Have you heard? San Francisco has a new Jewish mayor.
Daniel Lurie, the 47-year-old nonprofit exec and philanthropist, and son of a prominent San Francisco family, has won his bid, making him the city’s fourth Jewish mayor ever.
The fourth, not the third! History has gotten this fact wrong, and we’re here to set the record straight.
Adolph Sutro is often erroneously cited as the first Jewish mayor, and certainly for many years he was the most famous one. He was a major influence on the city, giving his name to Sutro Heights, the Sutro Baths, Sutro Elementary School and Sutro Tower. He was wealthy and a part of the city’s established German Jewish community, a friend to the kind of people who founded and supported this newspaper.
However, he was not the first Jewish mayor. That honor goes to Washington Bartlett.
Confusion surrounds Barlett, a man said to have broken many barriers: He was not only the first S.F. Jewish mayor, but also the first, and only, Jewish governor of California. In fact, he was one of the first Jewish governors — or maybe the first — of any state in the U.S.
Some claim that title for Georgia’s David Emanuel and others for Idaho’s Moses Alexander. It depends how you want to define “Jewish,” which is more than this column cares to tackle. It’s possible Bartlett may have converted to Christianity. Whether he had any religious tendencies, it’s safe to say that Bartlett was not an overtly practicing Jew.
However, his roots go back to an established Jewish community.
“Washington Bartlett’s mother was a Sephardic Jewess, Sarah Melhado, born in Charleston, South Carolina, so by Jewish religious law, Bartlett was Jewish, though his father was a gentile,” California Jewish historian Norton Stern wrote in in this paper in 1979. “The future Governor was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1824, and arrived in San Francisco on November 17, 1849.”
The history of Jewish Savannah is long and the city boasts one of the nation’s oldest Reform synagogues, one of the first established in the South. Savannah’s Jewish community was founded in 1733 by a group of Sephardic Jews from London, and in 1790 its congregation was granted a charter from the state of Georgia, confirming its legal status and making it the third-oldest Jewish congregation in the United States.
We don’t know exactly why Bartlett left Savannah, but a clue may lie in the timing, as he came out to San Francisco during the wave of immigration sparked by the Gold Rush. He arrived with his brother and founded what may have been the West Coast’s first — and shortest lived — daily paper, the Journal of Commerce & Daily Bulletin.
After holding various government roles, he was elected mayor of San Francisco, twice, serving from 1882 to 1887. He was then elected governor of California on the Democratic ticket, but he died in office months later.
“He is frequently confused with a distant cousin, Washington A. Bartlett, who had served as San Francisco’s Mayor (Alcalde) in 1848, but who had no Jewish ancestry,” wrote historian Stern in 1979.
Much of what we do know about Bartlett can be gleaned from a letter to this paper written in 1897, soon after his death, by his brother Columbus Bartlett. He was not satisfied with our coverage at all.
“To the Editor of Emanu-El: My Dear Sir, My attention has been called to an article in the ‘Pacific Jewish Annual for 1897’ in which reference is made to my late brother, Hon. Washington Bartlett.”
(The Pacific Jewish Annual was published by our founding editor, Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger, and contained “contributions from the leading litterateurs of the United States.”)
“There are several errors in this statement, viz.: 1st —Washington Bartlett was born in Savannah, Ga., not Charleston; 2nd —The maiden name of his mother was Melhado, not Henriquez; 3rd —He arrived in California Nov. 17, 1849, not in 1848; 4th —He never served as Alcalde of San Francisco; 5th —He died Sept. 12th, 1887, not in 1888.
So from whence the confusion? Columbus made it clear.
“Lt. Washington A. Bartlett, U.S. Navy (a distant cousin), was Alcalde of San Francisco in 1848. The similarity of names led to the frequent confounding of the two. Lieut. Bartlett left California in 1851 or 1852, and never returned to California, so far as I know. My brother held many positions of trust and honor in this City and State: County Clerk (3 terms) ; State Harbor Commissioner; State Senator; Mayor of San Francisco for two terms, and Governor of California. I am, very truly yours, Columbus Bartlett.”
Following closely on Bartlett’s Jewish heels was Sutro, mayor from 1895 to 1897. While Bartlett is largely an enigma, our paper was pretty full of Sutro.
In 1898, we wrote upon his death that “we know Adolph Sutro in private life to be a most lovable character, a genial host, a helpful man, and a friend of genius. He has helped many students in their struggles and always was delighted when he found opportunity to extricate deserving men from temporary difficulties. He was fond of the companionship of the learned, and in true old Jewish fashion his house was a meeting place of scholars, who found his doors always wide open.”
Wide open to some. Sutro is also known for one infamous incident in 1897, when a Black man named John Harris was denied entry to the Sutro Baths because of his race. Harris sued Sutro and won.
San Franciscans had to wait more than eight decades to see a third Jewish mayor: Dianne Feinstein. She was elected in 1980 after filling the role for two years in the wake of the City Hall assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Feinstein served into early 1988.
Since Feinstein, we’ve waited nearly four decades for the next Jewish mayor to enter the office. Lurie will be sworn in at City Hall in January, 140 years after Bartlett. We will follow his political career with interest.