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The Gathering of A Community: The British-born of San Francisco in 1852 and 1872

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

R. A. Burchell
R. A. Burchell
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

Studies of the Massachusetts communities of Newburyport and Boston have revealed a high rate of geographical mobility for their populations, in excess of what had been previously thought. Because of the difficulty in tracing out-migrants these works have concentrated on persisters, though to do so is to give an incomplete picture of communal progress. Peter R. Knights in his study of Boston between 1830 and 1860 attempted to follow his out-migrants but was only able to trace some 27 per cent of them. The problem of out-migration is generally regarded as being too large for solution through human effort, but important enough now to engage the computer. What follows bears on the subject of out-migration, for it is an analysis of where part of the migrating populations of the east went in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, namely to San Francisco.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , December 1976 , pp. 279 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 See Thernstrom, Stephan, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge, Mass., 1964)Google Scholar; Thernstrom, , The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis 1880–1970 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The second of these works contains a good survey of the literature of the field, particularly between pp. 303 and 339.

2 Knights, Peter R., The Plain People of Boston, 1830–1860: A Study in City Growth (New York, 1971), pp. 103–118Google Scholar.

3 See Stephenson, Charles, ‘Tracing Those Who Left: Mobility Studies and the Soundex Indexes to the U.S. Census’, Journal of Urban History, 1 (1974), 73–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stephenson, , ‘Determinants of American Migration: Methods and Models in Mobility Research’, Journal of American Studies, 9 (1975), 189–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Throughout this work the term British-born refers to the Irish, English, Scots, Welsh, Australasians and British North Americans in the city. Australasians include both Australians and New Zealanders; British North Americans include immigrants from Canada, the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland. The present condition of the 1852 census data presents some problems. The original schedules, once in the Secretary of State's office at Sacramento, have disappeared. Their contents exist in a typescript which was prepared under the direction of the Genealogical Records Committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution of California in 1934. Faded ink, folds and tears in the original manuscript, and human error in the copying makes the typescript a less than perfect record of the population of 1852. Where possible it has been corrected; what has not been possible is to supply the names of indecipherable entries. The remarks that follow based on the census therefore cover something less than 100% of the British-born of San Francisco, though probably over 90% of them.

5 Index to the Great Register of Voters (San Francisco, 1872)Google Scholar, passim.

6 California. Senate Document. Session of 1853. Governor's Message; and Report of the Secretary of State on the Census of 1852, of the State of California (Sacramento, 1853), p. 42Google Scholar. The figures for the British-born have been personally compiled. It is to say the least remarkable to find more British-born females in the D.A.R. edition of the census than the Secretary of State found in all the original schedules, but the discrepancy cannot be explained except as the result of nineteenth-century error and must stand.

All those who gave their occupation as seaman, mariner or shipmaster have been excluded from this survey. Consequently the figures in the Table taken from the census do not refer to the total British community reported by the census. Although by no means all those excluded were transient it seems from the census material that marshals included many ships' crews in their accounts. In order not to include these it was decided to separate seamen from the rest of society. For the sake of comparison the following table gives the ‘place of last residence’ that the excluded group reported by major area.

7 Ricards, S. L. and Blackburn, G. M., ‘The Sydney Ducks: A Demographic Analysis’, Pacific Historical Review, 42 (1973), 20–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar studies this migration.

8 Figures personally compiled from the microfilm schedules of the U.S. census.

9 Figures from U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Seventh Census: Report of the Superintendent of the Census for December 1, 1852 (Washington D.C., 1853), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

10 The previous history of this group can be followed in Handlin, Oscar, Boston's Immigrants, 1790–1880: A Study in Acculturation (rev. edn., Cambridge, Mass., 1959)Google Scholar; Ernst, R., Immigrant Life in New York City 1825–1863 (New York, 1949)Google Scholar; Clark, D., The Irish in Philadelphia; Ten Generations of Urban Experience (Philadelphia, 1973)Google Scholar; Niehaus, E. F., The Irish in New Orleans 1800–1860 (Baton Rouge, 1965)Google Scholar.

