VICTORIAN WOMEN HELPED CIVILIZE CALIFORNIA'S GOLD RUSH ERA
FRONTIER
By
Deborah Paine Brock
A Thesis Presented to
The Faculty of Humboldt State University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts in Education
Committee Membership
Dr. Delores McBroome, Committee Chair
Dr. Gayle Olson-Raymer, Committee Member
Dr. Eric Van Duzer, Graduate Coordinator
May 2013
Abstract
VICTORIAN WOMEN HELPED CIVILIZE CALIFORNIA'S GOLD RUSH ERA FRONTIER
Deborah Paine Brock
Due to the lack of written historical documents authored by women during the
California Gold Rush, teachers often neglect their presence and influence on the developing society during this era of time in California. This project includes a three- week curriculum for elementary students that addresses the changing role of women on the early California frontier. Students examine the issues women faced in California during the Gold Rush era by utilizing critical thinking skills, analyzing primary documents, and viewing life through the eyes of women pioneers from secondary sources. Working through each lesson, students will gain an appreciation of the story of
Gold Rush women and their historical impact on the political and social development of
California.
Students will be given the opportunity to investigate, judge, and provide their
own interpretation of the significance of women’s contribution as they take the
perspectives of individuals they are studying. This project invites students and teachers
to explore historical issues, problems, ideas, values, behaviors, interests, and personalities
of women in Gold Rush California. As students and teachers alike do historical research
they will learn to view the past beyond the lens of the present and place into context the
motives and actions of women who lived in a very different time in the past.
ii
Acknowledgements
The Humboldt County Teaching American History (TAH) program inspired this project and provided Humboldt County teachers 10 years of history, methodology, and content courses taught by an esteemed pair of professors, Gayle Olson-Raymer and Dee
McBroome. Their countless hours preparing lectures, introducing teaching methodology, and reading M.A. students’ projects provided many teachers the opportunity to become history detectives and better prepared teachers in the classroom. I also wish to thank Jack
Bareilles for his inspiration for Northern Humboldt TAH and the opportunities he provided to teachers in our area to further their teaching skills in history.
Next, I would like to thank Eric Van Duzer and the Humboldt State University’s
Education Department for taking on the challenge of integrating the TAH program into the Education M.A. Program. I would also like to thank Professor Ann Diver-Stamnes
for her invaluable Academic Writing class and her assistance in formatting and guiding
my writing during my literature review.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for their encouragement and support
needed to complete this project. I could not have started, continued, nor finished it
without the sacrifice of my 91-year-old mother Audrey, my brother Steve, and my sister- in-law Paula. Many nights and days I spent cloistered in a room writing and researching, while my brother and sister-in-law cared for my mom and allowed me the time to study.
My son Jeff and his wife Monica provided me with the encouragement to “keep on
iii
going” when I felt frustrated and unable to continue writing and researching. To them I owe a big hug and thank you!
Finally, I would like to thank my dad Lyman, who looks down from heaven and sees the “seeds of education” he planted in my youth coming into blossom. He encouraged me to fulfill my dreams. He believed that women were capable of all possibilities that life had to offer, and nothing was too big a challenge. I owe my father the credit for germinating the thought about women pioneers, their strength and determination, and their inclusion in the Gold Rush story of California.
Obviously, it takes many people to provide the opportunities for a student and teacher to earn a master’s degree. Thank you all for this feat of support. I couldn’t have completed this journey without you.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ...... ii
Acknowledgements ...... iii
Table of Contents ...... v
List of Appendices ...... xv
Introduction ...... 1
Review of Literature ...... 6
Introduction ...... 6
The Absence of Women's Histories ...... 7
Overland Journey on the California Trail ...... 11
Journey by Sea ...... 17
Social Fabric of Diggings and Towns...... 24
Women’s Roles in Early California ...... 31
California Women Challenge the Cult of True Womanhood ...... 41
Summary ...... 45
Methods...... 47
Introduction ...... 47
Research Question ...... 48
The Research Process ...... 49
Justification for the Curriculum ...... 51
Curriculum Development ...... 52
v
Overview of Instructional Delivery ...... 56
Conclusion ...... 57
