Webster Genealogy Welcome

	CALIFORNIA
1864	By 1864, California's gold rush had ended. The rich surface and river placers were largely exhausted; hydraulic mines were the chief sources of gold for the next 20 years. http://www.learncalifornia.org/doc.asp?id=118 It has been estimated that more than 300,000 people came to California between the years 1848 and 1854. Many came and left in a relatively short time; others stayed a while longer, and still others remained permanently. The State's population at the time of the 1850 census was nearing 100,000 and, ten years later, the population reached 380,000. By 1880, California boasted a population of 560,247. By the end of the 19th century, more than 1.2 million people called the Golden State "home." So, while the rush to the gold fields may have lasted fewer than twenty years, the influx of people continues even today.

	San Francisco at the [Industrial and Fine Arts] Fair [California, 1864] Creator/Contributor: Jump, Edward (1832-1883), French, artist Date: c1864 Contributing Institution: Bancroft Library. More information about this image http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/

1863	Construction of the Central Pacific Railroad begins. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Railroad and ferry connection with Oakland inaugarated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first Cliff House opens. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- California Governor Leland Stanford calls for discouraging Chinese immigration by every legitimate means. Stanford's sincerity comes into question when it is revealed that his railroad is importing thousands of Chinese laborers to build the Central Pacific route through the Sierra Nevada. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Russian Fleet visits the City, both to express the Czar's support for the Union cause and to allow the fleet to dock in an ice-free port. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- San Francisco and San Jose railroad begins service. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Telegraph cable is stretched across the Golden Gate. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blacks allowed to testify against whites in California courts. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Mark Twain" makes his first appearance in western newspapers.
1864	San Francisco and San Jose Railroad completed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Starr King dies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vessels entering the port of San Francisco are prohibited from passing to the north of Alcatraz. Violators are warned that they will be fired upon. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- State legislation prohibits Sunday performances. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A gale destroys 300 feet of Meigg's Wharf.
1865	California ratifies the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fire alarm and police telegraph system established. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Earthquake. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Odd Fellows dedicate a cemetery on Point Lobos Road. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Pacific Museum of Anatomy and Science, a thinly disguised peep show, acquires "Joaquin Murietta's" head. It remains on display there for 41 years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Southern Pacific Railroad is founded. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Twain begins residence in San Francisco. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A competitive race between three volunteer fire companies turns to violence as members of each company try to prevent the others from arriving first to a fire. Several dozen men suffer gunshots, bruises, wounds, and broken bones. The incident prompts the State Legislature to authorize paid fire departments.
1866	-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Heyday of Miss Piggot and Mother Bronson, a pair of boarding house Shanghai queens and tavern keepers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A nitroglycerine explosion wrecks the Wells Fargo and Company Express office. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Union State Central Committee meets in San Francisco, adopting strong resolutions promoting equal rights for all men without reference to color. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1867	The Schah Jehan runs onto the rocks of the bay and is lost. Her crew is saved. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Angry laborers drive off Chinese working on excavating a Townsend Street lot and at the Tubbs and Company rope works. Many Chinese homes are burned. In subsequent days, anti-coolie clubs are formed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Pacific Mail steamship Colorado returns from her maiden voyage to China and Japan. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First steamer service to Alaska. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blasting of Telegraph Hill to procure rock for a seawall begins. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A terrific gale soaks and wrecks most of the state. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sam's Grill opens at the California Market.
