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The African Founding Father of California, a "Hidden Figure" to be discovered

by Khubaka, Michael Harris
The "hidden figures" of California African American Heritage remains a difficult and challenging notion given the difficult journey towards freedom. Today, AB 783 (Weber) may find a way to begin to officially quantify and qualify on the record the profound contributions to the forward flow of humanity by people of African ancestry throughout the State of California.
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Honorable William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr. was born in Christiansted on St. Croix in the Danish West Indies (now the American Virgin Islands) on 23 October 1810 to Wilhelm Alexander Leidesdorff, Senior and Anna Marie Spark.

William’ father was a veterinarian manager from the Altona, Hamburg (part of the Danish Schleswig-Holstein) and his mother was of African ancestry, quite possibly from Cuba. Wilhelm and Anna Marie held a common law marriage and had four children with William the oldest. In 1837 all of the children were officially adopted by Wilhelm giving them a legal status as Danish citizens. William was sent to Denmark for his education.

William’s father had come from Denmark as a sailor to the newly forming United States of America and found himself working as a sugar seller in New Orleans while it was still under Spanish rule. In 1800 Bonaparte took the region but sold it to the United States to finance his wars in Europe and Haiti. Wilhelm and Anna Marie met and fell in love. Eventually they moved to the Danish West Indies and he took a job as a veterinarian manager in today's US Virgin Islands.

Leidesdorff was baptized as a child in the Lutheran Church and a strong community of friends saw to the boy’s mercantile and social education. Eventually he was sent to Flensburg, Denmark to further his education where a boy became a man. Arriving back in St. Croix, with the blessings of his parents, young William began his maritime career delivering and selling cotton from the Port of New Orleans to to New York. After becoming a naturalised US citizen in 1834 he worked his way up to Captain and was a successful trader throughout the Caribbean Basin and beyond.

William became a master mariner and his services as ship’s captain moved him around the East coast of North America, down into the Caribbean and even over to Europe. He built a reputation that kept him in demand. Louisiana Negro Seamen's Law of 1830 required out-of-state black seamen to depart with their ships or leave the state in thirty days if their vessel were not being prepared for an outbound voyage. Leidesdorff, was said to be the last ship captain operating out of the Port of New Orleans.

According to legend, he met the love of his life, a belle of New Orleans, Hortense down in Ole New Orleans and eventually asked her to marry him. William had been passing in Louisiana society as a European-American but decided to tell Hortense of his African blood after asking her hand in marriage. This upset her family so much that she not only annulled the engagement but committed suicide.

Heartbroken for many reasons, Leidesdorff solid reputation and official record was disparaged. He worked to clear his name and was contacted by Mr. J.C. Jones, who had been a former U.S. Consul in the Hawaiian Islands. Jones contracted with Leidesdorff to utilize the Julia Ann, a 106 ton schooner in the Pacific.

Official records of voyages of a vessel captained by William A. Leidesdorff. throughout his career offer source documentation of his international maritime activities. Captain Leidesdorff left New York about January, 1841 and navigated the Julia Ann as Captain down the Caribbean and the South American coastline, and transited the dangerous Straits of Magellan, up the coast and out to Hawaii. According to accounts by John C. Davis, a mariner and shipwright who knew Leidesdorff.

‘During her passage through the Straits she encountered many delays and perils, having almost constant head-winds, and being in great dread of the Indians, who were cannibals and who swarmed about the vessel in their canoes, a little distance off, apparently waiting an opportunity to pounce upon the schooner and capture all on board. A constant watch was therefore kept up to prevent such a calamity. They finally got through the Straits, and were greatly relieved to find themselves beyond the reach of the savages.’

US Consul Jones, the ship Julia Ann’s title holder, left New York aboard another vessel headed for Panama where he was to continue the voyage with Leidesdorff. Jones crossed the forty miles of jungle and waited in Balboa. Weather delays in the Straits of Magellan caused Jones to wait sixty days before continuing on the then Sandwich Islands. This was not pioneer Boston trader Jones’ only vessel. He owned several other ships, the Volunteer, Louisa and Harriet Blanchard, all of which traded successfully throughout the Pacific Rim Basin.

Jones thought the Julia Ann had been lost around Cape Horn and was arranging to charter another schooner to go to Yerba Buena when his schooner dropped anchor and relieved his worries. John C. Davis, who narrates this story of Leidesdorff’s arrival in Yerba Buena/ San Francisco had a brother, Robert G. Davis, who booked the voyage aboard Julia Ann in Panama to deliver merchandise along the coast of California. Two other passengers who made the trip north from Panama were Mr. John Weed of New York and J.J. Warner. The Julia Ann cleared into the Mexican Capitol of California, Monterey (100 miles south of San Francisco), on 22 June 1841.

When finally they anchored off the small cove village on the northern side of the Yerba Buena peninsula the record show Leidesdorff did not see it as tiny fishing village but a major maritime cosmopolitan trading port. His global perspective by personal experiential learning were the motivation utilized by Captain William A. Leidesdorff as his vision is seen today.

In 1844, Leidesdorff the first shipping storage warehouse, and upgraded the first San Francisco hotel in 1846, called The City Hotel (and it had a saloon), he expanded trading routes to fill his warehouse with global commodities and as the population grew to sell through his general retail store, the first shipyard, the first lumberyard adjacent to his warehouse.

He established steady trading agreements with the Russians in Alaska, Hawaiians in the Sandwich Islands, Mexicans in Lower California and the maintained essential ties in New Oleans, New York, Boston and with family in the Caribbean.

Through his vision and foresight acumen, he developed and stabilized agricultural innovation in the Sacramento Valley. He brought the first steam powered vessel to work the Sacramento River and American River to expand his significant investment at Sutter's Fort and beyond.

By 1844 Leidesdorff had become a naturalised Mexican qualifying himself the next year for an 35,000-acre land grant on the American River that he called the Rancho Río de Los Americanos. He made the Rio de Los Americanos into a cattle and wheat ranch to serve both the needs of food and hides. Part of his vast estate is now the City of Folsom and Rancho Cordova.

Leidesdorff died and was buried on 18 May 1848, leaving behind a vast estate that was in question for years. Prior to his untimely death he had received official notification of vast quantities of gold on his immense cattle and wheat ranch along today's State Highway Route 50 corridor.

Adopted by the California State Assembly in 2003 and passing the Senate in 2004, Assembly Concurrent Resolution no. 131 designated ‘…a specified portion of State Highway Route 50 as the William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr. Memorial Highway.’
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