goldfields

Where Green Street in San Francisco meets the Embarcadero, there are plaques embedded in the pavement telling the history behind the street name. Similar plaques adorn Fremont, Francisco, Brannan, Townsend, and other streets of the City.

All cities should do this so we can learn some history as we hurry along the street.

One plaque is a portrait of Talbot H, Green, but it is almost certainly Samuel J. Hensley. The image is very much worn down by the countless shoes that have passed over it.

Another plaque has a description of Green’s career in California. It isn’t entirely accurate, but it comes close.

There is an image of a mask (very appropriate!) The mask reminds me of something drawn by Edward Gorey.

And, last but by no means least, there is a quote from Oscar Wilde. This is the perfect quote to match the story of Talbot Green.

I am indebted to the website Public Art and Architecture from Around the World for these images.  Someday I’ll go look at them myself. They are just across the street from the new location of the Exploratorium at Pier 15.

I couldn’t find a picture of Talbot H. Green online or in any books, and I assumed that while in California he avoided having his likeness taken. But I thought that there just might be a picture of his grave online, under his real name of Paul Geddes. And I got lucky!

Paul Geddes, from the Rob Leicester Wagner Collection

On findagrave.com there is a picture of the Geddes family tomb at the Lewisburg, PA cemetery, plus there is a picture of the man himself. I contacted Rob Wagner, who posted the picture, and he tells me that Paul Geddes was his three-times great uncle, and that his (Rob’s) grandmother, kept a family photo album in which this picture appears. It is definitely Paul Geddes, aka Talbot H. Green. The photograph was probably taken sometime around 1860 in Pennsylvania.

Looking at this photo, you can see why “Cheyenne” Dawson described him as “gentlemanly, kindly, genial, generous,” and “a favorite with all.”

There is some confusion about the group daguerreotype of Thomas O. Larkin and his business associates. The man at the back left is sometimes identified as Talbot H. Green, and they are similar looking. But the Bancroft Library identifies him as Samuel J. Hensley, and that accords better with other pictures of Hensley.

The findagrave.com site also has a photo

Henrietta Geddes, from the Rob Leicester Wagner Collection.

of Mrs. Geddes, courtesy of Rob Wagner.  Here is Geddes’ long-suffering first wife, Henrietta Fredericks Geddes.

I am very grateful to Rob Wagner for making these pictures available online. I agree with him that “genealogists, researchers and just the plain curious should have free access to photos, documents, newspaper obituaries and ephemera.”

One last photograph. Talbot H. Green was a founding member of the Society of California Pioneers and its first treasurer. The Society is still in existence in San Francisco and has a wonderful little research library.

I was there a few months ago, looking for material on John Bidwell and Dr. John Townsend. In leafing through their membership book I found the entry for Talbot H. Green. Near the bottom is the note “ex-member,” with an explanation. I find it poignant that he was struck off the books like that, for in spite of his mistakes, he was indeed a California pioneer.

For four years, from 1851 to 1855, Talbot Green languished in Tennessee, writing plaintive letters to Thomas O. Larkin and watching the return mail. He maintained that his former partners and friends, W.D.M. Howard and Joseph P. Thompson, owed him a considerable sum of money. Moreover, the U. S. government still owed him money for goods he supplied the army in 1847. His pleas did not go unheeded, but it must have been easy to ignore a man who was in the powerless position that Green found himself.

The claim on the government necessitated a power of attorney from Green, and Larkin gave the task to his stepbrother Ebenezer Childs to execute. By this means Green’s whereabouts were revealed. This put him in a tizzy, but eventually it all worked out. He was able to meet with Sam Brannan and W.D.M. Howard to settle his affairs satisfactorily. After some dickering and discounting, he wrote to Larkin that the balance due him, which Howard promised to pay, was $67,118. He stopped by Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and gave his wife Henrietta $500.

He returned to San Francisco in the summer of 1855. It was not, however, the happy reunion with old friends that he had hoped for. William Francis White, in A Picture of Pioneer Times in California, reported that he looked “broken down and wretched.”

He appeared to shun every one, and every one shunned him. I met him once after his return. We had been intimate friends. The meeting was embarrassing and awkward. I did not know how to address him. With me Talbot H. Green was no longer in existence, and as to the poor, weak creature, Paul Geddes, I did not care for his acquaintance; so, without addressing him once by name, we parted.

