goldfields

Jennie Megquier’s letters from Gold Rush San Francisco record a few interesting notes about clothing. In November 1849 she wrote:

I have starched twenty shirts this evening. I tell you this to give you an idea of the amount of work I have to do. Uncle has given me a whole piece of calico, one of de laine, one balererine. I shall make it all into broad aprons as I cannot get time to make a dress and when they get dirty throw them away that is the order of the day in this rich country.

Calico is a plain weave cotton fabric, and delaine was a lightweight wool fabric with a print. What balererine is I have no idea. It isn’t in any online fabric dictionary, like this one or this. Delaine is the sort of fabric that Jennie would have ordinarily used to make a nice dress, not aprons.

Uncle had some washing done for which they charged six dollars a dozen, they looked so bad, he gave them two dollars to keep them.

Which sounds like a joke, but that’s what Jennie wrote.

A fashion plate from Godey’s Lady’s Book 1853.

Later she had more time to sew, and in 1853 wrote:

I was in at Mrs. Calkins today, all well, she and Mrs. Davis are making dresses all the while, I presume they have twenty five in a year, a silk dress lasts but two months at the best. I know not why but everything goes to destruction in a very short time here. . . . I have been making me a brown silk, and next week I am going to make a black one, today I have been making a pink thibet sack trimmed with velvet ribbon but I am sure I do not know when I will wear it.

Thibet was another fine woolen cloth used for making dresses. By a “sack” she probably meant a free-hanging dress with a loose waist.

. . . after they’ve seen San Francisco?

It didn’t take long for San Francisco to work her magic on Jennie Megquier. She wrote about the folks at home in Maine, “I have seen so much of things a little more exciting that I fear I shall never feel perfectly satisfied with their quiet ways again.” Then she drew this word-picture for her daughter:

Here you can step out of your house and see the whole world spread out before you in every shape and form. Your ears are filled with the most delightful music, your eyes are dazzled with everything that is beautiful, the streets are crowded the whole city are in the street. We have near us a splendid ice cream saloon which surpasses anything I have seen in the states, very large windows with magnificent buff silk damask curtains with lace like those that Newhall Sturtevant boasts so much of, two large rooms are connected by an arch hung with the same material, marble tables, floors and counters and as light as day at all hours of the night. The homeliest man in the city treated me to an ice cream there a few nights since at one dollar a glass.

Winthrop Maine had nothing to compare with the ice cream parlors of San Francisco!

SIL7-89-01, 4/22/03, 4:14 PM, 8C, 3724×5398 (1956+864), 100%, A.I. Basic, 1/60 s, R46.5, G33.3, B47.8

Jennie Megquier ran a boarding house in San Francisco, and the work was never-ending. She writes:

I should like to give you an account of my work if I could do it justice. . . In the morning the boy gets up and makes a fire by seven o’clock when I get up and make the coffee, then I make the biscuit, then I fry the potatoes then broil three pounds of steak, and as much liver, while the woman is sweeping, and setting the table, at eight the bell rings and they are eating until nine.

I do not sit until they are nearly all done. I try to keep the food warm and in shape as we put it on in small quantities. After breakfast I bake six loaves of bread (not very big) then four pies, or a pudding, then we have lamb, for which we have paid nine dollars a quarter, beef, and pork, baked, turnips, beets, potatoes, radishes, salad, and that everlasting soup, every day dine at two.

For tea we have hash, cold meat, bread and butter, sauce and some kind of cake and I have cooked every mouthful that has been eaten excepting one day and a half that we were on a steamboat excursion.

I make six beds every day and do the washing and ironing you must think that I am very busy and when I dance all night [she loved to go to dances] I am obliged to trot all day and if I have not the constitution of six horses I should have been dead long ago, but I am going to give up in the fall whether or no, as I am sick and tired of work.

She also sewed all her own clothes, but more of that later.

The Megquiers shipped a “portable iron house” to San Francisco, figuring it would be a good investment in a city where people were living in shacks and tents, and indeed it was. They used the ground floor for a store, and rented out the upper floor for offices.

We have a fine store which is now nearly completed, the upper part will rent for one thousand per month a pretty little fortune of itself if rents continue as they are now, but it is doubtful. Our motto is to make hay while the sun shines, we intend to sell the first good offer and return forthwith, although there are many things here that are better than the states yet I cannot think of staying from my chickens [her children] a long time, and it is not just the place for them at present, no schools, churches in abundance but you can do as you please about attending, it is all the same whether you go to church or play monte, that is why I like, you very well know that I am a worshipper at the shrine of liberty.

Jennie had chafed under the day-long church services back home in Maine, where her father was a deacon in the Baptist church. She didn’t miss that at all.

The land is very rich would yield an abundance if it was cultivated, but no one can wait for vegetables to grow to realize a fortune, potatoes are twenty cents a pound, beets one dollar and seventy-five cents a piece, tomatoes, dollar a pound but we have them for dinner notwithstanding, we have made more money since we have been here than we should make in Winthrop in twenty years, the Dr often makes his fifty dollars, a day in his practice, then we have boarders to pay our house rent, they make great profits on their drugs [Dr. Megquier and his partner].

To show you some of the profits on retail, the Dr bought a half barrel of pickle in salt, after soaking them I put up fourteen quart bottles, sold them for six dollars more than we gave for the whole, which still left me the same bulk I had at first.

