California Letter from Isaac Leigh Carried by Commodore Stockton Mailed from St. Joseph in 1847
Entry/Object ID
AM2020.1.352
Scope and Content
California Letter from Isaac Leigh Carried by Commodore Stockton Mailed from St. Joseph in 1847. Photocopy of letter from a former New Jersey man who had emigrated with his wife to California, according to his descendants, on board ship with Commodore Stockton in 1846. It is thought that Stockton made a trip back east by land and took this letter with him, postmarked then in St. Joseph in October on its way to New Jersey.
Written July 1, 1847 after the surrender of California by the Mexicans to the U.S., the letter is mostly about daily life in California where he lives with a Spaniard and must work for him. His location is about 14 miles along San Francisco Bay somewhere near Urbana. He tells of a grasshopper plague and of earth tremors.
Copy provided to St. Joseph Museum in 1969. The original letter remained in the family with a descendant who lived in Prairie Village Kansas.
Note from donor, grandson Elmer H. Leigh, accompanies the letter.
Lexicon
Nomenclature 4.0
Nomenclature Secondary Object Term
Letter
Nomenclature Primary Object Term
Correspondence
Nomenclature Sub-Class
Other Documents
Nomenclature Class
Documentary Objects
Nomenclature Category
Category 08: Communication Objects
Search Terms
California History, California Letters Easbound Mailed in St. Joseph, 1847, Western Migration
