A pioneer pastorate and times

Albert Williams (1809-1893) was pastor of a church in Clifton, New Jersey, when the Presbyterian Board of Missions sent him to California via Panama in February 1849. A pioneer pastorate (1879) recalls his five years in San Francisco, 1849-1854, in which he organized the First Presbyterian Church and witnessed fires, earthquakes, and cholera epidemics. He offers vignettes of other clergy in the San Francisco area, missionary work among the Chinese, and accounts of visits to San José, Sacramento, and Oregon.