John Sutter

John Augustus Sutter (1803 to 1880), born Johann August Sutter in Kandern, Baden, was a Swiss immigrant who became a Mexican and later an American citizen and built a large agricultural and trading settlement in early California. He left debts and his family behind in Switzerland in 1834, travelled through North America and the Pacific, and in 1839 obtained a Mexican land grant of roughly 48,000 acres on the Sacramento River, where he founded the fortified settlement of New Helvetia, later known as Sutter's Fort and now part of Sacramento. The settlement farmed and ranched at scale, ran workshops and stores, and was the first stop for many overland emigrants before the Gold Rush. It depended on Native American labor, much of it coerced or enslaved, a record the sources document in detail. When gold was found at a mill built by his employee James W. Marshall, the rush that followed coincided with the failure of Sutter's own business ventures, though those of his elder son, John Augustus Sutter Jr., were more successful.