Early 1840s millionaire sailor and merchant launched public education in the Golden State

Capt. William Alexander Leidesdorff was chair of the school committee and the school construction subcommittee which erected the school in what is now Portsmouth Square in 1847.   The dedication ceremony took place on April 3, 1848.

Historan John William Templeton conducted a walking tour of Leidesdorff's considerable impact on the early history of Yerba Buena, as San Francisco was then known.  

He took a prominent role in American conquest of the former Mexican province as a subconsul to William Larkin, financed provisions for U.S. troops during the Mexican War with a $75,000 loan on his own property, wrote the report on the Bear Flag Revolt for the U.S. State Dept. and issued the declaration that California was now part of the United States.

Locally, he was Yerba Buena's first treasurer, agent for the disposition of the Russian colony at Ft. Ross, a land grantee from the Mexican government for large holdings in what is now Lafayette and Folsom and the third largest landowner in Yerba Buena with 40 lots.

Ship captain and merchant

This handwritten ledger was used by William Alexander Leidesdorff to keep the accounts for his shipping business between Hawaii and California in the 1840s

Leidesdorff also established the port of San Francisco, building a dock and shipping warehouse at the corner of what is now Leidesdorff and California Streets, after establishing a trade between the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and the San Francisco Bay.   He also sailed the first steamship into the San Francisco Bay.

The entrepreneur also set up the first hotel and general store in Yerba Buena.  He is described in detail in Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 and Come to the Water: Sharing the Rich Black Experience in San Francisco.  

When he died suddenly in 1848, flags were at half-staff, all businesses closed and Leidesdorff was buried inside Mission Dolores Catholic Church.