Half way through the nineteenth century not a single brick building could be found in the entire city of San Francisco, and only a few timber ones existed. Ninety percent of the then twenty thousand residents of this lawless town were gold prospectors camping in tents crowded along muddy streets. Only ten of those regular residents were women but dancehall girls, gambling dens, whisky saloons and brothels abounded in that lawless frontier town.
A Whisky Barrel Pulpit
Few ministers would choose a street corner for a worship service or a whisky-barrel for a pulpit but Methodism's pioneer preacher, William Taylor, did so in California. For seven years from 1849 he proclaimed the Gospel thus to thousands of the frontier settlers -- miners who were popularly known ever after as "the Forty-Niners" because they had rushed to the new state hungering for the gold discovered at Sutters' Creek and in the hills near San Francisco.
A plaque originally erected in Portsmouth Square by the Methodist Historical Society, and now in possession of Temple Methodist Church notes that: "Here, on December 3, 1849, William Taylor preached to miners who crowded this park the first of 600 sermons on this city's streets and docks. Later he preached on six continents but was commonly known as "California" Taylor.
Stuart Taylor, William's farmer father was of Scottish-Irish descent. In Virginia, Stuart was so opposed to slavery that he released his own servants and even paid passage for some of them to return to Liberia. Unexpectedly converted through a local Methodist revival, Taylor senior launched immediately into a 40-year itinerant evangelist ministry leading his son also into circuit Wesleyan ministries and ultimately into the pastorate of a prestigious church in North Baltimore.
Challenged to Change His Approach
The exploding California population quickly demanded the attention of national Methodist leaders who searched in vain for a church planter to pioneer their work in the West and finally convinced William that this could be God's call for him.
In Baltimore he was so commissioned and sailed for San Francisco on April 19, 1849. Taylor's approach to religion involved stern disciplined behaviors which led him to voice severe criticisms of the shipboard dances and even the making of emergency repairs to the ship on Sundays.
Mellowed by the long, arduous sea journey around Cape Horn, the birth of a sickly daughter while on voyage (she died in San Francisco only seven months later), and warm relationships with passengers, Taylor adjusted his preaching style completely. From a regular denunciation of congregational sins he moved to simple Gospel proclamations, expanded his illustrative skills and used more persuasive arguments rather than aggressive criticisms to share his convictions. He realized that such changes attracted many more to his on-board services than his previous approaches.
On his first Sunday in San Francisco Taylor had preached from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church, then a small wooden chapel. By the third Sunday after his arrival when his own small precut timber building had arrived freighted from Oregon and been hastily erected on the plot reserved for it, he had gathered a dozen or more of Methodist background into worship. Then, with the help of a few of these faithful, he built a home for his family nearby cutting the timber himself and shipping it from across the Bay.