# California Historical Society Quarterly/Volume 22/Gentleman from Vermont

​Gentleman from Vermont
Royal H. Waller
By Dolores Waldorf
ROYAL HIRAM WALLER, one of San Francisco's early day judges, was an astonishing man to find on any frontier, most of all on the gold rush frontier. He was a staid and pious gentleman who waited thirty-six years before setting out to seek his fortune in far lands.
Costumes and conventions have varied a good many times in the past two thousand years, but the essential characteristics of a conservative have remained the same. Royal H. Waller had them all. He was austere, rockbound in his convictions and afraid of nothing but a scene. He flew against tradition in politics but three times in his life. Each time the nation rocked with the forces which brought the change about.
Royal H. Waller was born on November 29, 1802,^ in the village of Royalton, Vermont, northeast of the famous Green Mountains. He came into a world temporarily at peace. Napoleon was First Consul of France, immersed in the business of revising the codes and map of conquered Europe. George Washington had been dead less than three years, and Thomas Jefferson had been in the office of President but a little over eighteen months. Andrew Jackson, who in years to come would lure Waller from a New Englander's devotion to the creed of John Quincy Adams, was judge of the Tennessee Supreme Court, with most of his stormy career before him. The nation was still in knee breeches, hardly out of Colonial swaddling clothes. Waller's entire sixty-three years spanned the growth of the new democracy to crisis and the test by fire. He died in the turbulent "carpet bag" days, just a little over a year after the end of the Civil War.
Royal Waller reversed the usual formula for living. The average boy roves until he marries and then settles down. Educated for the law. Waller hung out his shingle in Rutland, Vermont,^ a small but busy hillside town in the valley cut by Otter Creek between the Green Mountains and the Taconic Range. Just outside of Rutland the famous marble quarries were already producing building stone for a booming nation. Waller was appointed post-master^ for Rutland by President Andrew Jackson; and in 1834 he won the hand of Elizabeth A. Hodges, daughter of Dr. Silas Hodges, local plutocrat and political factor since 1783.* By all precedent. Royal Waller should have settled down in Rutland for the rest of his life.
But in 1836^ he and his good wife set out for the "Great West," as Michigan was known in those days. After a journey which must have been a test of endurance, the Wallers arrived in Detroit, a frontier town^ of some three ​thousand inhabitants, on the rim of a dense forest. Michigan was not yet a state but had hopes, and Waller quite possibly had received a Federal appointment from President Jackson in anticipation of the territory's admission. This was accomplished on January 26, 1837, by a compromise common in middle America: Michigan came in as a free state and Arkansas as a slave.7 Less than two months later President Van Bureau took office, and the greatest depression in the history of the new republic crashed down upon the dreams of quick fortune everywhere.
Waller practiced law in Detroit^ for several years but finally decided to return to the Atlantic States. Some time in 1839 the thirty-seven-year-old attorney opened an office in New York City,^ where he practiced until 1849. During this time he apparently returned to the Whig party. The Albany regency and the suave domination of redheaded Martin Van Buren were definitely not to Waller's taste. Chastened and penitent, he turned his back upon Jackson's chosen successor. He was through with adventure, he thought.
But the Wallers, now graying and middle-aged, arrived in San Francisco aboard the ship Normon,^'^ sixty-three days out of Panama, on July 15, 1849. It was a further test of the amazing endurance of these two New Englanders. On the very same day arrived the steamer California, but twenty-two days out of Panama. Waller was now nearly fifty, one of the older men in a city full of gold-mad boys and young men.
While most of his fellow men stalked adventure in the dark muddy streets or stood bedazzled in the lurid gambling saloons. Royal H. Waller paid his respects to the Rev. Albert Williams, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, who held services twice each Sunday in the little red schoolhouse on the Plaza.^2 During the rest of the week the Reverend Mr. Williams kept school in the little building, which had served as jail, court, and meeting house and was known as the Public Institute. Waller became interested in the school at once and was promptly appointed a director, serving until Mr. Williams found it necessary to abandon the school in the fall of '49,^^ owing to pressure of church work.
The childless Wallers devoted their frustrated parental instincts to every enterprise for the spiritual development of other people's offspring. There were many such opportunities. Churchmen were greatly exercised over the increasing neglect of children by the carefree population. Aside from the need for schools, there was a great need of religious instruction. Royal Waller was one of the early officers of the Pacific Tract Society, founded on February 24, 1850.^* He became almost at once a sturdy pillar of the First Presbyterian Church.
