JOSEPH W. WINANS.

BY THE EDITOR.

J

OSEPH W. WINANS, a pioneer of 1849, and a leading and successful member of the San Francisco bar, was born in the city of New York, July 18th, 1820, the second of nine children. His ancestors were English and German, but it is necessary to go very far into the past in order to trace them to a European origin. They came to America many years before the Revolutionary war, in which Joseph's grandfather was a soldier in the American army. His son (father of Joseph W.) was a prominent merchant of New York city for forty years. He long since retired from business, having amassed a large fortune. The old gentleman and his wife are still living in that city. Time has dealt leniently with the aged couple, who celebrated their golden wedding some years ago.

Joseph W. Winans spent his youth in a course of continuous study. Having entered Columbia College at the age of sixteen, he graduated from that worthy institution of learning at the age of twenty. In the same class with him were Hon. A. C. Monson, formerly Judge of the Sixth Judicial District of California, and Hon. Ogden Hoffman, the distinguished Judge of the U. S. District Court for this State. Not resting from his labors, nor pausing in the pursuit of knowledge, young Winans entered immediately on the study of law, to which he

applied himself for three years. At the end of that time he received his license to practice, and also the degree of A.M., from Columbia College, in the year 1843.

Armed with this license and this endorsement, Mr. Winans at once devoted himself to his chosen calling. At that time, the ranks of the legal profession in New York were divided into two classes, attorneys and counselors. After practicing for three years as an attorney, with satisfactory success, Mr. Winans received his license as a counselor-at-law the year before the adoption of the new constitution of the State of New York, which abolished the distinction between the two grades. For three years more, he practiced as an attorney and counselor at the New York bar. The success which rewarded his labors, in the morning of his life, demonstrated that he had not been unwise in the choice of his profession.

With all his love of study and his application to business, our subject was not without the natural ardor of youth. He wished to behold new fields. At the age of twenty-nine, in conjunction with a few friends, he purchased a vessel, manned and fitted her for the voyage, and set sail for California, by way of Cape Horn. The vessel landed the party at San Francisco on the 30th day of August, 1849. Resting for a few days in the sandhills of the Bay City, they turned the prow of their little craft towards the north, and after a few days' sail, arrived at Sacramento. The City of the Plains, at that early day, was a vast encampment of tents and rude huts, thronged by a rough and restless multitude, hailing from all parts of the globe-the grand headquarters of the miners of northern and central California. Crowded with the trampling, rushing, struggling mass of adventurers who filled her streets and her dens of dissipation and crime, the city presented a scene which cannot even be imagined by those who never beheld the motley picture.

Here Mr. Winans pitched his tent. His journey was at an end. Only a few days were devoted to observation and repose, when he opened a law office and commenced the practice of a science unknown and unrecognized by