page_title: Peter Hardeman Burnett
section_title: Post-governorship
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Hardeman Burnett / Post-governorship
caption_attribution_description: Peter Hardeman Burnett (1807-1895), first Governor of California 1849-51. This picture was taken in his later years, when he served as president of Pacific Bank.
context_page_description: Peter Hardeman Burnett was an American politician and the first elected governor of California, serving from December 20, 1849, to January 9, 1851, and the first to resign from office. Burnett was elected governor almost one year before California's admission to the United States as the 31st state in September 1850, and was the last governor during the interim period that began with US military occupation during the Mexican–American War.
context_section_description: One year after leaving the governorship, Burnett was finally able to repay the heavy debts he had incurred in Missouri nearly two decades before. He entered a number of careers, serving briefly as a justice in the California Supreme Court between 1857 and 1858, the Sacramento City Council, as well as becoming a San Jose-based lawyer, a noted proponent of Catholicism during the Victorian period, and then the president of the Pacific Bank of San Francisco. Although never venturing into politics much after the 1860s, Burnett was an active supporter of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In 1880, he published an autobiography, Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer. He died May 17, 1895 at the age of 87 in San Francisco, and is buried in the Santa Clara Mission Cemetery at Santa Clara, California.
caption: Picture taken in his later years, when he served as president of Pacific Bank.
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