The ideals and good deeds of the Wallers shine serenely through the rolling smoke and political fury of the town in which they now lived. While it burned five times in 1850, only to rise and burn again, they pursued their ​determined purpose. They would bring civilization and culture to San Francisco. Nothing could stop them.
Aloof from the tumult of the city in fact as well as in spirit, they lived far up on Montgomery street at the corner of Vallejo.^^ They were so far out from the muddy, planked town that toiling Charley Kimball missed them entirely on his rounds in the fall of 1850 when he was collecting names for the first San Francisco Directory.
The beginning of the eventful year of 1851 found Mrs. Waller sharing with other good Presbyterian ladies in plans for the formation of an orphan asylum society which late in January of that year^^ became the San Francisco Ladies Orphan Asylum Society. Her husband, however, was concerned with more worldly matters and was planning to run for Recorder on the Whig ticket. At the April election, the second^ ^ to be held under the city charter, nearly six thousand votes were cast.^^ Charles J. Brenham was elected Mayor, and Royal H. Waller became San Francisco's second recorder, succeeding Frank Tilford, the first recorder.^^
The recorder in those days was a police judge. He heard the usual run of misdemeanor cases: petty theft, trespass, disorderly conduct and drunken- ness, disturbance of the peace, and the failure of peddlers and small fry to pay their license fees. Drunks, hoarse-voiced barmaids, sneak thieves from Sydneytown, and highly painted females of obvious occupation paraded through his court room on the lower floor of the City Hall (the former Graham House), a veranda-hung edifice at the corner of Kearny and Pa- cific Streets.^^
In the spring of '5 1, William Walker, editor of the San Francisco Herald, was waging relentless war on Judge Levi Parsons, demanding impeach- ment.^^ Walker put the same fury into his job as editor as he later put into waging the wars of an insurrectionist in Mexico and Nicaragua. But the storms which swirled around the City Hall never touched Judge Waller. He conducted his court with dignity and solemnity, punishing the guilty and releasing the innocent with a final parental word of warning.
But among the fellow citizens of Judge Waller were many who shared Walker's dissatisfaction with the local courts. Men from every strata of so- ciety talked of "perjured witnesses" and "corrupted juries."^^ They openly declared that they would do something drastic if the courts continued to release the notorious and guilty. On one side of the benign recorder raged roaring mobs, plundering and terrifying the town. On the other gathered an incipient mob pledged to enforce the law with stout rope if necessary. If the judge had said anything regarding the proposed Committee of Vigi- lance and the gangs known as "the Hounds" and "the Ducks," he undoubt- edly would have cleared his throat testily and declared, "A plague on both your houses!"
​But however much he preferred a staid middle course, the tranquil re- corder was destined to have a most untranquil term of office. Less than a month after he held his first court, fire wiped out about three-quarters of the town southeast of the City Hall. It started in a paint factory<r23> on the opposite side of the Plaza, three blocks south of the City Hall, and burned everything, including the planked streets, from the Plaza to the bay. Noth- ing remained east of Kearny Street but the far end of Long Wharf, isolated beyond ash and debris strewn water and the charred stumps of the piles upon which that part of the town had rested. With the usual blithe reaction of the frontier this remnant of former splendor was named Pile Island.<r24> That was on May 4, 1851, the anniversary of the great fire of May 4, 1850.
Just about two months after the judge took office, a big six-foot Sydney cove named John Jenkins was caught stealing a safe down on the far end of Long Wharf, in the Pile Island region. The Committee of Vigilance went into action, and before morning Jenkins' great hulk was dangling from a rope flung over a beam on the south porch of the old adobe on the upper slope of the Plaza.<r25>
Twelve days later a fire started on Sunday morning in a house some four blocks due west of the City Hall on Pacific Street.<r26> When it had spent it- self. Recorder Waller was without a courtroom and the town without a City Hall. For the remainder of his term Recorder Waller held court in rented rooms, for it was not until the following year that the Jenny Lind Theatre opposite the Plaza was finally sold to the city and made over into a City Hall.<r27>
History records one interesting meeting of Recorder Waller with the Committee of Vigilance in 1851. That occurred in August. Judge Waller had accompanied the Rev. Albert Williams, his pastor and good friend, to the jail for religious services, which Williams held there every Sunday at 3:00 P.M.<r28> The judge wished to study the reactions of hardened criminals to the softening influence of the Holy Writ.