Lesson Plans...... 58
Lesson Day One ...... 58
Introduction...... 60
Hook...... 60
Transition...... 61
Content...... 62
Homework...... 63
Conclusion...... 63
Assessment...... 63
Notes to teacher...... 63
Lesson Day Two ...... 65
Introduction...... 65
Hook...... 65
Content...... 66
Homework...... 66
Assessment...... 66
Conclusion...... 66
Lesson Day Three ...... 67
Introduction...... 67
Hook...... 67
Transition...... 67
vi
Content...... 68
Class discussion...... 68
Homework...... 70
Assessment...... 70
Conclusion...... 70
Notes to Teacher...... 70
Lesson Day Four ...... 71
Introduction...... 71
Hook...... 72
Transition...... 73
Content...... 73
Homework...... 73
Conclusion...... 73
Assessment...... 74
Notes to teacher...... 74
Lesson Day Five ...... 75
Introduction...... 75
Hook...... 75
Transition...... 76
Content...... 76
Homework...... 76
Conclusion...... 77
Lesson Day Six ...... 77
vii
Introduction...... 77
Hook...... 77
Transition...... 78
Content...... 78
Homework...... 78
Notes to teacher...... 78
Conclusion...... 82
Lesson Days Seven and Eight ...... 82
(Two 50-minute sessions ...... 82
Introduction...... 82
Hook...... 83
Transition...... 83
Content...... 83
Assessment...... 85
Conclusion...... 85
Notes to teacher...... 86
Lesson Day Nine ...... 94
Introduction...... 94
Hook...... 94
Transition...... 94
Content...... 94
Homework...... 95
Assessment...... 95
viii
Conclusion...... 95
Lesson Day 10 ...... 95
Introduction...... 96
Hook...... 96
Transition...... 96
Content...... 96
Homework...... 96
Assessment...... 96
Conclusion...... 97
Lesson Day 11 ...... 97
Introduction...... 97
Hook...... 97
Transition...... 97
Content...... 97
Homework...... 98
Conclusion...... 98
Lesson Day 12 ...... 98
Introduction ...... 98
Hook...... 98
Transition...... 98
Content...... 98
Homework...... 99
Assessment...... 99
ix
Conclusion...... 99
Lesson Days 13 and 14 ...... 99
Introduction...... 99
Hook...... 100
Transition...... 100
Content...... 100
Assessment...... 100
Conclusion...... 101
Results ...... 102
Limitations of the Research ...... 102
Implications of Future Research ...... 104
References ...... 106
Appendices ...... 114
Appendix A ...... 114
Chronology of 16 women of the Gold Rush era and their influence: civilizing/socializing California Gold Rush towns...... 114
1848: Elizabeth Jane Wimmer ...... 114
1848-1858: Ah Toy ...... 115
1849: Sarah Royce ...... 116
1849: Mary Ellen Pleasant ...... 117
1849: Elizabeth Farnham ...... 117
1849-1850: Mary Jane Megquier ...... 117
1850: Margaret Frink ...... 118
x
1850: Luzena Wilson ...... 118
1850: Nancy Gooch ...... 118
1851: Biddy Mason ...... 119
1851: Charley Parkhurst ...... 119
1851: Juanita ...... 120
1851: Mary Ballou ...... 120
1851- 1852: Louise Clappe ...... 120
1853: Lotta Crabtree ...... 121
1854: Madame Eleanor Dumont ...... 121
Appendix B ...... 123
Language arts standards grade four...... 123
Appendix C ...... 129
Think, pair, share learning strategy...... 129
Appendix D ...... 130
Understanding words...... 130
Appendix E ...... 133
Gold rush test (pre and post)...... 133
Appendix F ...... 135
Broadside advertising the lure of California...... 135
Appendix G ...... 136
Using excerpts from Catherine Haun’s diary ...... 137
Appendix H ...... 140
Journal assessment rubric research worksheet...... 140
xi
Appendix I ...... 143
Diary excerpt from Mary Jane Megquier...... 143
Appendix J ...... 144
Lesson on Biddy Mason: Read and answer questions...... 144
Appendix K ...... 147
Questionnaire on Charlie Parkhurst...... 147
Appendix L ...... 148
Women of the California Gold Rush PowerPoint final...... 148
Cover Slide...... 148
Slide 1 ...... 149
Slide 2 ...... 150
Slide 3 ...... 151
Slide 4 ...... 152
Slide 5 ...... 153
Slide 6 ...... 154
Slide 7 ...... 155
Slide 8 ...... 156
Slide 9 ...... 157
Slide 10 ...... 158
Slide 11 ...... 159
Slide 12 ...... 160
Slide 13 ...... 161
Slide 14 ...... 162
xii
Slide 15 ...... 163
Slide 16 ...... 164
Slide 17 ...... 165
Slide 18 ...... 166
Slide 19 ...... 167
Slide 20 ...... 168
Slide 21 ...... 169
Slide 22 ...... 170
Slide 23 ...... 171
Appendix M ...... 172
A time of change...... 172
Appendix N ...... 173
Research project...... 173
Appendix O ...... 175
Assessment rubric research worksheet /poster presentations...... 175
Appendix P ...... 177
Excerpt from Luzena Stanley Wilson’s diary...... 177
Appendix Q ...... 178
Methods for historical investigation of Gold Rush women...... 178
Slide 1 ...... 178
Slide 2 ...... 179
Slide 3 ...... 180
Slide 4 ...... 181
xiii
Slide 5 ...... 182
Slide 6 ...... 183
Slide 7 ...... 184
Slide 8 ...... 185
Slide 9 ...... 186
Slide 10 ...... 187
Slide 11 ...... 188
Slide 12 ...... 189
Slide 13 ...... 190
Slide 14 ...... 191
Slide 15 ...... 192
xiv
List of Appendices
Appendix A ...... 114
Chronology of 16 women of the Gold Rush era and their influence: civilizing/socializing California Gold Rush towns.
Appendix B ...... 123
Language arts standards grade four.
