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
