Although this chromolithograph was produced many years after the war, it was "designed and compiled from views taken at the time & published by William F. Swasey." An important California pioneer, Swasey arrived there overland in 1845 and knew firsthand many of the people and events of the war there which he detailed in his book The Early Days and Men of California (1891). Just before the war, Swasey found varied employment as a bookkeeper for Captain John Sutter, as a clerk for merchant William Heath Davis, and as a consular clerk for Thomas O. Larkin. Swasey served with Frémont's California Battalion as assistant commissary. After the war he witnessed the Gold Rush firsthand and served as a notary public in San Francisco, and as captain of the volunteers stationed at Benicia during the Civil War. A reduced version of the image here served as the frontispiece for his book.