Appendix C ...... 129
Think, pair, share learning strategy.
Appendix D ...... 130
Understanding words.
Appendix E ...... 133
Gold rush test (pre and post).
Appendix F ...... 135
Broadside advertising the lure of California.
Appendix G ...... 136
Using excerpts from Catherine Haun’s diary
Appendix H ...... 140
Journal assessment rubric research worksheet.
Appendix I ...... 143
Diary excerpt from Mary Jane Megquier.
Appendix J ...... 144
Lesson on Biddy Mason: Read and answer questions.
Appendix K ...... 147
xv
Questionnaire on Charlie Parkhurst.
Appendix L ...... 148
Women of the California Gold Rush PowerPoint final.
Appendix M ...... 172
A time of change.
Appendix N ...... 173
Research project.
Appendix O ...... 175
Assessment rubric research worksheet /poster presentations.
Appendix P ...... 177
Excerpt from Luzena Stanley Wilson’s diary.
Appendix Q ...... 178
Methods for historical investigation of Gold Rush women.
xvi
1
Introduction
In the annals of United States history, the story of the California Gold Rush incites images of large, golden nuggets, male miners, and sights of panning for gold on the Feather River, Yuba River, American River, and countless streams and rivers throughout California. The Gold Rush has been remembered as an all-male event.
Where were the women? Not until Women’s History erupted into the social sciences in the 1970s were the stories of these strong-spirited women finally published and added to the revisionist views of this historical time period. Certainly, there were a few seminal works, such as Louisa Clappe’s The Shirley Letters, that were published during the time of the Gold Rush and solicited through the Alta California Newspaper of the 1850s. But there were other women, pie makers, hotel keepers, boarding house owners, washerwomen, prostitutes, school teachers, and entrepreneur ladies, who made fortunes during the Gold Rush, not from gold, but from hard work and making their domestic services available to the miners. These women’s journals and diaries tell their stories, which have now become part of the historical accounts of this time period.
The purpose of this master’s project is to relate these women’s accounts of the
Gold Rush by reviewing the historical literature written about these female individuals and to develop a view of their changing roles within the “cult of domesticity” that women pioneers of the Gold Rush California era experienced and lived. This project helps teachers address Gold Rush women’s histories in the classroom in a way that encourages critical thinking by allowing students to compare and contrast the changing roles of
2 women during this period of time through analyzing primary and secondary documents concerning these women pioneers.
The Review of Literature discusses what the diaries, journals, and literature say about these women’s live and contributions to the California Gold Rush era. It provides insight into why these women’s accounts of their journeys to California and their lives in the diggings, mines, and towns of the California frontier were not found in male historical accounts of this time period. The Review of Literature also discusses the changing role of women on their journey by land and sea to California and describes how this affected the “role of domesticity” and Victorian Age beliefs during this period for women, known as the “cult of true womanhood.”
White, middle-class women are the main subject of my thesis. The women who chose to travel to California went for many reasons and the Review of Literature addresses some of these reasons, as well as how these women changed their roles on the trail and adapted to life on the California Trail by assuming some of the roles males performed, thereby surviving the hardships and dangers on their journeys. Upon reaching
California, these women adapted and adjusted their roles to become important facets in socializing and civilizing the frontier Gold Rush diggings and communities. Finally, the
Review of Literature discusses the changing idea of the “cult of domesticity” for these pioneering women and how they adapted their roles to survive in an uncivilized, lawless frontier. Their stories provide a glimpse into women’s histories that, until recently, were unpublished and not part of the historical annals of California. The Review of Literature
3
references primary information from women historians and 20th-century male historians to provide a new vision of the California Gold Rush frontier.
The Methods section outlines the early process of researching women in the Gold
Rush who socialized and civilized the California frontier, and how this process led to expanding this master’s project to include the “cult of domesticity” and beliefs about white women’s place during the Victorian Age in the 19th century. This chapter also
illuminates the motivation behind creating a two-week lesson plan on the roles of women
during the California Gold Rush, and justification for utilizing a learning lab structure
with primary documents—to help students become better historians and analytical
thinkers.
The Lesson Plans section contains the 12-day, learning lab-based fourth-grade
curriculum. The main goal of the Women of Gold Rush California Unit is to give
students the opportunity to practice thinking like a historian by questioning historical
writings and traditional histories and learning to look for primary documents to justify
historians’ interpretations of a time in the past. The first week of the lesson plan is
designed to allow students the opportunity to have an expert, the teacher, lead them in
analyzing and questioning primary documents, photographs, diaries, and journals, as well
as to become familiar with secondary documented information, to support them while
writing their journal entries about the life of a Gold Rush woman, and to help them
prepare for researching information for a culminating poster presentation at the end of the
unit.
4
Utilizing the learning lab model allows the teacher to give students some freedom
in reading primary documents, and frees the teacher’s time to supervise and aid students
in their research. This time period spent in research enlightens students to what it is like
to be a historian, while also addressing the fourth-grade, fifth-grade, and eighth-grade
California Standards in Social Studies and Language Arts, as well as the fourth-grade’s
California State Standards in Mathematics. The learning lab model allows students to
stretch their abilities, with extra scaffolding and resources provided by the teacher.
