Document Type

Book

Publication Date

2006

Abstract

When Alonzo Delano died on 8 September 1874, newspapers throughout the Northern California region lamented the passing of a favorite local celebrity. A death notice issued by the Sacramento Union on 10 September (reprinted a day later by San Francisco’s Daily Alta California), observed that Delano “was known by reputation throughout the State as an author and a man of integrity. [. . .] He was a writer of much native humor and plainness of speech, abounding in facts, anxious to do justice to all and injury to none.” The San Francisco Chronicle echoed this sentiment, adding that he “was a writer of considerable ability.” A longer obituary from the Grass Valley Union, the newspaper in Delano’s adopted hometown, observed that he “was known all over the State as a writer for the papers, and for books which he published. [. . .] ‘Old Block,’ under which name he wrote, is as familiar on this coast as any household word” (10 September, reprinted by the Sacramento Union on 11 September). Even the New York Times, in which a few years earlier Delano had published a series of correspondence about life in California, carried on 23 September a five-sentence obituary that noted, in accord with the others, that upon “Arriving in California without capital, he speedily became one of the most active men in the State, as a writer displaying talent of a peculiar order, over the signature of‘Old Block.’”

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