While they study and work, I have the chance to explore my dubious connections to the city of gold. My great grandmother, Mary Backus, was an American whose uncle, Henry Meiggs, bears the most recognized name on our family tree.
I have read a 1946 biography, Henry Meiggs: Yankee Pizarro, and some more recent material. Now I have a couple of days to walk around the city that Meiggs helped to shape. Born in Catskill in upstate New York in 1811, Henry Meiggs went into the family lumber business, and as a young man moved to Williamsburg in present-day Brooklyn where he owned his own lumber mill and became the town's mayor. He was an irrepressible entrepreneur, charming and so well trusted that he earned the moniker 'Honest Harry'. In the late 1840s a business downturn in the eastern United States coincided with news that gold had been discovered in California. Harry decided he could profit from the opportunities out west: he bought a ship, loaded it with lumber, packed up with his wife and children, and set sail from New York. A long journey south, navigating the treacherous seas around Cape Horn and up the west coast of South America, took over three months. But the payoff was enormous: when Harry landed in San Francisco in 1849 he made a fortune from the sale of his well-seasoned lumber.
The gold rush town was growing at break-neck speed, and trading on his early success Harry established himself as the prime supplier of timber. He developed a sawmill on the coast further north, in a spot that was dubbed Meiggsville and is now Mendocino, and arranged for regular shipments to his lumber yard in North Beach, feeding San Francisco's insatiable appetite for building materials.
He built his family a splendid mansion, known as the Birdcage, on the Montgomery Street slope of Telegraph Hill - on a street which was probably as steep as this one. There's evidence that the house survived for fifty years or so, but was doubtless destroyed in one of the city's frequent fires or in the earthquake of 1906.
From his Telegraph Hill perch, Harry spied a large area of undeveloped land to the north, much closer to the Golden Gate harbor entrance than the area at the foot of Market Street where most ships then docked. He named the undeveloped area 'North Beach' and bought up as much land as he could, becoming its major property owner. He built a dirt road around Telegraph Hill - on the line of Columbus Avenue - and had Powell and Stockton Streets extended as far as the water. He was elected to the city council, and apparently he used his position to 'cause several streets to be built in that direction' (I need to do further research on the sequence of events: some accounts say he wasn't elected until 1853). Earth from cutting and leveling the hill was used to extend North Beach into the bay. It was a massive and expensive project.
On the first full day of our trip, Mike and I walk down from Russian Hill, stopping for coffee along the way, to explore Harry's North Beach and the site of his most ambitious project: Meiggs Wharf.
Today Francisco Street, which marked the water's edge in 1850, is several blocks back from the sea due to later land reclamation.Harry's goal was to build a wharf at North Beach that would compete with the existing docks further round the bay. People were skeptical about the feasibility of his plans, but he went ahead and completed construction of Meiggs Wharf in 1850. He had to build an extremely long pier, about a third of a mile, in order to reach deep water from the north shore. This is what it looked like then (note the cow in the foreground!):
The wooden pier of Meiggs Wharf is long gone, its site now part of the famous Fisherman's Wharf facing Alcatraz Island.
When Mike and I first visited San Francisco in 1974, a touristy seafood restaurant called Meiggs Wharf was the only relic of Harry's vision. Nowadays an excellent visitor center at the SF Maritime National Historical Park commemorates the pioneer and his wharf:
When Mike and I first visited San Francisco in 1974, a touristy seafood restaurant called Meiggs Wharf was the only relic of Harry's vision. Nowadays an excellent visitor center at the SF Maritime National Historical Park commemorates the pioneer and his wharf:
As the visitor center display shows, 'Honest Harry's' California days ended badly. My mother Audrey (Harry's niece's granddaughter) told tales of how our most notorious relative fled San Francisco, absconding with city funds, sailing eventually to Chile and making a new fortune as a railroad builder. Now I am revisiting the intriguing story, inevitably finding inconsistencies in biographies and other sources, and plan to follow the trail of my American and South American family, writing a new account. Suffice it to say here that Harry's luck in the city of gold undoubtedly turned: he was way overextended when a depression hit California in 1854. Bankrupt, he took to forging stacks of warrants from the city treasury and handing them out to his many creditors. Realizing that the game would soon be up, in October 1854 he asked his family to pack up for a second time, chartered a schooner and slipped away through the Golden Gate with his creditors in hot pursuit.
On a day out visiting the Stanford campus, I find an out-of-print book in the Green Library that I've been wanting to consult.
Author William Martin Camp introduces Henry Meiggs' story in his 1947 volume, San Francisco: Port of Gold, thus:
Here is "Honest Harry Meiggs" who foretold the day when the point beyond Yerba Buena Cove would become the center of shipping, forged a stack of warrants, then absconded with his family aboard a schooner to South America to become conqueror of the Andes and make a new fortune as a railroad builder.
It is hard to know whether to be proud or ashamed to be related to this lovable rogue!
There is not much more time for research before we head up to the Sonoma Valley for Thanksgiving. But on my last morning in San Francisco, I go downtown to discover South Park, a legacy of which the Meiggs' descendants can be justifiably proud. Harry, with an Englishman called George Gordon, was involved in the creation of this delightful oval park, which was modeled on London's Berkeley Square.
From the muddy acres of North Beach and the early mansions of South Park, it is a far cry to this twenty-first century development. Henry Meiggs would be impressed.
