John Shertzer Hittell was an American author, historian, and journalist. He was the author of numerous works, including A History of The City of San Francisco and Incidentally of the State of California, and The Evidences Against Christianity.
Background
John Shertzer Hittell was born on December 25, 1825, in Jonestown, Lebanon County. He was the son of Doctor Jacob and Catherine (Shertzer) Hittell. He was descended from Peter Hittell, who emigrated to America from Rhenish Bavaria in 1720. With the generation to which John and his brother Theodore belonged, German ceased to be the mother tongue of the family. After practicing medicine in Lebanon and Lehigh counties, Jacob Hittell removed his family in 1831 to Hamilton, Ohio, where he attained success as a surgeon.
Education
Theodore and John were placed in school. In 1843 he graduated from Miami University, having followed a "Latin-Scientific" course. He then undertook to prepare himself for the law, studying it under a Hamilton lawyer, John Woods; but illness interrupted the effort, and he went away to work on a farm in Hake County, Indiana.
Career
When Hittell was in Ottawa, Illinois, he was seized with a desire to join the gold rush, and on May 1, 1849, he set out in company with an ox train of fortune hunters. He walked some 1, 200 miles of the distance to the Sacramento River, following the Platte, Sweetwater, and Humboldt rivers, and reached the gold fields in September. He spent the first winter in the mines of Reading's Diggings, at a place later known as Horsetown, Shasta County, and then worked in diggings on Cottonwood Creek. After moderate successes he gave up the gold hunt in May 1850 and settled in Sonoma, where he pursued the study of Spanish, French, German, and Italian.
In 1852 he moved to San Francisco, forming a connection in the following year with the Alta California, which lasted until 1880. In connection with this journalistic work Hittell became noted as a statistician, obtaining his information by personal visits to the scenes of the great industries and agricultural areas. He traveled eighteen months through Germany and then returned to San Francisco in 1884 to dedicate himself to authorship. Much of his work was on guide books and almanacs, but among the more serious works were: The Evidences against Christianity; The Resources of California (1863), which went through several editions; The Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast (1882); A History of the Mental Growth of Mankind; and The Spirit of the Papacy (1895). These works reveal his practical, unorthodox spirit.
He also dabbled in phrenology and published A New System of Phrenology in 1857. As a friend of José Limantour, he espoused that adventurer's spurious claim to a large part of the pueblo lands of San Francisco, though he later repudiated his defense in an article in the Hesperian, June 1860.
His final publication was Reform or Revolution? (1900), in which he lamented the decadence of government in the United States and proposed a reform of the Constitution.
Views
Hittell was a known freethinker in the early Freethought movement as well as a Pantheist as described in his book A Plea for Patheism.
Membership
Hittell was for many years historian of the Society of California Pioneers.