goldfields

This random one-off letter from G.W. Lawson to Charles L. Hansicker is in the Sutter’s Fort Pioneer Collection at the California State Library, along with papers from John Bidwell, John Sutter, and George McKinstry. It’s a glimpse of the news of the day from a rich mining camp that would become Nevada City. There is one word in the first line that baffles me, otherwise it is pretty easy to read. Here is the entire letter:

Nevada April 27th 1850

Dear Charley

            As you are [kindee?] connected with the press now I want to tell you some few things concerning this diggings & if they are worth repeating put them in the paper if not I hope they will interest you enough to secure your perusal. I also wish to correct a statement made in the paper about “Gold Run”. It is not wanting in water as stated but the water has just subsided enough to let all hands in, and it will last long enough to work out all the claims. Today I went up the run its length, one company of five men washed down the forenoons work, & shewed it to me, 4 & ½ pounds of grain gold. [Inserted] Evening: one of the company has just come in & informed me that the days work is 12 pounds. Ain’t that some? 20,000 is asked for some claims of 120 or 40 feet. East Branch (close by it) is now attracting attention. 3000 is asked for claims of 60 feet. I think Deer Creek itself will turn out very rich. They are turning it here every foot. A gentleman tells me tonight that he saw 9 pounds which was taken out of a small space on the side of Sugar Loaf Mountain (close to this place). Don’t it go ahead of anything.

The place is growing from 1 to 4 houses a day. Seeing so much earth throwed out today suggested to me a way of building a Rail Road to California. Let the government, or a Great Company, collect about 100,000 of the poor laboring men of the states such as would like to come & have not the means, manage them in sections completing along as fast as practicable. In that way, supplies from the States could be furnished the laborers by the road itself cheap and one year would bring them all here. Reward each man with a good gold claim when he got here (this the Government could do) & thus a road could be built upon the labor of men wishing to get here either by the Gen. Government or a heavy company. Don’t laugh now.

I have not heard from home, & though weighing out the dust half my time I get homesick. I should like to “scratch gravel” in that direction, wouldn’t you, Charles. But when we get back, won’t there be some “prospecting” about them diggings, “striking of leads,” & perhaps some “jumping of claims.”

I meant to have written you more, but so many are in, talking and using me that I can’t think of what I would write & the mail is in haste.

Yours truly, G.W. Lawson

A little sleuthing in the census records of 1850 and I discovered that Charles Hansicker, age 24, was employed as a printer by the Sacramento Transcript. The statement about water that the writer corrects in the first paragraph appeared in the paper on April 12, 1850.

G.W. Lawson didn’t make it into the 1850 census, which was a hit-and-miss affair, but seems to have remained in California. George W. Lawson shows up up in the 1860 census: a 38 year old lawyer, living at Rose Bar Township in Yuba County, married to Mary, with baby son Herman.

Charles Hansicker served in the Mexican War as a 2nd lieutenant. After the war he probably returned to Indiana, but when the news of gold in California hit the States, he joined the rush for gold. He soon turned from mining to printing, first working at the Sacramento Transcript, and then founding the Sacramento Daily Union.

He returned to Indiana in 1853. His “prospecting,” as his buddy George joshes, was successful and he married Gabriella Preble. They had two daughters. Unfortunately, he died of consumption (tuberculosis) in 1859.

I started this blog ten years ago to promote the book I wrote about John Bidwell, and to note any bits of Northern California history that caught my fancy. Now I have reached my one-thousandth post, and it’s time to remind you about my books and other projects.

Since that first book I have written three more and have a fourth in the works. I have also collaborated on a variety of books, mostly with the Association for Northern California Historical Research. Between that and my big garden, I manage to keep myself busy and out of trouble.

I live in Chico, California, a city founded by pioneer John Bidwell, so two of my books are about his remarkable life. If you ever come to Chico, be sure and visit Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park. Their home is packed with history. One of my most enjoyable activities has been writing historical vignettes for events at the Mansion and acting in them. I portray the cook, Florence Proud, a real person who didn’t always get along with the rest of the help.

