Note 105 — REMINISCENCES OF VILLAGE LIFE AND OF PANAMA AND CALIFORNIA. 1840-1850.

Samuel Brannon was a native of Maine. In his youth he had edited Mormon journals and became an elder of that church. In 1846 he went to California with a shipload of Mormons, mostly converts made in the East, intending to found a colony. But his plans were interfered with. The country had already been proclaimed United States territory. San Francisco became, however, for a time very largely a Mormon town. Brannon founded a newspaper in San Francisco and preached Mormonism on Sundays. With the finding of gold his community was disbanded. He had quarreled with Brigham Young and other Utah Mormons and was denounced as an apostate from the faith. Becoming the owner of large tracts of land in San Francisco and Sacramento he exerted an influence in the development of those towns and acquired large wealth. When the Civil War broke out he was rated the richest man in California, but his wife sued him for divorce and obtained a verdict which deprived him of one-half of his estate. From this blow he never recovered. During the struggle of Mexico against Maximillian, he aided that country with money and supplies for which he afterwards received a grant of land in the Province of Sonora. He attempted to colonize the province but the scheme failed and eventually he lost all his property. Brannon was born in 1819 and died in 1889 at Mazatlan, in abject poverty.