Alameda County CA Archives History - Books .....1772-1866 Westward The Course Of Empire 
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Book Title: Berkeley The First Seventy-Five Years

1772-1866
I: Westward the Course of Empire

THE MORNING was beautiful and clear. The men gathered on a slope of the Contra
Costa hills one day in May, 1866, could see ships outward-bound through the
Golden Gate. Trustees of the College of California, they stood or sat at their
ease around a rock where, six years earlier, they had dedicated a
quarter-section of new land to the cause of learning. One of them, watching the
ships, thoughtfully quoted the final stanza of a prophetic poem:

"Westward the course of empire takes its way;
   The four first acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama of the day;
   Time's noblest offspring is the last."

  "Who wrote that poem, Billings?" asked one of his hearers. "Wasn't it Berkeley?"

  Trustee Frederick Billings nodded; then, turning, asked suddenly: "Why
wouldn't Berkeley be a good name for the college town?"

  Others agreed. The discussion continued over luncheon in the new home of Dr.
Samuel H. Willey, acting president of the college, near the campus site. And at
their regular meeting, held in San Francisco on May 24, 1866, the trustees
unanimously adopted the name.

  Thus, according to the most reliable accounts, the city of learning opposite
the Golden Gate was christened. Much of the story sounds apocryphal, and it is
probable that the scene by Founders' Rock has been embellished in the
seventy-five years that have since passed. But parts of it, at least, are
verified by official records and first-hand accounts: the name was suggested by
Frederick Billings, President of the Board of Trustees of the College of
California, in honor of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, and was formally
adopted at the meeting of the board on May 24, 1866.

  Most commentators, then and since, have agreed that the name was appropriate.
Billings himself said afterwards, in a letter written to President Daniel Coit
Gilman of the university in 1873, that it came to him "as a sort of
inspiration!" His colleagues, men of letters and of intellectual vision who had
dared in the midst of the social anarchy of the Gold Rush period to lay plans
for a seat of learning worthy of their faith in California, and to project a
city about it which would preserve the tradition of Cambridge and New Haven,
accepted it as such. The only dissidents were outsiders who, through loyalty to
their new State or through ignorance of the reasons for selection of "Berkeley"
decried the imposition of such an alien name. One of the ablest—and
slyest—members of the opposition was a writer for the San Francisco Bulletin of
May 29, 1866, who, after announcing the board's action, commented:

  "We are not sure but in the list of rejected names there were not some at
least more euphonious than the present one. How are the poetical fledglings
which the college expects to nurse in future years, to say nothing of those
already full-grown and 'out-cropping,' going to make Berkeley rhyme in the
coming odes and bucolics? There's trouble ahead for the classic birds and the
sooner they swoop down upon the name the better for their rhymes and rhythms.
But considering that a year was required to select a name one would have thought
that something original at least might have been found. There must have been
some poverty of invention to suggest borrowing thus early, though if the loan of
a name must be made the thing has been cleverly done. But if the Trustees borrow
they ought not to apply the college clamps to the boys if they sometimes borrow
by way of imitating the example!"

  The writer had not yet learned the source of Billings' "inspiration," but he
assumed that the name probably honored Bishop Berkeley, and gave a brief review
of the bishop's career which is as admirable a biographical notice today as it
was when it first appeared in print:

  "The . . . Irish prelate ... as Dean came over to Newport, R. I., in 1729 with
the intention of founding a college [in the Bermudas]. His scheme failed but he
gave to Yale College a library of 880 volumes and his estate called Whitehall.
There is still a Berkeley prize foundation at Yale and the house is still
standing at Newport where he lived, and an organ presented by him is still in
the church at that place. Berkeley went back to England for a residence of two
and a half years and received from Queen Anne 'as a special mark of favor' the
Bishopric of Cloyne, which place he held for twenty years. He was a man of
exalted character, a liberal patron of learning and a notable author. Like many
great men of his time he had special hobbies. Having used tar water as a
medicine, he wrote 'Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Enquiries concerning
the Virtues of Tar Water.' As the bishop was a patron of at least one infant
college in America and strove to found another there is some fitness in those
giving his name to the college homestead on the Pacific Coast . . ."