In writing John and Annie Bidwell: The Long and the Short of It, I realized how much I like the format of the picture book biography. It’s fun to work with illustrator Steve Ferchaud, and I like bringing history to the youngest readers. Limiting the text to what will fit on 32 pages, with plenty of room for pictures, forces me to concentrate my writing and make every word count. Plus I love doing the research, so even though most of it doesn’t make it into the book, I have learned a lot about my protagonist.

I wrote about Nancy Kelsey, the first American woman to come over the Sierra Nevada mountains into California. She came as a seventeen-year-old young mother, carrying her young daughter in her arms. She saw so much of California history: Sutter’s Fort, the Bear Flag Revolt, the Gold Rush, Indian encounters, life in town and life on the ranch.

I did another book on Peter Lassen, the Danish pioneer for whom Lassen County, Lassen Peak, Lassen National Volcanic Park, and so many other landmarks are named. His ranch was just up the road, a half-hour drive from where I live, where the town of Vina is now.

Peter Lassen was quite the character, and I wish I could have known him and Nancy Kelsey and many more of those early inhabitants of California.

In between my own books I have worked on a number of other projects. Together with John Rudderow I edited the poems of Pres Longley, a miner and a minor poet. I still like to open that book and read a one of his poems now and then. He could turn a verse on just about anything.

Since John Bidwell not only wrote in a daily journal, but also kept all his letters, receipts, and other papers, I have been able to mine that trove for two articles for The Diggin’s, the quarterly of the Butte County Historical Society. One was on his life-long friendship with Nelson Blake, and the other about “The Lady with the Blue Silk Umbrella.” Both articles look at California around 1850 through the eyes of the people who were there when it happened.

I’ve also worked with the Association for Northern California Historical Research (ANCHR) on several books, such as The Road to Cherokee, Ten Miles of Archeology on the Humboldt Wagon Road, and Conversations with the Past. ANCHR’s upcoming book on John Brown’s family in Red Bluff will have a chapter by me on rival newspapers in Red Bluff during the time that the Browns were living there.

This last year of staying close to home seemed to me to be the ideal time to write another picture book biography. But who to write about? I want to like my subject, so I don’t want to do an out-and-out villain. Some people have already had plenty written about them, while others seem too obscure to warrant a book. I couldn’t decide.

Then a couple of months ago I read about Alvin Coffey, a man who made three overland journeys to California. The first time he came as a slave, but the last time he came as a free man, bringing his wife and children with him. Here was a man who had worked through incredible difficulties to gain the precious prize of freedom. That’s the book I have started on, and I can’t wait to see what Steve can do with his pen and brush. Pretty soon I’ll be sharing some of those illustrations with you.

Here I am as Florence the cook in the kitchen with Annie’s secretary, played by Marquita Goodman. Soon we will be presenting events again at Bidwell Mansion, after taking a year off.

So that’s the history of the last ten years. I hope to keep writing and sharing the fascinating history of northern California with you for many more.

Jennie Carter, African American journalist in California, had some strong words when it came to issues of civil rights and equality. Her “Letter from Nevada County” in The Elevator on September 25, 1868 comes down hard on Southern Democrats, including those living in California, who objected to the Fourteenth Amendment, which declared “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” to be citizens thereof, with the same privileges and immunities and entitled to equal protection under the law. The amendment’s ratification had been certified on July 28, 1868.

This did not sit well with former slave owners in the South. And their attitude did not sit well with Jennie Carter. The entire letter, filled with righteous indignation, is worth reading.

Mud Hill, Sept. 12, 1868. Mr. Editor : —There is in the present political campaign less bitterness than heretofore at the North, while at the South it is increased tenfold. A Democrat said the other day, that the feeling exhibited South was “caused by negroes seeking equality, and the people would not endure it and the despotism it brought them.” They can’t stand despotism. I think they ought to, for they have dealt largely in that material.

Until the rebellion, who dared to express an opinion adverse to human bondage south of Mason and Dixon’s line? who dared read the first clause of the Constitution—”All men are born free and equal”—and give it a literal interpretation? and who dared preach the whole gospel—that master and servant were equal? Who dared to be seen reading the New York Tribune. All must put a lock on their lips, or suffer imprisonment and death. I know what I write, having spent a great portion of my life there; and often have I been told if I were a man I would be hung: and for what? why, for saying slavery was wrong. 