Prices were fascinatingly high — everyone talked about the prices. The money came in fast, but it went out fast as well. Jennie was sure that she would go home with “an apron full of gold,” but that would take longer than she expected.

Mary Jane, known as Jennie, arrived in San Francisco on June 13, 1849. Her husband, Thomas Megquier, was a medical doctor and planned to practice medicine and open a drug store. Jennie knew she could make money running a boarding house, if she could just get a house. (Their name, by the way, was pronounced “Me-gweer.”)

. . . you may bless your stars [she wrote to her daughter] that you are not here at present, report says there are six thousand people here that have no shelter, but some are going and coming from the mines, so we got a small room the size of my bedroom in Winthrop for five of us with our luggage, your Father and me lie on a single mattress on the floor with one small pillow. Col. Hagen, wife, and little girl lie on a hard mattress on the bedstead  . . .

. . . some kind of provision are cheap as in the states such as beef pork flour, but vegetables are enormously high . . .We have been here three days and have had nothing to eat but beef, pickled fish, and poor flour bread.

. . . money is plenty as dirt if you have any means of getting hold of it, but we have not been here long enough to tell whether we can make anything or not, but if your Father can get practice there will be no doubt but we can get money enough in a year or two to come home, there is seven million dollars in gold dust in this little place besides thousands of coined money . . .

Jennie would soon find how to make her own way in San Francisco, where, as she wrote:

everyone must do something, it matters but very little what it is, if they stick to it, they are bound to make money.

Letter from Jas. C. Callen to John Bidwell, courtesy of the California State Library.

On February 7, 1854 James C. Callen wrote John Bidwell about an “Indian ware on the clammoth river.” A ’49er, Callen had been residing in Butte County in 1850, but by 1854 he was living on the Klamath River “ten miles from Yreiky.” Here is the first half of his letter, reporting on a skirmish with Indians. Spelling is just the way he wrote it. Note that he always spells ‘they’ phonetically as ‘tha’, the rest you can probably figure out.

Siskiyou County, Callens Fery Febuary 7^th / 54

Mr. J Bidwell   Sir

Indian ware on the clammoth river

Some of the miners on cottonwood bought squaws of the Indians and pade for them in horses and guns some time after these traids the squaws run away then the boys told the Sitisans that the Indians had some stoling horses and if tha would help them to provision and aminison tha would bring them a way, so tha ware all furnished and when tha came to the place whare the indians ware tha found them all in a large cave and well prepared for wore. So tha wint back and told a worse taile than ever Sitisens and traiders made up a second out fit for the boys and about forty of them turned out now to take the cave and horses when tha came in Sight the indians hailed them and inquired there bisness the cottonwood boys thinking it would ondly be sport for them fired on the indians tha soon saw the indians had the advantage and give ground the indians fought them about four miles and killed four whites and wounded five more one Indian was kild and several wounded this caused the excitement the indians sent them word to come on that tha had a good fourt and could cleare out all that could come you can se the last fight in the mountin herreld.

The Mountain Herald was a weekly newspaper published in Yreka beginning in 1853. This letter is in the John Bidwell Papers at the California State Library, where you can also read the Mountain Herald. The transcription is my own.

What do a 12th century Spanish monastery, Peter Lassen’s ranch, Stanford University, and New Clairvaux Vineyard have in common? They all come together at Vina.

I have been planning to take the short (19 miles from Chico) drive north to Vina for ages now. I finally did it today, together with my husband Jim and our daughter and her family. If you live in Northern California, it is well worth the trip, in history alone, and if you like wine, that’s another reason to go.

New Clairvaux Chapter House.

The Abbey of New Clairvaux is a Cistercian Trappist monastery following the Rule of St. Benedict. It was founded in 1955, and is home to over 20 monks, who spend their days in prayer and manual labor. They care for walnut and prune orchards and grape vineyards.

The abbey site in Tehama County is rich in history. It was once part of the 22,000 acre Rancho Bosquejo, the Mexican land grant belonging to Peter Lassen. In 1852 the property passed to Henry Gerke, who was successful in growing grapes and making wine. It was during Gerke’s time that the site acquired the name Vina.

Later the ranch was bought by Leland Stanford, governor and railroad baron, who built up a land empire of 55,000 acres. His “Great Vina Ranch” became the world’s largest wine operation. The huge brick fermenting plant built by Stanford still stands. Difficulties in growing and processing the grapes in the hot Sacramento Valley meant that the wine business was never as successful as Stanford hoped, but he did pretty well with brandy.

Stanford’s fermenting building.

After Stanford’s death in 1893 his wife carried on the business, which helped to finance Stanford University, but increasing pressure from the temperance movement led the University to get out of the wine-making business. They uprooted the grapevines and sold off the land in 1919. Sixty years ago the Cistercians bought it from a dairy farmer named Flynn. In addition to the orchards, they re-planted grapes and established New Clairvaux Vineyard.

Lassen and Stanford are not the only famous California names associated with Vina. William Randolph Hearst comes into the picture as well. For the last 20 years the monks have been reconstructing a medieval Spanish chapter house using stones from a monastery that Hearst acquired in Spain. Hearst never used the stones to build his second castle. Instead they have come home to the abbey. You can read more about this project at Sacred Stones.

For fascinating history in a scenic package, Vina is hard to beat. Go visit it soon. The linked websites have all the visiting information.