This page is sponsored by award-winning author and recognized authority on women in the gold rush, JoAnn Levy, whose book, They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush, was praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as "one of the best and most comprehensive accounts of gold rush life to date. Levy's newest novel, For California's Gold, is already drawing high praise. Levy has appeared frequently in televised documentaries about the gold rush, and was featured in the prize-winning PBS documentary, "The Gold Rush," broadcast nationally in conjunction with California's gold-discovery sesquicentennial.
Actresses
"Madame Eleonore is still
able to use her old eyes to good effect, which gets over with
the public,
and Madame Adalbert dresses well enough to make up for the rest...I
should certainly be the last
one to abuse these good ladies, as some of them treated me with
great kindness, and, I might say,
generosity. Need I add that it was not because of my personal
charm? To them I was only a
dramatic critic who had to be won over and muzzled, and I suppose
they succeeded well enough. I
can't help smiling when I think of the glowing write-ups I used
to give them in Monday's paper, far
better ones than Parisian stars usually received. The hypocrisy
of the press? Oh well, perhaps. But
they are nice people."
..............................................................-Albert
Benard de Russailh
Hotel Keeper
"I determined to set up
a rival hotel. So I bought two boards from a precious pile belonging
to a
man who was building the second wooden house in town. With my
own hands I chopped stakes,
drove them into the ground, and set up my table. I bought provisions
at a neighboring store, and
when my husband came back at night he found, mid the weird light
of the pine torches, twenty
miners eating at my table. Each man as he rose put a dollar in
my hand and said I might count him
as a permanent customer. I called my hotel 'El Dorado.'"
From the first day it was well
patronized, and I shortly after took my
husband into partnership."......... -Luzena Stanley Wilson
Gamblers
"In one corner, a coarse-looking
female might preside over a roulette-table, and, perhaps, in the
central and crowded part of the room a Spanish or Mexican woman
would be sitting at monte, with
a cigarita in her lips, which she replaced every few moments by
a fresh one. In a very few
fortunate houses, neat, delicate, and sometimes beautiful French
women were every evening to be
seen in the orchestra. These houses, to the honor of the coarse
crowd be it said, were always
filled."......... -Eliza W. Farnham
Pie Maker
"I concluded to make some
pies and see if I could sell them to the miners for their lunches,
as there
were about one hundred men on the creek, doing their own cooking
- there were plenty of dried
apples and dried pealed peaches from Chili, pressed in the shape
of a cheese, to be had, so I bought
fat salt pork and made lard, and my venture was a success. I sold
fruit pies for one dollar and a
quarter a piece, and mince pies for one dollar and fifty cents.
I sometimes made and sold, a
hundred in a day, and not even a stove to bake them in, but had
two small dutch ovens.".........
-Mary Jane Caples
Muleteer
"She is genuine Castilian,
owns a train of mules and buys and loads them. We bought the flour
she
sent to Weaverville. I had a strong idea of offering myself...but
Angelita told me she had a husband
somewhere in the mines and she has a boy about five years old.
So I didn't ask her.".........
-Franklin Buck
Miner
"We saw last April, a
French woman, standing in Angel's Creek, dipping and pouring water
into the
washer, which her husband was rocking. She wore short boots, white
duck pantaloons, a red flannel
shirt, with a black leather belt and a Panama hat. Day after day
she could be seen working quietly
and steadily, performing her share of the gold digging labor."
........................................................................
-San Francisco Daily Alta
Speculator
"I have before spoken
of her....Her husband would give her no money to speculate with,
so she sold
some pieces of jewelry, which she didn't value particularly, &
which cost her about twenty dollars
at home, with this jewelry she purchased onions which she sold
on arriving here for eighteen
hundred dollars, quite a handsome sum, was it not?...She also
brought some quinces & made quite a
nice little profit on them."......... -John McCrackan
Victim
"As she began to make
considerable money the bigger, if not better, half of this couple
began to feel
quite rich and went off on a drunk, and when his own money was
spent he went to his wife for
more, but she refused him, and he, in his drunken rage, picked
up a gun near by and shot her dead."
.........................................................................................
-William Manley
Intrepid Tourists
"I think if it is not
too warm, it will be fine fun--sailing and riding the Donkeys--.
Most of the
conversation for the last few days has been about the Isthmus--and
I really think some of the
gentlemen dread it worse, than Mrs. Allen and myself.".........
-Margaret De Witt
"Another insect which
is rather troublesome, gets into your feet and lays its eggs.
The Dr. and I
have them in our toes-did not find it out until they had deposited
their eggs in large quantities; the
natives dug them out and put on the ashes of tobacco-nothing unpleasant
in it, only the idea of
having jiggers in your toes."......... -Mary Jane Megquier
Washerwoman
"Magnificent woman that,
sir," he said, addressing my husband; "a wife of the
right sort, she is.
Why," he added, absolutely rising into eloquence as he spoke,
"she earnt her old man," (said
individual twenty-one years of age, perhaps) "nine hundred
dollars in nine weeks, clear of all
expenses, by washing! Such women ain't common, I tell you; if
they were, a man might marry and
make money by the operation."......... -Louisa Clapp