Week Two expands on the skills the students practiced in Week One. In partners, students choose a woman to research and learn about her life during the California Gold
Rush. Once the woman subject is chosen, the partners conduct research about her to present to the class in the form of a poster presentation, given orally with at least one primary document, as they analyze this woman’s historical contribution to the Gold Rush era in California. This portion of the learning lab allows students to gather information through the research process and to synthesize this information with a poster presentation, as well as a written journal kept by the student for the last two weeks. This journal is a homework assignment where students choose a historical woman, fictional or real, and use each day’s lessons in class to gather information to present in a diary entry each night about their Gold Rush woman. Students will culminate this assignment on the last day of the lesson plan with an oral recitation of one of their diary entries, to be chosen by the student.
5
This learning lab lesson plan is designed for students to practice skills that can
foster new methods of inquiry and learning in future class lessons, as well as across the
curriculum. Future years in school build on skills, such as conducting historical research,
synthesizing conflicting information, writing about history in a balanced manner to
include gender and cultural differences, and presenting the research in a multi-faceted way so that students can complete their education in public schools with a broad awareness that what is true in historical accounts is always open to historical debate, especially concerning the parts of the accounts left out of the story.
The Conclusion concludes the Master’s Project with an overview of the subject, women in the Gold Rush era of California, and justification for the study of this unit.
The Conclusion also addresses the limitations of the research presented in this project, and includes additional questions that should be answered with further research into the diaries and journals of California women pioneers of the 1850s.
6
Review of Literature
Introduction
In the past, the era of the Gold Rush in California’s history has been a story primarily told from the collective memory of white Victorian men. From diaries, journals, and first-person accounts, historians have been able to rewrite the perspective of the Gold Rush from East Coast Victorian women’s views of the times. Due to their personal correspondences and diaries left in family members’ care for over a century and recently in the last decades made public for researchers’ to explore, their stories can now be told. School textbooks are beginning to include women’s perspectives on the historical
Gold Rush era, as well as their collective memory of a period of time in the camp towns of California that was not so dominated by males.
Women were present on the overland California Trail and sea routes to the Gold
Rush in California. The hardships, dangers, and changing roles experienced on the journey prepared them for the primitive society they would find when arriving in the gold fields. As white women entered this lawless and foreign society, they were immediately confronted with a lifestyle of immoral behavior, gambling, dirt, crime, and men who relished the freedom from restraint in a multi-cultural society. These Victorian Age women, hardened from their journey, began to assert their power and influence to reshape the crude and unordered society they encountered, into a new, somewhat changed,
Victorian Age social structure. Foreigners and native peoples were marginalized in this new society, as these white, Eastern women set forth on a mission to socialize and
7
civilize the population of men and women they encountered when they reached
California’s rugged frontier.
This review of relevant literature begins with an analysis of why there was an
absence of women’s histories concerning the Gold Rush, and then continues with an
exploration of the overland journey on the California Trail, as well as the sea journey.
Next, the literature review describes the influence of women on the social life in mining towns, as well as women’s changing roles in early California. Following this section, a view of women’s emerging new image on the California frontier is introduced and discussed as they challenge the cult of true womanhood.
The Absence of Women's Histories
Historians have tried to explain the Gold Rush frontier and its importance to the
American character, culture, and institutions (Jeffrey, 1998). Frederick Jackson Turner, who was the leading authority on the frontier for the first half of the 20th century, wrote
about the frontier as a place where white Americans moved away from settlements along
the east coast (Turner, 1920/1996). The new environment they encountered forced
settlers to create values appropriate for their environment (Turner, 1920/1996). Turner
emphasized that the frontier was a place where savagery and civilization met (Turner,
1920/1996). His theory suggests that white men were the bearers of civilization and that
indigenous people had no claim to the land; therefore, the land was free (Turner,
1920/1996). Scholars of Turner’s day looked at the subject of the frontier from an
8
Atlantic Coast bias, and this has continued through four generations since his writing of this thesis (Davidson & Lytle, 2010).
The eastern seaboard was considered the true bearer of American culture. The pioneers that Turner refers to were the white men and their settlement was the free land of the frontier or the free land of the California gold area of the Sierra Nevada Mountains
(Jeffrey, 1998). While most historians today have modified and attacked Turner’s thesis for the complete absence of references to other cultures, ethnicities, and women in the
West, most have also retained his assumption: white men were predominant on the trails, moving from east to west across the United States (Jeffrey, 1998). Therefore, historians have continued to explore the experience of these white men in the West (Jeffrey, 1998).
Women historians challenge past histories that are preoccupied with male pioneers. They assert that historians could not understand the frontier gold rush experience and the coming of civilization to the diggings without understanding gender roles in the 19th century (Jeffrey, 1998). In recent histories, the western gold rush frontier has been defined as a place of cultural contact and interaction between groups, a recurring process in American history (Jeffrey, 1998). Understanding that women during the 19th century were responsible for civilization and morality, historians could not accurately account for the civilizing influences of white men in the West (Jeffrey, 1998).
