Frank Baumgarder - Golden Dreams: True Stories of Adventure in the California Gold Rush

GOLDEN DREAMS

True Stories of Adventure in the
California Gold Rush

FRANK BAUMGARDNER

Copyright 2020 Frank Baumgardner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-8676-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8677-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020900355

Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/04/2020

For Jeannette, my beloved, whose love gave me hope.
She never gave up, keeping sacred her vows, and put my
crazed mind at restand all in proper perspective.

CONTENTS

M any accounts of Californias Gold Rush focus on one aspect, or one persons account. This book, Golden Dreams: True Stories of Adventure in the Gold Rush , weaves together a myriad of experiences of those who made the journey to pre-Statehood California and the gold fields. Overland journeys and sea journeys tell different stories, encounters with Indians and early settlers, illuminate the Gold Rush in different ways. Once the gold seekers arrived in California, they often went in many different directions this book makes this clear and explains why.

Golden Dreams focuses on the forty-niners own words words which were written on the trail or on a ship, and then words written after their arrival. These accounts were written in the mines, by candlelight, hurriedly after a long days work in the mines and then sometimes after their trip when they returned home. The successes and failures are both shown, the varied backgrounds of the miners are illustrated and these stories themselves make clear why the Gold Rush had such a strong draw for men and women from all over the world.

Using primary sources and published accounts of diaries, Frank Baumgardner has made this book more immediate for readers. The juxtaposition of the many stories make for not only exciting reading, but also clearly illustrate why gold seekers risked their lives and left their families and friends to seek gold in California.

Patricia L. Keats

Director of Library and Archives

The Society of California Pioneers

B efore the gold rush, gold in any great quantity was rare in the existing United States except for a limited strike in North Carolina at the end of the eighteenth century. Before January 1848. Russia was where most of the worlds supply of gold was found. When volcanic action created both the Rocky Mountain Chain and the Sierra Nevada Mountain Chain, molten gold spewed out and ran down into numerous California riverbanks, cracks in rock, and gullies, where it mixed with granite and other hard rocks. The gold and silver deposits were laid down millions of years before 1848, and thus placers preexisted the invasion of miners. When gold was found at Coloma (Sutters Mill) in northern California, news of it spread like a wildfire during the spring and summer of 1848. To most hardheaded people, it didnt seem possible. Wasnt this too good to be true? And yet, as the weeks and months flew by, news article after news article kept stating there was gold and some placer miners were getting rich.

A Honolulu newspaper, Polynesian, reported on July 8, 1849,

The Gold Fever. The California alias gold fever is beginning to rage with unprecedented fury among the denizens of our town. One after another comes to request us to announce their intention to depart from this Kingdom. The promulgation of the law respecting passports came at an unlucky time for some In the emergence of the occasion, creditors will do well to watch their interests closely, for it is impossible to tell who will go next.

Soon the news spread to Central and South America, Hawaii, Australia, China, and the Western European nations as well. Golden dreams seized the minds, hearts, and imaginations of tens of thousands of people worldwide. There seemed to be no restrictions to making the journey to Californias hilly gold fields. Those who could make themselves free could come. It apparently made no difference what faith one practiced, where someone came from, or what color of skin one happened to bear.

Will you go the caper?

The California gold rush was unique. Nothing in the world like it had ever happened before. By 1855, three hundred thousand people from all over the world flocked to remote California. Thousands came from Europe, China, Latin America, and Australia. For the Indians of the soon-to-be new state, it was disastrous. Although they were of great assistance to the miners, thousands died from starvation, disease, or genocide.

Although the news about Californias gold deposits reached the minds of all, not everyone could take on the difficult journey to reach the distant, just-acquired territory, which was full of surprises. Forty-niners, out on the California Trail, found pans of water left the night before, frozen solid in the morning. Cattle might suddenly be gone, having wandered away or been taken by Indians. Some who decided to go by sea, like Nelson Kingsley, a gold-seeker from Connecticut, passed around Cape Horn. Kingsley noted that his ships main mast was broken in two. Passengers and crew jerry-rigged the mast together in order for the ship to limp into a nearby port in southern Chile. Once an emigrant left home and began the caper, he or she could rarely turn back. It has been estimated that of the three hundred thousand gold seekers, about half came by sea, and half came overland.

The California gold rush, in its most feverish pitch, lasted only about three years. If one arrived in 1852 or later, one was almost too late. The gold placers, flakes and nuggets, or whole chunks of pure goldthe stuff of fantastic visions and nightly dreamshad already been removed from Californias ravines, hills, riverbeds, creeks, and valleys. Gold claims were the financial and legal grist for clever bankers and lawyers, and a federal court system didnt exist anywhere in the Far West.

In this study, many gold seekers are presented not by an academic writing in the third person but by the forty-niners themselves. Their diaries tell their stories. In addition, the study primarily focuses on the northern California diggings. For as long as I can remember, Ive thought about writing a book like this. The problem for me was getting the time for research and writing. Previously, I was too busy earning a living. Although accounts like these were written, books containing them are missing from libraries. Most publishers of such accounts are long since out of business. I had to buy most of the diaries from a rare book store in San Francisco, The Argonaut Book Store.

Parts of these diaries made up the text. Many of these miners, working almost twenty-four-seven in extreme heat or cold, as well as rainy or snowy weather, fell ill. Placer mining work was so physically taxing that they turned to other occupations. Some had worked as newsmen before theyd journeyed here, and they returned to plying their trade to write travel accounts or how-to books, which were sold to the general public. Many found the circumstances of life so lonely that they perished from heartbreak. Others succumbed to diseases: cholera, smallpox, influenza, dysentery, malaria, or accidents. Only the most fortunate could take stock of their situations to sell out and return to their families, loved ones, and friends. Far fewer ever returned with a sufficient pile and made any really significant gain in social position, which all miners had desired before leaving their homelands. Often, if they did make it back in one piece, they were so weak or sickened that they died soon afterward.