Photographs
This is one of the original bits of gold from Sutter’s mill that set the world racing to California. (Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)
Audiences around the world clamored for news of the goldfields. No one had ever imagined that an ordinary person could get rich overnight. (Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division)
When the president of the United States himself proclaimed that all the rumors were true, adventurers scrambled to find a way west. This cartoon from 1849 depicted the variety among the gold-seekers, who included muscular toughs in work clothes, young swells in tailored coats, pudgy parsons, and men of affairs in top hats. (The New York Atlas, January 14, 1849. American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts)
In the year 1849 alone, some ninety thousand young men joined the stampede west. Cartoonists mocked their eagerness and their naïveté. (Currier & Ives, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
A newly rich emigrant heads back home in this cartoon, riding in a scow atop a golden boulder so huge that it requires a whale to pull it. (California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento)
Newspapers of the day were notoriously unreliable, and at first no one believed the astonishing tales of California’s riches. In 1835 the New York Sun had reported straight-faced, on page one, that astronomers had discovered human-like creatures living on the moon, complete with wings. (New York Public Library)
J. A. Read, Journey to the Gold Diggins. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento
Many of the emigrants were city slickers who had never spent a night outdoors or dug a hole, except perhaps to plant flowers in the garden. Utterly unprepared, they set out on a cross-country journey, on foot, or a months-long ocean voyage.
The emigrants relied on guidebooks and newspaper accounts, like this one from the Detroit Free Press in 1849. (Detroit Free Press, January 19, 1849)
John C. Frémont, “the Pathfinder,” had explored the West and written rapturously about it. Seduced by such reports, many of the gold-seekers quit their jobs, left their families, and spent their savings on the trip west. (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, New York)
One of the ablest emigrants was Joseph Goldsborough Bruff, an architectural draftsman and amateur artist from Washington, D.C. Bruff, shown here in a self-portrait, kept perhaps the best and most complete of all the gold rush diaries. (Joseph Goldsborough Bruff, Diaries, Journals, and Notebooks, Western Americana Collection, Bennecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University)
Above is Bruff’s drawing of Nebraska’s Chimney Rock, one of the landmarks on the overland journey (with a tiny figure on horseback, at bottom right, for scale). (Joseph Goldsborough Bruff, Diaries, Journals, and Notebooks. Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University)
The emigrants crammed their wagons with clothing, food, furniture, pots, pans, silverware, and books. They would throw so much away, to save weight, that parts of the trail west came to resemble a colossal yard sale. (National Archives and Records Administration)
River crossings were especially hazardous. Wagons capsized, animals foundered, and men drowned. (Nebraska State Historical Society)
Many American gold-seekers who lived near the coast opted to travel by ship. The journey took some five months; the choice was to sail around the tip of South America or else to Panama, then travel overland, and finally up the Pacific coast by way of a second ship. (The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Jennie Megquier chose the Panama route. (She may have been the first American woman to make the crossing.) Feisty and funny, she described her adventures in letters to her family back in Maine. (Uncatalogued daguerreotype, Mary Jane Megquier Papers, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California)
Ships no sooner arrived in San Francisco than their crews ran off to the goldfields. This photograph shows abandoned ships in San Francisco Bay in 1853. (Daguerreotype by William Shew, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)
The goldfields were known as “the diggings,” and in the early years, tools were primitive. Men worked with picks, shovels, pans, and “cradles,” which were akin to colanders intended to sift gold from dirt. (The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Panning was the simplest technique, though it was hard, wet work. The recipe was utterly basic—shovel gravel into the pan; add water; swirl carefully, letting the water carry away the lighter-weight grit; throw away any big rocks; swirl again; scan the last remaining bits of grit for a glint of gold. (The California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento)
Daguerreotype studios appeared almost at once, and miners posed proudly. (Unknown photographer, Untitled [Miner with Shovel], circa 1850. Quarter plate daguerreotype, 5 x 4 in. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California, Oakland Museum Purchase)
Women were rarities in California’s early days, outnumbered by men thirty to one. (The California History Room, California State Library Sacramento)
Some blacks came west on their own, as free men; some hoped to earn the money to buy family members out of slavery. Some slave owners brought their slaves with them, to dig them a fortune. (The California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento)
Isaac W. Baker, Untitled [Portrait of a Chinese Man], circa 1853. Sixth plate daguerreotype, 3.75 × 3.25 in. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California, gift of an anonymous donor.
The California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento
Driven from home by famine and poverty, Chinese miners came to the diggings by the tens of thousands. Whites marveled at these exotic strangers, with their odd language and unfamiliar clothes, but the Chinese endured harsh mistreatment and prejudice.
