[Stockman's Ledger Documenting the Commercial Activities of Dunphy & Hildreth, Prominent 19th-Century California Cattle Dealers]

[San Francisco, 1863. Very good.. [23],180pp. Folio. Contemporary suede, leather spine labels, spine title in gilt. Moderate scuffing to boards, corners worn. Minor occasional thumb-soiling to text. An informative and useful stockman's ledger containing five years of transactions between California cattle kings Dunphy & Hildreth and their numerous customers in San Francisco just before and during the early years of the Civil War. The ledger begins with an alphabetical listing of the company's customers who appear in the ledger, followed by almost 200 pages of entries recording detailed transactions. The ledger shows primarily beef sales (but also offal, tongues, tallow, and so on) from Dunphy & Hildreth to a wide variety of local and regional firms such as Stockton Street Market, South End Market, San Jose Market, Nevada Market, Broadway Market, the Salsipuedes Ranch, Hensley & Howard, Robin & Gray Metropolitan Market, and more. Some customers are identified by name, such as Herman Hertz, Herman Pope, Joseph Beals, Thomas R. Dean, John Zimmerman, and so forth. Meat sales are shown in pounds, with amounts owed in dollars, and with the right hand column reserved for monthly payments made by each vendor. The ledger also contains pages recording the company, cash, and expense accounts of both of the partners.

William Dunphy was an Irish immigrant to the United States who engaged in cattle trading along the Mississippi River in his early career. In 1846, during the Mexican-American War, he contracted to furnish the United States Army with beef. Dunphy joined a regiment of Texas Rangers and was actually wounded in several skirmishes. Following the war, Dunphy engaged in the cattle business in Brownsville, Texas, but started for California in the watershed year of 1849. After tiring of gold speculation, Dunphy once again turned his attention to the stock business as rancher and dealer. He became officially associated with Thomas Hildreth in 1855, and over the next three decades the two men headed one of the largest cattle operations in the American West. Dunphy was the more active stockman, owning several large ranches in California and Nevada, and eventually bought out Hildreth in 1881. Hildreth died in San Jose in 1886; Dunphy lasted another six years, and died in San Francisco in 1892 as one of the richest men in California. The present ledger provides insight into half a decade of Dunphy & Hildreth's commercial cattle dealing, as well as a wonderful snapshot of the economics of California stockraising just before and during the first few years of the Civil War.