Gates, Moultrie, Appleton and Wool.
Anderson, Putnam, Banks and Prentiss.
Chapman, Winfield, Wright and Stoneman.
Bernal's street signs honor more than a dozen general officers from the bloody wars of the nation's first century. Most of these men, like the carnage and waste they supervised, are no longer household names. Only four set foot in San Francisco and none, we suppose, ever chased sheep across the pastoral slopes of 19th century Bernal Hill. The only truly famous general to be honored by a Bernal street sign is Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Grozon but the Marquis de Montcalm was French.
Other Bernal streets and lanes bear the names of three unremembered Civil War heroes of lesser rank -- a battle surgeon, a murdered colonel and a boatswain's mate who won two Medals of Honor.
Only two battles are memorialized. A badly needed triumph by American revolutionaries in 1777 is remembered with Bennington Street (changed in 1882 from Scott Street). And the defeat of U.S. invaders in Canada near Niagara Falls in 1814 gives us Lundy's Lane.
The Battle of Lundy's Lane
For street names of famous Civil War battles, you must go over to Noe Valley to find Vicksburg, Chattanooga and Fair Oaks (a street without oaks).
Those who named Bernal's streets before 1870 didn't stop with generals and battles, although it looks as if they may have thumbed through 19th century schoolbooks for inspiration.
The mythic story of New England's Thanksgiving may have morphed into the streets that criss-cross Bernal's east slope in honor of Puritan leaders William Brewster and William Bradford; the trusting Indian chief Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoags; Samoset, the Pemaquid who helped the intruders, and, of course, the Mayflower itself.
Chief Massasoit
The legend of Pocahontas inspired Powhattan Avenue, a rustic lane named for her fierce daddy as chief of the Powhatan Confederacy of Algonquian tribes in tidewater Virginia.
Chief Powhatan
Heavily hyped admiration for Gen. Andrew Jackson, as seen by the president's uncritical tale-spinners, put Old Hickory Avenue on the 1870 map. It was soon renamed Ogden Avenue, possibly for the Revolutionary War hero, senator and New Jersey governor in 1812, Col. Robert Ogden.
Robert Ogden
Spanish words gave us Bernal streets named Bocana ("entrance," as in the Golden Gate's original name, "La Bocana de la Ensenada de los Farallones"), Buena Vista ("good view"), Esmeralda ("emerald") and Precita (which, we are told, could mean "little dam").
From literature: Coleridge Street (changed in 1909 from California Avenue) and Bronte Street (changed in 1882 from Harrison Street).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
From England: York, Waltham, Hampshire, Manchester and Norwich streets.
From the wives and daughters of developers, city officials and family friends: Gladys, Elsie, Bessie and Virginia streets. Or so we assume. Who knows?
We know a little more about the street names of neighboring Noe Valley. The historians tell us that pioneer farmer John M. Horner, a man who must have wearied of references to the Little Jack who sat in the corner, bought a big piece of the San Miguel Rancho from Jose de Jesus Noe in 1852. It's still called Horner's Addition. He laid out streets on paper and gave them names. One was to be called Horner Street; another, Elizabeth Street (for Mrs. Horner). Included were Army Street and Navy Street.
Two years later Horner lost the heavily mortgaged property to banker Cornelius K. Garrison, the mayor in 1853-54. And later, when the Board of Supervisors decided in 1895 to rename every other South of Market and Mission District street with a number, Horner Street became 23rd Street. Elizabeth Street is still with us, but Navy Street became 26th Street. That left Army Street, which was military in name only, as the northerly border of Bernal Heights. A century later, after an emotional battle of words, the name was changed to Cesar Chavez (Army) Street.
Much less is known about the provenance of Bernal's street names. The Bernal Heights Foundation says on its web site, "The Bernal Heights community was developed in 1839 as part of a large Mexican land grant belonging to Don Jose Cornelio Bernal, called Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo. Don Bernal used the area as grazing land for his cattle . . . In the early 1860s most of what is now Bernal Heights was still largely undeveloped. Even after Francis Pioche, a French-born merchant, subdivided it remained a very rural area. How Monsieur Pioche came in possession of old Don Bernal's Rancho is a mystery to this date."
