Jacob Primer Leese (1809 - 1892)

Born 19 Aug 1809 in St. Clairsville, Ohio

Died 1 Feb 1892 at age 82 in San Francisco, California

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Biography

Jacob Primer Leese was born in Ohio and became active in the Santa Fe, New Mexico trade in 1830. Leese first came to California from New Mexico in 1833, but did not remain (and for a time transported mules between New Mexico and Southern California). He returned in July 1834, settled in Los Angeles and went into partnership with Hugo Reid.

Two years later he formed a partnership with two established Monterey merchants, William S. Hinckley and Nathan Spear, for the purpose of starting a store in Yerba Buena. In 1836, he was the second permanent settler of the new town established by William A. Richardson in 1835. Leese built for his residence (at what is now Grant and Clay), the first substantial structure. It was preceded only by a tent house put up by Richardson the year before, before Richardson also built a permanent house in 1836. Leese built a store in 1837 on Montgomery Street near Sacramento Street which did business mainly with the large ranches in San Francisco Bay area and the ships which came to California seeking hides and tallow.

In 1837 Leese married María Rosalia Vallejo, sister of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. The partnership with Hinckley and Spear ended in 1838. Leese continued the business alone until 1841, when he sold out to the Hudson's Bay Company and transferred his business and residence to Sonoma.

In 1841 he was granted Rancho Huichica in Napa County. In 1841 he was also granted the two leagues Rancho Canada de Guadalupe la Visitacion y Rodeo Viejo on the San Francisco Peninsula, which Leese soon exchanged for Ridley's three leagues Rancho Collayomi in Lake County. Leese moved to Sonoma in 1841, where he was alcalde in 1844. During the Bear Flag Revolt of 1846, Leese was taken prisoner with Vallejo and held captive at Sutter's Fort. He figured somewhat conspicuously in the historic Bear Flag revolt as interpreter for the contending force. In 1846 he was associated with Thomas O. Larkin in executing his plans of annexation to the United States.

Leese moved to Monterey in 1849. He and Larkin traded real estate. Larkin purchased an interest in Rancho Huichica. In 1852, Leese bought Rancho Sausal in Monterey County. Salinas is located on Rancho Sausal land, and Leese is considered to be one of the founders of Salinas, although he left the area in 1865 and did not return until 1885.

In 1863 he, with others, worked on obtaining a concession from the Mexican government for two thirds of Baja California lands for colonization purposes. To work on the project, he moved to New York in 1865, leaving his family in Monterey. The enterprise was not successful.

Leese returned to San Francisco in 1885 after an absence of 20 years. Rosalia Vallejo died in 1889. Jacob P. Leese died on February 1, 1892, in San Francisco.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_P._Leese

Jacob P. Leese was well-known in Alta (upper) California. A native of Ohio, like many young men of his time Leese had left home at an early age. As hunter, trapper, trader and guide on the Santa Fe Trail he had been successful enough by the age of 25 to establish a mercantile and marine supply business with a partner in Monterey.

A restless sort, he left the business two years later and continued north, arriving in Yerba Buena in 1836. “I have concluded to stop in this place for good,” Leese wrote to his business partner, “in consequence of the great prospect ahead…” Proving his business acumen better than his spelling, he continued, “I have made a contract with a couple of Men to Build a house for 4 hundred and 40 dollars paid in Goods. I think it is a good Traid.”

Leese’s new home, completed by a crew hired from ships moored in the bay, was the second residence in the nascent village – Capt. Wm. Richardson, known as the founder of San Francisco and later of Sausalito, had erected a tent to house his wife and children a year before. Leese’s home and store was the first frame structure in what would one day be billed as “everybody’s favorite city.” As soon as it was completed he, in his own words, “invited the whole countryside to a glorious Fourth of July party at which the guests ate, danced and drank for three days while both the Mexican national emblem and the Stars and Stripes floated overhead.” That occasion, in the summer of 1837, is assumed to be the first appearance of Old Glory in California.

