he arrived after the ceremonies were over. For a short time he was a member of the Cassius Clay battalion in defence of the capital. At the California state convention, on June 19, 1 861, he was a candidate for nomination as gov- ernor, but was defeated by Stanford.^^ In 1862 he was appointed warden of the port of San Francisco by Governor Stanford,^^ and served until 1866.
In 1 866 Staples was appointed vice-president of the Fireman's Fund Insur- ance Company, and became president the following year. He remained the active head of this growing business until October 1 899, when he retired. He was president of the Board of Fire Underwriters from 1867 to 1891, and was a vice-president of the Society of California Pioneers while his friend James Lick was its president. He died on April 3, 1900.^^
NOTES
1. The Journal, in a leather-bound notebook, is in the possession of a grandson, David S. Painter, of San Mateo, California, who has been kind enough to permit its publication here. All entries but the last are in ink, in good legible handwriting. The writer used few periods to mark the end of sentences or capitals to indicate the beginnings of new sen- tences; spaces have accordingly been left to indicate breaks in thought. Most of the orig- inal spelling has also been kept in an effort to retain the character of the journal.
2 . Biographical material concerning Staples is to be found in Alonzo Phelps, Contempo- rary Biography of California's Representative Men (San Francisco, 1882), II, 337-47; W. F. Swasey, The Early Days and Men of California (Oakland, 1891), pp. 291-97; Frank Morton Todd, A Romance of Insurance (San Francisco: Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, 1929), pp. 291-97; The Bay of San Francisco (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1892), p. 386; San Jose Pioneer, May 15, 1900, p. 76; Obituary Notices of the Society of California Pioneers (bound typewritten MSS), VII, 195-98.
3. The company included Bracket Lord, president; Walton C. Felch, vice-president; S. D. Osborn, secretary; Jesse Winslow, treasurer; and David J. Staples, J. A. Hough, A. C. Sweetser, H. W. Dickinson, Benjamin C. Evans, and Thomas H. McGrath (or Me- grath) . Boston Evening Traveler, April 17, 1849. See also C. W. Haskins, The Argonauts of California (New York, 1890), p. 397.
4. The story of the Granite State and California Mining and Trading Company, which left Boston the day after the Staples party, is told by one of its members, Kimball Web- ster, in The Gold Seekers of ^49 (Manchester, N. H.: Standard Book Company, 1917.) Webster makes no mention of the religious services on Sunday, April 29, but does say that the Bay State "is very much crowded with Calif ornians." Op. cit., p. 31.
5. John Charles Fremont was the first to record accurately on a map the road to the South Pass, as well as other routes to the Pacific. "After 1845, the emigrant commonly carried in his kit a copy of Fremont's journal with a useful map of the country as far as the Pacific." Frederic Logan Paxson, History of the American Frontier (Boston and N. Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924, p. 338. "In 1846 the Senate of the U. S. published a detailed oblong folio map in seven sections, compiled from field sketches and observa- tions made by Charles Preuss. The map shows the overland route from Westport to Fort Walla Walla in great detail, also gives tables of meteorological observations, extracts from Fremont's report, and remarks concerning water, grass, fuel, game and Indians." Fremont's Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-44 (Washington, 1845), printed as 28th Cong. , 2d sess., S. Doc. 174, and also as H. Doc. 166, was the source for a number
