SMOKE SIGNALS #9- Frank Aleamon Leach (1846–1929) Founding Member, Samoset Tribe No. 22, Improved Order of Red Men, Vallejo, California Pioneer Journalist · Legislator · Director, United States Mint

 

Frank Aleamon Leach

(1846–1929)

 

Founding Member, Samoset Tribe No. 22,

Improved Order of Red Men, Vallejo, California

 

Pioneer Journalist · Legislator · Director, United States Mint

Prepared by Dr. Mike Bortner-Historian

for

Samoset Tribe No. 22

Improved Order of Red Men

431 Georgia Street, Vallejo, California

June 18, 2026

 

Fig. 1.  Frank Aleamon Leach (1846–1929), portrait photograph reproduced in Recollections of a Newspaperman (San Francisco: S. Levinson, 1917). Photograph attributed to Webster Photo Studio.

 

Frank Aleamon Leach: Pioneer Journalist,

Legislator, and Charter Member of Samoset Tribe No. 22

 

INTRODUCTION

Among the men whose signatures graced the original charter of Samoset Tribe No. 22, Improved Order of Red Men, when it was organized in Vallejo, California, on July 19, 1869, none would go on to a more distinguished public career than Frank Aleamon Leach. Over the span of six decades, Leach served his adopted state and nation as a newspaper publisher, California state legislator, postmaster, Superintendent of the United States Mint at San Francisco, and ultimately Director of the United States Mint under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. He also left behind two published volumes — a memoir and a natural history — that have since been recognized by scholars as culturally significant primary sources on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century California. Yet through all of these accomplishments, Leach always thought of himself first as a newspaperman, and it was in that capacity that he came to Vallejo as a young man of twenty and planted the roots of a life lived entirely in the service of the public good.

EARLY LIFE AND ARRIVAL IN CALIFORNIA

Frank Aleamon Leach was born on August 19, 1846, in Auburn, New York, the son of Edwin Warren Leach and his wife Mary A. Leach. His fifth great-grandfather, Lawrence Leach, had immigrated from England to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1629, establishing a lineage with deep roots in American history.

When Frank was still a young boy, his father traveled west to Sacramento, California, to establish a bottling plant. Frank and his mother followed, and the family subsequently relocated to Napa, California, in 1857, where Frank completed his formal education at the age of seventeen. He then entered the printing trade as an apprentice, gaining the practical knowledge that would define the next two decades of his career.[1][2]

THE VALLEJO YEARS: JOURNALISM AND CIVIC LIFE, 1867–1886

In 1867, at the age of twenty, Leach moved to Vallejo and launched what would become one of the most important newspapers in Solano County: the Vallejo Evening Chronicle. He was just twenty years old — already an experienced printer and, soon, one of the most visible men in the city.[3]

Vallejo at that moment was a city defined by the proximity of Mare Island Naval Shipyard, established in 1854 as the first United States naval installation on the Pacific Coast. The shipyard drew workers, tradesmen, and professionals of every description, and the young publisher found himself at the center of a busy and growing community.

Fig. 2.  The Vallejo Evening Chronicle, founded by Frank A. Leach in 1867 and published by him until 1886. The paper served as the principal daily newspaper of Solano County throughout the period of Leach's residence in Vallejo. Source: Library of Congress, Chronicling America, LCCN sn85025211.

On July 19, 1869, Leach joined a group of Vallejo men in signing the charter of Samoset Tribe No. 22, Improved Order of Red Men. The Red Men, a patriotic fraternal organization tracing its origins to the colonial-era Sons of Liberty and formally organized in Baltimore in 1834, had by the post-Civil War period spread across the country. The Samoset Tribe would meet in various Vallejo locations before eventually constructing its permanent hall at 431 Georgia Street in 1925. The original group of charter members numbered approximately twenty.[4]

Among Leach's fellow charter members was James Henry Powell, born 1847, the eldest son of Abraham and Mary (Sparks) Powell. The Powell family had established themselves in Solano County by 1866, when Abraham Powell was registered to pay taxes there, and by 1880 Abraham was employed in a Vallejo lumber yard. James Henry Powell and Frank Leach were not yet brothers-in-law when they co-signed the Samoset Tribe charter in July 1869. That connection would come one year later, when, in December 1870, Frank Leach married Mary Louise Powell — James Henry's younger sister — in Vallejo, binding the two charter members in family as well as fraternal brotherhood.

