A few random bits from the Butte Record’s Christmas pictorial. The text was dictated by the engravings available and the imagination of the editor.

Quartz mills for extracting gold were common, but not quite that small.

The printer’s devil was the lowest man on the totem pole in a print shop, doing all the dirtiest, heaviest work. That turtle must have been the closest image to a devil he could find.

If you have a picture of a running dog and an arm and hammer, what do you do? Put them together and give a warning to stray dogs.

Here is a really lovely cut of a sailing ship. You wouldn’t want not to use it. But who is John Kirk? He had been in the news as a road contractor, responsible for the building of a road from Placerville to the Carson Valley. The editor of the Butte Record labeled him “Hangtown John, the Road Overseer.” I’m not sure what he was guilty of, but Mr. Editor wanted him run out of town.

The only Emma Stanley I can find in this period was a singer and actress, popular on the San Francisco stage. She gave a farewell performance in January 1858 before returning to the East Coast. Perhaps the editor had seen her on stage.