goldfields

I am working on a picture book biography of Peter Lassen, the old Danish pioneer whose name is all over Northern California. I have written about his mysterious death previously on this blog.

Today I went to Susanville to find out more about Lassen. It was a beautiful day for a drive up into the mountains, where it was nice and cool compared to the Sacramento Valley.

Susanville has a fine historical museum, where all the artifacts are neatly arranged and well labeled. It is open Tuesdays through Friday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Saturday 10-1.

There is a nice section on Peter Lassen and Isaac Roop, the founder of Susanville. The lovely young lady next to handsome Mr. Roop in the painting is his daughter Susan, for whom the town and the Susan River are named.

The display includes Lassen’s Danish Meerschaum pipe. It was fun to see that, a genuine item linked to Lassen. The docent at the museum was also kind enough to let me look through their files on Peter Lassen.

Behind the museum is Roop’s Fort, a log building that was once Isaac Roop’s trading post, but during the Sagebrush War of 1863 it became a stockade with the rather grandiose name of Fort Defiance. One of these days I will tell you more about the Sagebrush War.

After a visit to Lassen’s grave (more about that next time) we had lunch at the Pioneer Cafe and visited Margie’s Book Nook next door. I never could resist a bookstore, especially one with piles of used books.

File this under “You learn something new everyday.”

Whenever I am looking for an article in an old newspaper (in the California Digital Newspaper Collection — a wonderful resource), my eye always strays to the advertisements. They are frequently entertaining and sometimes baffling.

This ad announcing PULU! PULU! PULU! caught my eye because I had no idea what pulu is. Clearly from the rest of the ad — which gives you a good idea what people stuffed their mattresses with — it had something to do with bedding.

Wikipedia came to my aid.

Pulu is a silky material obtained from the fibers of the hapu’u pulu (Cibotium glaucum), a tree fern which grows in Hawaii. The Hawaiians used it for padding, dressing wounds, and wrapping the dead.

The ad appeared in the Sacramento Daily Union on 21 May 1863.

Wikipedia states:

For a period in the 19th century, pulu was collected, dried, and exported to California commercially as pillow and mattress stuffing.  A stone structure in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park known as the Old Pulu Factory was a site for drying and packing pulu. However, the discovery that pulu breaks down and crumbles into dust after only a few years led to the demise of the industry. Pulu was collected by cutting down the slow-growing ferns, an extremely unsustainable method. The industry shut down by the 1880s.

And now you know about PULU!

It was a full day of celebration in Chico on July 4, 1888. As reported in the Chico Enterprise, Independence Day was packed with patriotic activities.

Yesterday morning Chico, the “City of Roses.” looked gay, and her citizens smiled in the most satisfactory manner as they gazed upon the beautiful, loyal, and patriotic decorations which were displayed in the most artistic manner from nearly every store and dwelling in the city.

The day began with a parade, featuring dignitaries, the Colusa and Chico Guards, the Native Sons of the Golden West, cars and floats “beautifully trimmed” featuring young ladies representing the different states of the Union, and much more.

The firemen and exempts with their gaily decorated engines and hose carriages were quite a feature in the procession, while the old veterans of Halleck Post G.A.R. [Grand Army of the Republic], were the admired of all admirers.

The parade was followed by a patriotic program of orations and music, and then a review of the troops.  A highlight of the afternoon was the “hose races” between the five fire engine companies, to see who could be the swiftest in unrolling their hoses and making their attachments on Broadway. Engine Co. No. 1 set a record time of 36 seconds and won a prize of $60.

The Barber Hose Team, winning team July 4, 1905

Next on the day’s agenda was the laying of the cornerstone at the Normal School building, presided over by Grand Master Hiram N. Rucker of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of California. The newspaper report gave a full and lengthy list of the contents of the copper casket which was deposited in the cornerstone. I wonder what happened to the casket when the first Normal School building burned down?