James Henry Powell himself married in 1872, taking as his wife Emily Jeannette Browne (1847–1938) of Waldo County, Maine. Emily Browne Powell became a prominent figure in Bay Area literary and civic circles, eventually serving as the second president of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association. The Powells settled in Alameda, California, where James Henry Powell resided until his death in 1925.[5]

Frank and Mary Louise Leach went on to have four sons: Frank Aleamon Leach Jr., Abraham Powell Leach, Edwin Ralph Leach, and Harry Earl Leach. The children's middle names reflect the family's close ties to the Powell lineage. Frank Jr. would rise to become vice-president and general manager of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company; Abe P. and Harry E. Leach became Oakland attorneys; and Edwin R. Leach followed his father to the San Francisco Mint, where he served as Melter and Refiner.[6]

Throughout the Vallejo years, Leach continued to publish the Evening Chronicle with energy and ambition. The paper was his pulpit and his livelihood — in the tradition of nineteenth-century American journalism, the publisher was simultaneously editor, civic booster, and political force. His political career emerged from these roots.

In 1879, Leach won election to the California State Assembly as the representative for Solano County's 19th District. He served two terms, from 1880 to 1882, during which he participated in the Republican Party politics of a state that was rapidly industrializing and urbanizing. He was also chosen as an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1880. From 1882 to 1885 he served as Postmaster of Vallejo, adding a federal administrative role to his already considerable local profile.[7]

In 1886, after nearly two decades in Vallejo, Leach made the decision to expand his journalistic enterprise. He moved to Oakland and, together with partners A. B. Nye and W. F. Burbank, founded the Oakland Enquirer. He published that paper until 1898, when a new chapter of his life entirely began.

THE SAN FRANCISCO MINT: SUPERINTENDENT AND DIRECTOR, 1897–1913

In 1897, President William McKinley appointed Frank Leach Superintendent of the San Francisco Mint, the premier coinage facility in the American West. It was a role that suited him: a man of administrative energy, public reputation, and Republican loyalty, placed in charge of an institution that by the 1880s had been producing sixty percent of the nation's gold and silver coins. He would hold this appointment for a decade — the longest tenure of any San Francisco Mint superintendent to that point.[8]

Fig. 3.  The San Francisco Mint (the "Granite Lady") standing amid the ruins of the 1906 earthquake and fire. Under Superintendent Leach's direction, the building and its gold and silver reserves — valued at $300 million — were saved from destruction. Source: Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

The defining moment of Leach's tenure at the Mint came at 5:12 in the morning on April 18, 1906, when the most destructive earthquake in American history struck San Francisco. The quake ruptured gas lines across the city and ignited fires that merged into a single catastrophe described by eyewitnesses as a wall of flame twenty stories high, with temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Five square miles were ultimately incinerated; some 28,000 buildings were destroyed; and an estimated 3,000 people lost their lives.[9]

The San Francisco Mint — known as the Granite Lady for its massive stone construction, designed by architect Alfred B. Mullett and opened in 1874 — stood directly in the path of the largest and hottest blaze. Its vaults held gold and silver worth $300 million, the equivalent of more than $6 billion in contemporary terms, representing approximately one-third of the nation's entire gold reserves. Had the Mint fallen, the financial consequences for the country could have been catastrophic.

Leach, though he had no experience in fire suppression, organized and led the Mint's overnight workforce — a few dozen men — in a multi-hour fight to save the building. The crew closed and locked the building's iron security shutters, cleared flammable materials from the perimeter, and employed the Mint's own chemical stores — barrels of sulfuric and hydrochloric acid used in coin manufacture — to fight encroaching fires. When the Mint's water pump, damaged in the earthquake, was repaired by an engineer named Jack Brady, the crew gained the means to douse the flames directly. Military assistance arrived from Brigadier General Frederick Funston. By the time the fires burned out, the Granite Lady stood alone and intact among the ruins.