11 Erickson, C. J., ‘ Who Were the English and Scots Immigrants to the United States in the Late Nineteenth Century? ’ in Glass, D. V. and Revelle, Roger, eds., Population and Social Change (London, 1972), pp. 347–382Google Scholar; Jones, M. A., ‘ The Background to Emigration from Great Britain in the Nineteenth Century ’ in Perspectives in American History, 7 (1973), especially pp. 49, 57–58, 68–71Google Scholar. See also Duncan, Ross, ‘Case Studies in Emigration: Cornwall, Gloucestershire and New South Wales, 1877–1886 ’, Economic History Review, 16 (1963–1964), 272–89Google Scholar.

12 Redford, Arthur, Labour Migration in England, 1750–1850 (2nd ed., Manchester, 1964), p. 124Google Scholar; Erickson, ‘ Who Were the English and Scots Immigrants? ’, p. 360; Jones, ‘ Background to Emigration ’, p. 49.

13 The Welsh contingent was too small for comparison. Percentages have not been rounded up to one hundred.

14 Fares were advertised in 1849 and 1850 as between £20 and £30 steerage from England to California. See Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse Herald, 10 February, 10 March 1849; 26 January 1850.

15 Burchell, R. A., ‘ The Loss of a Reputation; or, The Image of California in Britain before 1875 ’, California Historical Quarterly, 53 (1974), 121–6Google Scholar.

16 See Barth, G., Bitter Strength: A History of the Chinese in the United States 1850–1870 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), esp. pp. 58, 60, 62Google Scholar; Monaghan, Jay, Chile, Peru, and the Californian Gold Rush of 1849 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973), esp. pp. 23, 136Google Scholar; Wright, D. M., ‘ The Making of Cosmopolitan California, 1848–1870 ’, California Historical Society Quarterly, 19 (1940), 324, 326, 327Google Scholar.

17 Figures personally compiled from the manuscript schedules of the 1870 U.S. Census.

18 The figures for the total San Francisco population were derived from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Ninth Census, Volume I; The Statistics of the Population of the United States (Washington D.C., 1872), p. 799Google Scholar. Details are given there of only 93% of the total occupational structure. It has to be assumed that the missing 7% would not alter the percentages falling into the categories used by very much. The percentages for the British-born are more accurate, being personally compiled from the microfilm schedules of the census and covering all occupations.

19 According to the schedules of the 1870 census 2,292 or 3,443 Irish labourers claimed citizenship, that is 66.6%, whereas 70% of all Irish adult males claimed to be naturalized. These percentages were compiled from a personal survey of the census schedules.

20 This point has been made of Roseburg, Oregon. Robbins, William G., ‘ Opportunity and Persistence in the Pacific Northwest: A Quantitative Study of Early Roseburg, Oregon ’, Pacific Historical Review, 39 (1970), 296CrossRefGoogle Scholar states ‘ If Roseburg's experience was similar to that of other frontier towns, then length of residence in early western communities was directly proportional to economic standing. ’

21 San Francisco Alta California, 3 September 1866, 1 September 1867.

22 Wright, ‘ Making of Cosmopolitan California ’, 341.

23 Wright, loc. cit.

24 Figures compiled from the County Clerk's Reports in the San Francisco Municipal Reports (San Francisco, 1866–1870)Google Scholar; 1865–66, p. 100; 1866–67, p. 147; 1867–68, pp. 146–147; 1868–69, p. 246; 1869–70, pp. 120–121.

25 Persistence rates in a society affected by mining rushes would be expected to be low. In Grass Valley and Nevada City in 1856 only about 5% of the population had been in the towns in 1850. See Mann, Ralph, ‘ The Decade After the Gold Rush: Social Structure in Grass Valley and Nevada City', California, 1850–1860 ’, Pacific Historical Review, 41 (1972), 493CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Cf. Thernstrom, Stephan and Knights, Peter R., ‘ Men in Motion: Some Data and Speculations about Urban Population Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America ’, p. 34, in Hareven, Tamara K., ed., Anonymous Americans: Explorations in Nineteenth-Century Social History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971)Google Scholar.

27 Wright, op. cit., 341; Stewart, George R., The California Trail: An Epic With Many Heroes (New York, 1962), pp. 217, 232, 292, 301, 303, 309, 310, 312, 313, 314Google Scholar. Stewart's figures refer to the South Pass route only.

28 Thernstrom and Knights, op. cit., pp. 35–36.

29 I should like to thank the Social Science Research Council, the Sir Ernest Cassel Educational Trust and the University of Manchester for grants which made the research incorporated into this paper possible.