1868	The H.L. Rutgers is wrecked off Point Bonita. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A storm sinks the sloop John Stillson with its 80 ton cargo of wheat while berthed at San Francisco. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The British bark Oliver Cutts becomes another victim of the year's inclement weather. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The British ship Viscota is wrecked off Point Lobos. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Four major earthquakes shake the city. The last of these will be the largest tremor in San Francisco history until 1906. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A gang of hoodlums drag a Chinese crab catcher beneath a wharf where they rob him, beat him with a hickory club, branded him in several places with a hot iron, and then slit his ears and tongue. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Shanghai Chicken and his partner Johnny Nyland go on a shooting and knifing spree. Several men are wounded, but none seriously. The spree is ended when Billy Maitland enters Billy Lewis's saloon and throws Nyland out. When the Shanghai Chicken aims at pistol at Maitland, the bouncer cuts off the Chicken's hand and throws him out onto the street. The Chicken replaces his hand with a metal hook. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hoodlum leader James or "Butt" Riley arrives in the city and becomes one of the Barbary Coast's legendary figures. The handsome Riley is popular with waiter girls and prostitutes, to whom he sells nude pictures. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Young Men's Christian Association is constructed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Twain bids San Francisco farewell. His job as the "Town Crier" is filled by a bitter, young Civil War Veteran named Ambrose Bierce. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- San Franciscans welcome the staff of the Chinese Embassy with a grand banquet and a tour of the city's fortifications. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Construction crews use several tons of powder to drill a tunnel at Lime Point. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A heavy fog shrouds much of the state in September. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A four hour long meteor shower attracts the attention of skywatchers mid-November. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Smallpox cases on the rise. 350 fatal cases are reported this year. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Big Four (Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker) gains controlling interest in the Oakland Waterfront Company. This gives them control over the main access routes into the San Francisco Bay. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Burlingame Treaty establishes the right of Chinese to free immigration. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hell's Kitchen and Dance Hall opens its doors. It celebrates its first Christmas with a free-for-all fight in which several men are injured.
1869	The completion of the transcontinental railroad is celebrated with the driving (and immediate retrieval) of several golden spikes at Promontory Point, Utah. First westbound train arrives at Alameda in September. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Marriot demonstrates his dirigible, Avitor Hermes Jr. at Shell Mound Park in the East Bay. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A train from Boston brings the first transcontinental shipment, consisting of boots and shoes. A few days later, another train heads east with a shipment of tea bound for Chicago. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First shipment of fresh oysters from Baltimore arrives in October. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The 1864 legislation prohibiting Sunday theatrical performances is repealed, giving rise to a new era of spectacle. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Shanghai Chicken serves a year in jail for larceny. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An expose by The Call compels authorities to prohibit the employment of women in melodeons, music halls, and concert saloons. No effort is made to enforce the ordinance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emperor Norton commands that bridges be built spanning San Francisco Bay. The bridges are ordered to be built from Oakland to Goat Island and thence to Tiburon and out to the Farallones. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bret Harte's "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"
1870	The anti-Chinese Industrial Reformers organize. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Golden Gate Park is established by state and municipal legislation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First Federal Civil Rights Act. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bret Harte's The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rivalry between Chinese cigar makers explodes into an open fight on Battery Street. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A city ordinance prohibits the carrying of baskets attached to poles laid across the shoulders. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Board of Supervisors prohibits the rental of sleeping rooms which contain less than 500 cubic feet of air per person.
1871	The California Women's Suffrage Society meets for the first time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A huge flock of birds darkens the skies over the west side of the City. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An evening school for Chinese is denied funds. It becomes impossible for Chinese San Franciscans to obtain an education for the next fourteen years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Board of Supervisors adopts William Hammond Hall's design for Golden Gate Park. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Shanghai Chicken shoots a German sailor. When he is discovered aboard the steamer Wilson G. Hunt by Patrolman John Coulter, he is wearing his victim's cap. Devine predicts that he will be hung for the murder. He is. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Los Angeles mobs attack Chinese laborers, killing twenty. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- San Francisco Art Institute established. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blossom Rock is removed as a hazard to navigation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Jordan shoots hoodlum James Riley in the chest. Riley survives, but his reputation and health suffers as a result. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Construction begins on a new City Hall.
1872	Committee of One Hundred organized to oppose giving Goat Island to the railroads. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Police force increased to 150 patrolmen. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A pair of miners trick banker William Ralston into investing in a nonexistent diamond mine. The Great Diamond Hoax contributes to Ralston's ruin. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Modoc War begins. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bohemian Club is founded by a pack of young artists and writers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Twain, Roughing It. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Streetlamps appear. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hercules Powder Works blows up.
1873	First post cards appear in the City. The Emperor Norton becomes a popular subject. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Chinese Six Companies wires Hong Kong requesting that emigration to San Francisco be stopped. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Hallidie runs the first cable car up Clay Street. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Presbyterians organize the Oriental Board, which they dedicate to helping Chinese women enslaved in the bagnios. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The state legislature once again outlaws gambling, but the casinos continue to operate behind closed doors.
