A majority of the Jews from the mining communities who did not return to the East finally drifted into San Francisco, which from the beginning had the largest and most important Jewish community of the Pacific Coast. The foremost among the Jews who attained eminence in the new state, which was admitted into the Union in 1850, was Solomon Heydenfeldt (b. in Charleston, S. C., in 1816; d. in San Francisco, 1890). He removed to Alabama at the age of twenty-one, where he was admitted to the bar and practiced law for a number of years in Tallapoosa County. He was obliged to leave the state on account of his views on the slavery question, and came to San Francisco in 1850. He was elected Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California two years later and held the office with distinction from 1852 to 1857. His brother Elkan and Isaac Cardozo were members of the Legislature of California in 1852, while another Jew, Henry A. Lyons, was also a member of the Supreme Court of the state about that time. A. C. Labatt, one of the pioneers, was an alderman of San Francisco in 1851, when Samuel Marx was United States appraiser of the port and Joseph Shannon was county treasurer. Many Jews who began their careers in San Francisco later became eminent merchants and financiers, like the four brothers Seligman, the three brothers Lazard, the Glaziers and the Wormsers, all of whom settled later in New York. Michael Reese, one of the extensive realty brokers; Moritz Friedlander, who later became one of the largest grain dealers in the country; and Adolph Sutro, the engineer, were also among those whose modest beginnings belong to that period. To the same class belong also Louis Sloss and Lewis Gerstle, who later founded the Alaska Commercial Company.