Circa 1842–1843

G. M. Waseurtz af Sandels, aka Emanuel Sundelius Edelhjerta (b. Visnum Parish, Värmlands, Sweden, 1794; d. New Orleans, Louisiana (?), c. 1850). The Sea Town and Port Yerba Buena in San Francisco Bay in California, 1842–43. Ink on paper; bordered area 5⁵/₈ x 10 in.; entire sheet 6⁷/₈ x 10¹/₄ in. Original black-and-white sketch courtesy of The Society of California Pioneers. Color rendering in 2007 by Richard Elmore. Reproduced by Anchor Brewing Co., San Francisco.

Five years before the discovery of gold, a self-described "physician, mining expert, and naturalist" sailed into the Bay of San Francisco. The Swedish adventurer, raconteur, and artist was known as Dr. (he held no medical degree) Sandels, "the King’s Orphan," educated at a government institution with the proviso that he travel abroad and record his experiences for its archives. When the King's Orphan's invaluable account of his 1842–43 California sojourn surfaced in 1878, the Pioneer (San Jose, CA) published excerpts, noting that “the style and manner of his writings denote a gentleman of culture and education, and his sketches, of which there are many, are life-like and truthful delineations of California life in those days." Among the finest and most accurate of these is this view—originally in black and white—of Yerba Buena. Sandels paid several visits to the "little village now forming," as he called it, "yet very small, but growing fast." Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco in 1847. Landfill has long since facilitated the transformation of this unassuming cove into prime San Francisco real estate. Today, for example, Building #1 (the Hudson’s Bay Company) would stand well inland—near the corner of Montgomery and Sacramento Streets!

We first encountered this delightful image in an old book about San Francisco, where it appears in full color. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was common practice for artists to “colorize" black-and-white views of the City by the Bay. So—with the kind permission of The Society of California Pioneers, keepers of the King’s Orphan’s manuscript and sketches—we asked Bay Area artist Richard Elmore to create this color rendering, in the style of San Francisco’s early watercolorists and stone lithographers.

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