  Had the reporter thus ended his editorial and his speculations, he might still
have won the thanks of the college's board of trustees for his fluent defense of
the new town's namesake, despite his caustic remarks about "borrowing." But he
went on to discuss another possible reason for the board's selection, thus
provoking a controversy that gave editors ammunition for good-natured "ribbing"
of the college town for many years.

  "... but there was another famous Berkeley," he said, "a royal Governor of the
Colony of Virginia, who gave his name to a county since noted for treason. The
governor was a sanguinary old Tory and shed so much blood that he astonished
even Charles II. Besides he was no friend to popular education. For in reply to
commissioners sent to inquire into the affairs of the colony he made the famous
declaration 'Thank God! there are no free schools nor printing presses, and I
hope there will be none for an hundred years, for learning has brought
disobedience and heresy, and sects, into the world, and printing has divulged
these and other libels.'

  "Which Berkeley do the trustees really mean to honor? And how are the public
to be certified that they have not slyly lugged in the old Tory or at least
divided the honors between the two? It might be well enough to put an
explanatory note under the name of the beautiful town site: 'This is not
Berkeley the Tory, who anathematized free schools and printing presses, but
Berkeley the friend of education, who wrote the famous treatise on tar water.' "

  Billings publicly quieted these slanderous conjectures when he donated a copy
of Smibert's portrait of Bishop Berkeley to the university for presentation at
the first commencement exercises on the new campus in July, 1873, with the
thought, written to President Gilman: " . . . it is most fit that he who gave
the name of the good Bishop to the site of the University, should have the
privilege of placing his portrait in the University halls."

  Scholars have raised one last point of issue over the christening, fortunately
a minor one for everyone except the scholars themselves: did Billings misquote
the verse which served as his inspiration? Probably he did, if he read the same
version that the eminent historian, George Bancroft, had used in his History of
the United States—"Westward the star of empire takes its way"—a misquotation
ascribed originally to John Quincy Adams in his "Oration at Plymouth" in 1802.
Evidence that Billings did make this error is found in a letter from Dr. Willey
to President Gilman on January 2, 1873, in which he says: "Berkeley's couplet
about the 'Star of Empire' determined the choice." Fortunately it is a dispute
which does not affect the basic facts about the name's origins, and one which
need worry only purists who may wish to debate whether Adams' version was an
improvement in poetic imagery over the original, as some have contended.


Lost Spanish Arcadia

THE LANDSCAPE which spread before Billings and his colleagues on that May
morning seventy-five years ago was not far unlike the scene viewed by another
little group of pioneers near the same spot almost a century before. True, there
were some plowed fields and farmhouses in the 1866 foreground, a few buildings
and a wharf were outlined against the Bay waters at Ocean View, and the
sprawling, growing metropolis of San Francisco was visible to keen eyes to the
left of the Golden Gate. But these signs of human habitation were so scattered
as hardly to affect the grandeur of the natural setting which had greeted the
weary followers of Pedro Fages and Father Juan Crespi on March 28, 1772, when
they halted for the night on the banks of a stream — probably Strawberry Creek
—somewhere near Founders' Rock, while exploring the eastern shore of San
Francisco Bay.

  "As soon as we stopped," Crespi recorded in his diary, "the soldiers succeeded
in killing a bear, so that they had fresh meat to go on with." On the next day,
which "broke very cloudy," they proceeded to discover San Pablo Bay ("bahia
redondo" Crespi called it) and to explore the San Joaquin Valley as far as the
site of Antioch. On the basis of these explorations, Crespi drew the first map
which showed San Francisco Bay and the future town site of Berkeley.

