Samuel Brannan: The Gold Rush Millionaire Who Died Unclaimed

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Samuel Brannan became California's first millionaire, owned large stretches of San Francisco and Sacramento, and brought the region its first steam locomotive. When he died in 1889, his body sat in a receiving vault for over a year because nobody would pay for a funeral. This episode follows the whole arc: a boy born in Maine in 1819 who fled an abusive father at 14, learned the printing trade in Ohio, lost an inheritance in a market crash, and joined the early Latter-day Saint movement.

In 1846 he chartered the ship Brooklyn and sailed a company of pioneers around Cape Horn with a printing press and a disassembled flour mill in the hold, arriving to find the American flag already flying over Yerba Buena. He founded the California Star, opened a store near Sutter's Fort, and when workers paid him in gold in early 1848, he cornered the supply of picks, shovels, and pans before shouting the news through the streets. The episode then tracks the vigilante violence, the divorce, and the fire sale that undid him.

Brannan sold metal pans he had bought for 20 cents at $15 apiece and took in $36,000 in nine weeks.
His aggressive rents helped set off the Squatters' Riot, which left nine dead, and in 1851 he became first president of San Francisco's vigilance committee.
The church expelled him for combining with lawless assemblies to commit murder, years after he had been excommunicated once and talked his way back in.
He founded the resort town of Calistoga, built a private railroad to reach it, and survived being shot eight times in an ambush.
A divorce ruling demanding half his assets in cash forced him to liquidate his land, and he spent a late $49,000 payment from Mexico repaying old creditors.

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