goldfields

Moses Logan Rodgers came to California in 1849 as a slave. Born in Missouri in 1835, he he was only 14 when he joined the Gold Rush. He mined by day and worked for himself in the evenings until he had earned enough to purchase his freedom. By “great effort, close study and application” he not only freed himself, but gained an education as a mining engineer. (All quotations are from The Negro Trail Blazers of California, by Delilah L. Beasley (1919).)

Exactly how he got his education isn’t known, but Moses became a successful and sought-after miner. To his friends he was “Mose.” He settled at Hornitos, in Mariposa County, where he operated several mines. The respect he earned is evidenced by this quotation from the Merced Star:

“A carload of machinery arrived at the depot last Friday, consigned to the Mount Gaines Mine, Mariposa County. Moses Rodgers, of Hornitos, than who there is no better mining man in the State, has been engaged as its superintendent.  The standing and known energy of the men backing the enterprise are a guarantee that the mine will be carefully handled and worked on a paying basis. The Mount Gains Mine is well known among mining men to the good mining property, and the new arrangement and its undoubted success will mean a great deal for mining in the vicinity of Hornitos”. (Beasley, p. 114)

In 1873 he married Sarah Quivers and they become the parents of five daughters. Seeking a better education for his girls, he moved the family to Stockton, where he built a fine home. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

One of the daughters of Moses and Sarah Rodgers, Miss Vivian Rodgers, was the first African American female graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. She became a teacher in Hilo, Hawaii.

Moses Rodgers died in October 1900 at the age of 65. His obituary in the Merced Star said of him:

He was an expert in his line and his opinion was always sought by intending purchasers of mines. He was a man of honor and his word was as good as his bond.  He was energetic in his younger days and took a great interest in helping along any good enterprise.

In the photograph below, Moses Rodgers is the tall man in the black coat on the far right. The photo of these “Hornitos old-timers” in front of the Hornitos Saloon was taken in 1890, when Moses would have been 55 years old.

One more story from California history for Black History Month.

Southern slave owners who came to California for the Gold Rush usually brought at least one enslaved person with them. Although California was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1850, slavery continued in the state before the Civil War.

One such man was George Washington Dennis. Here is his story, as told by his son Edward Dennis.

George Washington Dennis came to California September 17, 1849, with the gambling party that opened the ‘Eldorado Hotel’ in San Francisco. This party of gamblers was from New Orleans and was composed of the following persons: Green Dennis, a slave trader, from Mobile, Alabama; Joe and Jim Johnson, from Ohio, and Andy McCabe. . . While en route from Panama to San Francisco, the gamblers lost and re-won Mr. Dennis three different times. He was their slave and therefore chattel property.

The Negro Trail Blazers of California. p. 119

Those Louisiana gamblers knew a money-making opportunity when they heard about it. They were doing their own version of a gold rush.

Upon reaching California, the gamblers set up a tent, which they had brought with them, as a hotel and gambling den. The gambling went on night and day. Green Dennis, George W. Dennis’s owner, told him that “that if he would save his money he could purchase his freedom.”

George W. Dennis was given the position of porter of this hotel at a salary of $250 per month. Mr. Dennis, very anxious to secure his freedom and at the same time to start life with a little money, saved the sweepings from the gambling tables and at the end of three month he paid, in five and ten cent pieces, the sum of $1000, and received a bill for himself from Green Dennis, who was his father and also his master.

It staggers the mind that a man would keep his own son as a slave or sell him. But that was slavery in the United States, all legal and customary at the time.

$250 a month seems like a high salary, when you consider that in the States a man might work all year for that amount. But everything was different in California, and that included prices and wages. And those gamblers must have been raking it in. Gambling was the most popular entertainment in gold rush San Francisco.

Notice too that Dennis carefully sifted through the straw and trash that he swept up each day and saved any coins or bits of gold he found. He soon had the price of his freedom.

