Sam Brannan:The "Paul Revere" of the Gold Rush
Many people who headed west, either by ship or by wagon back in the mid-1800s were Pro-American but mostly Pro-Opportunity which America is called "The Land of Opportunity" It was just a matter of time before the United States would manifest its destiny to have the land from sea to shining sea. but not everyone had a positive view of America, such as the Mormons.
Mormonism started in 1830 in New York They believe a bunch of things that are at odds with the Baptist, Protestant, and Catholic doctrines who view them as heretics.
So the Mormons were pushed out, not welcome in many towns and they continuously fled until they made their town called Nauvoo over in Illinois.
This is where we meet Sam Brannan.
He's a kid living in an abusive home and when he had the chance at 14 he fled to Ohio to live with his sister and brother in Law. There in Ohio, he became an apprentice at a printer shop learning that trade. Soon his brother-in-law converted to this new religion called Mormonism, from there his sister and he converted and went all in.
He was called to be a missionary but before that, his dad died and he inherited some money, he moved to New Orleans to join up with his brother and bought a printing press. The plan was to start a newspaper, he also invested in the booming housing market in Cleveland. His brother got Yellow Fever and died and then the market busted leaving him with worthless property.
So Sam moved on back to Ohio and became a missionary.
He met a gal he liked and they got married and had a kid. Then he went out to the mission he was assigned and met another gal he liked and married her too, abandoning his first wife for her. This new couple had 4 kids.
By the time Sam was 25, he started a Mormon Newspaper aptly named "The Prophet"
He ran this newspaper with one of Joseph Smith's brothers. William.
One day Joseph Smith and another of his brothers Hyrum were in jail in Illinois because they incited a riot (Smith ordered a newspaper to be destroyed because they were non-Mormons and were printing unpopular things about him) and were being tried for treason. Joseph was technically the Mayor of the town of Nauvoo and also was running for President of The United States so it was an interesting case...
Well about 200 or so people rushed to the jail and shot Hyrum in the face and then Joseph but he jumped out the 2nd story window fell to his death and then was shot a few more times.
At this point, the Mormons were in crisis mode. Their leader, Prophet, and Mayor was dead. They decided they needed to leave the United States and go West but there was also the issue of who will be their leader. Sam Brannan believed it should be Joseph's Brother William.
But the Majority decided to put in a man named Brigham Young instead. The fact that he was not in favor of Young's appointment was viewed as a dire sin and he was "disfellowshiped" and basically excommunicated.
About a year later he was reinstated and was called to lead the New York Faction of Mormons to the West. All eyes were set on this land called California. Specifically Northern California, so while Brigham was to lead the overland camp, Sam chartered a ship from New York around Cape Horn to The Sandwich Islands for a pit stop and then to California.
While in Honolulu, A guy you may know if you saw my episode about him, Commodore Robert Stockton boarded the ship and inspected it. He told Sam about the plan to overtake California. Sam was not too happy about this. He, like all other Mormons, Hated the United States. But he sailed on.
When they got to Yerba Buena, a small fishing village that we now know as San Francisco he looked out into the distance and soon he screamed these words...
“By God, there is that damned American flag!”
From Yerba Buena they set out to find a place to call their own. They settled on a nice area in Central California near a river and called this land New Hope. This was in the modern city of Ripon which is between Stockton and Modesto.
There was not much hope for New Hope, it died out pretty quickly.
Soon it was learned that Brigham decided not to go to California. He figured that the area near the Great Salt Lake would be better because the Americans were all about going to Oregon, California, and Washington, nobody seemed to care about Utah other than using it as a pit stop. Sam Loved California too much and decided to stay while a bunch of the Mormons then went to Utah to join up with their leader.
After a while Sam grew further and further from the Mormon Faith.
He set up a newspaper in San Francisco called the California Star which was the 2nd Newspaper ever made in CA and the 1st in San Francisco then opened up a store at Sutter's Fort over in Sacramento.
Now, one day word got to Sam about Gold being discovered. He went out to John Sutter's house and asked if were true. It was and was told to keep it a secret. He did for a little while, just long enough to buy a bunch of land, buy a bunch of gold mining supplies then rack up the prices. Like a gold pan he bought for 20 cents, he sold for 15 bucks.
He told his newspapermen to type up a report about the gold in the Sacramento area but as soon as they heard about it they up and left to go mine for gold themselves. He got himself a little bottle of gold and took a ferry down to San Francisco and as soon as he got off the boat he started waving his hat and screaming "Gold Gold Gold from the American River!"
You could call Sam Brannan the Paul Revere of the Gold Rush.
Soon Sam opened a few more shops, verbally leased government-owned land to his Mormon buddies, and charged them a 30% finders fee for any gold that they got. In the Mormon Archives, they claim this to be evidence of him taking tithes from the church members but it isn't accurate. It was pretty evident that he left Mormonism and the people sent their tithes to Brigham in the mail.
