He immigrated to San Francisco, California in In '71 he lived at Stevenson, and in ''76 at Silver. His boarders were almost entirely male blue collar workers, plus 2 teen prostitutes and another unmarried girl whose only occupation was "keeps house".
She was listed directly above the prostitutes and may have been their madam. The hotel's live-in help included 2 cooks, 2 porters and a Chinese servant. The neighborhood included hotels, saloons and a couple of brothels. Pretty easy to distinguish the brothels because the female "boarder's" occupations were blatantly listed in the census as "Prostitute" and the houses were headed by women whose only occupation was "Keeps House".
Although guests at neighboring hotels were both native born Americans and immigrants from a variety of countries, the vast majority of Joseph's boarders were born in Switzerland, Prussia and Austria; all German speaking countries.
He married Katie Diethelm sometime after the census was taken in June and before their first child was born in Sept, They probably met when Katie's family spent a few years on the west coast in ' The Diethelms may have deliberately sought Joseph out when they were in California because he was a boy from back home, and possibly a relative. The Steiners and Katie's mother's family, the Fesslers, had close ties. Joseph came from the same Canton in Switzerland as Katie's parents and one of Katie's grandmothers was a Steiner.
A Steiner family not Joseph's lived next door to the Fesslers' back in Switzerland, and two of Kate's Fessler uncles married Steiner sisters from that farm. In , a Bar Keeper named Frank Fessler b. From through '96 Joseph and a string of partners were co-proprietors of the Helvetia Hotel located at Pine St, near current day Chinatown.