The gratitude of the federal government was immediate. A Treasury Department telegram to Leach acknowledged that his actions had saved "the most important structure in San Francisco" from destruction, and that without the Mint's survival the city would have found itself "in a desperate plight financially without adequate means for making money transfers." Leach and his men were recognized as having saved not merely a building but a crucial mechanism of national commerce.[10]

The recognition took tangible form. In September 1907, on the recommendation of Secretary of the Treasury George B. Cortelyou, President Theodore Roosevelt named Frank Leach Director of the United States Mint in Washington, D.C. — the highest position in the nation's coinage system. Leach held that office until August 1909, serving also briefly into the administration of President William Howard Taft. He was succeeded by Abram Andrew.[11]

Following his departure from the Directorship, Leach served as president and manager of the People's Water Company of Oakland, retiring in October 1911. He was called back to public service once more in July 1912, appointed again as Superintendent of the San Francisco Mint following the death of Judge Sweeney. He resigned that post in August 1913, closing a career in public administration that had stretched across sixteen productive years.

FRATERNAL LIFE: THE RED MEN AND THE MASONS

Fig. 4.  Red Men's Hall, 431 Georgia Street, Vallejo, California, constructed in 1925 and the permanent home of Samoset Tribe No. 22, Improved Order of Red Men, chartered July 19, 1869. Frank A. Leach was among the founding charter members. The building, a variant of the Renaissance Revival style with three Native American terra cotta portraits, was designed by architect C. E. Perry. Source: Historical Marker Database, no. 21, Vallejo, Solano County, California.

Frank Leach's fraternal affiliations were consistent with his character: civic, collegial, and rooted in the community of men who built post-Civil War California. His membership in Samoset Tribe No. 22 placed him within a national organization that claimed descent from the revolutionary-era Sons of Liberty and devoted itself to patriotism, friendship, and mutual aid. In the fraternal landscape of 1869 Vallejo, such memberships were how a young publisher signaled his commitment to the community and forged the civic bonds that sustained a career.

Leach was simultaneously a committed Freemason. Naval Lodge No. 87 of Vallejo conducted his funeral services in June 1929, having been affiliated with the lodge for fifty-eight years — meaning he joined the Masons in Vallejo around 1871, within two years of co-founding the Samoset Tribe. The two fraternal memberships overlapped in time and in the same Vallejo network of men.[12]

LITERARY LEGACY: TWO BOOKS ON CALIFORNIA

In the final years of his life, Frank Leach turned his journalist's instincts toward memoir and natural history. In 1917, at the age of seventy-one, he published Recollections of a Newspaperman: A Record of Life and Events in California, a 416-page memoir issued by S. Levinson of San Francisco. The book follows Leach from his boyhood departure from Cayuga County, New York, through his California years in Sacramento, Napa, Vallejo, and Oakland, to his work at the Mint and his encounter with the 1906 earthquake and fire.[13]

The Vallejo chapters — covering the years 1867 to 1886 — constitute the primary documentary resource for understanding Leach's time as a charter member of Samoset Tribe No. 22. He also covers his legislative career, mining speculations, railroad strikes, and his campaign against Oakland political bosses. His account of the 1906 earthquake is among the most vivid first-person records of that event written by a direct participant.