  During their march through what is now Oakland, the party had been much
annoyed by the "ascents and descents" of the hills and by the "zancudos and
mosquitoes which molested us as much or more than they molest the inhabitants of
the port of San Blas." Despite the marshes along the adjacent estuary, the
Spaniards observed that the site of East Oakland was "very suitable for a good
settlement; for on account of the proximity of the forest they [the settlers]
could provide themselves with timber and firewood." (This forest of redwoods,
called Arroyo del Bosque by Fages and Crespi, and known later as the San Antonio
or Peralta Redwoods, was almost totally destroyed to provide lumber for houses
in the San Francisco of Gold Rush days.) Emerging from the hills, apparently
near the present location of Oakland's Technical High School, they obtained the
first view by white men through the Golden Gate. "We halted a little while in
order to map the entry through the gate to the mainland, and it appeared to all
of us to run from west to east through the gulf where the seven or more
farallones are lined up." From this point they observed that the gate was "about
three quarters of a mile wide" estimated the area of San Francisco Bay, and
noted the locations of Alcatraz, Yerba Buena, and Angel Islands.

  The party "came to seven arroyos of running water" on the march from San
Lorenzo Creek to the site of Berkeley, three of the streams being found opposite
the Golden Gate. On the surrounding plain were "many lilies and an abundance of
very leafy sweet marjoram." Somewhat to their surprise, they saw not "a single
heathen, and very few tracks of them" during this journey.

  The Fages-Crespi expedition did not encounter any Indians until it had marched
beyond the site of Berkeley almost to what is now Pinole Point. However, there
is evidence that Acalanes, Bologanes, Carquinez, Juchiyunes, and other Costanoan
(coastal) Indians frequented the area at the time of Spanish exploration. Don
Jose de Canizares, pilot of the San Carlos, first ship to enter the Golden Gate,
who explored San Francisco Bay in a launch in 1775, thus reported to his
commander, Don Juan Manuel de Ayala:

  "The extreme end of this sound, eastward forms with a point, a pocket, which,
at low tide is nearly dry. [These were the Oakland and Berkeley tide flats.] In
every part there are seen poles driven in (the mud), with black feathers,
bunches of tule, and little shells, which I believe are buoys for fishing, since
they are in the water."

  At some later date the Spaniards named the arroyo between the sites of Oakland
and Berkeley Temescal Creek—a name which, according to one authority, "appears
to be a mutilation of the Nahua word 'temazcalli,' the name of sweathouscs in
Mexico"—presumably because this stream was at one time the location of an Indian
village. These pyrolactic institutions were a feature of every Costanoan community.

  But there are even more positive evidences that Berkeley and adjacent areas
were the location of Indian settlements. Mortar Rock Park, at Indian Rock Avenue
and San Diego Road, contains a huge irregular outcropping of rock, in which many
smooth cylindrical holes record the tedious labor of generations of Indian women
who ground corn there. Many large shellmounds, one of the largest of which was
found in Emeryville near West Berkeley, have revealed to archaeologists the
accretion of thousands of years of native life in this area. Excavations
conducted by Professor Clinton Hart Merriam in the Emeryville mound in 1902
revealed several distinct strata of shells, bits of charcoal, ashes, and
artifacts. The mound itself was found to be a truncated cone with a diameter of
270 feet at the base and 145 feet at the top. Previously, in 1871. during
construction of a racetrack nearby, another lower mound had been found to
contain graves and other relics which with evidence found elsewhere in Alameda
County prove the antiquity of one of the lose races of California.

  The descendants of this ancient people—if such they were—were docile
creatures, and the Franciscan padres had little difficulty in converting them to
the communal labor and Catholic ritual of the Mission San Jose, after that
outpost of Christianity was established in 1797 Thus this mission became, with
one exception, the wealthiest and most populous in California before its
secularization by Mexican authorities in 1834. Its prosperity was rivaled only
by that of the ranchos of the contra costa, the first of which was granted in
1820 to Luis Maria Peralta, sergeant in the Spanish colonial army, who as a boy
of 17 had accompanied his father, Corporal Gabriel Peralta, and the Anza
expedition of 1776 in the settlement of San Francisco.

