goldfields

File this under “Who’d a thunk it?”

Wenham Lake ice was famous. The lake in northeast Massachusetts supplied crystal-clear ice to the eastern states, Great Britain, and all the way to California. The ad above began publication in the Sacramento Transcript at the end of July and continued through the fall.

The Transcript publicized the news and poked fun at their rival newspaper, the Alta California and its editor, J.E. Durivage (“Dury”). I guess they didn’t have any of this precious stuff in San Francisco.

According to a Wikipedia article:

“A crew of 100 men and 30 to 40 horses was required to harvest the ice. The crew waited for a foot of black ice to form in the lake. Snow was swept off and snow-ice was scraped off by horse-drawn vehicles if necessary. Then, a horse-drawn cutting tool, the marker, scored a grid 2-3 inches deep forming 21-inch squares over two to three acres of ice. Men with saws cut along a line in one direction while men with ice spades knocked the blocks free from the strip. Another crew with ice hooks drew the ice along ramps onto platforms. Full platforms were slid onto sledges for transport to ice houses on the shore. An ice house was built of pine walls filled with sawdust to a thickness of 2 feet (61 cm). The blocks were packed in sawdust for transport, moved to a train in a special wagon and brought directly to a wharf in Boston The blocks arrived in Boston within an hour of the cutting with no loss.”

From Boston the ice went by ship around Cape Horn, a five to six month voyage. Its arrival in Sacramento in the midst of the summer heat would have been welcome indeed. There was probably “pressed snow” available from the Sierras, but nothing could beat Wenham ice for purity and clarity, just the thing to cool your drink, whether it be champagne or sarsaparilla.

Another shipment of ice on the bark Coosa arrived in Sacramento in January 1851. Ice was still available in May, as the weather began to heat up.

On this date, April 6, in 1937, Herbert E. Bolton, professor of history at UC Berkeley and director of the Bancroft Library, announced a spectacular find. Nothing less than the inscribed brass plate set up by Sir Francis Drake to claim the west coast of North America for Queen Elizabeth of England.

On his round the world voyage Drake explored the west coast and was thought to have landed in California at Drake’s Bay in 1579. His actual landing place is now thought to have been further north, not in California.

According to a contemporary account by Francis Fletcher, a member of Drake’s crew, Drake left behind “a plate” as “a monument of our being there” that claimed “her maiesties, and successors right and title to that kingdome”. The memoir also say that the plate included the date of the landing, Drake’s name, and the queen’s portrait on a sixpence coin.

This was just the recipe needed for a bunch of pranksters to cook up a hoax to fool one of California’s most notable historians. Bolton had talked about Drake’s plate and urged his students to keep a lookout for it. The perpetrators of the hoax (who by the way were all members of E Clampus Vitus) got the plate cut and inscribed, and even included a hole for a missing sixpence. They hoped to lure Bolton to find it where they planted it, but instead it was found by a hunter who threw it in the trunk of his car, and then tossed it out by the side of the road. When it was next discovered, three years later, the finder took it to Bolton to be authenticated.

Delighted with the find, Bolton announced at a California Historical Society meeting on April 6, 1937, that “One of the world’s long-lost historical treasures apparently has been found!… The authenticity of the tablet seems to me beyond all reasonable doubt.” Doubters questioned the plate’s authenticity, but Bolton had it verified by a pair of metallurgists, who declared it genuine. The plate of brass was proudly put on display in the Bancroft Library. For the next 40 years the hoax went undetected.

I first saw it in the Bancroft when I was a student employee there. “What a fabulous piece of history,” I thought. “What could be more romantic than a shiny brass plate that connected California history with the daring sea rover, Sir Francis Drake, and Queen Elizabeth I?”

I have a cardboard souvenir replica, with a gold-tone top layer, which my children took to school to share when they studied California history. I was careful to make sure they knew it was a fake, because in the 1970s a team of scientists, after a thorough examination, found the plate to be a modern forgery. Among the findings, tests revealed the plate to be too smooth, made by modern rolling equipment, not hammered flat by a sixteenth-century hammer. Neutron activation analysis showed that it contained far too much zinc and too few impurities to be Elizabethan English brass.

