Charles Warren Stoddard (1843-1909) and his family left Rochester, New York, for California in 1855. In the 1870s and 1880s, he became a well known writer of travel books, most notably his South-Sea Idylls. He taught at Notre Dame and the Catholic University of America before retiring to California at the end of his life. In the footprints of the padres (1902) recalls Stoddard's boyhood and family life in San Francisco: schools, Chinatown, social life, Happy Valley, and the Vigilance Committee. He also describes a voyage to New York in 1857 with his ailing older brother and offers miscellaneous anecdotes of California missions, Monterey, and Theresa Yelverton.