Notable among the great prospects Leese saw was General Mariano Vallejo’s sister Rosalia, whom he courted and wed in a remarkably short time. In 1838, their daughter Rosalie was the first American child born on the San Francisco peninsula.

Leese became socially and politically active in both Yerba Buena and throughout the district of Sonoma, where in 1841 he claimed about 18,000 acres around Carneros Valley. He soon commis- sioned the construction of a grand adobe home in Sonoma across the plaza from that of General Vallejo. His fortunes multiplied, primarily through his dealings in land. He subsequently purchased or traded several other parcels of land in northern California and the Monterey area, including the lands that became Salinas, California, where he is listed among the city’s founding fathers.

The year after he set up his cattle business on the ranchos here, Leese was caught up in events directed at his well-known brothers-in-law. Most notably, Leese served as interpreter and translator during the Bear Flag Rebellion of June 14, 1846, the first overt move toward making California a part of the United States.

We’ve all heard of the rebellion, but the ease by which the rebels took over is rarely noted. There was only token resistance. Well before they arrived, General Vallejo had heard the approach of the thirty-three rowdy Americans who stormed Vallejo’s Sonoma headquarters in the wee hours of the morning June 14, 1846. He donned a full-dress uniform and greeted them at the door, invited their leaders in, and offered wine and brandy to the ragtag group of militants.

As discussions began, Vallejo suggested that Jacob Leese might be useful “to help draw up any formal papers that would require approval and signatures.” A few hours later the rebels claimed victory and raised a hastily constructed Bear Flag over the villa, declaring California a free and independent republic. General Vallejo and other officials were taken prisoner. Leese was asked to accompany them to act as interpreter, but by the time of their arrival at the fort he too had been made a prisoner.

News of the declaration of the Mexican-American War reinforced the rebels’ claims. On July 7, 1846, Commodore John Sloat planted the American flag in Monterey. Seven weeks later, on August 2, General Vallejo, ill with malaria, was released. Jacob Leese and others were held until August 8.

Leese went back to buying and trading land and in the following years became, despite his questionable spelling, adviser, accountant, business representative, and counselor to most of the old-line families as well as many recently arrived ranchers in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties.

By 1851, Leese, like Salvador Vallejo, apparently wearied of long distance ranching. He sold both of the local ranchos, and pre- sumably the cattle on them, to Capt. Archibald Alexander Ritchie for $14,000. South Lake County was still essentially owned by one man, just a different man.

Among his numerous grants, Leese held the Rancho Sausal, and participated in the founding of Salinas there. He had a fine home constructed in Massachusetts, then deconstructed and shipped around the Horn to be reconstructed on his Salinas property.

Once his wife and nine children were comfortably ensconced there, Leese took off for New York and Washington, D.C., where he spent the next fifteen years trying to convince the U. S. government it should buy Baja California.

When Richard Henry Dana, author of Two Years Before the Mast, revisited San Francisco 24 years after the book was published, he recognized the now-aged Leese because he recalled the derring-do with which the young man had exhibited his skills as a sharpshooter and his extravagant self-confidence.

Source: South Lake County, California, History - http://middletownhistory.weebly.com/jacob-p-leese--capt-a-a-ritchie.html

Source

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_P._Leese

• http://middletownhistory.weebly.com/jacob-p-leese--capt-a-a-ritchie.html

• http://mchsmuseum.com/leese_jacobp.html

• "United States Census, 1850," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M4SM-63R : 12 April 2016), Jacob Leese, Monterey, Monterey, California, United States; citing family 83, NARA microfilm publication M432 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

• "California State Census, 1852," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V4ND-7H7 : 30 July 2017), Jacob P Leese, Monterey, California; citing p. 9, State Archives, Sacramento; FHL microfilm 909,230.

• "California Great Registers, 1866-1910," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VYD6-P22 : 4 August 2017), Jacob Primer Leese, 16 Oct 1888; citing Voter Registration, 17 Fourth, San Francisco, California, United States, county clerk offices, California; FHL microfilm 977,626.

• https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=101039582