Employees earned a weekly wage of between 12 and 45 dollars according to their level of expertise, and worked as much as 12 or 15 hours per day. The workers’ tasks were carefully assigned. But regardless of size, they were all organized according to a unique model. According to historians Olivier Lafaye and Marie Galanti, 85% of the Béarnais people in San Francisco worked as launderers until as late as 1930.Ī typical laundry employed between 10 and 20 people, and the most successful ones had up to 100 workers. The city’s first French laundry was founded in Pacific Heights by André Peninou in 1903, and is still open today.

Other laundries began to open in different towns in California, in Pasadena, Santa Ana, Richmond, Oakland, Turlock, and Petaluma, but most of all in San Francisco. Stanford was so impressed by the meticulous treatment of her tablecloth that she sent all of her laundry to the Menlo Park laundry from then on! But one of her employees accidentally sent it to a local laundry owned by the Larrecou family from Béarn, who worked in Menlo Park near Palo Alto. While preparing to receive President McKinley at their home, she wanted her tablecloth cleaned by a renowned laundry in New York. The first French launderers in California – a man from Alsace called Gassman and his Béarnais wife – opened their business in 1862, with a description specifying that their company was a “French hand laundry.” As the well-known anecdote goes, Jane Sanford, the wife of businessman Leland Stanford who founded the prestigious university, may have accidentally contributed to the success of Béarnais laundries in California. The French starched their linen, except for sheets, and they ironed using irons heated directly on a coal fire. Originally owned by Irish immigrants, they were taken over by the French and transformed into luxury laundries specializing in cleaning lace, bleaching, washing, ironing, folding, and sewing. Following this trend, laundries were opened in 1851 to meet the demands of this new clientele. While still a developing town, many of its inhabitants became part of a new, nouveau riche social class. The gold rush that took hold of prospectors had repercussions in San Francisco. The Béarnais dialect was the official language in these immigrant communities, keen to keep the traditions of their native country alive. The town was home to more than 100 Béarnais laundries by 1915, and each one was managed by a small, autonomous community with its own socio-professional hierarchy. They emigrated in droves in the 19 th century for economic reasons and a lust for gold, before turning to laundries in San Francisco. Some 30% of these French settlers came from the region of Béarn, and they are still very present in San Francisco today. And under the guidance of Parisian tenor André Ferrier, they even inaugurated a theater called La Gaieté Française. They also built the church of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires on Bush Street in the heart of San Francisco in 1856.

The same year they founded L’Echo du Pacifique (1852-1865), a daily newspaper providing local information and published in French, English, and Spanish. They founded the Société Française de Bienfaisance Mutuelle in 1851, and opened the first hospital a year later, which later became the renowned institution named L’Hôpital Français. They worked as skilled laborers, merchants, bankers, lawyers, and managers in hotels and restaurants.

The French formed a close-knit, active community in San Francisco. This did not however stop them from settling in California, where they quickly prospered… But few succeeded in the Sierra Nevada, unable to find the promised gold supposed to send them home wealthy. Historians note that this number was almost double in San Francisco. The first gold seams were found in California in 1848, and two years later some 10% of the Los Angeles population was made up of French people.

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