During the 19th century, most men had been indoctrinated since birth from pious, God- fearing women about the conventions of society (Taniguchi, 2000). Women were considered vessels of purity and were looked upon by men as virtuous and good
9
(Taniguchi, 2000). Men’s notion of society was separate spheres of influence for men and women (Taniguchi, 2000). Men went out and swung the ax, engaged in politics, and gambled, while women, viewed as pure vessels of social morality, stayed home
(Taniguchi, 2000). These were the white women who considered themselves responsible for civilization and morality (Taniguchi, 2000). Where were these women during the
Gold Rush? They must have been present for the process of civilizing society to begin
(Jeffrey, 1998).
The answer to where these women were is found in the letters and diaries of literate women that prove their presence on the trail, on ships at sea, and in the mines and towns (Jeffrey, 1998). The generation of historians of new western history erupted in the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, when minorities and women in American society sought a greater voice and representation in history (Davidson & Lytle, 2010).
All these forces for change challenged historians’ traditional ways of thinking and many reevaluated their perspectives in history, especially historians of the West (Davidson &
Lytle, 2010). These women on the routes to California and in the mining camps and towns in the years of the Gold Rush, finally, were to have a voice in history.
In historical writing, facts include information that is not under dispute, such as what happened, who was involved, and when an event occurred (Davidson & Lytle,
2010). Factors such as a person’s race, class, gender, or even age can create a bias and influence a person’s account of events (Davidson & Lytle, 2010). Therefore, when researchers look at diaries and journals, they need to evaluate any bias that may have
10 influenced the written account (Davidson & Lytle, 2010). Women's perspectives were left out of the traditional interpretations of Gold Rush history, and therefore, history was biased toward a man's point of view (Roberts, 2000). The women’s voices from the
California Gold Rush were private, written in letters, diaries, and journals to be seen only by family members and close friends (Roberts, 2000). Because these documents survived, their voices are now heard in history (Roberts, 2000)
The Gold Rush had been exclusively a male-dominated historical event told through the perspective of white men (Roberts, 2000). Recently, historians of the west have viewed this period of California history through the perspective of different ethnic, racial, and gender groups who participated in this event (Roberts, 2000). Historians have uncovered many private diaries and family treasures (Roberts, 2000). These are the recollections and first-hand experiences that remained unavailable, until revisionist historians searched and found them (Roberts, 2000). Louisa Clappe’s diary, known as
The Shirley Letters, was published in the Pioneer Newspaper during the Gold Rush. It is considered to be a pivotal historical account of life in a mining camp (Clappe, 1998). She is one of the rare women whose writing gained recognition during the 19th century for its vivid accounts depicting her life in the diggings during the Gold Rush (Clappe, 1998).
Many diaries also contain accounts of women’s experiences on the trail and sea routes, focusing on the hardships they endured while traveling to the new frontier of
California (Jeffrey, 1998). These hardships on the trail and women’s changing roles in this male-dominated society prepared them for their lives in the diggings and towns of the
11
Gold Rush era in California (Jeffrey, 1998). The focus of the next section is on the
journey women took on the California Trail.
Overland Journey on the California Trail
Gold distinguished the California Trail from all other trails in 1848 when the
discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill established it (Schlissel, 1982). The allure of wealth
caused thousands of emigrants to undertake this perilous journey along this route to the
Golden State (Schlissel, 1982). Estimated to have been trodden by 25,000 emigrants, the
trail hosted both men and women (Schlissel, 1982).
Women were part of the journey west because their fathers, brothers, and
husbands decided to go in search of gold and some women refused to be left behind
(Schlissel, 1982). The exact number of women heading west in 1849, 1850, and 1851 is
not known, but in 1852, the Fort Kearney register offered hard data from a subordinate
who tallied the passing by of 7,021 women and 8,270 children (Oakland Museum of
California, 1998).
Many of these women left diaries of their journeys west to California (Schlissel,
1982). From these diaries women’s perspectives of traveling to California can be recognized and included in historical accounts. Included in new women’s histories are female pioneers such as Catherine Haun. She wrote in her diary how she accompanied
her lawyer husband to California to find enough gold to pay off their debts (Schlissel,
1982). Married for only a few months, they faced the trail with anticipation and joy
(Schlissel, 1982). Another woman pioneer, Luzena Stanley Wilson, refused to be left
12
behind when her husband caught gold fever. She describes her desert journey as a forced
march over the alkali plain (Royce, 1886). Sarah Royce wrote in her journal how she,
her husband, and their two-year-old daughter, Mary, had a late start and faced difficulties
as they lagged behind other emigrants going west (Schlissel, 1982). They missed the fork
to the meadows essential for cutting grass to feed the oxen in the desert, and so, traveling
at night to avoid the heat, they were forced to turn back and try to find the meadows
(Royce, 1886). Margaret Frink, another woman pioneer, endured almost two days on the
desert, and for many weeks she and her husband became accustomed to “seeing property
abandoned and animals dead or dying … both sides of the road strewn with clothing,
cooking-utensils, furniture, in utter confusion. The owners had left everything—and hurried on to save themselves” (Levy, 1990, p.19). Luzena Wilson describes in her diary the desert crossing and the suffering she endured with her family.
