1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910790755503321

Autore

Sveen Karin <1948->

Titolo

The immigrant and the university : Peder Sather and gold rush California / / Karin Sveen ; foreword by Kevin Starr ; translated by Barbara J. Haveland

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley : , : University of California Press, , [2014]

©2014

ISBN

0-520-95712-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (307 p.)

Altri autori (Persone)

HavelandBarbara J

Disciplina

979.4/604092

B

Soggetti

Businessmen - California - San Francisco

San Francisco (Calif.) Emigration and immigration

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Translation of the author's Mannen i Montgomery street : portrett av en norsk emigrant.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- 1. Monuments and Mysteries -- 2. Sole Passenger -- 3. Baptism and Marriage -- 4. 1837 -- 5. New Yorker and Norwegian -- 6. A Specimen of the Gold -- 7. A Particular Friend -- 8. Drexel, Sather & Church -- 9. Congratulating Himself on Freedom -- 10. Cigars, Wine, and Other Evils -- 11. The Turning Point -- 12. Law in a Lawless City -- 13. Gold, Pigs, and a Summer Residence -- 14. The Foundation of Man's Future Circumstances -- 15. Morals, Money, and War -- 16. The Haunted House -- 17. Never Sather & Son -- 18. Among Friends on Wall Street -- 19. Under the Fever Trees -- 20. Peder and Jane -- 21. In Memoriam -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Peder Sather was a scribe before he emigrated from Norway to New York in 1832. There, he worked as a servant and a clerk at a lottery office before opening an exchange brokerage. During the gold rush, he moved to San Francisco to help establish the banking house of Drexel, Sather & Church on Montgomery Street. Sather was a founder and a liberal benefactor of the University of California at Berkeley where he is memorialized by the Sather Gate and Sather Tower (the Campanile), three endowed professorships, and more recently the Peder Sather



Center for Advanced Study. Karin Sveen, one of Norway's most accomplished writers, pieces together a story yet untold-a beautifully crafted biography based on her dedicated search for scraps of information. The result gives readers a look at the life of a successful entrepreneur and a leading California patron who engaged in public education on all levels; supported Abraham Lincoln; and worked to give emancipated slaves housing, schooling, and employment after the Civil War. His legacy and vivid persona and the frontier city of his time are brought to life with interesting anecdotes of many famous people- General William T. Sherman, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull, and above all, his close friend Anthony J. Drexel, legendary Philadelphia financier and one of the founders of Wall Street.