150 years ago, Sacramento celebrated its seventh Holiday season as an incorporated city. A great window into the state of the city at that time is the
Sacramento Bee. The full run of the paper (back to 1857) is held at the Sacramento Public Library’s Central Library. Central also holds the
Sacramento Union (back to 1851), the
Sacramento Transcript (1850-51),
Daily Democratic State Journal (1852-1857), and the
Placer Times (1849-50), Northern California’s oldest newspaper. Papers are viewable and microfilm and patrons may make copies for ten cents a page. Here are a few Holiday snippets from the December 1857
Sacramento Bee; not quite the world of Charles Dickens, but then again, not that far off either:
Just days before Christmas 1857,
Sacramentans were treated to the spectacle of the Aurora
Borealis. At around 11 o’clock, the phenomenon “presented a magnificent appearance, enveloping the sky in a sheet of brilliant red…” Lasting twenty minutes, the display pulled sleepy citizens from their homes and “created no little consternation in the minds of those not accustomed to the display.” (“Aurora
Borealis,” December 17, 1857).
It did not take long for settlers to grasp the immensity of the Central Valley’s agricultural value. This must have made the local Holiday table an amazing sight. A particularly germane passage comes from the Christmas Day issue of the Bee that describes the City Market of “K” Street, where the display of “meats, poultry, vegetables, etc. was superb, and attracted large crowds of citizens.” The stall of
Marzen,
Burnes & Co., was said to have “excelled all others…with artistic skill…beets, turnips, celery, radishes, potatoes, cabbage, spring onions, lettuce, carrots…such as would astonish our Atlantic friends too (sic) see on a Christmas at their markets.” (“A Grand Display,” December 25, 1857).
Further spectacle was recorded in the Bee under the headline of “Christmas Tree Festivals.” The article describes Reverend Benton’s Sixth Street Church, Reverend
Grober’s on Seventh, Reverend Hill’s on Eighth, and Reverend Deal’s on “H,” as serving venue to “Christmas trees laden with gifts of every description.” The article goes on to say that “many hundred prizes were given to the Sabbath School children, all of whom, of course, were perfectly delighted.” (December 25, 1857).
What were the antebellum Holidays without the flow of spirits? Local
saloonist, John
Zwicker of the Wiener Coffee Hall on Third Street, did not forget the importance of patronage, as he supplied the Bee staff with “delicious egg
nogg (sic).” The editors went on to drink to “his health in bumpers, and wished him four score and ten returns of a merry Christmas.” (“Did Not Forget Us,” December 25, 1857).
Holiday charity was even extended to those having ended up in the city’s chain gang. “roast duck, plum pudding, pound and fruit cake, egg
nogg (sic), etc.” were provided by a fellow named Sands who, as the Bee said, “insure[ed] him forever against the incursion of thieves, for he never forgets the unfortunate, no matter how busy he may be.” (“A Rare Treat,” December 26, 1857).
Happy Holidays and thanks for using the Sacramento Public Library!
Edward Cleveland Kemble, circa 1880. After a 20-year-old Kemble visited Sutter’s Fort in 1848, he wrote in vivid detail about his journey by “adobe cart” from Sutter’s Embarcadero on the Sacramento River to the Fort, a route that would take him along Alkali Flat. “A forest of Noble sycamores, dense and deep, guarding a mighty solitude like a vast army of giants” he wrote, stood amidst “miniature lakes…prophets of the floods that were to drown the fortunes of thousands in subsequent times.” While indeed prophets of flooding, they too would portend the drying, then deposit of alkali rings and a Sacramento district’s eventual namesake. Kemble went on to found Sacramento’s first newspaper, the “Placer Times.”
