arriving monthly, the city was poorly equipped to house them, feed them and provide non-skilled work. After the fires, the city was once again a tent city in the areas decimated by the June fire. Fortunately, most businesses destroyed in the May fire and rebuilt, were spared.
Our story begins with Pierre and Manon now married and expecting a child in these uncertain times. Fortunately, their brig, “The Eliza,” docked on the Long Wharf was spared the wrath of both fires. Manon’s wharf-side canteen, serving hearty soups, pâté sandwiches on fresh baguettes with a glass of wine from their wine bar, is doing a roaring business thanks to the elimination of so many competitors and the increased number of travelers taking the paddle-boat ferries from their wharf to Sacramento, Stockton and the mines.
Still, they face serious challenges in these uncertain and dangerous times. Can Manon realize her dream to be the first woman to own and operate a quality French restaurant given male domination of all the fine eating establishments in the city? Will anti-foreign immigrant sentiment affect and limit Pierre’s ability to mount successful business enterprises? Will the dearth of easy to mine placer gold along the river banks and continued influx of unskilled immigrants, political undesirables, hoodlums and prostitutes limit Pierre and Manon’s ability to achieve their goals? And so their story resumes in these turbulent times.
— Ken Salter
Berkeley, California
California Gold Rush Journal
CHAPTER ONE
San Francisco — July 1851
As with the disastrous fire of May 3-4, the newly burned area of the June 22nd arson fire was now a scene of frenetic rebuilding. Though the City’s administrative center was still sooty rubble, the rest of the burned area from Montgomery Street to Broadway was rife with the sound of carpenters’ hammers on redwood framing and the slapping of masons’ mortar on bricks as the affected commercial and residential areas quickly were resurrected anew.
Manon’s catering business and accompanying wine bar were booming on the Long Wharf where our British brig, “The Eliza,” was berthed. Manon’s newly liberated partners, Teri and Giselle, who ran our food and liquor tables on the wharf, were largely responsible for the increase in male patronage at their stands. Both now eschewed “respectable” married woman’s traditional mode of dress—high-necked dresses with petticoats and a fashionable bonnet to discreetly hide one’s hair. Teri, whose Chilean boyfriend had dumped her and stolen her earnings after his liquor store burned in May, now wore her long, blond tresses loose down the back of her form-fitting Chilean peasant’s dress with low-cut bodice. Giselle, more reserved, now wore a minimum of petticoats under form-fitting dresses that no longer covered her dainty shoes and boots which now gave an alluring glimpse of well-turned ankles as she served Manon’s hearty soups and thick slices of home-made pâtés on freshly baked baguettes to an ever increasing male clientele. Each women now wore a flower in their loose flowing hair to signify they were no longer married or bound to an unappreciative male.
After the fire, my assistant, Georges, took the first paddle-steamer leaving for Panama and was on his way to escort his American fiancé, Nelly Swanson, to San Francisco to thwart her father’s plans to marry her off to an eligible New York bachelor who could help promote the father’s many business interests. He’d received a tear-stained letter from Nelly attesting to her desperate plight. Their shipboard romance on the trip to New York on the Clipper, “Flying Cloud,” and Georges’ departure meant I now had to find another assistant to help in my newly established private detective and notary business serving the legions of French arriving weekly and those already trying their luck in the gold fields.
I decided to head for town, scour the newspapers for the latest efforts of the Committee of Vigilance to apprehend the villains responsible for torching half the city less than six weeks after the last arson that destroyed the main commercial area and most warehouses. I also wanted to seek the advice of our friend, Pierre-Louis, proprietor of Les Bons Amis restaurant on Dupont Street.
The papers teemed with caustic accusations against the Sydney Ducks, who were generally blamed for the fire. The city was now effectively without police or judicial protection. City Hall, the courts and police headquarters all burned in the fire. The Committee of Vigilance was the only organized group that had the backing of the business and professional communities and the capability to arrest, incarcerate, try and execute arsonists and criminals. They were currently detaining 30-40 suspects at their armed headquarters, which had escaped the fire’s wrath.
Judge Campbell sought to thwart the Committee of Vigilance by appointing a new grand jury to investigate the fire and charge criminals. The grand jury was the sole judicial body that was difficult to corrupt or bribe as its members were not randomly selected but appointed from the city’s leading citizens — bankers, merchants and professionals who owned property. Ironically, several members of the new grand jury were also Committee members.
The papers were screaming for the neck of a Sydney Duck, named James Stuart, also known as “English Jim,” who claimed he was Thomas Berdue. He’d been recognized by a Committee member on the street and arrested. He was wanted for the murder of Sheriff Charles Moore in Auburn, California during a robbery attempt in October, 1850. Stuart had been convicted of murder and sentenced to hang in Marysville. He escaped and fled when the rope around his neck broke. Berdue protested adamantly not to be Stuart, but the Committee sent him to Marysville to be quickly retried and hung.
“What do you think of the Stuart affair?” I asked Pierre-Louis when he joined me for an aperitif. “Do they have the right man?”
“Even if they don’t, the guy’s a Duck and in with the gang that torched the city and nearly got my restaurant this time. I say hang ‘em all or deport ‘em; enough’s enough,” Pierre-Louis replied with vehemence.
I explained my dilemma at the loss of my assistant, Georges. “Any ideas how I might find a replacement?” I asked.
“You could always put a help wanted ad in the French sections of the newspapers, but you’d be flooded with unqualified and desperate job seekers. Better to ask people you know and trust,” he replied.
“You’re right as usual. I’ll try to be patient and ask around. I can’t afford to make a mistake.” I was thinking of the latest delivery of several sacks of mail from the French Consulate. I needed someone who could read and sort through the piles of letters addressed to the thousands of French gold seekers who couldn’t read or write or were constantly on the move in search of richer diggings. Most of the letters were addressed to someone “at San Francisco” or simply “in the gold fields.”
My agreement with the consulate required me to match names of emigrants with ship’s manifests provided by the consulate and forward the letters to the groups of French miners working either the northern or southern placers where the consul general had sent the mostly impoverished arrivals. Georges and I had delivered letters to the northern mining camps along the north and south forks of the Yuba River. I would now need to take a similar trip to the southern placers and seek out French miners there.
Hundreds of new immigrants arrived weekly and brought even more letters from mothers, wives, fiancées and other family members desperate to know their loved one was safe and sound and hopefully getting rich. By visiting French