Green/Geddes left San Francisco and traveled up the Sacramento Valley. He visited old acquaintances in Northern California: Pierson B. Reading, Albert G. Toomes, and Robert H. Thomes. The names will be familiar to residents of Shasta and Tehama Counties.

He left California in September 1856 and returned at last to his hometown in Pennsylvania. He wrote to Larkin:

I found everything about the house as I left it, nothing changed. It seems now as if I had not been absent a week, everything is so familiar. The hardest task was to have to become acquainted with my own children. One is 19 years old; the other 17. [Two children had died while he was absent.] My daughter is a very bright and smart girl and has improved her time at school very well; the boy is very quiet and, I think, rather dull, but I hope he will improve.

Geddes family tomb, from Findagrave.com

He didn’t stay in Pennsylvania. He moved with his wife and children to Texas, where he engaged in land speculation for a few years. By 1880 he was back at home in Pennsylvania, living on friendly terms with his neighbors, although he would never talk of his time in California. He died on July 2, 1889.

His name lives on in San Francisco: Talbot H. Green is the man that Green Street is named after. Notice it the next time you drive northward on Van Ness Ave (Hwy. 101), and think of the man who could have inspired the song, “What Was Your Name in the States?”

Bibliographical Note: The information for this series of posts came primarily from:

Hussey, John Adam. “New Light upon Talbot H. Green.” California Historical Society Quarterly, March 1939, pp. 32-63.

A Picture of Pioneer Times in California , by William Francis White, can be found on Google Books, and makes for entertaining reading.

Paul Geddes left Pennsylvania and made his way to New Orleans, probably by ship from New York City. From New Orleans, he took a steamboat up the Mississippi. He was getting as far away from the scene of his crime as he could. On board the boat he met an Englishman, Talbot Henry Green, and when the man died, he appropriated his name.

He continued from St. Louis up the Missouri River until he reached Westport, that jumping off place for the western plains. An emigration party was forming to journey to California. He couldn’t get any farther away from the States than California; he signed up. It was May, 1841.
He made a good impression on the other men. Nicholas “Cheyenne” Dawson recalled him as “a young man of evident culture and very pleasing address.” When the company gathered to organize and elect officers, Green was elected president. This was not a position with much responsibility. The Company had a captain, John Bartleson, and a trail guide, Thomas Fitzpatrick, who was the true leader, at least until the California-bound company parted from the larger group. But Green’s election was testimony to his instant likability. Many years later, “Cheyenne” Dawson wrote:

Among my overland comrades of ’41, the most to my liking and with whom I became most friendly was Talbot H. Green. Gentlemanly, kindly, genial, generous, he was a favorite with all. Before starting the trip he had provided himself with a case of medicines, and from his attention to the sick, he soon won the title of doctor. After we reached California, Green and I were separated, but I took great interest in him, and although I wondered somewhat at his and Grove Cook’s sudden affluence, no suspicion entered my mind, and for some years Green was, to me, just about the all-around best man I had ever known.

Dawson noticed that Green’s “most important possession seemed to be a quantity of lead that he was taking with him.” In the Utah desert the company had to abandon their wagons, but Green clung to his packet of lead. By the time they reached the Sierra Nevada the two men were sharing one mule, taking turns riding “Monte.”

It was in the Sierras that the lead-covered lump became too heavy for Green to carry. Dawson recalled that, “Green, whose pack of lead which he clung to most solicitously, had been growing heavier for his weakened animal, took Grove Cook with him, and going off into some gulch secreted or cached it.” After they reached the rancho of John Marsh, Green and Cook hired an Indian guide and went back for the “lead.”

We can only assume that the lump of “lead” was gold coin, covered over with a coating of lead. Perhaps the coin was in a leather bag and the bag was wrapped in lead sheets. Whatever its exact nature, it was Talbot H. Green’s grubstake in California. When Dawson met Green again after a year in California, he found that Green was thriving.

Thomas O. Larkin

I found T. H. Green in Monterey, clerking for T. O. Larkin. It was from his recommendation that I was now at Dye’s. Green was finely dressed, and apparently very prosperous. Soon after my arrival, he set up a store of his own out at a ranch near the redwoods. “Where did he get the money?” I queried of Larkin. “Oh, Green has plenty of money,” was the answer.

Dawson may have had his curiosity about Green’s special package, but he couldn’t guess how he had come by it.