1874	Railway conductors and drivers on the Bay View and Potrero Railroad strike. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chronicle publisher Gustavus de Young exchanges shots with F.R. Fitzgerald of the Sun. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A huge mass meeting is convened to denounce the Chinese. The assembly calls for the immediate ejection of the Chinese from California. The Chinese Six Companies petitions President Grant, declaring their loyalty to the United States and their many positive contributions to the American economy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Professor Allen takes several citizens for balloon rides over Woodward's Gardens. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The French Mail balloon Le Secours arrives, commanded by Captain Barbiere. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The balloon America narrowly escapes destruction after a miscalculation during its descent from an altitude of 3000 feet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fire on Alcatraz. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The new U.S. Mint opens in the South of Market. * Grampy said their house was across from the US Mint
1875	-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Heyday of the melodeons. Artistes of this time include the Galloping Cow, her sister the Dancing Heifer, the Roaring Gimlet, the Waddling Duck, Lady Jane Grey, and the Little Lost Chicken. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Northern Pacific Coast Railroad, from San Francisco to Tomales, starts its service via Sausalito. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Catholics meet to protest the expulsion of the Sisters of Charity from Mexico. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bank of California magnate William Ralston accidentally drowns or commits suicide after financial opponents force a rush on his bank. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Low Sing, a member of the Suey Sing tong, is murdered while holding the hands of his lover, the crib courtesan Kum Ho. Ming Long of the Kwong Dock tong and noted assassin kills Low Sing because he considers Kum Ho to be his girl. Low Sing lives long enough to identify his killer. The Suey Sing declare war on the Kwong Dock. Ming Long is hunted by the Suey Sing, but manages to escape home to China. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Six Companies estimates that there are 75,000 Chinese living in California. Most of these are males of working age. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Three Lively Fleas are an erotic attraction at Madame Bertha's Sacramento Street parlor house. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Toby Rosenthal's painting Elaine is displayed at the galleries of Snow and May and immediately proclaimed a masterpiece. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Pacific Stock Exchange opens. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Native Sons of the Golden West organize. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Actress Lotta Crabtree bestows a cast-iron monstrocity, thereafter known as Lotta's Fountain, on the people of San Francisco. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Miser James Lick turns philanthropist with a donation of a Market Street lot to the California Academy of Sciences. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Palace Hotel opens.
1876	The Chinese Six Companies petitions the Board of Supervisors for protection from the tongs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The State of California begins mandatory licensing of doctors. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- City jailers enforce a short hair policy by cutting off the queue of a Chinese convict. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Board of Supervisors makes another token effort to bar women from working in concert saloons. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesuit scientist Father Joseph M. Neri demonstrates the electric light. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- James Riley is convicted of house-breaking and sentenced to fifteen years in San Quentin. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A mysterious cigar-shaped craft is sighted over the City, shining its search lights on the deserted streets. Among the witnesses is Adolph Sutro. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeanne Bonnet, a cross-dresser known as the Little Frog Catcher, is found dead with a bullet in her heart. She has been leading a criminal gang of escaped brothel girls who refuse to sell their bodies, have nothing to do with men, and who make their living through shop-living and other petty thievery. Police suspect that Bonnet has been killed by the pimps whose girls she has taken. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children founded. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Southern Pacific links San Francisco and Los Angeles by rail. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charles de Young is assaulted by John Duane. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fire at the Chinese Theater, Jackson Street. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Diptheria epidemic in latter part of the year. (Children usually represent a large majority of the cases and fatalities)
1877	Anti-coolie convention convenes. Denis Kearney later leads the "sandlot riots" against the City's Chinese. The year is filled with violence against the Chinese and those who would speak in their defense. William T. Coleman organizes a "pick-handle brigade to defend the Chinese from the Sandlotters. For this, his house is attacked. Kearney finally abandons his violent campaign and organizes the Workingmen's Party of California. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- State prison officials complain that Chinese labor, hiring out for 25 cents or less a day, is unfair competition with convict labor renting for 50 cents a day.