Unknown photographer, Untitled [Two Miners with Gold Nugget Stick Pins], circa 1853. Quarter plate daguerreotype, 4.15 x 5.063 in. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California, Prints and Photographs Fund.
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
The California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento
The gold-seekers had traveled thousands of miles from home, and they eagerly posed for pictures to show their families how they had changed.
Entertainers raced to California, which was rich, restless, and starved for entertainment. Lola Montez, a singer and dancer known more for her love affairs than for her talent, was one of the great draws. (The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
In 1853 a Connecticut miner devised the “water cannon,” which could blast away hillsides to reveal the gold hidden under tons of dirt. The day of the free spirit laboring on his own was done. As corporations moved in, the chance for a single man to strike it rich disappeared. “It takes a mine,” a newly coined proverb declared, “to run a mine.” (Lawrence & Houseworth, California, Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE HISTORIAN G. M. Trevelyan wrote that the astonishing, compelling, almost unfathomable feature of history is “the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow.”
The great treat for anyone who writes about the gold rush is the chance to savor the letters and diaries of countless men and women, as actual as we are today, who confronted an opportunity like none they had ever imagined. The gold-seekers knew they had embarked on one of the great adventures in American history. They set down their t
houghts at the end of exhausting marches or in snatched breaks along the way. Many of their journals vanished, but hundreds have turned up at the bottom of trunks, in cobwebbed attics, in yard sales and rubbish heaps.
My greatest debt is to the editors and librarians who lovingly preserved this other sort of gold rush treasure, first of all, and then presented it to the world. The Library of Congress, in particular, has gathered in one place nearly two hundred gold rush diaries in its “California as I Saw It” archives. All students of American history are in its debt, and to the gold rush collections at the Beinecke Library at Yale University; the Huntington Library in San Marina, California; the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley; and the New York Public Library; as well as a myriad of smaller institutions. For guidance I turned often to Gary Kurutz, the leading authority on gold rush narratives. His generosity is a match for his scholarship.
I chose to focus on five gold-seekers. In some ways these five—Joseph Bruff, Alonzo Delano, Israel Lord, Jennie Megquier, and Luzena Wilson—were representative of gold-rushers generally. They came from different parts of the country, occupied different rungs on the social ladder, traveled different routes, harbored different ambitions, and included both sexes and a variety of ages. But, in truth, they would not do as a random sample of “typical gold-seekers.” All five were American, for one thing, and two women out of five is vastly out of proportion.
They stood out for their distinctive, quirky voices and their storytelling skills. We can hear them thanks to a small group of dedicated researchers who labored mightily to honor their achievements. Georgia Willis Read and Ruth Gaines edited Joseph Bruff’s journals brilliantly and diligently. Necia Dixon Liles lovingly transcribed and edited Israel Lord’s manuscript diary. Polly Welts Kaufman captured Jennie Megquier’s humor and vitality. Fern Henry brought context and background to the bare-bones story of the indomitable Luzena Stanley Wilson, who announced in the first paragraph of her diary that whatever her husband might think, “I would not be left behind.” (Alonzo Delano told his story himself, in an account published in 1854.)
This book has been several years in the making. Like the gold-seekers themselves, I found that working in a team far surpassed struggling alone. Flip Brophy, my agent and my friend, grabbed up the idea with characteristic gusto. Liese Mayer was the first to support it. Geoff Shandler improved the manuscript with sharp questions and wry humor. Chris Jerome copyedited thoughtfully and meticulously. Ben Allen managed somehow to combine gentleness and tenacity in his supervision of the production process.
My two sons, one a novelist and the other an editor, weighed in on every decision. No writer could have better allies.
Lynn, my road-trip partner on a gold rush excursion and the best of partners on every journey, deserves more thanks than I can put in words.
About the Author
Edward Dolnick is the author of The Clockwork Universe, The Forger’s Spell, Down the Great Unknown, Madness on the Couch, and the Edgar Award–winning The Rescue Artist. A former chief science writer at the Boston Globe, he has written for The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. There are over 130,000 copies of his books in print. He lives with his wife in rural Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
edwarddolnick.net
ALSO BY EDWARD DOLNICK
The Clockwork Universe
The Forger’s Spell
The Rescue Artist
Down the Great Unknown
Madness on the Couch
NOTES
Sources for quotations and for assertions that might prove elusive can be found below. To keep these notes in bounds, I have not documented facts that can be readily checked in standard sources. Publication information is provided only for books and articles not listed in the bibliography.
LC denotes a work that can be found online in the Library of Congress archives, at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbhome.html
Epigraph
1 “The planter, the farmer”: Andrew Jackson’s Farewell Address, Mar. 4, 1837, available online at http://tinyurl.com/q4gwojb.
