This was a Federal Facility created by the United States Goverment to tend to the medical needs of merchant seaman from around the world free of charge. The Marine Hospital Service was created under the Treasury Department in 1798. The San Francisco U.S. Marine Hospital was built after the California Legistature requested help with dealing with the crush of sailors during the Gold Rush. These men were in need of basic health care as well as suffering from the current cholera and yellow fever epidemics at that time. It was hoped this could also help to combat unsanitary conditions existing for the Gold Rush Era Merchant Seaman.

There are no San Francisco city records of a cemetery here but I have heard about one from numerous oral sources. It would make sense that they had one since they added one to the new Presidio location. I have to look in the State and Federal archives to find out more. Some believe the cemetery was moved to the new Presidio location for the U. S. Marine Hospital.

The Ladies Seaman's Friend Society relocated and rebuilt a Sailor's Home here after their first Sailor's Home on Vallejo and Battery Streets, which was on ground next to the sailors' graves of the Telegraph Hill Cemetery, at the time of its construction. Mrs. Rebecca H. Lambert and her ladies educated and organized the sailors to be aware of the prevalant shady practise of the day for ship conscription, namely the recruitment process to "Shanghai" seaman.

"When the horrid scheme was in process to "shanghai" the sailors, and sell them to the shipping monopoly in the Port of San Francisco, Mrs. Rebecca Lambert, a sea captain's widow, came to the protection of the sailors. She gathered together a band of women to go into that building on Rincon Hill, and to get the men away from the "sharks", as they called the water front creatures". (From Life and Letters of a Forty-Niners Daughter by Aurora Esmeralda.)

It is possible the Ladies Seaman's Friend Society moved some of these to their wonderful Seamans' Cemetery at the city's Golden Gate Cemetery perhaps starting in the late 1860's, if they weren't already moved to the Presidio by the U. S. Marine Hospital staff.

Here is a brief excerpt from a description of the hospital found in an old San Francisco Directory;

"United States Marine Hospital, Rincon Point between Main and Spear. Organized 16th March, 1852. Building erected Nov. 1853. This is one of the most splendid public edifices in the State. It is four stories high besides an excellent basement, and is capable of accommodating five hundred patients. It occupies one of the most conspicous positions in San Francisco, and from its windows can be seen the entire city on the North, the beautiful town of Oakland on the East, in the distance the Mission Dolores, and on the North, embraced by waters of the Bay, Goat and Alcatraz Islands. Daily admissions, 6; deaths per month, 4; average number of patients, 150."