Liedesdorff

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WITH 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.

He 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.

For 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.

Bancroft, 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. She 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.

FROM “SITKA” TO “RAINBOW”

“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.”

But 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 thirty-five 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:

“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.”

With 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.

He 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.

A 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.

On 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.

In 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.

Leidesdorff 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.

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