California, 1848 – Gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill. The news spread across the county and young men grew excited at the promise of quick wealth. The opportunity to pick gold nuggets off the ground or out of a stream was enough to make farmers leave their fields and storekeepers board up their shops.
There were actually three major (and probably several minor) nineteenth-century American gold rushes. The one we most often think of was the California Rush in 1849. Then there was a Colorado Gold Rush in 1858-59, followed by the Klondike Gold rush in Alaska in 1897-98. We’ll look at the California Gold Rush now. My next blog will look at the Colorado Gold Rush.
Several young Clinton County, Indiana farm boys caught the California gold fever and went west. They were all neighbors, single, in their early twenties and still living and working on their parents’ farms. Townsend Thompson, his cousin Edward Thompson, Abraham Michaels, Samuel Douglass, Samuel Hopple, John Lee and another man named Painter all left for the gold fields in 1848 -1851.
There were two ways to get to California. Some went to the gold fields via water. Depending on your location, you could leave from either New York or New Orleans, then by ship to Panama, across the isthmus and again by boat to San Francisco. It was an easier way, but more expensive. Most midwesteners took the cheaper and closer option and went to St. Louis and then overland to California. There was not much understanding of the geography and ecology of the American plains. Some writings referred to the area as the American desert. But the route was considerably cheaper, so reluctantly it became the main way to California. The seven Clinton County boys went overland.
From Frankfort, Indiana to St. Joseph, Missouri they traveled by horse-drawn wagon and were rather comfortable. The long trip from St. Joe to the Rockies took them 6 months. The harder travel on the Plains was too much for the horses so they sold them and the party invested in four yoke of oxen. It was a dangerous and tedious trip. Though the danger was from the weather, lack of provisions or just bad luck, and generally not from the Indians. The Indian Wars were still a few decades in the future.
A letter from Townsend Thompson stated, ”I take this opportunity to inform you that we are well at present and I hope you are well. We have sold the horses and got oxen. . . We expect to start across the plains the eighth of May. There are lots of men who are every day backing out. They started and went a hundred miles, when their oxen gave out. There was no grass for the oxen. Everything is very high in St. Joseph. Corn is one dollar a bushel . . The boys are in good spirits.”
Another letter dated December 28, 1850, “I am well at this present time and hope you and your family are enjoying good health. My health has been very good ever since I left home. I am working with John Lee, Abraham Michael and Henry Kowenhowen. We are making from five to ten dollars a day at the present time. . . Mining is an uphill business. Some are making their hundreds and some are making their board and darned hard to make that. I am going to give California a fair trial before I leave. I can’t say come to this blessed place, for there are too many here now. I like California better than I expected to. The winter has been very pleasant so far. There has been very little rain and very little snow. I had some pleasure on the road and some hard times. I will not say anything about the hardships on the road, for if anybody comes by land they will find them too soon, anyhow.”
“I think that the people in Indiana who want to get rich had better stay at home and work harder for there are great risks to run in coming to California, and then very likely not make anything. For you may find a place where you may make very good wages for a few days and then you may prospect fifteen or twenty days before you find a place where you can make anything. At least this has been my fix and it has been the same with hundreds of other men. It is just like a lottery. If you buy a ticket and draw the prize, you are the lucky one. And that is the way the thing works in mining in California.”
Eventually, six of the Hoosier boys returned to Clinton county and resumed the more quiet life of Indiana farmers. Both Thompson men invested their money in farmland. They each bought a quarter section (160 acres) and paid $1600 for it with gold dust.
Connections:
Edward Elwood Thompson was the father-in-law of the sister-in-law of my 2nd cousin 2x removed.
Townsend Thompson was his cousin and both Thompsons were related to me through their link to the Strain family.
David S. Brelsford, my 3rd great granduncle, also went to the Gold Rush. He crossed the plains to California, being 110 days on the road and engaged in mining two years. He then returned via Isthmus of Panama, with money enough to purchase the old homestead, his mother having died during his absence.
Elihu Coffin – one of his descendants married my great aunt. From 1850 to 1852 he lived in Iowa; “thence he wended his way across the plains to the gold regions of California, where, for two years, he had an experience brighter in imagination than in reality. From California Mr. C. returned to Iowa, by way of Panama, New York and Chicago.”
William Sallee, my 2nd cousin 6x removed. In 1849 William Sallee and thirteen others formed a party to participate in the California Gold Rush. They departed from Missouri and crossed the plains overland with oxen and wagons, going by way of Laramie, and once there to the mountains in the search of gold. After eleven months in the gold fields William Sallee returned home by way of Panama, New Orleans and St. Louis. He had acquired nearly $6000 as a result of his toils. Later he invested most of the money in additional farmland.
Robert Witham —“ . . . went west in 1853 with the gold seekers of that period and nothing has ever been heard of him since, although he is believed to be alive and still in the far west;” – from his brother’s obituary, 1914. Witham was the brother-in-law of the uncle of my 1st cousin 4x removed.
John M. Shively – He was living in Astoria, Oregon and serving as their postmaster when he was lured to California by the gold rush in 1849. He was more of an entrepreneur and salesman than miner, so he entered the shipping business and developed a scheme to establish steamship service between New York and the West Coast via Panama. He purchased a steam engine with his gold dust and brought it back to Oregon by schooner, but the ship was wrecked at the mouth of the Rogue River and the plan was abandoned. He returned to Astoria but soon another gold rush presented itself. Gold was discovered in southern Oregon and in the early 1850s, and Shively left for the goldfields.It was reported that he made over $50,000 in eighteen months at Shively’s Gulch. He eventually returned to Astoria to administer his extensive properties there. Shively was the great-uncle of my husband’s first cousin 2x removed.
The story of the Clinton County ’49ers was from Ed N. Thacker’s newspaper column “Stories of the Town and Country ‘Round” which ran in the Frankfort [IN] Morning Times. See April 4, 1933 and August 15, 1930 issues.
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