San Francisco County
SAMUEL
HOLLADAY
SAMUEL
HOLLADAY, the subject of this sketch, and one of the earliest residents of San
Francisco, was born at Duanesburgh, Schenectady county, New York, April 29, 1823.
His
parents may be called pioneers of that State, his father, Gideon Holladay,
having emigrated in his youth from Tyringham,
Massachusetts, while the State of New York was little more than a wilderness.
Coming
to manhood, Gideon Holladay purchased a farm of one hundred acres upon the
“Cherry Valley turnpike,” which, before the days of railroads and even before
the construction of the Erie canal, was the main highway from the interior of
the State to Albany, over which the broad tired, canvas-covered “Pennsylvania
wagons,” drawn by many horses, decked with tinkling bells and guided by a
single rein. On this highway,
twenty-five miles west of Albany, he built a commodious tavern with large
barns, arched gates, sheds and outhouses for the accommodation of travelers.
He
married Martha Coon, a native of Poughkeepsie, New York, and at Duanesburgh these parents raised a family of thirteen
children of which our subject was the twelfth, and of sons the seventh. Gideon Holladay was a man of some local
distinction, of great energy in public as well as in private affairs,
especially in the promotion of public schools, and was elected and served for a
term as “High Sheriff” of Schenectady county.
When
Samuel was four years old his father died, leaving the family to the support of
his mother and older brothers. He passed
the first fourteen years of his life with such educational advantages as the
“district school” of the neighborhood afforded; after which time he moved west
to Hammondsport, Steuben county, New York, where, during the summers, he
assisted his older brothers, who were conducting a business of merchandising
and lumbering, and during the winters he went to school in the neighborhood,
including a term at Franklin Academy, Prattsburg.
In
the autumn of 1841 he removed to Cleveland, Ohio, with his mother and others of
the family, where some of his older brothers were engaged in business. Here he attended the Shaw Academy at Euclid
(now called Collamer), and later the English and
classical school of W. D. Beattie, who was a distinguished scholar and teacher
of Cleveland at that time.
At
the end of his school days, in 1843, he entered as a student the law office of
Andrews, Foote & Hoyt, in Cleveland, the firm consisting of Sherlock J.
Andrews, then a late member of Congress, an eminent lawyer distinguished for
his talents and great eloquence; John A. Foote (who was a brother of the late
Admiral Foote, one of Grant’s supporters at Fort Donelson),
and James M. Hoyt, still living in Cleveland, an honored and prosperous
gentleman.
Mr.
Holladay was admitted to the bar of the Supreme court of Ohio, then sitting in
Cleveland, in the year 1846, when he commenced on his own account the practice
of law, with such moderate success as usually attended beginners at that time,
and so continued till he started for California by the way of New York, sailing
thence by the steamer Northerner for Chagres and
Panama, March 1, 1849. He and a friend
(Henry C. Smith, still living at Cleveland) were the first who left that city
attracted by the accounts of the gold discoveries in California. His example was soon followed by a number of
other young men from that place, who have since become honored residents of
this State, among them E. B. Mastick, Esq., Judge
James C. Cary, Judge Walter Van Dyke, George C. Hickox,
United States Senator John P. Jones and his brothers, and the late Judge Samuel
Cowles.
Arriving
at Panama, there was no steamer to take him to California, so that he was
detained there from about the 12th of March to the middle of May,
waiting for means of transportation, the steamers California and Oregon then
being somewhere up the coast, while the steamer Panama had not yet arrived from
around the Horn. In this interval a
swarm of California-bound passengers by various steamers from New York and New
Orleans came pouring into the small city of Panama, until there were
apprehensions of famine and pestilence.
After
a tedious suspense, and within a few hours of each other, they heard the
welcome book of the cannons of the steamers Oregon from San Francisco, and the
Panama from New York, announcing their arrival in port, and blessed were those
possessed of a ticket for San Francisco on either. Mr. Holladay was fortunate in having secured
a ticket for passage to San Francisco on the Panama at a cost of $365, whereby
he reached San Francisco June 4, 1849.
Among the passengers of the Panama on that trip were the commission
appointed to run the boundary line between the United States and Mexico,
pursuant to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, of which John B. Weller was the
chief, Major Emory in command of the military escort, and a staff of
mathematicians, artists and naturalists.
With
other passengers on that trip were also the following: William M. Gwin,
General Robert Allen, United State Paymaster, Dr. Stephen R. Harris, W. H. V. Cronise, Henry B. Livingston, J. H. Crossman, John C.
