Mormon Settlement in Arizona: A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the DesertMcClintock, James H.
History
Mormon Settlement in Arizona: A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the Desert
McClintock, James H.
Arizona -- History -- To 1950; Latter Day Saints -- Arizona -- History
"They crowded upon the deck, women and children, questioning husbands and
fathers, and studied the picture before them--they would never see it
just the same again--as the foggy curtains furled towards the azure
ceiling. How it imprinted itself upon their minds! A long sandy beach
strewn with hides and skeletons of slaughtered cattle, a few scrubby
oaks, farther back low sand hills rising behind each other as a
background to a few old shanties that leaned away from the wind, an old
adobe barracks, a few donkeys plodding dejectedly along beneath towering
bundles of wood, a few loungers stretched lazily upon the beach as though
nothing could astonish them; and between the picture and the emigrants
still loomed up here and there, at the first sight more distinctly, the
black vessels--whaling ships and sloops of war--that was all, and that
was Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, the landing place for the pilgrims of
faith."
In John P. Young's "Journalism in California" is recited:
"It is not without significance that the awakening of Yerba Buena did not
occur till the advent of the printing press. From the day when Leese
built his store in 1836 till the arrival of the Mormon colony on July 31,
1846, the village retained all the peculiarities of a poverty-stricken
settlement of the Spanish-American type. From that time forward changes
began to occur indicative of advancement and it is impossible to
disassociate them from the fact that a part of the Brooklyn's cargo was a
press and a font of type, and that the 238 colonists aboard that vessel
and others who found their way to the little town, brought with them
books--more, one careful writer tells us, than could be found at the time
in all the rest of the Territory put together."
Brannan and his California Star had a part in the very naming of San
Francisco. This occurred January 30, 1847, rather hurried by discovery of
the fact that a rival settlement on the upper bay proposed to take the
name. So there was formal announcement in the Star that, from that date
forward, there would be abandonment of the name Yerba Buena, as local and
appertaining only to the cove, and adoption of the name of San Francisco.
This announcement was signed by the Alcalde, Lieut. Washington A.
Bartlett, who had been detached by Capt. J. B. Montgomery from the
man-of-war Portsmouth on September 15, 1846, and who rejoined his ship
the following February.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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