This visit was shortly after Samuel Whittaker and Robert McKenzie, accused murderers and notorious gangsters, had been forcibly removed from the Vigilance Committee rooms by Governor John McDougal, Mayor Charles J. Brenham, and Sheriff John C. Hays.<r29> The raid by the law had taken place at 2:00 A.M., and all but five of the temporarily unvigilant Vigilantes had been sound asleep.
With Recorder Waller and the good Mr. Williams on their pious visit to the jail were the son and daughter of the Presbyterian pastor. It was not a party capable of coping with such scenes of insurrection and violence as soon developed. The dignified gentlemen were mildly surprised but not suspicious when they found a half dozen local citizens waiting in the office of the jail.<r30> The men were known to Waller and Williams, but they further explained their presence by announcing that they too had come to study the ​faces of the prisoners during divine services. This laudable sociological purpose found favor with both the recorder and the minister. The visitors were admitted. The prisoners were ushered into the courtyard, which was well shielded from the world by a tall plank fence.^^ Services began.
During the prayer there was a knock at the door.^^ The guard sang out that none would be admitted, but the door burst open as a mob of sixty grim- faced men poured into the yard.^^ The half dozen authorized visitors had already leapt into action and had both Whittaker and McKenzie in their clutches. Before astounded Judge Waller could blink an eye, the trembling criminals were whisked outside to a waiting carriage.^*
In the curtained carriage the two miserable wretches were hustled through the littered streets to the Committee's rooms on Battery Street and up the stairs to face trial. The Monumental bell up on Brenham Place gave tongue suddenly to the summons of the Committee, and a great crowd closed in on Battery Street from every side. Less than fifteen minutes after the prayer of the Reverend Mr. Williams had been interrupted, furtive little McKenzie and world-weary Whittaker were standing out in front of the headquarters. Around their necks were two ropes, which dangled from two beams jutting out from the second story above them. The men were pulled up off the ground with such speed and efficiency that not once did they fall.^^ The improvement in the Committee's hanging technique since Jenkins had been liquidated was noticed by all, but it is doubtful that Judge Waller was among the onlookers. He had had quite enough for one day.
Despite the deplorable conduct of his fellow citizens. Judge Waller re- tained his faith in their ultimate redemption. Whether he declined to run for a second term or was crowded out is not clear. In January 1852 he was succeeded by George W. Baker, 36 who subsequently had his courtroom in Room No. 6 on the lower floor of the New City Hall (the former Jenny Lind Theatre) on Kearny Street opposite the Plaza. 37 Royal H. Waller returned to his law practice, opening offices in Bolton and Barron's Building on Merchant Street near Montgomery. He moved his offices to the Montgomery Block a few years later. His partner was Henry L. Dodge." 38
On January 26, 1853, the Church Session of the First Presbyterian Church was increased by the installation of Judge Royal H. Waller and Messrs. Thomas Hopkins and Thomas C. Hambly .39 The next year the judge be- came a ruling elder,40 which he remained until his death more than ten years later. Toward the latter part of 1853 Waller became United States commissioner for Ohio, 41 an appointment which he retained for a number of years.
It was in 1854 that Mrs. Waller became one of the managers of the San Francisco Ladies Orphan Asylum Society, which by that time had erected a building of its own, costing about $25,000, and housing twenty-four orphans. 42 Five or six years thence Mrs. Waller would become president of this society. 43
​And in 1854, after examining his conscience carefully, Royal H. Waller changed his politics. He became a candidate for recorder on the "Citizens Reform ticket," a child of the incendiary Native American party.<r44> There were some who said the Whigs were deserting their party in quest of politi- cal jobs,<r45> that the party "was an old dotard."<r46> One editor commented, "It is quite clear however that to nominate a Whig ticket is to elect a large ma- jority if not all of the candidates of the Secret Order."<r47> So Royal H. Waller had his fling at secret handshakes and secret "dark lantern" meetings. He be- came recorder for the second time.<r48>
By 1854 the Wallers had moved to their last San Francisco home, which stood on Montgomery between Green and Union Streets.<r49> Late in that year the Rev. Albert Williams preached his farewell sermon, preparatory to re- turning to the Atlantic States. The trustees of the church, among them Royal H. Waller, addressed a letter to their pastor asking him to furnish them with a copy of the sermon, so that it might be printed for the congregation. Touched and pleased, their shepherd complied with their request.<r50>
Directly after Waller became recorder for the second time, the Alta com- mented, "We have no sympathy with the 'Know Nothings' as a political body . . . but if they have elected their ticket in this city, they have done the city the service of placing in office good and capable men."<r51> Royal H. Waller had lost neither his dignity nor his good name by the change.
