Native Sons of The Golden West

Arrowhead Parlor # 110

Friendship * Loyalty * Charity

General Albert M Winn, A Virginian who came to California during Gold Rush days and who was deeply impressed with the fortitude of the men and women of the period, organized the Native Sons of the Golden West in San Francisco on July 11, 1875.

General Winn sought to immortalize those pioneer fathers and mothers. Many years after the establishment of the Native Sons  of the Golden West, General Winn  wrote:

"For Twenty years my mind has been running on some lasting style of monument to mark and to perpetuate the discovery of gold. I could not think of anything that would not perish in the course of time. At last it came to my mind that an Order composed of Native Sons of the Pacific coast would effect the object and be sustained by pride of parentage and place of nativity, while it would be imperishable memento-an institution that would last though time".

General Winn had served as a member of San Francisco's Fourth of July Celebration Committee for several years and, in 1875, decided to gather a group of Native Californians who, dressed in the rough miner's garb of the Gold Rush days, would march in the 1875 Independence Day Parade on Monday, July 5. Twenty-one of those participating joined together on July 11 to form the Society of Native Sons of the Golden West, prefacing their first constitution with the following statement of the aims and purposes:

"The society was organized for the mutual benefit, mutual improvement and the social intercourse of its members, to perpetuate in the minds of all Native Californians the memories of one of the most wonderful epochs in the world's history, the days of '49; to unite them in one harmonious body throughout the State by the ties of friendship, mutually beneficial to all"