goldfields

If you are interested in the Bidwells — especially if you are a 3rd or 4th grade teacher doing Butte County or California history — don’t forget that I have a read-aloud YouTube video of my book John and Annie Bidwell: The Long and the Short of It.

Get a peek into Bidwell Mansion and see their story told through my words and the fabulous illustrations of Steve Ferchaud.

I concentrate on stories of northern California, and this isn’t one, but who can resist a good dog story? It’s the story of Dorsey, a dog who carried the mail in the mining camps of San Bernardino County.

Dorsey was a stray dog in the Calico mining camp until he was adopted by the town’s postmaster, Everett Stacy. The dog accompanied Stacy on visits to his brother Alwin, who ran the general store in nearby Bismark, another mining camp about a mile and a half away. One day Everett had an urgent message for his brother but didn’t want to make the three-mile round trip himself, so he tied a note to Dorsey’s collar and told Dorsey to “Git!” The dog headed out on the steep and rugged trail alone. When Dorsey returned to Calico with a reply from Alwin the following day, his career as the official mail carrier between Calico and Bismark began.

Dorsey was outfitted with a mail bag with two straps that buckled around his neck and chest and delivered the mail to the miners at Bismark every day. According to a news article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1885:

Every day, just about the time the stage is due, Dorsey wakes up from his nap, stretches himself and walks into the Post office. When the stage has arrived and the Bismarck letters have been put into Dorsey’s mailbag, the Postmaster says, ‘The mail is ready,’and Dorsey soberly walks up to have the bag fastened on. Then he starts off’ on a little trail which he has worn for himself over the hills. If he meets a stranger he makes a long detour, for he knows that he is engaged on important business and he don’t want to run any risk of having trouble. He stays in Bismarck over night and returns with the mail the next day in time for the outgoing stage. He has never missed a connection, lost a letter or been behind time. He is immensely popular with the miners, whose mail he carries so faithfully and every evening at Bismarck the miners order an extra beefsteak for the canine carrier.

San Jose Mercury-News 8 October 1885, reprinted from the San Francisco Chronicle

Dorsey’s mail-carrying career only lasted about a year. Everett Stacy gave Dorsey to W. W. Stow, the owner of the Bismark mine. Dorsey lived out his retirement years in canine comfort at the Stow mansion in San Francisco.

Today Calico is a park and a ghost town, officially designated as “California’s Silver Rush Ghost Town.” If you are ever near Barstow, you can visit it. Dorsey has also been the subject of a song by Kenny Rogers and a picture book by Susan Lendroth.

Alvin Aaron Coffey arrived in California in the fall of 1849 in company with his master, Dr. William Bassett. Coffey was born into slavery in 1822 or 1824 in Mason County, Kentucky, the property of Margaret Cooke. Bassett was his third master, who promised him that he could earn the money to buy his freedom, and the freedom of his wife and children, in the goldfields of California. It was a promise that Dr. Bassett would not keep.

Coffey told his story in his Autobiography and Reminiscence of Alvin Aaron Coffey, recorded in 1901 for the Society of California Pioneers. You can read it here. He was the only African-American member of the SCP. Members had to have come to California before 1850, and Coffey was a genuine forty-niner.

Most of his short autobiography is an account of that 1849 overland journey.

When we got pretty well down the Humboldt to a place called Lawsons Meadow, which was quite a way from the sink of the Humboldt, the emigrants agreed to divide there. . . . We camped a day and two nights, resting the oxen, for we had a desert to cross to get to Black Rock where there was grass and water.

(His use of the name Lawson shows how out pronunciation of Lassen’s name has changed.)

Starting to cross the desert to Black Rock at 4 o’clock in the evening we traveled all night. The next day was hot and sandy. . . . A great number of cattle perished before we got to Black Rock. When about 15 miles from Black Rock, a team of four oxen was left on the rad just where the oxen had died. Every thing was left in the wagon. I drove our oxen all the time and I knew about how much an ox could stand. Between 9 and 10 o’clock a breeze came up and the oxen threw up their heads and seemed to have new life. At noon we drove into Black Rock.

The oxen perked up at the scent of water. They still had a long way to go and Coffey mentions wolves, the dangers of hot springs to cattle, poor feed, and hard traveling. They came down Deer Creek to the Sacramento Valley and then went up to Redding Springs and began mining. In 1851 they returned to Missouri, where Coffey hoped to buy his freedom and reunite with his wife and children.

I worked thirteen months for him in California. I saved him [earned for him] $5,500 in gold dust. I saved $616 of my own money in gold dust. Going home in 1851 we went by the way of New Orleans. He said, “Let us go to the mint and have out gold coined.” He kept my money (616 dollars) and when we got up into Missouri, he sold me for a thousand more.

My labor on his farm [before they went to California] amounted to $360, I made $5500 for him in California, he kept my $616 I had saved and sold me for $1000; in this way clearing $8,876 clear profit.

Some say slavery is not profitable!

Coffey persuaded his new owner to allow him to return to California to earn money to purchase his freedom, and returned to the goldfields in 1854. By 1856, he had earned $1000, enough to purchase his freedom. He continued mining and working at other jobs until he had earned another $3,500. In 1857 he returned to Missouri and came back to California with his wife and three sons. Another son was born free in California in 1858.

The Coffey family first settled in Shasta County, and then later bought a farm in Tehama County. During the Modoc War, Coffey provided livestock to the U.S. Army and served as a teamster. Alvin A. Coffey died in the Home for Aged Colored People that he had helped to found in Oakland in 1902. The following obituary and tribute appeared in the Red Bluff Daily News.

John Bidwell believed fervently 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)