1878	Happy Jack Harrington, proprietor of the Opera Comique, comes under the influence of the Praying Band while drunk. He forsakes his business for the Bible and a new restaurant. In a few weeks, however, he decides to return to his evil ways and opens a new saloon. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Five hundred unemployed men march on City Hall and demand that the mayor give them work. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Workingmen's Party holds its first state convention. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Sutro Railroad to Land's End opens. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A U.S. District Court rules that Chinese are not eligible for citizenship. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Hopkins dies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Galloping Cow saves enough money to open her own saloon. She makes sure that it is understood that she wants no bulls by her strength of character and forearm. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First San Francisco telephone book issued by the American Speaking Telephone Company. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Douty Colton, a late-coming partner to the Southern Pacific Octupus (the half in the Big Four and A Half), arrives home in a state of total collapse. He dies two days later, at the age of 47. Officially the cause of death is a fall from a horse on his ranch, but persistant rumors crop up that Colton has been stabbed to death.
1879	Collision of the ferryboats Alameda and El Capitan in dense fog. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jewish author's Salmi Morse's play The Passion, directed by David Belasco and starring James O'Neill as Christ, opens several days ahead of schedule to avoid censorship by municipal authorities. The production closes within a week after playgoers take to weeping and kneeling during performances. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Chronicle stirs concern about the cancan. The Board of Supervisors outlaws its performance. Mabel Santley and her Rentz Troupe perform the dance in spite of the ban at the Standard Theater. Chronicle journalist Charles Warren Stoddard reports Ms. Santley's "immodest and indecent" terpsichordean exercise to the police. Santley is arrested, tried, convicted, and fined two hundred dollars. The cancan continues to be performed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The State Constitution, ratified by voters in the spring, contains many anti-Chinese provisions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Workingmen's Party nominates candidates for state and national legislative office. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- San Francisco Public Library opens. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Grant visits the City and is entertained at the home of Comstock millionaire James Flood. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charles de Young shoots Workingmen's Party mayoral candidate Isaac Kalloch, thus ensuring Kalloch's election that fall.
1880	New California State Consitution goes into effect. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emperor Norton dies on a Chinatown street corner. His estate consists of a two and a half dollar gold piece, three silver dollars, an 1828 franc piece, and 98,200 shares in a worthless gold mine. The entire city turns out for his funeral. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wool and jute mill owners fire 1200 Chinese workers. ??? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Police force increased to 400 men. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The city is treated to daily parades by Communists until other citizens serve notice that this will not be tolerated. The Citizens Protective Union of San Francisco is organized to protect the city from the Communist menace. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Denis Kearney is arrested on charges of using incendiary language. He is given a six month sentence, but the State Supreme Court orders him released. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Isaac Milton Kalloch, son of Mayor Kalloch, hunts Charles de Young down in the publisher's office and kills him. He is later acquitted on grounds of self defense. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mussel Slough Tragedy. The Southern Pacific Railroad has invited settlers to farm certain disputed properties in Tulare County, telling them that they could buy it later at prices starting at $2.50 an acre. When the railroad acquires title, it offers to sell the land to any buyer at prices ranging between $17 and $40 an acre. Some of the original settlers organize a Grand Settlers League which not only refuses to buy the land upon which they are now legally squatting, but also attempts to prevent others from buying it. During an intense encounter with the U.S. Marshal, a horse rears, shooting starts, and when the dust clears, one would-be purchaser and four settlers lay dead. Two more settlers die of their wounds, five are sentenced to prison, many of the rest give up their homes, and a few accept the SP's terms. Frank Norris later makes this a key scene in his novel The Octopus (1901). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Sutter dies in Washington. He has been spending the last several years petitioning the Government for redress of his losses due to the Gold Rush. Harper's Weekly memorializes him thusly: His claim to rememberance proved to be his greatest calamity, and he died, it is said, from the effect of his efforts and anxiety in importuning Congress to vote him a national indemnity because of the misfortunes he had suffered through the very discovery which has done so much toward enriching the country of his adoption. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Borax is discovered in Death Valley. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Public Library allows patrons to borrow books for the first time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seamen's Protective Union formed.
1881	U.S. Quarantine Station authorized for Angel Island, making it the Ellis Island of the West Coast, where Asian immigrants must wait for clearance to enter the United States.