As Sam got more and more rich Brigham Young tried to take over the newspaper Sam ran but he ended up selling it just in time to another Company to create The Daily Alta California Newspaper. Young also sent Tithe Collectors to California to get the millions they believed they were owed from tithes by Sam but he had left Mormonism and declined. He did give some money as a parting gift but not the huge amount they were hoping for. Eventually, the Governor was asked by the Mormon miners if they had to give 30% to Sam for a finders fee and the guy laughed at them and told them “This is government land and if you are foolish enough to pay Brannan, he will take it.”
They quit paying after that
Also, his wife left to go live in luxury over in Switzerland with Sam's money. Sam then went on to be a rabbit with the ladies of the night. Which gave him a certain reputation.
At one point over in San Francisco, a group of Chileans got attacked by some drunk Americans. This ticked off Sam and he organized a group called The Vigilante Justice Group where he was president. This group hung, deported, jailed, and sentenced people to hard labor for various crimes. You've heard of the Crips and the Bloods, right? Well back then in San Francisco the two notorious gangs were The Hounds and the Sydney Ducks, The vigilante group fixed the gang problem quickly. San Francisco became a Law and Order kind of City after that. The Mormon Archives say he was disfellowshipped for his actions in this group.
Sam continued to buy up land, raise the prices like crazy, and even started looking at other places like Hawaii and Southern California.
Apparently, he even tried to take over Hawaii... yeah. Let me explain.
Hawaii had an interesting relationship with the United States. and in the mid-1800s The US was expanding as we all know. Other Expansion efforts were being made that you might not know about. Such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Lower California, Sonora, and two separate attempts in Northern Mexico.
Well for Hawaii, It was taken over by Great Britain for a little bit in 1843 then France tried to take it a few years later, so the Hawaiian Government set up a top-secret treaty of sorts that said if France were to attempt to take over Hawaii then Hawaii would cede to the United States. That was made in 1851.
Rumors spread about the fact that King Kamehameha III was pretty much giving up on his kingdom and was ready to retire and get some kind of pension from the US for giving them his kingdom.
But both Britain and The U.S. publicly stated they wished to see Hawaii continue to be a sovereign land.
But in 1851 Sam Brannan and a bunch of other people sailed to Hawaii to take it over but the rumors were not as simple as they seemed. This top secret deal was the nuclear option for Hawaii, in case of a French takeover, break glass type of thing. Once Sam realized this he left. He went there thinking he could cozy up to the King and be appointed governor-general and his buddies governors of the different islands.
That wasn't gonna happen.
To add insult to injury, when Sam got back to San Francisco there was a big crowd and were asking: “Well, have you taken the Islands? Who’s the King? Is it you?”
To bring the Hawaii thing to a close for those that might be curious, The U.S. rejected the Top Secret Deal from the King and it brought the idea to the forefront of Congress' mind. In 1893 some pro-American businessmen overthrew the Hawaiian Government and annexed it to the U.S. about 5 years later. Then 60 years later Hawaii became a state.
Now back to Brannan.
His wife came back after Sam Jr. graduated from college and she found out he'd been a busy bunny. She got a divorce, forcing him to liquidate his empire and give her half the money. He was destroyed.
He kept on though and built himself a brewery and turned into a severe alcoholic. He was one of those kinds of guys who always had new ideas though and came up with an idea for a luxury city over in Napa Valley. He wanted to make a Saratoga in California. Saratoga Springs is a fancy city in New York. He was drunk when talking about this idea and instead of saying Saratoga of California, he said Calistoga Sarafornia. So that is why there's a city named Calistoga.
He built the town to be a place for the elite and was squeezing out the poor quickly. At one point he tried to repo a steam pumping plant and sawmill after a few drinks and was shot 8 times but like Rasputin, he lived.
Sam's demise kept going deeper and deeper to the point that he was bankrupt.
He set his sights on Mexico buying 1.5 million dollars in Mexican bonds to support Benito Juarez against Maximilian. At this point Napoleon the 3rd appointed Maximilian as the emperor of Mexico. This whole thing is a really interesting study in itself. But basically, Mexico was in a civil war so they stopped paying their debts to Europe so France came to collect their portion and decided to take it over entirely. Both sides of the Mexican civil war didn't want the French so neither wouldn't team up with him. The United States' Civil War finally ended and was in support of Juarez over Maximilian and threatened war with Austria which Maximilian was the Duke of. So both Austria and France said yheahhhhh never mind to the whole Mexican takeover idea and they left.
This was good news to Sam who was then given 1.5 million acres of land. Turned out the land was Yaqui Land and they were extremely fierce Indians like the Comanche.
So just as at the beginning of his life with that investment in Cleveland, he was once again the proud owner of worthless land.
His new Mexican wife divorced him after that and he moved to Arizona selling pencils until he had enough money to buy a fig ranch near San Diego. Where he died not long after. He was unclaimed for about a year just rotting away in a morgue until one of his sons could afford a burial and gave him a simple wooden stick for a marker. Eventually, some random person got him a real tombstone.