Smithsonian Magazine drew directly on Leach's memoir in a major 2006 centennial feature on the saving of the Mint, reproducing his portrait from the book's frontispiece. Princeton University Library has preserved the volume in its Western Americana microfilm series (reel 317, no. 3168), and it is catalogued in the Storm Catalogue of the Everett D. Graff Collection — one of the most prestigious bibliographies of Americana — confirming its standing as a primary source of enduring value. The Library of Congress selected it for inclusion in its curated digital collection "California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849–1900," and the Journal of American History reviewed the collection in its June 2005 issue.[14][15]

In 1920, three years after the memoir, Leach published Wild Life in California: Some of Its Birds, Animals and Flowers, a 109-page natural history issued by Tribune Publishing Company of Oakland. The slimmer volume reflects the private man: a Californian of long residence who had watched the state's wild landscapes retreat before urbanization and wished to record what he had observed. Scholars have designated the work culturally important, and it has been reprinted by multiple preservation publishers.[16]

DEATH AND BURIAL

Frank Aleamon Leach died on June 19, 1929, at Merritt Hospital in Oakland, following a sudden breakdown in health two months earlier. He was eighty-two years old. Funeral services were held at the Masonic Cathedral at Fifteenth and Madison Streets in Oakland, conducted by Naval Lodge No. 87 of Vallejo, with which he had been affiliated for fifty-eight years. He was survived by his four sons: Frank A. Leach Jr., Abraham Powell Leach, Edwin Ralph Leach, and Harry Earl Leach. He was interred at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California, plot 14B.[17]

His wife, Mary Louise Powell Leach, had predeceased him, dying in 1913 and also interred at Mountain View Cemetery. The Oakland Tribune's obituary of June 20, 1929, described him as 'a prominent figure in California for more than a half-century,' a characterization that, measured against the arc of his life, understates more than it overstates.

CONCLUSION

Frank Aleamon Leach was not a man who sought legend, but a man who sought to be useful. He arrived in Vallejo at twenty as a printer and publisher, and within two years had helped charter a fraternal tribe, married into the local community, won election to the state legislature, and established himself as one of the most consequential journalists in Northern California. When the 1906 earthquake tested him as nothing else could, he met it with the same practical, unheroic competence that had defined him throughout his career.

For Samoset Tribe No. 22, Leach's name on the charter of July 19, 1869, is no minor detail. It connects the Tribe to one of the most complete lives lived in nineteenth-century California — a life that touched journalism, politics, the federal government, the history of American coinage, the 1906 earthquake, and the literary record of a rapidly transforming state. The Improved Order of Red Men can number among its California founding members a man whose memoir sits today in the collections of the Library of Congress, Princeton University, and the Smithsonian Institution.

 

Notes

 

Footnotes appear automatically at the bottom of the page on which they are referenced in this document, in accordance with Chicago style. The notes are numbered consecutively throughout the text. Full citations for all sources appear in the Bibliography that follows.

 

Bibliography

 

PRIMARY SOURCES

Leach, Frank Aleamon. Recollections of a Newspaperman: A Record of Life and Events in California. San Francisco: S. Levinson, 1917. 416 pp. OCLC 5168858. Digitized and freely available at archive.org.

Leach, Frank Aleamon. Wild Life in California: Some of Its Birds, Animals and Flowers. Oakland: Tribune Publishing Company, 1920. 109 pp. OCLC 12257730. Digitized and available at HathiTrust.

Leonard, John William, and Albert Nelson Marquis. Who's Who in America. Vol. 5. Chicago: A. N. Marquis, 1908. Entry for Frank Aleamon Leach, p. 1111.

Newman Numismatic Portal, Washington University in St. Louis. Treasury Department telegram to Frank A. Leach reproduced in Recollections of a Newspaperman. https://nnp.wustl.edu.

"MINT DIRECTOR APPOINTED.; Frank A. Leach, at Present Superintendent at San Francisco." New York Times. July 9, 1907. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/1907/07/09/.

Oakland Tribune. Obituary of Frank A. Leach. June 20, 1929. Transcribed by Cheryl A. Tovar, December 2010.

United States Census, 1880. Solano County, California. Abraham Powell household. Ancestry.com.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Castleman, Michael. "Grace Under Fire." Smithsonian Magazine. April 2006. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/grace-under-fire-114073500/.

"California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849–1900." Library of Congress, American Memory Project. Review by Richard Stillson. Journal of American History 92, no. 1 (June 2005): 324–325. https://doi.org/10.2307/3660696.