I recollect one time, in B___ county, Kentucky, I sat up all night with a poor slave mother, who lay in spasms, caused by the selling to a negro trader of her little boy, not three years of age. When in the morning her master came to her cabin to see how she was, I began to plead with him in humanity’s name; and when that would not move him, I told him God was just, and would not suffer such things forever. He told me I had said enough to hang me.

They had better not talk of despotism and military rule now. I am sure they have more liberty than they ever allowed others. They can all speak their minds fully—even curse the Government that ought to have hung them; and now that we have the blood-bought right to speak of Christianity, humanity, morality and justice, and they cannot muzzle us, they cry “negro equality!”

We do not desire equality with them. I hope none of us are so low and so lost to all that is noble as to wish to change places with those slave owners (all Democrats), who before the war raised men and women for the market—selling their own flesh and blood, separating husband and wife, parent and child. No, we never expect to be bad enough to be their equals. As regards color, the slave-holders did all they could to produce equality. I know many of them whose daughters in the big house were not as light as their daughters in the cabin. And when I the Democrats say, “Want your daughter to marry a nigger?” I tell them many of your daughters have married negroes, and many more would have done it, but you choose to sell them to white men to become victims of their lust. Shame! I say, l am tired of listening to their falsehoods, and thankful that the Chinese can rest. Last year it was Chinese and Negro; this year not one word about the ” moon-eyed celestials”; and next year they will be patting you on the shoulder, saying, “Come friend, give us your vote.” Then should everyone have the courage to say, “Depart, I never knew you, ye workers of iniquity.”  SEMPER FIDELIS

A pledge was drawn up in which every signer agreed to purchase a suitable outfit, and to rendezvous at Sapling Grove in what is now the state of Kansas, on the 9th of the following May, armed and equipped to cross the Rocky Mountains to California.

We called ourselves the Western Emigration Society, and as soon as the pledge was drawn every one who agreed to come signed his name to it, and it took like wildfire. In a short time, I think within a month, we had about five hundred names.

John Bidwell, The First Emigrant Train to California

After losing his farm in Missouri to a claim-jumper, 20-year-old John Bidwell “resolved to go elsewhere.” He was not the only one dissatisfied with life in fever-ridden Missouri, and after hearing about the benefits and beauty of California from fur trapper Antoine Roubidoux, neighbors and correspondents from as far away as Kentucky and Arkansas signed up to go.

That was in the early months of 1841. Doubts and hesitations soon set in, fueled by the criticisms of local merchants and a newspaper letter that warned of problems with the Mexican government. By May—

membership of the society began dropping off, and so it happened at last that of all the five hundred that signed the pledge I was the only one that got ready; and even I had hard work to do so, for I had barely means to buy a wagon, a gun, and provisions.Indeed, the man who was to go with me, and who was to furnish the horses, backed out, and there I was with my wagon!!

And yet, John Bidwell was determined to leave Missouri and set out for California. He found another partner, gathered a few more people, and arrived at Sapling Grove around May 12. There they found a few more wagons ready to go, and at the last minute, partnered up with a party of Catholic missionaries. By May 18th they were ready to hit the trail.

For more about Sapling Grove as a rendezvous point and the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, you can watch this video from the Oregon-California Trails Association.

On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation establishing the second Sunday in May as a day for honoring mothers and calling on government officials to display the flag to show “love and reverence for the mothers of our country.” By this time most states had already made it an official holiday.

The San Francisco Call newspaper asked its readers on May 15, 1915 whether they had done anything for their mothers on May 9th (which, like this year, was a Sunday). “What did you do about it?” they asked.

After chiding its readers for neglecting Mother, the column ended with this call to action — not to give Mother flowers or brunch — but to give her the VOTE.

Women already had the vote in state elections in California (since 1911) and in several other (mostly Western) states. Not until 1920 would women throughout the United States enjoy the right to vote.

Note that last line — American Indians would not be classified as citizens with the right to vote until the passage of the Snyder Act in 1924.