  Don Luis applied to Governor Pablo Vicente de Sola in 1818 for the land
stretching north from the creek named San Leandro ". . . and from this to a hill
[El Cerrito] adjoining the sea beach in the same direction and along the coast .
. . " In recognition of conspicuous military service he was granted the land two
years later, and thus formed the 48,000-acre Rancho San Antonio on which stand
today the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Piedmont, Emeryville, Albany,
and part of San Leandro.

  Peralta took possession of his grant on August 16, 1820, with a brief
dedication ceremony at the point where East 14th Street now crosses San Leandro
Creek. Present as witnesses were Juan Miranda, Nicolas Berryesa, and two of
Peralta's sons, Antonio Maria and Jose Domingo. The youths, aged 19 and 25
respectively, then accompanied the party to El Cerrito Creek, where they marked
the northern boundary by placing stones of various colors in a rocky niche on
the bank of the stream. (Later known as Monument Rock, this dedicatory stone now
forms part of the foundation of the house at 552 Vincente Avenue in Berkeley.)
Young Domingo could hardly have surmised on this occasion that he was claiming
the very portion of land which would be given to him by his father twenty-two
years later.

  Already an old man when he received this grant, Don Luis never actually lived
on it, preferring instead, from the time of his retirement in 1826 until his
death in 1851, to live on another grant which he had obtained in 1818 near the
pueblo San Jose—Portados la Rancheria del Chino. He placed four grown sons in
charge of the Rancho San Antonio, and in 1842 divided it among them. To Ygnacio
went the most southeasterly section (East Oakland and San Leandro); Antonio
received the part between present Fruitvale and Lake Merritt, including Alameda;
Vicente obtained the balance of present Oakland; and Domingo was given the
northernmost portion, where Berkeley and Albany now stand. Foreseeing the danger
from family altercations, Don Luis counseled with these wise words, which he
also wrote into his will: "I command all my children, that they remain in peace,
succoring each other in their necessities, eschewing all avaricious ambitions,
without entering into foolish differences for one or two calves, for the cows
bring them forth every year; and inasmuch as the land is narrow, it is
indispensable that the cattle should become mixed up, for which reason I command
my sons to be friendly and united."

  To the fact that they followed this advice may be credited much of the
brothers' prosperity during the next decade. Until American occupation the
contra costa, including ranchos of the Castro, Estudillo, and Alviso families,
was a Spanish Arcadia of vast herds, haciendas, fiestas, and commerce. Yankee
traders pushed their tall ships into San Leandro Bay and San Antonio Estuary,
bought tons of hides and tallow for the New England and South American markets.
Each adobe ranchhouse became a settlement where saddles and harness, cartwheels
and shoes and farm implements, were manufactured to supply the needs of the
rancheros and their families. The social atmosphere was one of almost continuous
carnival: for the Spanish Californians a birth, a wedding, a visit, a
homecoming— any unusual event—was an occasion for feasting and dancing and
general merriment. Rodeos, bullfights, and barbecues accompanied the seasonal
roundup and slaughter of cattle; on these occasions the matador and the vaquero
gave exhibitions of their skill, while the hordes of Indian peons feasted on the
viscera, which they believed imparted to them the strength and endurance of the
slaughtered bulls.

  Headquarters of the Rancho San Antonio was on Antonio's section, which had the
principal hacienda. Domingo had built for himself in 1841 an adobe house on the
south side of Codornices Creek, on present Albina Street just off Hopkins—the
first building on the site of Berkeley. About ten years later he erected a frame
house just north of present 1521 Hopkins Street, which became his residence
during the following years.

  Shortly before his death in 1851, Don Luis called together all the members of
the large Peralta clan for a final bit of sage advice: "My sons" he said, "God
has given this gold to the Americans. Had He desired us to have it, He would
have given it to us ere now. Therefore, go not after it, but let others go.
Plant your lands and reap; these be your best gold fields, for all must eat
while they live."