This grand event was followed by the parade and performance of “horribles,” a “motley crowd of clowns, stump speakers, and brass band,” much to the amusement of all. The evening finished up with a ball, a “beautiful panorama of youth and beauty” in the Pavilion.

Just a tiny bit more on the first work of fiction published in California.  Entewa, the Mountain Bird is mentioned briefly in Print in a Wild Land, by John Myers Myers (and no, that is not a typo — that was his name), a book about the world of Western newspapers, published in 1967.

Another bandit, the semi-fictional Joaquin Murrieta

At the time the one and only copy of the book was owned by the estate of a famous collector of Western Americana named Thomas W. Streeter. Tied up in the estate, it was not available for viewing. All Mr. Myers Myers could say about it was that it was a paperback of 119 pages. Quoting Streeter’s catalog, he says

This is not only the first novel printed in California, but the scene is laid in the gold regions in 1849; and it is a first-class story with the villain of the piece a bandit whose crimes were ascribed to the Indians.

As they so often were.

I really do have to see if I can get access to the microfilm for this book.

I have been reading an old book about the Sacramento River and California history — The Sacramento, by Julian Dana. It was part of the Rivers of America series and published in 1939.  The book has some entertaining stories, but it is dated and leaves much to be desired in the way of footnotes and bibliography.

An ad that appeared in the Sacramento Daily Union, Oct. 6, 1852

Along the way the author mentions the very first novel written in California. Entewa, The Mountain Bird: A Romance of California, Founded on Fact, written by Dr. J.R. Poynter and published in Marysville in 1852.

Well! that sounds intriguing. The first novel published in California — I’d like to see that book!

Good luck with that. It is an exceedingly rare item. It has never been digitized by Google Books. The California State Library and the Bancroft Library do not own copies, let alone my local state college library. The public library in Marysville does not have it. It does exist on microfilm, and according to WorldCat, a few universities have copies of the microfilm.  The original (and possibly the only extant copy) is in the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

As best I can tell, it is about life in the diggings and among the California Indians. Perhaps it features a handsome young forty-niner and a fair Indian maiden.

I wish I could tell you more. If I ever track it down, I will. Don’t you think someone ought to reprint it?

If you find accounts of life in early California fascinating, as I do, then the Library of Congress has a treasure trove for you. California as I Saw It contains first-person narratives of life in early California, from 1849 to 1900.

This collection includes more than 180 accounts by men and women who came to California in its formative years. Some of the writers are well-known figures, like Jessie Benton Fremont, John Bidwell, and Richard Henry Dana, the author of Two Years Before the Mast. Many others are remembered only because they kept a diary or later wrote a memoir, like Luzena Stanley Wilson, and numerous male Forty-Niners.

You can find Luzena’s full account here, as well as some other people I have written about, such as Edward McIlhaney and H.H. Bancroft. Here is where you can read Sim Moak’s The Last of the Mill Creeks. Check out the list of collection items, or search by contributor. Every item can be read online or downloaded.

Enjoy!

Luzena in later years, a shrewd woman by the looks of her

It’s been a while since I wrote about Luzena Stanley Wilson and her memoir about life in Gold Rush California, but I have been meaning to get back to it. Her recollections are full of striking detail about everyday life, just the kind of thing I want to know about.

So here is another excerpt from her memoir (not long after they arrived in Sacramento in 1849):

Half the inhabitants kept stores; a few barrels of flour, a sack or two of yams, a keg of molasses, a barrel of salt pork, another of corned beef (like redwood in texture) some gulls’ eggs from the Farallones, a sack of onions, a few picks and shovels, and a barrel of whisky, served for a stock in trade, while a board laid across the head of a barrel answered for a counter. On many counters were scales, for coin was rare, and all debts were paid in gold dust at sixteen dollars per ounce. In the absence of scales a pinch of dust was accepted as a dollar, and you may well imagine the size of the pinch very often varied from the real standard.

Just imagine corned beef “like redwood in texture.” It would take some chewing!