1882	Oscar Wilde visits the City. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Congress passes the Ten Year Exclusion Act against the Chinese. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Dolbeer invents the "donkey engine", a portable steam engine which allows lumberjacks to hoist logs in the forest at a speed comparable to that of the saws in the mills. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Carpenters demand and get the eight hour day for Saturday only. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fort Point renamed Fort Winfield Scott.
1883	"Black Bart", a gentleman bandit who has been robbing Wells Fargo stages throughout northern California, turns out to be respectable bank clerk Charles Bolton. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Golden Gate Park Conservatory damaged by fire. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Major gas explosion at the Palace Hotel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sixty-five year old Senator William Sharon is arrested on charges of adultery after Sarah Althea Hill produces a contract which she alledges proves that they are married. The other woman is Gertie Dietz, who has borne Sharon a child. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association formed.
	1884 A stray bear cub is found in the middle of the city and turned over to the Cooper Medical College. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adolph Spreckels shoots Chronicle editor Michael de Young after de Young defames the Spreckels family. De Young survives to give the city the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Adolph Spreckels is found insane and goes on to give the City the rival Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sarah Althea Hill is granted a divorce from Senator William Sharon by a state court which awards her a $2,500 alimony. She marries her lawyer, Nathan Terry, the man who assassinated Senator David Broderick. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- D.F. Riehl swims out from the Cliff House to Seal Rocks and back.
1885	Senator William Sharon dies. His litigation with Sara Althea Hill has not yet been fully resolved. The State Supreme Court has upheld the divorce ruling. A ruling in federal court holds, however, that the marriage documents are forgeries. Sharon has been dead one month. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A special city committee finds 15,180 sleeping bunks in Chinatown. Most of these are shared by more than one person. The committee also finds twenty six opium dens with 320 bunks open to the general public. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The State Supreme Court rules that any Chinese child born and continuously residing in the City is entitled to an education.
1886	Plasterers, plumbers, gas fitters, painters and members of the Laborers Protective Benevolent Association (hodcarriers) form the Building Trades Council. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ten thousand workers march to demonstrate Union solidarity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joaquin Miller organizes the first Arbor Day. Trees are planted on Yerba Buena (Goat) Island. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Call identifies the area bounded by Broadway, Kearney, and Montgomery Streets as The Devil's Acre, "the resort and abiding place of the worst criminals in town." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Colton's widow loses her lawsuit against Stanford, Huntington and Crocker, but succeeds in proving false their claim that Colton defrauded the company. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bancroft's History of California begins to appear.
1887	A cargo of powder aboard the schooner Parallel blows up below Cliff House. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The City prohibits the selling of alcohol in theaters, forcing establishments like the Bella Union to eventually close when it is actually enforced. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas S. Baldwin makes a record-breaking parachute jump from a balloon. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It snows. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Congress grants Seal Rocks to the City. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sarah Bernhardt appears at the Baldwin Theater. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Wright Act, guaranteeing the rights of farmers to create irrigation distrcts that can divert river water to dry lands for flood control and water conservation purposes, is passed by the State Legislature. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Little Pete, the leader of the Sum Yop tong, is sentenced to five years in San Quentin after he attempts to bribe the jurors, the District attorney, and anyone else involved in the prosecution of one of his hit men.
1888	E.L. Thayer, Casey at the Bat. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the federal ruling against Sarah Althea Hill Terry. The Terrys refuse to produce the marriage documents for the appeals court, sealing the fate of their lawsuit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prices for Chinese slavegirls rise after Congress makes Chinese female immigration illegal. Another law prohibits the reentry of any Chinese laborer who has left the country for any reason. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charles Crocker dies in New York. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ferry explosion in San Pablo Bay. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Incadescent lamps used for the first time at the Bijou Theater.
	1889 The Union Iron Works launch the USS Oregon and the USS Olympia. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A new special investigating committee estimates that there are 45,000 Chinese in San Francisco, one third of whom are women and children. Of these, 5000 work as domestics and cooks; 4000 make cigars; 5000 more make men and womens clothing; and 2000 work in laundries. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First jukebox installed at the Palais Royale Saloon. The contraption is nothing more than a coin-operated Edison wax cylinder machine with four listening tubes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- James Flood dies in Germany.