  That these lands were, indeed, the "best gold fields" proved the undoing of
the Peralta fortune. Disappointed gold-seekers, drifting back from the Mother
Lode in the early fifties, cast covetous eyes on the fertile fields and
hillsides of the Rancho San Antonio. The first American settlers—the brothers
Robert, William, and Edward Patten and Moses Chase—leased farm land from Antonio
and on it raised good crops of hay and grain. Later arrivals, however, were not
so considerate. Disregarding the claims of the Peraltas, they became squatters
on the property of these proud Spaniards, who for the most part were too amazed
and helpless to resist the intruders. For protesting the occupation of the
rancho, Domingo was put in jail for six months and heavily fined by squatters
who mounted a cannon in the plaza of future Oakland and claimed the Peraltas'
property by force of arms.

  Despite their high-handed methods, these American pioneers were sticklers for
legality, and in the course of time they deprived the Peraltas of their holdings
by due process of law. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which California was
ceded by Mexico to the United States in 1848, had promised that land claims of
the Spanish-Mexicans who remained would be respected, and actually most of the
grants were upheld eventually by American courts. However, the courts moved too
slowly and expensively for the claimants, whose lands were being inundated
meanwhile by floods of American settlers, and most of them found themselves
dispossessed, to all practical purposes, by sales at prices too low to bring
much but lawyers' fees. This process was accelerated by the California Land Act
of 1851 (called "the devil's own instrument" by Josiah Royce), complicating the
method for establishing Spanish and Mexican land grant claims, and by the
Possessory Right Law, passed by the State Legislature in 1852. The latter, while
theoretically limited to unclaimed public lands, in practice legalized squatting
on old ranchos by disregarding land grant claims then in litigation in the
courts (an amendment passed in 1861 specifically referred to lands under
litigation under some "pretended Mexican or Spanish grant") ; by its terms
American citizens "now occupying and settled upon, or who may hereafter occupy
or settle upon any of the Public Lands in this State, for the purpose of
cultivating or grazing the same" were allowed to claim 160 acres, provided only
that "to the best of his knowledge and belief . . . the said lands are not
claimed under any existing title" and that improvements to the value of $200 be
made on the property within ninety days.

  As a result of these laws, and because of disputes among the Peralta heirs,
who forgot their family unanimity after the death of Don Luis, most of the
Rancho San Antonio was in litigation from the start of the American occupation
until 1877, when the United States Government issued patents for Domingo's and
Vicente's sections, last parts of the rancho to have their titles cleared. The
brothers had died long before this, with little left of their own vast
inheritances to pass on to their children.

  Under the terms of the California Land Act, Domingo presented his claim in
January, 1852, to the newly appointed Federal Board of Land Commissioners. Even
before the claim was approved two years later, he had sold all but a 300-acre
homestead tract around his home. The first transaction disposed of a 50-acre
water-front tract (now known as Fleming Point) to John J. Fleming of San
Francisco on July 20, 1853, for $2,200. Less than a month later, on August 16, a
second deed transferred the rest of Domingo's property, except the homestead
reservation, to four San Franciscans—Hall McAllister, Richard P. Hammond, Lucien
Hermann, and Joseph K. Irving—for $82,000. The reference points described in
this transaction are good evidence of the reason for the difficulty that was
later experienced in establishing definite boundaries for the property; they
were "the stone that appears like a monument facing to the North . . . the
Frenchman's house . . . where the line crosses the broken fence . . . Indian
mound . . . Flamingo house . . . buckeye tree" and similar objects.

  Despite this substantial deal, Domingo's financial situation steadily
deteriorated. In 1854, sale of his homestead was ordered to pay a debt of $134.
On December 31,1857, he regained full title to the property through payment of
$3,000 to Horace W Carpentier, Oakland speculator, and J. B. Watson. In 1860 he
sold 100 acres to John Everding for $4,000; and from then until his death the
balance of the homestead was involved in a series of mortgages and exchanges
which dissipated his few remaining resources. When he died in 1865 he was
interred in an unmarked pauper's grave in St. Mary's Cemetery.

