John Sutter
Johann August Sutter, actually Suter, ( born February 23, 1803 in Kandern, Baden, † June 18, 1880 in Washington, DC), and General John Augustus Sutter Sutter or or The Emperor of California called, was Californian lands owner with Swiss descent and founder of private colony of New Helvetia. At his country broke 1848, the California gold rush, from which Sutter but the absence of a functioning constitutional structure could not benefit.
Life
The home Sutter was Rünenberg ( Basel-Landschaft ). His ancestors were wealthy owners of Baden and Alsace paper mills and printing plants.
Sutter made an apprenticeship in the printing and publishing Thurneysen'schen bookshop in Basel and arrived about 1824 to Burgdorf in the canton of Bern, where he worked as Handelscommis with salt factor Aeschlimann and later ran his own cloth goods shop on the Schmiedsgasse. On October 24, 1826, he married in Burgdorf Annette Dübold. Their first son, John Augustus came a day later to the world. Four more children, three boys and a girl followed.
In Burgdorf Sutter was a visitor of the so-called cold water Leiste, a literary circle founded in 1820, whose members met regularly in special rooms on the second floor of Burgdorfer townhouse.
As the bankruptcy of his company Johann August Sutter & Co threatened and Sutter was also looking for a betrayal of his father's company by the Swiss authorities, he emigrated in May 1834 France and the United States in the Mexican from California since 1821. He made it a quick trip over Hawaii and the Russian Novo- Archangelsk (Sitka ), where he left his wife and children in public care in Switzerland.
Since 1839 Sutter colonized in the Sacramento Valley, an area the size of the canton of Basel-Country, which he had by the Governor of California, Juan Bautista Alvarado, visit: New Helvetia, as he called it, should be used for agriculture. On behalf of the Mexican government, he drove out the local Indians and put 1841 fixing Sutter 's Fort on. Likewise, in 1841, he expanded his property by buying the mobile assets ( not the ground) of the Russian colony Fort Ross. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, ( Alta California at the time) the territory of present-day State of California was and thus New Helvetia in 1848 to the United States. That same year, James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter 's Mill in subsequent gold rush broke law and order completely in the field together, and the rush of gold miners ruined Sutter's empire. He lost everything and completely impoverished. Although he succeeded in court to enforce a right to seek compensation, but to its actual fulfillment it never came.
His life was the inspiration for the film " The Emperor of California " by Luis Trenker.