	1890 The Comstock Silver Mines close. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Liquor consumption reaches its all time high. The City has licensed 3,117 establishments that sell beer, whisky, or other intoxicants. There is one such saloon for every ninety-six residents. Asbury later estimates that there are also at least 2,000 blind pigs (speakeasies) operating without licenses. San Franciscans spend an estimated $9,124,195 at the legal bars alone. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David S. Terry is shot and killed by U.S. Marshall David Neagle after Terry strikes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field. Field has earned Terry's wrath by ruling that documents giving Terry's wife a share of the estate of the late Senator William Sharon are fraudulent. Terry and his wife, Sarah Althea Hill Terry, are enroute to San Francisco for sentencing in a contempt of court case before Judge Field. The Supreme Court makes a landmark ruling holding that federal officials are immune to state prosecution for acts performed in the line of duty. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Sailors' Union of the Pacific unites the Coast Seamen's and Steamshipman's unions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Police Department begins to use signal boxes.
	1891 Stanford University founded. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Salvation Army is organized in the City. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mary Hopkins dies. She disinherits her adopted son Timothy who opposed her marriage to Edward T. Searles, a decorator twenty-two years her junior. Timothy Hopkins contests the will and succeeds in recovering part of the estate for himself.
1892	John Muir founds the Sierra Club. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sarah Althea Hill Terry's hallucinations and bizarre behavior lead Mary Pleasant, who has been looking after her, to have her brought before a court for commitment proceedings. Judge Walter H. Levy, who had served as one of Hill's attorneys in her suits against William Sharon's estate, orders her sent to the Stockton State Hospital for the Insane, where she dies forty-five years later. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- James J. Corbett becomes the world boxing champion. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stanford wins the first "Big Game", 14 to Cal's 10. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Angel Islands U.S. Quarantine Station opens. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Exclusion Act is extended for ten years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ambrose Bierce, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
1893	The City begins preparations for the 1894 Midwinter Fair. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ambrose Bierce, Can Such Things Be? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edward Searles donates the Hopkins Mansion to the San Francisco Art Institute. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Stein, brother of Gertrude, engineers the consolidation of street railways into the Market Street Railway Company. Stein acts as its vice president and superintendent of the division. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- San Francisco-born Stephen M. White becomes the first native Senator from California. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leland Stanford dies suddenly. His widow successfully fights off attempts by Collis P. Huntington to close Stanford University.
1894	The Midwinter Fair opens in Golden Gate Park in January. It closes on July 4. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adolph Sutro's Cliff House burns down. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Members of the San Francisco contingent of Coxey's Army are harassed by Oakland police. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- James G. Fair, the city's largest single taxpayer, dies.
1895	Gelette Burgess's "Purple Cow" makes its first appearance in The Lark. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Big Bertha takes control of the Bella Union. When she can't sell liquor, she shuts the establishment down for good and leaves the Barbary Coast. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charley Hung and Dah Pa Tsin maintain a Church Alley pen holding one hundred girls under the age of fourteen until they mature for the purposes of prostitution. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Donaldina Cameron begins her work at the Presbyterian Rescue Mission on Sacramento Street. She takes especial pains to free the Chinatown bagnio slaves. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The mutilated body of Minnie Williams is found in the library of the Emanuel Baptist Church. Her dress has been rammed so violently down her throat that the medical examiner has trouble pulling it out. A further search of the church by police uncovers the badly decomposed body of Blanche Lamont, another highly religious girl, in the belfry. Theodore Durrant, a young man known for his piety, is arrested for the murders. Friends and acquaintances don't want to believe his guilt until Annie Welming steps forward and reveals that Durrant had tried to rape her. She fled the Church and so survived. Durrant is sentenced to hang. His case remains on appeal.
1896	The third Cliff House and Sutro Baths open. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Building Trades Council announces the closed shop: no union member shall work on jobs with men without union working cards. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Velodrome opens. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst sends Ambrose Bierce to Washington to fight Collis P. Huntington's machinations on the part of the Southern Pacific Railroad. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Little Pete begins to move in on horse-racing.
	The whole period