Re: Books that you’d suggest about the history and flavor of San Francisco

07/19/07 - posted by Paul Rosenberg

You mentioned Two Years Before the Mast - Richard Henry Dana. Mr. Dana published a tome that became his second best seller: The Defense Offered by Mr. Richard Henry Dana in the Criminal Adultery Trial of the Reverend Isaac Smith Kalloch. Mr. Dana's defense resulted in a hung jury. The Rev. Mr. Kalloch, whose ministry at Boston's Tremont Street Baptist Church was cut short by the events leading to the trial went on to minister in New York but that tenure was cut short due to questions of his counseling methods with his female parishioners. So he moved to Kansas founding a college and university. Then to San Francisco where he founded the Metropolitan Baptist Church on Fifth between Market and Mission. He became the Workingman's Party of California candidate for mayor in 1879 but was shot by one Charles DeYoung ten days before the election. Though arrested immediately, Mr. DeYoung was released and skipped off to Mexico and returned after things cooled down a few months later. Meanwhile the Rev. Mr. Kalloch defeated Brillsford P Flint by a narrow margin and was sworn in as eighteenth mayor of San Francisco. Mayor Kalloch was the only mayor who was impeached (though not convicted) as well as being the only mayor of San Francisco to have been the defendant in a criminal adultery trial, shot before the election, a Baptist minister, founded a university and railroad, successful candidate of the WPC, etc. During his tenure, his son murdered Mr. DeYoung in front of eyewitnesses, but a jury acquitted the young Mr. Kalloch. Should you want to read more about this fine mayor, there is a chapter devoted to him in GAUDY CENTURY and an entire book, GOLDEN VOICE, by M.M.Marberry.