It was a forced march over the alkali plain … the hot earth
scorched our feet, the grayish dust hung about us like a cloud, making our
eyes red, and tongues parched, and our thousand bruises and scratches
smart like burns … Sometimes we found the bones of men bleaching
beside their broken-down and abandoned wagons (Levy, 1990, p. 18).
Her crossing was a frightful memory (Levy, 1990).
Some women saw the scenic splendors of the trail and wrote about their
wonderful experiences. Lucena Parsons saw Chimney Rock rising out of the flat earth as
a beacon, an amazing sight, and Harriet Ward described her trip, after four months of
13 travel, as very pleasurable and perfect (Levy, 1998). Others saw the misery and hardships of the trip in devastating memories. Mary Medley Ackley saw her mother die of cholera and buried by the Platte River (Levy, 1990). Lodisa Frizzel saw fresh graves with a feather bed lying on top of them, later learning it was a man and his wife who had died a few days before (Levy, 1990). Eliza McAuley witnessed an accident where a woman attempted to jump from a wagon hurtling down a steep hill. She had a child in her arms and she was crushed to death, as was the child, under the wheels (Levy, 1990).
These women endured and survived the trail in order to keep their families intact.
The trek was not an easy one and was an arduous journey for early Gold Rush women, but many survived the trail and arrived in California with an independent frontier character forged from the long journey across the plains that disciplined them to deadly dangers (Royce, 1886). The pious nature of many of these white women helped them gain more religious steadfastness for the struggle that was yet to come in the disorder of
California society (Royce, 1886).
The hardship was the crucible — causing women’s roles to change on the trail
(Levy, 1990). They had to do things they had never done before (Levy, 1990). The rigors of the trail forced them to do tasks essential for the survival of their families and themselves (Levy, 1990). As time passed on the trail, necessity became the determinant of everyday tasks (Faragher & Stansell, 1975). The primary task of getting to California suspended accustomed patterns of dividing work between men and women. All able- bodied men and women worked all day and the boundaries dividing the work of the sexes
14 were threatened and obscured. Women looked at the breakdown of sexual division of labor as dissolution of their own autonomous sphere (Faragher & Stansell, 1975). Within the first few weeks, the unladylike task of gathering buffalo dung for fuel became women’s work. As one traveler noted, the force of surroundings was a great leveler, with miles of grass, dust, glare, and mud erasing some of the most rudimentary distinctions between female and male responsibilities (Faragher & Stansell, 1975).
Women wrote in their journals about their changing roles and entering the sphere of male responsibilities (Faragher & Stansell, 1975). By summer, women often helped drive the wagons and the livestock. Charlotte Pengra walked beside the wagons, driving the cattle and gathering buffalo chips; at night she cooked, baked bread for the next noon meal, and washed clothes (Faragher & Stansell, 1975). Believing they had nothing to lose and a fortune to gain, Luzena Wilson’s family departed from their log cabin in
Missouri to get to California before all the gold was gone (Chartier & Enss, 2000).
Getting to the gold fields was not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but often a deadly challenge (Chartier & Enss, 2000).
Wilson recalls in her diary “the terrible journey of plodding, unvarying monotony, vexations, exhaustions, throbs of hope and experiencing depths of despair … She was scorched by heat, enveloped in dust that reddened the eyes and parched the throat, bruised, scratched, bitten by innumerable insects … and she was one of the lucky ones”
(Chartier & Enns, 2000, p.56).
15
Grave markers lined the trail and there was cholera, Indian battles, illness,
accidents, and violence along the trail and among wagon train members (Chartier & Enss,
2000). Women died in childbirth and children fell ill with disease and fatal mishaps
(Chartier & Enss, 2000). Although children are notably absent in women’s journals, they
do appear during Indian scares, storms, or rare and precious moments of relaxation,
grumbling and crying (Faragher & Stansell, 1975).
Familiar patterns disintegrated under the trip’s strain, such as the disappearance of
the Sabbath, which had become the mid-century symbol of women’s religious and moral authority (Jeffrey, 1998). In the beginning of the journey, many women hoped to use the day for worship and rest, but often, as the journey progressed across the frontier, the need to find water and food for the cattle became more important for survival. The need to make mileage made traveling on the Sabbath necessary. Although women agreed to this compromise, many confided in their journals that they were unhappy with the situation
(Jeffrey, 1998).
The journey west was a losing battle for women to be concerned about appearances and most women stopped thinking in these terms altogether (Jeffrey, 1998).
As days lengthened into weeks, self-respect suffered in the matter of clothes. Women were so worn out that they were not particular how they dressed but presented a mixture of fashions. “Fraying sunbonnets, tattered skirts worn into rags above the ankles, sunburned faces, hands brown and hard with no gloves, left these women modestly
16
embarrassed when reaching California and civilization. Eastern values so engrained in
these women’s psyche suffered” (Jeffrey, 1998, p.56).