Squatters and Settlers

LOCATION of the first American building on the site of Berkeley and identity of
the first American settler are in some doubt. The deed by which Domingo Peralta
sold Fleming Point, dated July 20, 1853, described the property as being "in a
westerly direction from the dwelling house of the said Peralta, and being a
point on the bay of San Francisco and formerly occupied by K. C. Drake, under
the said Peralta." How long Drake had "occupied" the point and where his house
was are not known. Presumably he was on the Albany side of the present city
boundary.

  Probably Berkeley's first American building was the home of Michael Curtis, a
farmer who came to Ocean View (West Berkeley) in 1852. In the following year
Captain W. F. Bowen opened a roadhouse on what is now the northwest corner of
San Pablo Avenue and Delaware Street; it became the community's first grocery
and feed store, and was a station for the stages which ran from Oakland.

  Proximity to the Bay, rich level land, and easy transportation soon attracted
a number of settlers and businessmen to Ocean View, and it became the first
community in present Berkeley, growing so steadily that "East Berkeley" did not
rival it for many years. In 1853 Captain J. Jacobs bought a 50-acre tract of
land there and started a shipping business, carrying grain and freight to San
Francisco and Sacramento in his sloop. His venture became so well known that the
community often was referred to as Jacob's Landing. He operated at first without
benefit of a wharf, but in 1866 he built a pier between Bristol (now Hearst
Avenue) and Delaware Streets. (This later became the landing for a passenger
steamer which made four trips a day between Berkeley and San Francisco.)

  A more pretentious business, Berkeley's first real manufacturing plant, came
to Ocean View in 1855. This was the Everding and Rammelsburg Starch and Wheat
Factory, attracted from San Francisco by the convenient transportation and
plentiful supply of water. (The firm previously had hauled water from Sausalito
at a cost of $1 for 250 gallons.) The plant's ten employees boosted Ocean View's
population and created a demand for more services.

  In 1856, the year blacksmith and wagonmaker Peter Guenette settled in Ocean
View, population of the surrounding area had grown sufficiently for the county
to erect a schoolhouse. The community's first church services were conducted in
the school building in 1856 by a circuit rider, Reverend Cox of Lafayette.

  Settlement of upper Berkeley was much slower and more scattered than that
around Ocean View. The first Americans to claim property in Berkeley, under
provisions of the Possessory Right Law, were four disappointed
gold-seekers—Francis Kittredge Shattuck, George M. Blake, James Leonard, and
William Hillegass —who filed 160-acre claims with the County Recorder in
Martinez (Alameda County not yet having been formed) in June and July, 1852.
Despite the requirement that $200 in improvements be made on such claims within
ninety days, none of the quartet built a house there for several years. They
lived in the new town of Oakland and traveled back and forth over the country
road (later Telegraph Avenue) to farm their property. Despite the papers filed
in Martinez, they were squatters before the law. Shattuck, Blake, and Hillegass
had their claims legalized in 1856 by deeds obtained from members of the San
Francisco combine which had bought most of Domingo Peralta's property in 1853.
Each paid $5,000 for his deed. Leonard received a deed for 130 acres of his
quarter-section three years later, for $4,200.

   These pioneers of upper Berkeley had an important influence on the
development of the future city. Shattuck and Blake, brothers-in-law, had come to
California from New York on the same boat in 1850, intent on finding their
fortunes in the mining fields. Having only indifferent success, they left the
fields late in 1851 or early in 1852 with their new-found friends, Hillegass and
Leonard, and settled in Oakland.

  To all except Leonard, ranching was a secondary occupation, Blake, trained in
law, opened an attorney's office; Shattuck and Hillegass went into partnership
in operating a livery stable. All three prospered and took leading roles in
public affairs. At one time or another all three were Oakland city councilmen.
Shattuck and Blake each served as mayor of Oakland, the former also serving at
other times as town clerk, county supervisor, and State assemblyman; the latter,
as city attorney and judge. As Berkeley did not become a corporate municipality
until 1878, their influence on it was largely that of property owners and
investors, but the college town held them in such high esteem as to name streets
for them—names still in use.