(For more information, the Wikipedia article is a good place to start.)

I still can’t help but wish it were real.

Today my daughter and I made our annual pilgrimage to Table Mountain in Butte County to enjoy a hike and admire the wildflowers.

With almost no rain in January, February, or March, it is a meager year for flowers. The grass is drying up and the flowers are short and skimpy. They are all in a hurry to set seed before the season is over, and are not wasting time on lush growth or lavish bloom. We saw mostly sky lupine, popcorn flowers, and the little poppies called frying-pans.

The section of Table Mountain set aside for hiking is officially known as North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve. A Lands Pass from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is required to visit. I have never seen anyone checking for passes, but it only costs $4.89 for a day pass and the fee goes towards upkeep and improvements.

And we did see a number of improvements. The parking lot has been enlarged, restrooms and porta-potties have been installed, and a viewing platform with informational signs has been set up.

The viewing platform includes a three-dimensional map of the terrain, which is nice for locating where you are and where you are going. The boundaries of the reserve are outlined and the various falls are labeled.

In the past we have usually hiked to Beatson Falls, the way that most visitors take. But that, as it turns out, is actually on private land. It is not part of the reserve and signs will tell you so.

The signs direct the visitor to take a turn to the right and hike to Ravine Falls and Phantom Falls. Which we did.

Not everybody heeds the signs and stays within bounds. The fence at this point has been pushed down. I saw a couple of folks step over the fence and head for Beatson Falls. The cows didn’t seem to care.

We made it to Ravine Falls, which was still dripping water, although the creek itself was dry. I would have liked to continue another 0.6 mile to Phantom Falls, but I had another place to be this afternoon, so we turned around and headed back.

It was a nice morning out, but I am hoping for more rain next winter and better wildflowers next spring. Here’s a little bit of owl clover we saw.

The entire test of this little letter reads:

January 9th, 1884

My dear General,

Can you oblige me by letting me have a few seeds of the Casawba (?) Melon, provided you can conveniently spare them. You will be pleased to hear that my father & all the family are very well indeed. Will you kindly remember me to Madam Bidwell, & trusting that you are both enjoying the best of health

I remain, dear General, very truly yours,

Tiburcio Parrott

Who was Tiburcio Parrott, who wrote with such an elegant hand and courteous manner?

He was the son of John Parrott, San Francisco banker and possibly the richest man in California. John Parrott had served as American consul in Mazatlan, Mexico, from 1837 to 1850. The position as consul paid nothing, but Parrott amassed a fortune in Mexico as a merchant and importer. Tiburcio, born in 1840, was his son by his Mexican mistress.

In 1850 John Parrott came to San Francisco and increased his fortune through banking and real estate. He built a large and beautiful mansion in San Francisco and a handsome summer home on his estate, Baywood, in San Mateo County. In 1853 he married Abbie Meagher and together they had eight children.

John Parrott did not neglect his Mexican-born son. He saw to it that young Tiburcio was given a good education in Massachusetts and England, before returning to the States to enter on a career in banking. Tiburcio came to California in 1862 and started working with his father. After his father’s death in 1884 he took over the Parrott Bank. About this time his step-mother bought property for him in the Napa Valley, where he built a mansion he called Miravalle and developed an interest in wine-making. This estate is surely where he planned to grow the casaba melons that John Bidwell had made famous.

The Parrott family has a Butte County connection. In 1860 John Parrott began buying land in Butte County and by 1875 he had acquired all of Rancho Llano Seco. This Mexican land grant, originally deeded to Sebastian Keyser, is situated on the east bank of the Sacramento River south of Chico. The ranch is still owned by the Parrott family.

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, often with a print. What balererine is I have no idea. Delaine is the sort of fabric that Jennie would have ordinarily used to make a nice dress, not aprons. Some of you may recall that Caroline Ingalls, in Little House in the Big Woods, wears her delaine dress to a barn dance. It’s her best dress.