Nothing sold for less than a dollar; it was the smallest fractional currency. A dollar each for onions, a dollar each for eggs, beef a dollar a pound, whisky a dollar a drink, flour fifty dollars a barrel.

This was when eggs in the States sold for 2 cents each and flour for about 10 cents a pound, with 196 pounds to a barrel. Think how valuable a flock of hens would be.

One morning an official of the town stopped at my fire, and said in his pompous way, “Madame, I want a good substantial breakfast, cooked by a woman.” I asked him what he would have, and he gave his order, “Two onions, two eggs, a beefsteak and a cup of coffee.” He ate it, thanked me, and gave me five dollars. The sum seems large now for such a meal, but then it was not much above cost, and if I had asked ten dollars he would have paid it.

Luzena saw that this was the way to earn a living, and she and her husband soon sold their oxen and bought a hotel — a small wooden building where she cooked from morning till night.

More about Luzena and her hotel to come.

Another tidbit from the Pioneer Collection at the California State Library — a letter from Butte County Sheriff J.Q. Wilbur to John Bidwell:

Hamilton, Butte Co. Cal.  July 4, 1851

Dear Major—

I should like to come up this morning with Fry but having some very troublesome business on hand I shall not be able to come for some days. My health is tolerable good only, and I have soon to take the field against a band of outlaws at Bidwells Bar, who have been committing a wholesale and damnable outrage upon one of my deputies, Mr. Dodge.

Random old-time gunfight illustration

What was it? A shootout in the street? A brawl in the barroom?

I wish I could tell you what that band of outlaws was up to at Bidwell’s Bar, but I can find no other information. Newspaper accounts can be scanty for 1851.

But Deputy E. K. Dodge would go on to be elected sheriff himself in September of 1851, just two months later.

Sheriff Wilbur goes on to inquire about a lame mule. Then he takes up the subject of local politics (“This ticket will not give satisfaction to the Democratic Party, for they certainly have put forward our very weakest men“).

He closes:

I hope to see you at Ophir today.  Your friend, J.Q. Wilbur

Ophir being the old name for Oroville.

What a tantalizing letter! If we only knew more about that band of outlaws and their “wholesale and damnable outrage.”

A nice example of a penmanship copybook  is in the Pioneer Collection at the California State Library. The Pioneer Collection consists mostly of letters and oddments that don’t fit into other collections, or don’t rate their own separate collection.

This is a copybook that was given to Miss Anne Lamont by J. P. Blakely, presumably a teacher of penmanship, in 1849. Miss Lamont (who later became Mrs. Robert Brownlee) brought the book with her to California.

You can see what a show-off piece of work this title page is. This calligrapher really knows how to wield a pen!

The idea of a copybook was to present samples of handwriting, in various styles, for the student to copy. So a page might be headed by a bit of poetry, a suitable sentiment, or a series of long words that would test the student’s ability to keep an even, steady hand. The rest of the page would be left blank for the student to practice in.

This page shows a verse about the Penman’s art, with the top sample done by the teacher, and the copy by the student (followed by four more copies). Notice that this is printing, rather than cursive.

A very fancy example, suitable for titles. If you are having trouble reading it, it says “Penmanship commend.”

“Good manners, grace and truth are ornaments in youth.” A nice example of unornamented “running hand,” used for ordinary letter writing.

It was a treat to come across this example of the lost art of penmanship.

I went to the California State Library today. Here’s a little item from the John Bidwell Papers, which I find amusing:

It reads:

Lassen’s Ranch May 24, 1851

To the hombre in charge at Bidwell’s you will please deliver to the bearer a single barrel shott gun left with you by some of the hands of the steamer California and oblige yours G.H. Messersmith

I don’t know a lot about Mr. Messersmith, other than that he was an associate of Peter Lassen, he later ran the Tehama House Hotel, and became a county judge. I hope he got his shotgun back from the “hombre” at Bidwell’s.