On this day 160 years ago, December 22, 1849, Colonel Jonathan Drake Stevenson of the New York Volunteers donated several books to the first California legislature for the expressed purpose of establishing a State Library. Two days later on Christmas Eve, Thomas Jefferson Green, a former general in the army of the Texas Republic and first elected state senator from Sacramento, donated more books for the formation of a California State Library. On December 28, the new state government purchased a book case for the safekeeping of public books in the Senate chamber. At the time, the state capitol was in San Jose.