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.

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. Originally “thibet” referred to a coarse Tibetan cloth woven from goat’s hair, but later it came to mean a kind of woolen fabric suitable for suits or dresses.

By a “sack” she either meant a free-hanging dress with a loose waist or more likely, a jacket, overcoat, or wrap that fitted loosely over a dress. It could also be spelled “sacque.”

Jennie Megquier ran a boarding house in San Francisco. It was profitable, but the work was never-ending, even though she mentions having the help of a boy and another woman. 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.

Jennie Megquier 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.”) She wrote to her daughter:

. . . you may bless your stars 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.

In honor of Women’s History Month I am going to re-post some entries from 2015. This the story of Mary Jane Megquier, who came to California in 1849 and fully expected to go home, as she said, with her “apron full of gold.”

Mary Jane Megquier, known to family and friends as Jennie, came to California with her husband, leaving her three children behind in Maine with relatives. At first the plan was only for her husband to go — many men left wives and children behind when they headed for the goldfields. But at the last minute Jennie decided to go along. As she wrote to her daughter from New York, “they think some of taking me along with them, it is so expensive getting womens work they think it will pay well . . .” And so it would prove.

Although she missed her children terribly, she thoroughly enjoyed the adventure of traveling to California and living in mining camps and San Francisco. “Women’s work” was hard, but the lively variety she found all around her more than made up for it.

Her letters home, written between 1849 and 1856, are one of the best portraits of life during the Gold Rush from a woman’s point of view. Crossing the Isthmus of Panama was an uncomfortable and often dangerous undertaking, yet Jennie reveled in it, despite the heat, damp, insects, disease, bad food, and lack of comfort. She was no complainer.

Here she is, describing the journey up river from Chagres:

After waiting three or four hours we were stowed into a canoe (Mr. Calkin, Dr. [her husband] and myself) twenty feet long two feet wide with all our luggage which brought the top of the canoe very near the waters edge. We seated ourselves on our carpet bags on the bottom of the boat, if we attempted to alter our position we were sure to get wet feet, notwithstanding our close quarters the scenery was so delightful the banks covered with the most beautiful shrubbery and flowers, trees as large as our maple covered with flowers of every colour and hue, birds of all descriptions filled the air with music while the monkeys alligators and other animals varied the scene, that we were not conscious of fatigue.

Two natives pushed the boat with poles unless the water was too swift for them they would step out very deliberately and pull us along, Was it not a scene for a painter to see us tugged along by two miserable natives. There are ranchos every few miles where you can get a cup of miserable muddy coffee with hard bread of which we made dinner, then we doubled ourselves in as small compass as possible and started, under a broiling sun the thermometer at one hundred.

Arrived at our destination for the night about five o clock where we seated ourselves on the bank to watch the arrival of the canoes, before dark there were one hundred Americans on that small spot of ground all busy as bees making preparation for the night. Our part thought it best to have the natives cook their supper, it was rich to see us eating soup with our fingers, as knives, forks, spoons tables, chairs are among the things unknown, they have no floors, the pigs, dogs, cats ducks, hens, are all around your feet ready to catch the smallest crumb that may chance to fall.

As I was the only lady in the party they gave me a chance in their hut but a white lady was such a rare sight they were coming in to see me until we found we could get no sleep, we got up and spent the remainder of the night in open air, At four we took up our bed and walked, Would to God I could describe the scene. The birds singing monkeys screeching the Americans laughing and joking the natives grunting as they pushed us along through the rapids was enough to drive one mad with delight when we got tired sitting, we would jump out and walk to cut out the crooks which were many, we could never see more than ten rods, sometimes we would find that we were going northeast when our proper course was directly opposite.

At four in the evening we reached Gorgona, another miserable town, where you will find the French, New York and California Hotels, but you cannot get decent food, nor a bed to lie upon at either house. There is a church in town which is not as respectable as the meanest house you have in town . . .