Heading: (California Gold Rush)
Author: Sherman, William
Title: Check for payment of $1,000 for "Grading & Planking Beale Street" - 1854 San Francisco’s Know Nothing Comptroller: William T. Sherman
Place Published: San Francisco
Publisher:
Date Published: December 18th, 1854
Description:

Secretarial signature of William Sherman, on an ornate printed and handwritten Document. City Comptroller’s Office, San Francisco, December 18, 1854. 5x8½".  Order to the City Treasurer to pay $1,000 to H.W. Seale for “Grading & Planking Beale Street”. 

In the San Francisco elections of 1854, the anti-Catholic (and anti-slavery) Know Nothing Party offered a slate for city offices. Their mayoralty candidate, lawyer Stanley Webb – who had been Mayor of Salem, Massachusetts before coming to Gold Rush California – was elected. So was their candidate for Comptroller, William Sherman. He had a difficult job ahead of him as, weeks before the election, his predecessor had absconded with thousands of dollars in city’s funds using faked Comptroller’s warrants exactly like this one. One city financier who had suffered losses by the theft was the San Francisco representative of a St. Louis banking firm by the name of William Tecumseh Sherman – later the famed Union Army General of the Civil War.  No historian has resolved or even noted the fact that the newly-elected Comptroller had the same name. The future General, in his memoirs, makes no mention of being elected to city office, though he did subsequently became Major General of the State Militia. He also recalled that most San Francisco politicians were “more than suspected of being corrupt”. If it’s even remotely possible that the two William Shermans were identical, it can’t be deduced from this document because the Comptroller’s signature is preceded by the word “Signed)”, usually indicating that the signature was secretarial. Incidentally, Seale, the Santa Clara County contractor who was paid by this document became a very rich man who bred thoroughbred horses and later owned a sizable portion of the city of Palo Alto. 

A few holes at top, and some yellowing (from old glue); very good.