"Frank Aleamon Leach Sr. (1846–1929)." Find a Grave Memorial #62959765. Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, Alameda County, California. Maintained by Cheryl Ann Tovar-Jester. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/62959765/.

"Frank A. Leach." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_A._Leach. Last edited May 8, 2026.

Heritage Auctions. "1907 $10 Wire Rim MS64 NGC." Lot #5221. Coins.ha.com. Includes provenance and biographical notes on Frank Aleamon Leach.

"Mary Louise Powell Leach (1851–1913)." Find a Grave Memorial #62962658. Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/62962658/.

"Abraham Powell (1828–1895)." Find a Grave Memorial #185801195. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/185801195/.

"Political Graveyard: Alameda County, Calif." Entry for Frank Aleamon Leach (1846–1929). politicalgraveyard.com.

"Red Men's Hall Historical Marker." Historical Marker Database, no. 21. Vallejo, Solano County, California. Erected 1994. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=100460.

"Vallejo Evening Chronicle (Vallejo, Calif.) 1869–1942." Library of Congress, Chronicling America. LCCN sn85025211. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn85025211/.

"Vallejo Fraternal Order Looking to Rebuild Its Future." Daily Republic. Fairfield, California. Circa 2025. https://www.dailyrepublic.com/news/vallejo-fraternal-order-looking-to-rebuild-its-future/.

"Emily Browne Powell (1847–1938)." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Browne_Powell.

Princeton University Library. Catalog entry for Leach, Frank Aleamon, Recollections of a Newspaperman. Western Americana series, reel 317, no. 3168. References Storm, Catalogue of the Everett D. Graff Collection, no. 2429.

Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC). "Leach, Frank Aleamon, 1846–." https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w64f2v6b.

Collectors Universe Message Boards. "Frank A. Leach." Forum post, 2014. https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/906663/frank-a-leach.

 

 

— End —

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[1]John William Leonard and Albert Nelson Marquis, Who's Who in America, vol. 5 (Chicago: A. N. Marquis, 1908), 1111.

[2]Library of Congress, "California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849–1900," American Memory Project, reviewed 2004, https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbhome.html.

[3]Frank Aleamon Leach, Recollections of a Newspaperman: A Record of Life and Events in California (San Francisco: S. Levinson, 1917), 1–416. OCLC 5168858.

[4]"Red Men's Hall Historical Marker," Historical Marker Database, no. 21, Vallejo, Solano County, California, erected 1994, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=100460.

[5]Emily Browne Powell, Wikipedia, citing Emily Browne Powell (1847–1938), spouse of James Henry Powell (1847–1925), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Browne_Powell.

[6]"Frank Aleamon Leach Sr. (1846–1929)," Find a Grave Memorial #62959765, Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California. Obituary transcribed from Oakland Tribune, June 20, 1929.

 

 

 

 

[9]Michael Castleman, "Grace Under Fire," Smithsonian Magazine, April 2006, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/grace-under-fire-114073500/.

[10]Newman Numismatic Portal, Washington University in St. Louis, citing Treasury Department telegram reproduced in Leach, Recollections of a Newspaperman, https://nnp.wustl.edu.

[11]"MINT DIRECTOR APPOINTED.; Frank A. Leach, at Present Superintendent at San Francisco," New York Times, July 9, 1907, https://www.nytimes.com/1907/07/09/archives/mint-director-appointed-frank-a-leach-at-present-superintendent-at.html.

[12]Collectors Universe Message Boards, "Frank A. Leach," forum post, 2014, https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/906663/frank-a-leach.

[13]Frank Aleamon Leach, Wild Life in California: Some of Its Birds, Animals and Flowers (Oakland: Tribune Publishing Company, 1920). OCLC 12257730.

[14]Princeton University Library catalog entry, Leach, Frank Aleamon, Recollections of a Newspaperman, Western Americana series, reel 317, no. 3168, Storm Catalogue of the Everett D. Graff Collection, no. 2429.