Morrison, Jr., Samuel C. Gray, Daniel T. Adams, H. G. Mason, John H. Jewett,
William M. Burgoyne, John V. Plume, Hall McAllister, Horace Beach, H. G. Blankman, W. G. Brown, Thomas Sunderland, Frederick F. Low,
John A. Collins, Chauncey Taylor, E. W. McKinstry,
Samuel Tyler, Edward Pooley, Mrs. Jessie Benton
Fremont, James L. Freaner, (“Mustang”), General Cadwallader Ringgold, John C. Hyer,
J. H. Nevett, George Rowland, J. M. Frye, Charles D.
Judah, Lieutenant George H. Derby (“Phoenix”), and many others of that
class. Amongst these names will be
recognized those of a number of the most distinguished in the history of this
State.
At
the time of his arrival there were a great many vessels assembled in the harbor
from all parts of the world, but very few houses had yet been built at San
Francisco; the numerous tents in and about the city, as they approached the
place, produced a depressing effect upon the hearts of the passengers who read
in them signs that the goldseekers had returned from
the mines after finding the gold story a myth.
But on landing they found that the occupants of the tents were denizens
of the town, either awaiting the construction of houses or preparing to go to the
mines.
Mr.
Holladay had come to California with the resolute purpose of settling and
acquiring real estate during its rise in this rapidly growing town, but he
yielded to the persuasion of a friend to go to the mines with him for three
months, on his assurance that he had always been lucky and that they would pick
up big lumps and plenty of them immediately.
By
schooner to Sutterville, then the rival of
Sacramento, thence to the mines by ox team, with a few mining tools, he brought
up at “Woods’ Dry Diggings” (now Auburn, Placer county), which was
distinguished, as they heard, for its “big lumps” and “coarse gold,” as against
the Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers to the south, where, as they heard, only
fine gold dust was to be found. He began
mining about June 10, and so continued there and in the neighborhood with
moderate success until April, 1850, including a six weeks’ trip to Trinity river in September and October, 1849, which was attended
only with hardships, loss of time, money and health. The community in and about
the “diggings” during that first summer was very peaceable and orderly,
composed chiefly of a good class of men from “the States.” There was also a strong representation of
Mexicans, Chilians, a few Kanakas and a camp of
soldiers, who had deserted from the United States army at Benicia. There was not a woman in the district.
The
law abiding character of the people was evinced by the fact that the men would
leave their gold dust in their tents unprotected, sometimes for days, while
they were away at work getting more, and, strange as it may seem, this practice
was without loss, until some time in that summer when some gold dust was missed
and a man arrested and charged with the theft.
He was in the hands of his accusers, who were disposed to execute
summary punishment upon him, as had been done in some instances attended with
great severity in other diggings, under like circumstances; but more sober
counsels prevailed, and the assembled miners elected Mr. Holladay alcalde, who appointed a sheriff, organized a court and
proceeded to give the accused a fair trial by jury, upon a complaint in
writing, duly verified, charging the defendant with larceny. Witnesses pro and con were examined in the
presence of the accused, and the evidence being insufficient the defendant was
acquitted.
There
were, afterwards, disputes of a civil nature for the possession of “claims,”
etc., duly settled before the alcalde’s court,
besides the trial, conviction and punishment by whipping, of another man, for
theft later in the summer, which produced great regularity in that
community. The most noted, however, of
those “State trials,” occurred in February, 1850, when two men were accused and
arrested for robbing a tent of a stock of provisions, which had become very
precious articles in the mines at that time.
The accused demanded legal counsel.
They selected lawyer Poland, for whom the alcalde
sent some miles down the Big Ravine; this gentleman has been an honored justice
of the peace for many years at Auburn.
The defendants, by their counsel, demanded separate trials; this was
granted; the trials took three days, resulting in the conviction of both men,
who were punished, under sentence of the alcalde, by
whipping administered by the sheriff.
This was followed by the immediate arrest, without complaint or process,
and an attempt to lynch, a third man without trial, who had appeared
incidentally in the proceedings to have been the chief leader in the crime for
which the others had just suffered.