But sometime during his year of office the spirit of his new party surged over the boundary between a defensive course and that of offense. The theory of priority in office for Native Americans became one of increasing persecution against those who were not natives. From such action the staid Vermonter shrank. Although he probably had never heard of a speech made years before by an obscure Illinois lawyer named Lincoln, he shared the conviction that: "When men take it in their heads today to hang gamblers or burn murderers, they should recollect that in the confusion usually at- tending such transactions they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is . . ."<r52>
He returned to his law practice in July 1855<r53> and took no active part in politics through the fire and fury of Charles Cora's trial and the violent sum- mer of '56.
Just when he again changed his politics is not clear. In November 1855, he had at least nine political tickets to choose from,<r54> all of them variations of the issue of property rights versus the emotional appeal of "black servi- tude." Lincoln's cry for the preservation of the Union and national unity won the Vermonter, heart and soul. He became such an active Republican that in 1861 President Abraham Lincoln appointed him United States land receiver and pension agent.<r55>
By this time he had a new law partner, Joseph H. Moore. They occupied ​the same law offices, Nos. 1 and 2, Montgomery Block,56- which Waller had shared with Dodge.
Late in 1863 he resigned as pension agent and was made a paymaster in the United States Army with the rank of major. His headquarters, however, were to be in Salt Lake City. Waller by this time was nearly sixty years old. He had chronic stomach trouble, and the very thought of venturing far into the desert appalled him. Besides, the Mormon City was no doubt a strange and godless place. He had no desire to investigate for himself. He resigned rather than leave San Francisco. 57
For two years his health failed steadily. Several weeks before his death his doctor told him that nothing more could be done. 58 With characteristic poise. Royal H. Waller prepared himself for the hereafter. His conscience was quite clear, his reward certain. He died on September 29, 1866, aged sixty-three years and ten months. 59 The Alta declared that he had been con- scious to the last. 60 His passing was as dignified as his presence in court.
On the day of his death. Queen Emma of Hawaii was visiting the Cliff House, watching old Ben Butler, a gigantic seal, cavort about the Seal Rocks. A comic young fellow by the name of Mark Twain was also in town, giving lectures on the Sandwich Islands and other subjects. The Queen, who was in mourning, did not attend. 61
San Francisco courts adjourned out of respect to Royal Waller.62 His funeral services were held in the First Presbyterian Church, on Stockton Street.63 The Alta bemoaned his passing: one by one the pioneers were de- parting from a community which could "ill afford" to spare them. 64
The widow of Royal Hiram Waller lost no time in returning to her fam- ily home in Rutland, Vermont, where her sister Mary Ann, also a widow, awaited her. Mary Ann's husband had been Solomon Foot, United States Senator from Vermont, who had died in 1865. 65 There the two sisters passed the rest of their lives with their memories.
But Royal H. Waller was not forgotten in San Francisco. In the course of time a street was named for him, 66 which bears his name to this day. It is some twenty blocks long, running from the San Francisco State College grounds on Buchanan Street west to Stanyan. About midway it is cut by Buena Vista Park. It is a street of tall old wooden houses, which date from the seventies through the nineties, just the sort of a street that should bear the name of a gentleman from Vermont.
NOTES
1. San Francisco Alta California, October 1, 1866, 1/1.
2. Loc. cit.
3. Loc. cit.
4. Silas H. Hodges, "The Hodges Family," Vermont Historical Gazetteer (Clare- mont, New Hampshire, 1887), III, 567.
5. San Francisco Alta California, October i, 186 ​6, i/i.
6. George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (New York: Ox- ford University Press, 1938), p. 239.
7. Writers' Program, Work Projects Administration, Michigan, a Guide to the Wol- verine State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), p. 48.
8. Yiodigesjoc.cit.
9. San Francisco Aha California, October i, 1866, i/i.
ID. Edward A. King, "Harbor Master Records of Arrivals," March-December 184% Society of California Pioneers Quarterly, I (December, 1924), 39.