Pioche? Now we can guess who might have put Montcalm Avenue on the street grid. It honors the French commander defeated by Gen. James Wolfe in 1759 at Quebec. The battle, which killed both generals, made sure that New France would become Canada.
The Official Map of the City and County of San Francisco in 1870 included Bernal Heights, Horner's Addition and other proposed streets of San Francisco's outer ranchlands. Bernal's streets would have been selected and named in 1868 or 1869, when street namers would have been familiar with Civil War generals. But the streets for the most part existed only on paper ? and the mapmakers didn't leave much of a paper trail.
For an explanation (and for informed speculation on where many street names come from) we're indebted to Louis K. Loewenstein, author of "Streets of San Francisco" (Wilderness Press, Berkeley). In researching the origins of San Francisco's 1,735 non-numbered and unalphabetized street names, he notes that the conflagration of 1906 incinerated thousands of city records. As he writes in his introduction, the rationales for name changes were generally omitted from Proceedings of the Board of Supervisors.
What's left is logical deduction, which can be scary. It's logical to deduce that Main Street south of Market was supposed to be a main street; it was named, however, for Charles Main (1817-1906), a onetime harness maker who became an influential capitalist. The researcher won't have any problem with the origin of, say, Nevada Street. He can suspect that Cortland Avenue was named for the city in upstate New York. But who was Eugenia? And why was her name chosen as a replacement for Lincoln Avenue? Says Loewenstein: "Popular legend has it that she was the daughter of the toll keeper on San Bruno Road before the turn of the 20th century." Perhaps.
Anderson Street
In a nation with many an Anderson, the most likely nominee for Bernal honors is Brig. Gen. Robert Anderson (1805-1871), whose father, Col. Robert Anderson, had been a hero in the battle of Cowpens in the Revolutionary War. The son, a major of artillery, commanded at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor when it was shelled by the Confederates in the opening salvos of the Civil War. He was forced to surrender and lower the U.S. flag. Four years later, after more than half a million combat deaths on both sides, he returned to preside as the same flag was raised over the fort's ruins.
Brigadier General Anderson
Appleton Avenue
So short a street, it may have been given the middle name of Gen. Nelson Appleton Miles (1839-1925), the Civil War hero and Indian wars veteran who was commander at the Presidio in 1888-1890.
Banks Street
Not named for financial institutions. Nathaniel P. (for Prentiss) Banks (1816-1894), who as an impoverished lad was a bobbin boy in the cotton mills, had been elected as state legislator, member of Congress and, shortly before the Civil War, governor of Massachusetts. Despite his lack of military training, he won a political appointment as a major general of volunteers and, in pictures at least, resembled a fierce warrior. In later commands, he was defeated by Confederate General Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley and again at Cedar Mountain. The rest of his military career was equally undistinguished. After the war, he served again in Congress and the State Senate.
Governor Banks
Chapman Street
Attorney, assistant clerk in the Indiana legislature and publisher of the Indiana Republican (in Terre Haute and Indianapolis), George H. Chapman (1832-1882) had been a Navy midshipman during he Mexican-American War. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he was appointed a major in the 3rd Indiana Cavalry in October 1861. By the war's end, when he was a brigadier general, he had served in the battles of Second Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg, and in the Mine Run, Overland and Shenandoah campaigns. He was wounded in the battle of Third Winchester. After the war, he was a judge and state senator in Indiana.
George Chapman
Ellsworth Street
Fascinated by military history and panoply, Col. Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth (1837-1861) was a friend of Lincoln's. He raised a regiment of volunteers from New York firefighters, who invaded Virginia the day after it seceded. When he cut down a Confederate flag atop a hotel, the owner killed him with a shotgun blast and was shot dead in return. "Remember Ellsworth" became a rallying cry of a regiment known as the Ellsworth Avengers.
Colonel Ellsworth
Gates Street
Born in England, Horatio Gates (1727-1806) began his military career as an officer in the British Army in the French and Indian War. Severely wounded at Fort Duquesne and retiring with the rank of major, he was living in Virginia when he sided with the rebels and his friend George Washington in the American Revolution. He was a major general when his ragged force defeated his former comrades at Ticonderoga and Saratoga in 1777, prompting the redcoats and their commander, Gen. John Burgoyne, to surrender. It was a turning point in the war, but Gates gets little attention in schoolbook histories.
