As written by Augusta Joyce Cocheron, one of the emigrants:
"They crowded upon the deck, women and children, questioning husbands and
fathers, and studied the picture before them--they would never see it
just the same again--as the foggy curtains furled towards the azure
ceiling. How it imprinted itself upon their minds! A long sandy beach
strewn with hides and skeletons of slaughtered cattle, a few scrubby
oaks, farther back low sand hills rising behind each other as a
background to a few old shanties that leaned away from the wind, an old
adobe barracks, a few donkeys plodding dejectedly along beneath towering
bundles of wood, a few loungers stretched lazily upon the beach as though
nothing could astonish them; and between the picture and the emigrants
still loomed up here and there, at the first sight more distinctly, the
black vessels--whaling ships and sloops of war--that was all, and that
was Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, the landing place for the pilgrims of
faith."
In John P. Young's "Journalism in California" is recited:
"It is not without significance that the awakening of Yerba Buena did not
occur till the advent of the printing press. From the day when Leese
built his store in 1836 till the arrival of the Mormon colony on July 31,
1846, the village retained all the peculiarities of a poverty-stricken
settlement of the Spanish-American type. From that time forward changes
began to occur indicative of advancement and it is impossible to
disassociate them from the fact that a part of the Brooklyn's cargo was a
press and a font of type, and that the 238 colonists aboard that vessel
and others who found their way to the little town, brought with them
books--more, one careful writer tells us, than could be found at the time
in all the rest of the Territory put together."
Brannan and his California Star had a part in the very naming of San
Francisco. This occurred January 30, 1847, rather hurried by discovery of
the fact that a rival settlement on the upper bay proposed to take the
name. So there was formal announcement in the Star that, from that date
forward, there would be abandonment of the name Yerba Buena, as local and
appertaining only to the cove, and adoption of the name of San Francisco.
This announcement was signed by the Alcalde, Lieut. Washington A.
Bartlett, who had been detached by Capt. J. B. Montgomery from the
man-of-war Portsmouth on September 15, 1846, and who rejoined his ship
the following February.
One of the Brooklyn's passengers in later years became a leader in the
settlement of Mesa, Arizona. He was Geo. W. Sirrine, a millwright, whose
history has been preserved by a son, Warren L. Sirrine of Mesa. The elder
Sirrine was married on the ship, of which and its voyage he left many
interesting tales, one being of a drift to the southward on beating
around Cape Horn, till icebergs loomed and the men had to be detailed to
the task of beating the rigging with clubs to rid it of ice. When danger
threatened there was resort to prayer, but work soon followed as the
passengers bore a hand with the crew.
Sirrine, who had had police experience in the East, was of large
assistance to Brannan in San Francisco, where the rougher element for a
time seized control, taking property at will and shooting down all who
might disagree with their sway. It was he who arrested Jack Powers,
leader of the outlaws, in a meeting that was being addressed by Brannan,
and who helped in the provision of evidence under which the naval
authorities eliminated over fifty of the desperados, some of them
shipping on the war vessels in port. Some of the Mormons still had a part
of their passage money unpaid and these promptly proceeded to find
employment to satisfy their debt. The pilgrims' loyalty appears to have
been of the highest. They had purchased arms in Honolulu and had had some
drill on the passage thence. At least on one occasion, they rallied in
San Francisco when alarm sounded that hostile Mexicans might attack.
According to Eldridge, historian of San Francisco:
"The landing of the Mormons more than doubled the population of Yerba
Buena. They camped for a time on the beach and the vacant lots, then some
went to the Marin forests to work as lumbermen, some were housed in the
old Mission buildings and others in Richardson's Casa Grande (big house)
on Dupont Street. They were honest and industrious people and all sought
work wherever they could find it."