11. San Francisco Alta California, October i, 1866, i/i.
12. Edward Arthur Wicher, The Presbyterian Church in California, 1849-192-] (New York: Frederick H. Hitchcock, The Grafton Press, 1927), p. 39; Frank Soule, John H. Gihon, and James Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco . . . (New York, 1885), p. 679.
13. James M. Parker, San Francisco Directory, 18 $2-18$^, pp. loi, 112.
14. LeCount & Strong, San Fraiicisco Directory, 18^4, p. 256.
15. A. W. Morgan & Co., San Francisco Directory, 18^2, p. 61.
16. Albert T. Williams, A Pioneer Pastorate and Times (San Francisco, 1882), p. 121.
17. Parker, San Francisco Directory, 18 $2-^^, p. 18.
18. Soule, Gihon, and Nisbet, op. cit., p. 326.
19. San Francisco Herald, February 6, 1851, 2/3; Parker, San Francisco Directory, i8s2-53, p. 15.
20. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Calif omia (San Francisco, 1884-90), VI, 217.
21. San Francisco Herald, March 15, 1851, 2/4; Soule, Gihon, and Nisbet, op. cit.y pp. 322-24.
22. San Francisco California Courier, August 21, 185 1, 2/1.
23. San Francisco Alta California, May 5, 1851, 2/1.
24. San Francisco California Courier, June 19, 1851, 2/3.
25. San Francisco Herald, June 11, 1851, 2/2.
26. San Francisco Alta California, June 23, 185 1, i/i.
27. Soule, Gihon, and Nisbet, op cit., pp. 345, 394.
28. Williams, op. cit., p. 186.
29. San Francisco California Courier, August 21, 1851, 2/r.
30. Williams, op. cit., p. 186.
31. San Francisco California Courier, August 25, 1851, 2/2.
32. Wi\\\2ims,loc.cit.
33. San Francisco California Courier, August 25, 185 1, 2/2.
34. Williams, loc. cit.
35. San Francisco, California Courier, August 25, 1851, 2/2.
36. San Francisco Municipal Reports, 18 $9-60, p. 183; Soule, Gihon, and Nisbet, op. cit., p. 350.
37. LeCount & Strong, San Francisco Directory, i8$4, p. 200.
38. A. W. Morgan & Co., San Francisco Directory, 18 $2, p. 61.
39. Williams, op. cit., p. 156. (The year is given as 1852 in the 1879 edition.)
40. I bid., p. 179.
41. LeCount & Strong, San Francisco Directory, 18 $4, p. 138.
42. Williams, op. cit., pp. 123, 124.
43. Henry G. Langley, San Fra?icisco Directory, i860, p. 27.
44. San Francisco Alta California, September 6, 1854, 2/3; ibid., September 7, 1854, 2/1.
45. Thomas B. Reed, Modem Eloquence (Philadelphia, 1903), XV, 2144. ​
46. San Francisco Herald, September 2, 1855, 2/2.
47. Op. cit., August 21, 1855, ill.
48. San Francisco Municipal Reports, 18^(^-80, p. 183; Zoeth S. Eldredge, The Begin- nings of San Francisco (San Francisco, 1912), II, 738.
49. LeCount & Strong, San Francisco Directory, 18^4, p. 138.
50. Williams, op. cit., p. 183.
51. San Francisco Alta California, September 7, 1854, 2/1.
52. Philip Van Doren Stern, The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Random House, 1940), p. 255.
53. San Francisco Municipal Reports, 18^9-60, p. 183.
54. San Jose Telegraph, November 6, 1855, 2/1.
SS' San Francisco Alta California, October i, 1866, i/i.
$6. Henry G. Langley, San Francisco Directory, i8$8, p. 276.
57. San Francisco Alta California, October i, 1866, i/i.
58. Loc.cit.
59. San Francisco Bulletin, September 29, 1866, 3/3.
60. San Francisco Alta California, October i, 1866, i/i.
61. San Francisco Bulletin, September 29, 1866, 3/7.
62. San Francisco Bulletin, October i, 1866, 3/3.
63. San Francisco Bulletin, September 29, 1866, 3/3.
64. San Francisco Alta California, October i, 1866, i/i. 6$. Hodges, loc. cit.
66. Eldredge, op. cit., II, 738.