  Another early settler on the site of Berkeley was Captain Orrin Simmons, a
Vermonter who brought to San Francisco in the early fifties a cargo of lumber
which netted him $30,000. This he invested in business, but a fire took most of
his fortune. In the fall of 1854 he turned to farming, acquiring from S. A.
Coburn squatter's rights to 160 acres (between Strawberry Creek and the present
School for the Deaf) for a total of $1,923, including "right, title and interest
in and to a certain house, and out-houses, fences, lumber, and other
improvements" made apparently by Coburn. Simmons moved to his new property the
next year. He obtained full title to the land in 1857, paying an additional
§2,500 to John A. Bonnerton, who in his turn had acquired title from the
purchasers of Domingo Peralta's property. In the same year he purchased two
tracts north of his first one, including most of the present campus above
College Avenue. Simmons did not succeed as a rancher. He is thought to have
influenced the trustees of the College of California to select the Berkeley
site, selling his entire ranch, except 100 acres previously transferred to Henry
Durant, to them in 1864 for $35,000.

  During the late fifties and early sixties Domingo Peralta's former property
was the subject of almost continuous parcelings, mortgagings, and transfers.
Most of the transactions were made for speculation or investment; a few, to
provide homes and ranches for new settlers. Among these were James Bradshaw
Woolsey, Mark Ashby, Amasa Drake Colby, and Noah Webster, whose residences are
perpetuated in street names in southern Berkeley; Captain John T. Fowler and
John T. Kelsey of the same neighborhood; James McGee, remembered by a street in
west-central Berkeley; John Schmidt, who settled on part of the old Domingo
Peralta homestead; E. B. Goddard, a college trustee whose house stood at the
present location of Cloyne Court, north of the campus; and Napoleon Bonaparte
Byrne, whose home was a mile farther north.

  Byrne was a Missouri plantation owner who crossed the plains in a covered
wagon in 1859 with his wife and four young children, his wife's mother and
sister, two free Negroes, and some stock. Although the rigors of the six-month
journey depleted the stock and limited the household possessions, Mary Tanner
Byrne managed to bring "her guitar, some books, music, and a trunk full of silk
dresses and other finery." Soon she was writing to relatives back East about
their first visit to the "Pacific Metropolis" (San Francisco), where like any
tourist they "were up and down Montgomery Street many tiniest and where "I got
each of us a very pretty new bonnet of drab colored hair, mine trimmed with blue
and Edna's with pink."

  It was in Oakland, however, that her eyes opened widest with wonder and
excitement. (A sensitive, literate woman, Mrs. Byrne left in her letters —quoted
by Mary Tennent Carleton in an excellent article, "The Byrnes of Berkeley." in
the California Historical Society Quarterly in March, 1938—some of the best
contemporary descriptions of East Bay life.) "We have been attending the
[county] fair.” she wrote. "The display of fruit and vegetables was a far
greater sight than I had ever dreamed could be made of such articles all in the
bright of growing perfection.” She spoke of finding "every vegetable that I know
anything about. Cabbages, tomatoes, Irish and sweet potatoes, green peas,
snap-beans and radishes; in short everything, apples and pears, plums, apricots
and peaches ..."

  But her greatest amazement was over the grapes. "I can emphatically assure
you, you have never seen grapes . . . It is a sight, the large purple bunches
that have not a defective grape on them, each grape often as large as the plums
you have seen . . . bunches would usually weigh eight or nine pounds . . . Grape
raising is getting to be a mania here, and wine making is going to be one of
California's richest productions." Back East, the Tanners' and the Byrnes'
mouths must have watered.

  It was no surprise, after this introduction to the East Bay, to learn that
Byrne was looking for farm land in this region. Within a few months he had found
a site a few miles north of Oakland, and in four transactions between May, 1860,
and April, 1861, he bought 827 acres covering much of the present Northbrae
district and the area north of Cedar Street. "I believe it the prettiest
situation in the valley." Mrs. Byrne wrote to her relatives. "Indeed I have
difficulty in believing there is prettier in the state." Napoleon quickly
erected a small house on his property, which was to be followed in 1868 with a
fine new home, "The Cedars." for many years a show place, which still stands on
the south bank of Codornices Creek between Oxford and Spruce streets. Mary
Tanner Byrne was soon writing about Nap's business deals, with land at $30 an
acre; about his grief that his "are not of the first class farming lands."
although the ranch was "good enough to pay for itself with one or two crops";
about the "enchanting view" and the "advantages .  . . too numerous to mention."

