"May 5:
The great fire swept down Washington Street to the Bay; my drug store with nearly all its contents gone. I had a lot of goods in Hutton’s Auction store on Washington, below Montgomery, found it abandoned and everything in confusion; before I could find my goods the house became full of smoke, nearly killing me, got out of the back door. Had saved a few things out of the drug store, which I sat up with during the night."

Thus begins Frederick Augustus Hihn's account of how he left San Francisco and came to Santa Cruz California. For the rest of the story, follow the 'How I Came to Santa Cruz' link below. The 'Tagebuch' link begins even earlier, before Hihn travelled to America, and includes explanatory notes by Stan Stevens.

• The Tagebuch (Diary) of F.A. Hihn
• F.A. Hihn's "How I Came to Santa Cruz"
• F.A. Hihn's European Trip, 1893
• 1906 San Francisco Earthquake — F. A. Hihn’s First-hand Account