2 “A frenzy seized”: Bancroft, Works, v. 23, p. 56.
Prologue
1 The scraps, Bruff conceded in his diary: Read and Gaines, eds., Gold Rush, p. 330. Bruff ate his dinner of coffee grounds on March 30, 1850.
2 “I will soon have plenty to eat”: ibid., p. 342.
PART I: HOPE
Chapter One: A Crack in Time
1 “effeminate indulgence”: Howe, What Hath God Wrought, p. 505. See also Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America, p. 48, and Lepler, 1837, p. 101.
2 Henry Thoreau’s brother: Richardson, Thoreau, p. 113.
3 William Henry Harrison: Gail Collins, William Henry Harrison (New York: Henry Holt, 2012), pp. 121–3.
4 “one moment warm”: “History of the Origin, Progress, and Mortality of the Cholera Morbus,” London Medical Gazette 44 (1849), p. 557.
5 The cholera epidemic that hit: Byrne, ed., Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues, p. 99.
6 “In St Louis…”: Cooperman, “Cholera.”
7 “to implore the Almighty”: President Zachary Taylor on July 3, 1849. The full text can be found in The American Quarterly Register and Magazine 3, no. 1 (Sept. 1849), p. 74.
8 “Being a shoemaker”: McNeil, Travels, p. 3. LC.
9 “Jane i left you”: Johnson, Roaring Camp, p. 73. Johnson is quoting a miner named Nathan Chase, writing on March 5, 1852. His letters are at Yale’s Beinecke Library.
10 California is like the rest: It was Wallace Stegner who famously wrote that California was like the rest of the United States but more so, in a Saturday Review essay in 1967. The essay is reprinted and discussed at http://tinyurl.com/m4pyahl.
11 A new word, millionaire: Clark, Social Change, p. 196.
12 “furnished once a month”: Gordon, An Empire of Wealth, p. 158.
13 by 1836 the number had soared: Shepard, Martin Van Buren, p. 249.
14 The population had skyrocketed: McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 6–10.
15 “a mere 812”: Edward Kemble, “San Francisco: Her Prospects,” Alta California, Feb. 1, 1849.
16 a rollicking city of 30,000: Garrett, “San Francisco,” p. 253.
17 “I am among the French”: Clark, Social Change, p. 220, quoting Mary Ballou.
18 “A New York merchant”: Marryat, Diary, v. 2, p. 13.
19 “regular and uniform prices”: Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, p. 668.
20 “A few are riding”: Henry Thoreau, Walden, ch. 1, “Economy.”
21 “nearly four million people lived in bondage”: Kolchin, Slavery, p. 242.
22 “She does not know”: The letter is part of the Kinsey Collection of books and artifacts relating to African American history. A full transcript, and a link to a PDF of the original, handwritten note, can be found at http://tinyurl.com/mbgkugh.
23 “I have followed that plow”: Larkin, Reshaping, p. 15.
24 tailors went on strike: Spann, Metropolis, p. 71, and Wilentz, Chants, p. 350.
25 “We are flesh and blood”: Foner, Labor Movement, v. 1, p. 199.
26 “Hot corn”: Spann, Metropolis, p. 70.
27 “the horse pulling”: Delbanco, Melville, p. 101.
28 “All communities divide themselves”: Alexander Hamilton, Debates of the Federal Convention: 1787.
29 Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay rebuking: Isaacson, Franklin, p. 63.
30 “not a totally new life”: Clark, Social Change, p. 220.
31 Most were young, single, inexperienced: Wright, “Cosmopolitan California,” pt. II, p. 74.
32 “toil had heretofore consisted”: Perkins, Three Years in California, p. 76.
33 “My little girls”: Wyman, ed., Letters, pp. 23–26.
34 some 90,000 young men: Starr and Orsi, eds., Barbarous Soil. For the 90,000 figure in particular, see p. 57, and for a discussion of the gold-seekers’ numbers and mak
eup generally, see pp. 44–85.
35 more than 1 percent of the American population: The figure comes from an essay by the Wake Forest University economist Robert Whaples, which in turn draws on Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820–1860 by Robert A. Margo, p. 123. See Whaples, “California Gold Rush.”
36 “I did greatly fear”: Cooke, Alistair Cooke’s America, p. 156.
37 Horace Greeley famously advised: Greeley is always credited with the advice to “Go West, young man,” but the quotation has a tangled history, and Greeley may never have put it quite that way. See “Who Said ‘Go West, Young Man’—Quote Detective Debunks Myths,” by Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, at http://tinyurl.com/le7v5sq.
38 The name “California” came: Holliday, Rush for Riches, p. 5.
39 California’s non-Indian population totaled only fifteen thousand: Wright, “Cosmopolitan California,” pt. I, p. 323.
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