  "Our place is about one mile distant (back) from one of the handsomest roads
in the state," she went on, in a letter dated March 26, 1860. "From Oakland to
San Pablo is a distance of about twelve miles. The road has been laid out
through the valley on a perfectly straight line within about one-half mile of
the beach. It is immensely wide, tho' the land is so valuable. It is intended to
set out the whole distance with trees, that never lose their foliage here, and
it is styled the Contra Costa Avenue [present San Pablo Avenue]. We frequently
ride down to Oakland on this road tho' it is somewhat farther than our road, but
the scenery is so beautiful that I can never look at it enough. There are three
lines of stages running on this road, both ways, twice a day, so that we can
ride down to Oakland any time almost for ten cents." The avenue was a favorite
drive for sporting San Franciscans, behind horses worth "from $2,500.00 to
$3000.00 on account of their trotting qualities."

  Byrne became a commanding figure in Alameda County, although— being a Southern
Democrat in a Republican State during the Civil War period—he was under a
political handicap. Feeling was bitter between members of the two parties, and
Byrne was not on speaking terms with many of his neighbors, whom he called "damn
Yankees" so consistently that his children thought the term was a single word. A
daughter, Kate Byrne, who still lives in Berkeley, recalls the story of a North
Berkeley sewer contractor named Murphy, father of five boys. Meeting him after
the birth of another boy, Byrne asked him when he was going to "quit." "Not
until North Berkeley becomes Democratic." Murphy answered.

  Napoleon Byrne did his own part in promoting party interests: four more
children were added to the family during the decade after his arrival in
California. He also joined his fellow Democrats in the formality—necessary in
order to maintain representation on the ballot—of running for office
occasionally. Kate Byrne relates that at one of the County Democratic
conventions her father was nominated for the Legislature. Hoping to avoid
spending time campaigning, he announced: "Boys. I'm too busy with my ranch, and
can't be bothered running up to Sacramento.” The presiding officer, dropping his
gavel, answered: "Hell. Byrne, you don't expect to get it, do you?"

  Byrne was never satisfied with the soil on his Berkeley ranch. Learning of the
enormous crops that could be raised in the delta region near Stockton, he joined
three friends in purchasing Venice Island, to which he moved in 1873. Using
Chinese labor to build levees and reclaim the marshy land, the men were able to
raise enormous crops in dry years. The reclamation was so expensive, however,
that Byrne had to sell his Berkeley property, piece by piece. He finally
abandoned the island in 1880 and returned to the thriving new college town. His
wife, who had left the beautiful Cedars with misgivings, had died on the island;
all but six acres of his vast holdings, including the big house, were sold; and
he had lost most of his money in the mud of the delta. But he built a new home
on Oxford Street, and opened a fuel yard at University and Shattuck, which he
operated more in a spirit of charity than of business until uncollected bills
forced him to close it. Finally, in 1887, he was rewarded for his political
loyalty: Democratic President Grover Cleveland appointed him Postmaster, a
position which he held through both of Cleveland's administrations.

  Napoleon Byrne died in 1905. His had been a minor role in the development of
the city, but living monuments commemorate this pioneer— the cedars, cypresses,
and pine trees which now grace Live Oak Park and the neighboring area, planted
at the behest of his beauty-loving wife.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

BERKELEY
THE FIRST SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS

COMPILED BY WORKERS OF THE WRITERS' PROGRAM OF THE WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION
IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 

CO-SPONSORS: 
CITY OF BERKELEY  
BERKELEY FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION 

PUBLISHED BY THE GILLICK PRESS -BERKELEY- CALIFORNIA MCMXLI



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