Both women and men complained about the journey in their diaries, but women expanded the ceiling to a generalized critique of the whole enterprise (Faragher &
Stansell, 1975). Margaret Chambers, a pioneer woman, felt as if she had left all
civilization behind her after crossing the Missouri (Faragher & Stansell, 1975).
Civilization was far more to these women than law, books, and municipal government; it
was pianos, church societies, daguerreotype, and mirrors— in short, their homes
(Faragher & Stansell, 1975). These Victorian white women brought the cult of
domesticity with them (Faragher & Stansell, 1975). They loaded their wagons with items
from their homes to remind them of the civilized society they were leaving to journey
west (Faragher and Stansell, 1975).
Only a minority of the women who emigrated over the California Trail were from
the northeastern middle classes where the cult of true womanhood reached its fullest
bloom (Faragher & Stansell, 1975). Some were from the Midwest, yet their responses to
the labor demands of the trail indicate that womanliness had penetrated the values,
expectations, and personalities of Midwestern farm women as well as New England
ladies. Having other women on the trail provided pioneer females with companionship, a
sense of self-worth, and most important, independence from men in a patriarchal world
(Faragher & Stansell, 1975). For women, the trail broke down sexual segregation and
offered women the opportunities of socially essential work (Faragher & Stansell, 1975).
17
Yet this work was performed in a male arena, and many women saw themselves as
draftees rather than partners (Faragher and Stansell, 1975).
Evidence of women’s motivation and involvement in planning the trip west
suggests that it would be a mistake to view them solely as unwilling emigrants (Jeffrey,
1998). Agreement to travel west did not mean they would not experience a sense of loss
at leaving family and friends behind (Jeffrey, 1998). Instead, women should be viewed
as participants in the process of emigration to the gold fields of California (Jeffrey, 1998).
Women spoke of opportunities, better climate, health problems, adventure, independence, and the allure of gold as motivation to journey to California (Jeffrey, 1998). It was not until well into the overland journey that women realized their changing roles into more masculine arenas. These masculine roles became part of women’s sphere of influence on the trail and remained with them as they began to settle the California Gold Rush communities (Jeffrey, 1998). The next section will focus on women’s journeys by sea to
California.
Journey by Sea
The sea was the main mode of travel for immigrants rushing to California from around the world (Bingham, 1892/1998). It was a long, hard journey wrought with danger (Bingham, 1892/1998). Women recorded challenges, hardships, struggles, and dangers they encountered in diaries and letters: storms, lack of food and water, disease, overcrowding, and shipwrecks (Bingham, 1892/1998). Between April 1849 and January
18
1850, 40,000 immigrants arrived in Yerba Buena (San Francisco) by sea (Bingham,
1892/1998).
Passenger lists in San Francisco reflect the presence of women early on in the
Gold Rush seafaring Argonauts (Riley, 1986). Women on such rolls cannot be determined absolutely due to the practice of listing passengers by their initials rather than first names and by the failure to record any steerage passengers (Riley, 1986). However, titles, such as Mrs., Miss, wife, lady, and daughter make it clear that women were among the passengers (Riley, 1986). They traveled with husbands, children, and alone.
Women’s diaries, journals, and memoirs also demonstrate that respectable women, both single and married, were aboard almost every steamship to Panama from the beginning
(Riley, 1986).
One such woman was Mary Jane Megquier (Riley, 1986). On February 18, 1849, she wrote that she was aboard the Chesapeake and was heading for Panama, where she would take another steamer up the Chagres River (Riley, 1986). She describes being seasick for four days and riding a mule for many miles (Riley, 1986). Her discomforts aside, she was the only woman among 200 men and received a lot of attention (Riley,
1986). Jessie Fremont crossed Panama in 1849 and did not have a pleasant journey
(Riley, 1986). She didn’t get seasick, but she missed home (Riley, 1986). She rode in native dugout canoes and slept on the ground (Riley, 1986). She endured a two-day mule trek to Panama City that she characterized as a nightmare (Riley, 1986). She, like
Megquier, was detained in Panama City for seven weeks, but she had the good fortune to
19
be able to stay with a friend’s family (Riley, 1986). Jane MacDougal traveled across
Panama in 1849 and was aboard the California when it was overloaded, and she writes about sleeping on the deck, little food, and her dangerous sea voyage (Riley, 1986). She had little to say about her travels in a hammock suspended between two native men or riding on top of a mule’s back, except that she was thankful to be safe (Riley, 1986). In
1850, Margaret DeWitt wrote to her parents-in-law from the Crescent City Steamer and described her good health, pleasant captain, friendly passengers, and all the fun she had riding the steamer with donkeys (Riley, 1986). Mary Pratt Staples was interviewed and reminisced about her journey in 1850, a 41-day-trip from New York to San Francisco via
Panama (Riley, 1986). She described it as an interesting journey from the beginning to the end (Riley, 1986). Sarah Merriam Brooks wrote about several black females who asked her to bring them with her to California and said they would serve her there (Riley,
1986). However, she refused, as California was a place where slavery did not exist
(Riley, 1986). Very little is known about steerage-class women, perhaps because they didn’t keep diaries, letters, or documents (Riley, 1986). One account does describe a journey by land over the Panama Isthmus where steerage women journeyed by foot rather than mule back (Riley, 1986). For neither the Panama nor overland journeys can the number of women or their ethnicity and race be more than guessed at because most of the diaries, letters, and other writings that have survived both kinds of migrations are the writings of white middle- and upper-class women (Riley, 1986). However, what is
20
apparent is that women were present and engaged on both the overland routes and sea
routes to California (Riley, 1986).