George W. Dennis had another person whose freedom he wished to buy, and that was his mother. He paid his father $950 for her. Two of the gamblers, Joe and Jim Johnson, went back to the States to get cattle and while there, found his mother and returned with her.

Upon the arrival of his mother in San Francisco, Mr. Dennis rented one of the gambling tables at $40 per day for the privilege of his mother serving hot meals in the gambling house on it. Eggs were selling at $12 per dozen, apples 25 cents apiece, and a loaf of bread $1. While her expenses were heavy, she averaged $225 a day.

That must have been a good business. She lived a long life in California with her son. George W. Dennis did quite well for himself. He bought and sold land in San Francisco, ran a livery stable, and later was a coal merchant, and prospered.

This advertisement appeared in the newspaper The Elevator, running for several issues in 1868. The Elevator was a Black newspaper begun in 1865 which aimed at the progress and uplift of the Blacks in California.

Dennis married and had a large family of children, and made sure that they each got a good education. When he died in 1916 the San Francisco Call said he was widely known and “probably the oldest negro in California.”

I am available to speak to groups and classes about California history and my books. I have a few presentations lined up — maybe you can make it to one of them.

Saturday, March 5th at 10 a.m. at the Chico History Museum. Ron Womack, Josie Reifschneider-Smith, and myself will be talking about ANCHR‘s new book, John Brown’s Family in Red Bluff. That’s John Brown the abolitionist of Harper’s Ferry fame. His wife and some of their children moved to Red Bluff in 1863.

Saturday, March 12th at 10 a.m. at the Lee Burrows Center for the Arts in Marysville. I’ll be talking about history and research and books. I’m looking forward to finding out more about Marysville, a town that is just jam-packed with Gold Rush history.

Saturday, March 19th at 10 a.m. at the Chico Veterans Hall. The DAR has invited me to talk about my books, especially my forthcoming book on Alvin Coffey. The book is not out yet, but the story is worth telling anytime.

Just about my favorite thing to do is talk to 4th grade classes. Fourth grade is when students learn about California history. They have so much history right here in their home towns! I hope that as the world opens up again I will be able to visit classes in person. If you know a teacher who would be interested, please tell them to contact me.

A few years ago Nick Anderson and I came up with a presentation in which I, as a lady reporter, interview Major John Bidwell in 1858. We had a lot of fun with it and Nick really enjoys getting into character as John Bidwell. If you are interesting in this one, give us plenty of notice so that we have time to rehearse.

I enjoy speaking to groups, whether it be to a 4th grade class about John and Annie Bidwell or a group of historically-minded adults about life in old Northern California. Please contact me if you are looking for a speaker. I’d love to meet you!

There are some fabulous images from the Gold Rush, and this is one of them. It’s so crowded with activity and life, even though the daguerreotypist must have told them to stand as still as possible.

Look at the variety of hats, the shirts, the beards, and all the wheelbarrows and the mining equipment that I can’t identify. There are even two females in this picture, rarely seen in any Gold Rush scenes.

Front and center stands a little girl, holding her father’s hand. It must be Take You Daughter to Work Day. She is wearing a short-skirted dress and little pantalettes and holding some kind of bag in her hand.

To the left, sitting on a rock, is another young girl, but it is less clear what the relationship is. She looks about 12 to me, but she could be older. She is looking down, away from the camera. Is she shy? Is the young man next to her, her brother, her boyfriend, or ??? We’ll never know.

This daguerreotype was taken by George H, Johnson in 1852. For a closer look at this image, you can find it (among other places) at the Wikipedia article on the California Gold Rush.

Delilah L. Beasley tells this story in her ground-breaking book The Negro Trail Blazers of California:

Robert Anthony came with his master to Sacramento, California, in 1852, from St. Louis, Missouri, by ox team across the plains. Two years to pay for his freedom he worked in the mines by day for his master. At night he worked for himself and with the money thus earned he purchased and built two quartz mills at Horncutt [Honcut], California, which is located between Yuba and Dry Cut.

