The English-born John Henry Brown (1810-1905) went to sea at an early age and was living among the Cherokees in 1843 when he set out for the Pacific Coast. Reminiscences and incidents of "the early days" of San Francisco (1886) describes his early work at Sutter's Fort before his permanent move to San Francisco, where he became a saloonkeeper and hotelkeeper. He offers a painstaking picture of the transformation of San Francisco's people and business patterns with the discovery of gold and provides lively tales of miners, gamblers, gangs and vigilance committees, shopkeepers, and real estate sepculators. He lists early white women in San Francisco and provides a map showing San Francisco's building lots and their occupants in this early period.