While the crowd of several hundred excited and exasperated men were
dragging this man, in the grip of the aggrieved parties, to a tree near by, the
alcalde begged their attention, and by a few earnest
words addressed to their pride and honor as American citizens and in favor of
good order as against violence and lynch law, he so engaged the attention of
his audience that while they were listening the victim in hand was overlooked,
the grasp of his accusers was involuntarily relaxed, and he vanished while they
were listening to the alcalde: and he was never seen
or heard of there again. As a silent
spectator of the scene, there was present in the camp a person then unknown to
Mr. Holladay, Mr. Gilbert C. Weld, as correspondent of the New York Journal
of Commerce, who made that occasion the subject of a letter of several
columns to his paper, giving a synopsis of the case, the arrest, trial,
conviction and punishment of the two men, and of the alcalde’s
speech to the people and the magical deliverance of the accused from the hands
of Judge Lynch. This letter was copied
in various newspapers at the time, and found its permanent place in literature
in Littell’s Living Age of May 25,
1850, page 354 et seq.
Mr.
Weld, in April, 1850, associated with George K. Fitch and the late Rev. F. C.
Ewer, founded the Sacramento Transcript, which, for the first few months
of its existence, was enriched by his graceful pen, but, to the grief of his
acquaintances and to the loss of society, this amiable young gentleman and
graceful writer died of cholera, at Sacramento, in the summer of that year.
In
August, the alcalde changed the name of that place
from “Wood’s Dry Diggins,” to the more euphonious one
of “Auburn,” which it still bears.
In
April, Mr. Holladay resumed his original purpose of locating in San Francisco,
and therefore declined the County Judgeship of Sutter county,
then embracing Auburn, which was tendered him by the people of that vicinity.
Arriving
in San Francisco, the political canvass was progressing for municipal officers
under the first charter of April 15, 1850.
Three
sides of Portsmouth square and a part of the streets below were at the time
thatched with gambling houses, open to the public; their tables piled with coin
of different countries—especially Mexican doubloons and five-franc pieces,
Indian rupees and gold dust and nuggets—all tempting the reckless
adventurers. The saloons were adorned
with fine pictures and resonant with music by the best artists. In the absence of other places of
entertainment, a stroll through these saloons in the evening was the best
entertainment the town afforded. These
were also the places where stump speakers urged the merits of their respective
candidates for political office at the then approaching first municipal
election. On some of these evenings, as
the old settlers will remember, a pale, light-haired youth of clear voice,
fine, white teeth and crude but pleasing address, was heard from the rostrum of
these saloons in the most enthusiastic manner proclaiming the glories of the
Democratic party, the “progress and development” of the country generally, and
the superior excellence of his candidates on the Democratic ticket, whose names
he emphasized with an unction that seemed to carry conviction with it, with
general accent on the first part of the name—eulogizing especially “Colonel
John W. Geary, the hero of Capultepec,” for Mayor;
James O’Grady for County Recorder; Dennis McCarty for Street Commissioner;
Frank Tilford for Police Judge, and so on.
His
speech was short and earnest, and during the same evening the same thing was
repeated in several different saloons, with little variation.
At
the election the Democratic ticket prevailed, of course; and under the judicial
desk of the city recorder, where Frank Tilford
presided as Judge, was seen the pale, white-haired young orator above
mentioned, as clerk, and, on inquiry, his name was found to be Milton S.
Latham, who soon after went to Sacramento into a lucrative law practice, thence
as Representative to Congress, Collector of the Port, Governor, and United
States Senator. At the close of his
Senatorial term, at the opening of the Rebellion, he retired to Europe, and at
its close returned as Banker Latham; and after some years of prosperity in that
pursuit his fortunes suddenly changed to disasters, from which he never
recovered.
Mr.
Holladay has continued his residence and practice of law at San Francisco from
April, 1850, to the present time. By
reason of the confusion and uncertainty existing in city land titles they were
adjusted under the acts of Congress, and by confirmation and patent of the
city’s pueblo title, there was much land litigation, which depending chiefly
upon the question of the prior possession of the respective contestants, and
Mr. Holladay has participated largely in that class of litigation, besides his
success in other cases of dignity and importance.
In
1858, he was elected and served in the State Legislature, where he introduced
and had passed the first San Francisco street railroad bill ever passed in this
State, and this in opposition to some of the San Francisco delegation; but the
bill failed to become a law, having been vetoed by Governor Weller,—not because
of his demerits, but, as was at the time claimed by its advocates, for some
political resentments of the Governor against Colonel Tom Hayes, one of its
chief promoters.
He
also introduced and secured the passage of the bill confirming the Van Ness
ordinance, upon which the titles to most of the land within the present city of
San Francisco depends at this day.
