William L Todd

WILLIAM L., born April 14, 1818, at Edwardsville, Illinois, and brought up in Springfield, where he learned the business of a druggist

He went to California in 1845,  before the Mexican war or the discovery of gold and was there when the survivors of the  Reed and Donner party arrived; so many of whom starved to death as they were snow-bound  in the mountains. 

William L. Todd was married April 14, 1868, in California, to Mrs. Clarissa J. Pike, whose maiden name was Chase. She was born in 1823 in Duchess county, New York. Mrs. Todd died childless in March, 1874, in Sacramento. Mr. Todd resides at Los Angelos, California

The first Bear Flag was designed by William L. Todd, a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln. According to the book Flags Over California, published by the California Military Department, the star on the flag was influenced by the 1836 California Lone Star Flag. William Todd, in an 1878 letter to the Los Angeles Express, states that the star was drawn using blackberry juice and in recognition of the California Lone Star Flag. The bear was designed to be a symbol of strength and unyielding resistance.