While working his mills he heard of a colored girl at Hansonville [now Rackerby], in the mountains, who was being held as a slave. She was working as a sheepherder. He drove out to the place and asked her if she did not wish her freedom. She replied: “Yes.” He requested her to get into his wagon and he drove with her to Colusa. Some time afterward this slave girl became his wife. The writer interviewed the subject a few years ago at the poor farm in Marysville, and he made the following remark in regard to his marriage: “The marriage of Miss Addie Taylor to Robert Anthony was witness by Allen Pinkard and Thomas Scott.” He further stated he had an only son, who worked on one of the Hearst papers, but who had forgotten his old father. (p. 90)

The first part of this story is clear enough. Robert Anthony was an enslaved man, like Alvin Coffey, brought by his owner to California to work in the mines. Like Coffey, he was able to earn enough money to purchase his freedom. Unlike Coffey, he had no family in slavery back in Missouri to worry about. At the age of about 40 he married Ida (or Addie) Taylor.

(“No cards” in this announcement meant that the couple did not wish to receive visits or calling cards from their acquaintances. Perhaps because they were not planning to stay in Colusa.)

They were married on September 9th, 1870, sometime after Robert Anthony rescued her from slavery. How did Miss Taylor come to be held in slavery in California as late as 1869 or ’70?

It’s possible. If she was brought to California before slavery was abolished, and if she was kept isolated, tending sheep in the hills, it could have taken several years before she found out that things had changed. Her owner would have had no incentive to tell her that she was free, and she wouldn’t have had any way to find out, until someone took an interest in her. Even if she did find out, it might be difficult for a poor, vulnerable, uneducated young woman to walk away from the only people and job she knew.

Other than that one marriage announcement, I can’t find Addie in any other record — no birth announcement, no census record, no death record. Robert Anthony shows up occasionally. He was a blacksmith. He moved around — records show him in Colusa, Tehama, Butte, and Yuba Counties. Some time before 1889 Addie must have died, because in that year Robert married again, to Nancy Cooper in Oroville.

Robert Anthony died at the age of 87, a widower, in 1917. He is buried in the Marysville Pioneer Cemetery.

What a shame we don’t know anything more about Addie Taylor’s story. She shows up all too briefly, and then disappears. But what we do know demonstrates the lingering effects of slavery, in the free state of California, well after the war to free the slaves.

In the great bachelor party that was Gold Rush California, women were scarce. Here’s a cartoon of the era that gives an idea of how rare and sought-after a pretty young lady could be.

Do any of those men look to be a likely choice for a Valentine? Here is a closer look—

(Artist unknown, published by W.J. Morgan & Co., Cleveland, Ohio)

Happy Birthday to President Abraham Lincoln, born on February 12, 1809. I remember when this day was a school holiday, but now it has been absorbed into Presidents’ Day. It’s still a good day to remember this great leader.

John Bidwell met President Lincoln in 1864 and was greatly impressed.

Bidwell believed whole-heartedly in the Union cause. In 1864 he was a California delegate to the Republican National Convention in Baltimore on June 7-8, where Lincoln was renominated for president. Bidwell was in the delegation sent to the White House to inform Lincoln of his renomination.

Upon his return home, he spoke to the Butte County “Lincoln and Johnson Club” on August 10th, 1864, about his experiences. He was pleased to have met with President Lincoln and gave this description, as reported in the Weekly Butte Record:

While at the Capitol, I had the pleasure of several interviews with the President. I found him to be a man possessed of that great and most precious of all natural gifts, plain common sense. Still he was not exactly the man I had expected to see. I had been told that he was continually inclined to jest, and that he did not appear to appreciate the magnitude of our national troubles. Suffice it to say that much injustice has been done Mr. Lincoln in reference to his personal traits. What are called jokes should in most instances be styled apt illustrations. He is calm, reflective, quite fluent in speech, and evidently feels the weight of the responsibility resting upon him. The more I saw of him the better I was pleased, and the more he looked like a President.

(Weekly Butte Record, 20 August 1864)