Montcalm Avenue
A professional soldier, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Grozon (1712-1759) was a major general commanding the forces of New France in North America at the outset of the Seven Years' War. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general after his capture of Fort Oswego and Fort William Henry and his defense of Fort Ticonderoga. But in 1759, Montcalm was defending Quebec when the James Wolfe, the British commander with a much bigger army, scaled cliffs to the Plains of Abraham. He defeated the French in a decisive battle that took the lives of both commanders and left New France as Canada, a British colony.
Major de Montcalm-Grozon
Moultrie Street
Although William Moultrie (1730-1805) led troops against Native Americans in 1761 and won election to the colonial assembly, the general is remembered chiefly for his surprising defense of a South Carolina fort (now Fort Moultrie) on Sullivan's Island. It blocked the British in 1776 from capturing Charleston, his birthplace. Captured in 1780 and released after the war, he was elected governor of South Carolina in 1785. (The 1870 map shows it as Moultry Street.)
William Moultrie
Mullen Avenue
Originally Wolff Avenue, it was renamed (probably) for Patrick Mullin (1844-1897), a Navy boatswain's mate and native of Ireland. He won the Medal of Honor twice in 1865 for heroism in battle on a Virginia stream and for rescuing a drowning officer off the Virginia coast. The Navy's citations after the Civil War ignored the correct spelling of his surname.
Prentiss Street
It's possible that this steep, narrow street memorializes the middle name of Nathaniel Banks (see Banks Street, above, which parallels Prentiss Street one block to the west). But that would ignore the accomplishments of another general, Benjamin Mayberry Prentiss (1819-1901), a veteran of the Mexican-American War who was lionized in the Civil War as "Hero of the Hornet's Nest" after the battle of Shiloh. He held off the rebel attackers until U.S. Grant's forces could move safely to the south, but by then Prentiss and 2,200 bluecoats were encircled and captured.
General Prentiss
Putnam Street
A veteran of Rogers Rangers in the French and Indian War, Major General Israel Putnam (1718-1790) was involved in numerous battles in the early years of the Revolutionary War. But the former tavern keeper and farmer from Connecticut is remembered mainly for telling his troops in 1775 at the Battle of Bunker Hill: "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes."
General Putnam
Ripley Street
The street was originally Prospect Place, a name changed in 1882 because of confusion with nearby Prospect Avenue. The honoree is probably Eleazar Wheelock Ripley (1782-1839), a U.S. brigadier general in the battle at Lundy's Lane and the siege of Fort Erie in the War of 1812. Ripley was later a Louisiana legislator. In 1816 the Ohio river port village of Staunton was renamed Ripley in his honor, believe it or not.
Stoneman Street
A West Pointer who came to San Francisco in 1846 as a lieutenant in the Mormon Battalion, George Stoneman (1822-1894) was a career military commander with an uneven record in numerous Civil War campaigns. A major general, he freed the prisoners at Andersonville and led cavalry raids into the Confederacy. After leaving the Army, he settled in the San Gabriel Valley and was elected California governor, 1883-87. Camp Stoneman, a 2,500-acre Army base opened in 1942 near Pittsburg in Contra Costa County, was the jumping off place for more than a million troops headed for the Pacific Theater in World War II. It was later the separation center for soldiers returning from the Korean Conflict. The base was shut down in 1954. The cavalryman's name was remembered in a different context when The Band, in a 1970 song by Robbie Robertson, included this couplet:
Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
Til Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again...
George Stoneman
Tompkins Avenue
He wasn't a general. The street (renamed in 1909 from Union Avenue) probably honors Dr. Hartwell Carver Tompkins (1828-1903). Surgeon-in-Chief of the Army of the Potomac's First Division, Second Army Corps, he stood "knee deep in amputated limbs" at Antietam. He had served also in the battles of Fair Oaks, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and Appomattox before returning to civilian life in Knowlesville in upstate New York. Other candidate: Patrick W. Tompkins, former congressman from Mississippi who joined the gold rush to California in 1849 and died in San Francisco in 1853.
