Three Years in California (SIGNED by William H. Brewer) by Colton, Walter - 1859

New York: S.A. Rollo & Co, 1859. Later edition with the same text as the first edition published in 1850. Original cloth. This copy was owned by William H. Brewer, noted author of "Up and Down the California Coast in 1860-1864" with his signature on ffep. Small 8vo. [2 leaves], [5] - 456 pp + [72]pp advertisements. Map; 12 plates (including frontispiece, some with tissue guards); 2 in-text illustrations. Publisher's brown cloth with decorative blind stamping to covers; gilt lettering to spine. A very good copy (light to moderate foxing throughout; wear to extremities, more so to spine end; corners worn through). Brewer's signature was compared with one offered by a PADA dealer. Brewer typically signed with abbreviation of his first name as here. Walter Colton (1797-1851) served as the alcalde of Monterey, was co-founder of the California (the state's first newspaper), and build the state's first school house. "Colton's memoirs of that period [include], descriptions of the U.S. military occupation of California, social life and customs of Monterey, discovery of gold and firsthand impressions of the Sonora mining camp in the Southern Mines, visits to Stockton and San Jose, John Charles Fremont, the Constitutional Convention of the 1849, and California missions." - Kurutz 151.(Cowan II, pg. 137; Graff 839; Howes C-625; Zamorano Eighty #20). William H. Brewer's (1828-1910) journals, Up and Down the California Coast in 1860-1864 were first published in 1930; like Colton it is a primary source work on early California, see Cowan II, pg. 70; Zamorano Eighty #9.