Thanks are due to my family for their bemused but patient support
during this never ending journey. The following people however deserve a special mention – I hold you all in my heart.
Dr. Gray Brechin – for your loving mentorship in all things
Maria Brower, Searls Library – for sharing some good stuff with me and the personal photograph
Lee Bruno – for your stellar encouragement, advice and friendship
Tony Bucher – for Harry’s Hunan over and over again, and the other stuff too
David Colin Carr – for your brutal [but loving] red pen
Lana Costantini – for being an instant pal and helping me hack through this history business
Hannah Cunliffe, Research the Past – for help with the exotic maritime bits http://researchthepast.com/
Dr. Myles Dungan – for welcoming me into the Hinterland empire and into your family’s life
David Gallagher, Western Neighborhoods Project/Open SF History – for your good comradeship (and making me laugh)
Susan Goldstein, San Francisco Public Library – for being a mother goddess of San Francisco historical material
Jeff Gunderson, SF Art Institute – for sharing some great stuff with me
Peter Hanff, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley - for sharing your research expertise
Abigail Hamilton - for all the froyos
Rick Homan – for being an excellent mentor, patience, and eternal good humor
Deborah Hunt, Mechanics’ Institute – for always appearing fascinated when I ramble on
John Hogan, Society of California Pioneers - for giving me a good chat whenever I call
Pat Keats, Society of California Pioneers – for your warm excitement at everything I’m researching
Woody LaBounty, San Francisco Heritage – for all the stuff I said about David
Ralph Lewin – for the best introductions and rendition of Happy Birthday I’ve ever had and all the advice
John Lumea, The Emperor Norton Trust – for all the breathless gossip about our mutual [dead] friends
Geordie Lynch – for being there at the start, knowing exactly what to say to everything I pitch you, and the IPA
Bobbie Monzon, Mechanics’ Institute – for everything and all of it
Kathryn M. Neal, University Archives, University of California at Berkeley – for inviting me twice to the Bancroft Library Roundtable and all the help
Jessica Neaves, Heritage Discovered – for your outrageous laugh, bathroom tears and “oh hell no’s”
Basya Petnick – for guiding me as a new biographer – it’s a picky business
Richard Reinhardt – for telling me once how important this project was
Derek Remski – for asking me to speak publicly for the VERY FIRST TIME
Chantaal Ryane – Royal British Columbia Museum Archives – for helping me with some tricky bridge business
Robin Seeley – for your encouragement and the legal research
Jim Stimpert, John Hopkins University – for sending me a tiny but great piece of Hallidie’s past
Heather Taylor – for telling me once, “it’s because you’re a woman!” and being a badass
Strephon Taylor – for texting me while I was riding on a fake cable car and casting me in The San Francisco Cable Cars
Heather Terrell – for being one of the best office mates I ever had and all the high jinks
George Thompson, California State University at Chico – for sharing a tiny but illustrative bit of Hallidie’s private life
Vicky Walker – for mudlarking with me on the foreshore of the Thames and figuratively in the old muck of SF
Douglas Watson – for being one of my earliest friends on this journey and all the deep Scottish digging
Evelyn Watson, Royal Society of Arts – for the Silver Isis Medal
Ted Weinstein – for telling me once that I was the “presumed expert” – a novel term
David Whitehead – for all the Gold Rush Trail good times and your advice
John Woodland – author of Money Pits: British Mining Companies in the Californian and Australian Gold Rushes of the 1850s – love that book!