For
some three years he served as City and County Attorney, by appointment of the
Board of Supervisors; the late Judge Lorenzo Sawyer, and after him the late F.
P. Tracy, were his immediate predecessors in that office. When he entered on its duties, the business
of the office was in a state of neglect and confusion, the old city hall being
advertised for sale by the sheriff under foreclosure of a mortgage existing at
the time of the city’s purchase of the property. Mr. Holladay got a new trial, and a reaccounting, by which it was found that the mortgage had
been not only paid, but over-paid, and, as a result, some $2,600 was paid back
and turned into the city treasury, and the judgment satisfied, and the city’s
title to the property perfected.
At
the same time, the county jail on Broadway street was found to be upon a lot
which had been bought and paid for and built upon by the former county, but to
which there was no deed from the real owner and the city could show no color of
title, the payments having been made to a stranger to the title; Mr. Holladay
effected a reasonable compromise and thus secured the title to the city.
Various
lots reserved by the Commissioners of the Funded Debt under ordinance of the
Common Council, he found occupied by squatters, claiming them adversely to the
city, for the recovery of which he commenced and prosecuted various suits, and
after the severest litigation ending by judgments in the Supreme Court, the
Board of Education was restored to the possession of them, including the school
lot, corner of Stockton and Rush, the Lincoln School lot, the lot at the corner
of Harrison and Fourth and several others.
Through
an earnestly contested lawsuit, he won by final judgment of the Supreme Court,
and under it restored to the possession of the city the public square between
Folsom and Harrison, Fifth and Sixth, taking Mayor Teschmacker
to the ground, and putting him into possession by the sheriff for the city.
Mr.
Holladay opened and kept the first docket of the city and county cases extant,
showing a list of those managed by him, with the results in each. This is now the office of the City and County
Attorney.
Resuming
private practice, he has so continued to the present time, the greater part of
his business relating to land titles, yet he has also been engaged in other
litigations, the more notable of which were the “Bonanza suits” brought by him
and an associate, for certain stockholders of the great mining corporations
against the managers to compel an accounting for the earnings of the companies,
alleged to have misappropriated. The
kings of the Comstock were called on to account for the bullion produced during
the flush times of the Comstock lode. In the Blythe Contest also Mr. Holladay
represents the Gipsy Blythes, claiming to be the next
of kin to the intestate millionaire Thomas Henry Blythe.
Mr.
Holladay married Miss Georgiana Catherine Ord, and
there are three children of the marriage.
One
son, Edmund Burke Holladay, who has been associated with his father for some
time in law practice—and two daughters, Louise and Ruth, all educated at our
public schools of which Mr. Holladay is a steady and faithful friend. The family have for
many years resided at the place purchased by him in the year 1851.
Mr.
Holladay early united with the Masonic and Odd Fellows’ associations, being at
the present time the earliest of the surviving members of Mount Moriah Lodge, No. 44, of F. & A. Masons; he is also a
member of the Pacific Lodge, No. 155, I. O. O. F. He is also a life member of the Society of
California Pioneers, for which he feels a lively sympathy and pride; and is
also a life member of the California Academy of Sciences, having served for
three years as a member of its Board of Trustees, giving the work his personal
attention daily, during the construction of its new seven-story building on
Market street.
Mr.
Holladay was an original Republican and took an active interest in the cause of
the Union during the great struggle to maintain its integrity. His tastes include to the quiet of private life,
rather than to the strife and anxieties of politics and public office, having
but once in later years departed from this course, when in 1888 he accepted his
party’s nomination tendered him for the Judgeship of the Superior Court, but
with nearly the whole of his ticket he failed of election.
A
careful student of political government, Mr. Holladay has given much thought to
the science off money as the prime factor in the progress of civilization, and
to that end he has occasionally published brief articles on the subject,
including a pamphlet entitled “Money Principles Formulated,” a paper read by
him before the Pacific Social Science Association, in support of the idea that
one of the highest attributes of national sovereignty is the power and duty of making
and issuing from the national treasury direct all the money used by the people
and the Government—to be made of paper exclusively—only one kind, and that a
full legal tender for all payments, public and private—in short, fiat money.
This
he regards as the great reform to come, which will elevate and purify
governments and promote the progress and welfare of humanity.
Transcribed by Donna L.
Becker.
Source: “The Bay of San
Francisco,” Vol. 2, Pages 479-485, Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
© 2006 Donna L.
Becker.