Dr. Tompkins
Winfield Street
Few given names are honored in the street nomenclature world, but Scott Street (across the northerly reaches of San Francisco) and Scott Street (in the Presidio) must not have seemed sufficient glory for admirers of Winfield Scott (1786-1866), pomp-loving hero of the War of 1812, the Blackhawk War and the Mexican-American War. At the beginning of the Civil War, "Old Fuss and Feathers" was the first lieutenant general since George Washington but, because he was overweight and gout-afflicted, he couldn't ride a horse. Forced to resign in late 1861, the 75-year-old general lived long enough to see his long-term "Anaconda" plan ? derided by his successor, George McClellan ? would eventually become the Union's ruthless, war-ending strategy.
Wool Street
A lawyer when the War of 1812 began, John Ellis Wool (1784-1869) organized a volunteer force, fought in several battles and wound up a colonel. He organized more volunteer regiments for the Mexican-American War, when he became a major general. In 1954 he commanded the Department of the Pacific where, because he was intolerant of territorial bureaucrats, he tried and generally failed to stop massacres of Indians and other depredations by civilian volunteers and settlers. Transferred to New York during the Civil War, he retired in 1863, age 75.
Wright Street
Despite a well documented reputation for fair dealing with Indians as they fought to retain their homelands, West Pointer George E. Wright (1803-1865) spent most of his career in conflict or in negotiations with Pawnees, Seminoles, Yakimas and the politicians who sided with land-hungry settlers in Washington and Oregon. Although a brigadier general with the outbreak of the Civil War, he was kept in California as commander of the Presidio in San Francisco and, later, of the District of California. When he was ordered back to the Pacific Northwest in 1865, the Brother Jonathan steamship hit a reef and foundered. Among the drowned were General Wright and his wife.
George Wright
Bernal Heights historian Jerry Schimmel contributed to this piece. Retired newspaperman Lynn Ludlow, a resident of Bernal Heights, was a reluctant Army draftee during the Korean Conflict. He developed a critical perspective toward generals while somehow attaining the rank of Private E-2. E-mail him at ludstadt@rcn.com with your comments on possible errors, omissions and opportunities for additional research.
Footnote: A Cool Grey City of Brass Hats
Look beyond Bernal Heights for street names elsewhere in San Francisco that evoke the names of many generals, some of them famous. The list of civilian street names outside the Presidio and Fort Mason includes Burnside, Custer, Dearborn, Fremont, Halleck, Hardie, Ingalls, Kearny, Keyes, Kirkham, Lafayette, Liggett, (Arthur) MacArthur, McDowell, Meade, Ord, Pope, Scott, Shafter, Sheridan, Taylor, Whipple and, of course, Jackson and Washington. Three names deserve special mention:
A heavily traveled Richmond District boulevard would have been 13th Avenue (unlucky) but for the name of Gen. Frederick Funston, whose slaughter of thousands of noncombatants in the Philippine-AmericanWar Independence was overlooked when he was bedecked with the Medal of Honor.
The same arterial ducks under the Presidio Golf Course via a tunnel aptly named for Douglas MacArthur. To many an unworshipful GI in World War II, the supremely arrogant five-star general was known perhaps unfairly as Dugout Doug.
Pueblo Yerba Buena's first main street, the Calle de Fundacion, was renamed Dupont Street in 1847 for Navy Capt. Samuel F. Du Pont, later an admiral in the Civil War. From Market to Bush streets, the downtown section of Dupont Street was renamed again in 1876 to honor Gen. U.S. Grant, the outgoing president. (The rest of Dupont, from Bush to North Point streets, became Grant Avenue in 1908. In Chinatown, however, Cantonese speakers still call it Du Pon Gai.) The Union general's Civil War triumph is reflected in a comparison of Grant Avenue, one of the city's best-known thoroughfares, with Lee Avenue. It's probably named for Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Confederate defender of slavery and slaveholder, or maybe his son, Lt. Custis Lee, who was stationed in San Francisco at one point. Lee Avenue, short and forgettable, is a humble little street in the Oceanview District, a neighborhood favored by African American families.
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