Posts Tagged ‘John Judson Ames’

The first issue of the Herald.

After surmounting difficulties and suffering anxieties that would have disheartened any but a live Yankee, we are enabled to present the first number of the Herald to the public. –John Judson Ames, editor, San Diego Herald.

San Diego’s first newspaper, the Herald, appeared on May 29, 1851, only twelve days after the first issue of the Los Angeles Star, the earliest newspaper in Southern California. The editor and publisher of the Herald was thirty-year-old John Judson Ames, a towering, six-foot six-inch “live Yankee” from Calais, Maine.

Read the story of John Judson Ames and the San Diego Herald.

George Horatio Derby

We found ourselves in a large bar and billiard-room . . . Here I saw Lieutenant Derby, of the Topographical Engineers, an elderly gentlemen of emaciated appearance and serious cast of features. . . 

William Heath Davis

Of the new town of San Diego, now the city of San Diego, I can say that I was its founder. –William Heath Davis, interview with San Diego Sun, December 1887.

Often forgotten in San Diego history is the pioneer some historians regard as the true founder of the City of San Diego.  William Heath Davis certainly believed he deserved credit for his attempt of 1850, an effort that failed but paved the way for a later city builder named Alonzo E. Horton.

Read the story of San Diego’s founding: The Davis Folly.