Seventy-five Years in California
A History of Events and Life in California: Personal, Political and Military; Under the Mexican Regime; During the Quasi-military Government of the Territory by the United States, and After the Admission of the State to the Union: Being a Compilation by a Witness of the Events Described; a Reissue and Enlarged Illustrated Edition of "Sixty Years in California", to which Much New Matter by Its Author Has Been Added which He Contemplated Publishing Under the Present Title at the Time of His Death; Edited and with an Historical Foreword and Index by Douglas S. Watson--
by William Heath Davis
Description
William Heath Davis (1822-1909) was the son of a Boston ship captain engaged in the Hawaiian trade and a Polynesian mother. He visited California twice on trading voyages before setting up business there in 1838. In 1845 he settled permanently in San Francisco, becoming one of the city's leading merchants. His marriage to María de Jesus Estudillo tied him to the Hispanic community in his adopted region. Seventy-five years in California (1929) is an expansion of Sixty years in California, a book Davis published in 1889. It is a history of California as well as the author's memoirs of his life through the mid 1850s with an emphasis on the transformation of Yerba Buena to San Francisco, the Gold Rush, and the imposition of United States power in California.