Women had difficulties traveling to California (Riley, 1986). They were ignored
in guide books discussing routes and what supplies would be needed on the journey to
California because writers directed their remarks to men (Riley, 1986). Women relied
upon letters, newspaper articles, and advice from friends for their travel routes (Riley,
1986). Women often over-packed and had trouble preparing for their journeys on land
and sea, for guidebooks were not directed toward women’s travels to California (Riley,
1986). All women on sea journeys were also troubled by complications posed by childbirth, childcare, and inappropriate clothing, and most had a sense of Victorian modesty that required covering their bodies from head to toe with clothing, quite inappropriate for the muddy trail and steaming jungles of Panama (Riley, 1986). Women who chose to journey through Panama also dreaded facing the jungle and feared their children would not survive the hardships (Riley, 1986).
The blizzards, deaths, and other disasters of the land route to California, as well as the adventurous Panama route, offered divergent conditions to women (Riley, 1986).
Even though the Panama Trail was shorter than the overland route across the plains, the experiences in Panama were difficult and dangerous (Riley, 1986). Both routes to
California gave women the chance to either make the transition from their home situations or to learn new skills that they would need to live and survive in California
(Riley, 1998). As with the overland trail, some women intensely disliked the experience
21 and turned back, while others looked upon it as a great adventure (Riley, 1986).
Depending on the conditions they encountered, female migrants to California were tempered by their own personalities, hardiness, and determination (Riley, 1986).
Another frequently traveled route to California in the early years of the Gold Rush was around Cape Horn in a ship. This route avoided the diseases and misery of the
Panamanian jungles, but presented other problems: storms, boredom at sea, and conflicts among passengers (Orsi & Starr, 2000). After preparing for life on the sea for four to eight months, the Argonauts parted from family and friends (Orsi & Starr, 2000). The promises of ships’ advertisements were disproved by the realities of life onboard, and sea sickness soon replaced gold fever (Orsi & Starr, 2000). Women recorded the challenges, hardships, struggles, and dangers they encountered in diaries and letters: storms, lack of food and water, disease, overcrowding, and shipwrecks (Orsi & Starr, 2000). It took six months to travel around the Horn to reach San Francisco from New York (Orsi & Starr,
2000). Women writers wrote about the long voyage and the internal tensions and anxiety
– and sometimes open conflict – that occurred aboard ship (Orsi & Starr, 2000).
Travel by sea had a certain class consciousness to it (Orsi & Starr, 2000). Some could afford better accommodations than others (Orsi & Starr, 2000). The ocean voyage exposed Argonauts to new American places and foreign cultures (Orsi & Starr, 2000).
Both made great impressions. In the foreign ports of call, whether Panama, Rio de
Janeiro, Lima, Peru, or Valparaiso, Chile, American Protestants had their first encounters with Latin Catholic culture (Orsi & Starr, 2000). The Argonauts were not impressed or
22
sympathetic to the local peoples (Orsi & Starr, 2000). They deplored local habits and they found the music, dancing, and habits scandalous (Orsi & Starr, 2000). One forty-
niner described Chileans as very indolent and an idle class of people possessing but little
enterprise (Orsi & Starr, 2000).
Eliza Farnham sailed out of New York Harbor with 22 other passengers aboard
the packet Angelique (Levy, 2004). Among them were her two sons, one spinster and
two widows, Miss Sampson, Mrs. Griswold, and Mrs. Barker, respectively, and a young
woman hired to care for Eliza’s debilitated son Eddy (Levy, 2004). Bad water was the
first problem (Levy, 2004). Mrs. Farnham demanded that they put in at St. Catherine’s
for clean water, and her resolve won out. They stopped (Levy, 2004). After rounding the
Horn, California-bound ships usually put in at Valparaiso, Chile, for wood and water
(Levy, 2004). It was here that Mrs. Farnham was left by the captain, and her son and
newly hired Chilean governess sailed on without her (Levy, 2004). She was only gone
20 minutes to clear up paperwork for her Chilean governess, but the captain, out of
revenge, left her and sailed on to California (Levy, 2004). Passengers aboard the
Angelique described the passage aboard ship as miserable owing to the brutality of the
captain. Leaving behind the mother of children was horrific to the passengers (Levy,
2004).
The Cape Horn route took more time but was easier for emigrants as they stayed
in the same ship all the way (Kemble, 1949). Part of the route lay through rough seas,
but travelers who chose this route were sure to reach California in good health (Kemble,
23
1949). The Panama Route, amongst others, was an isthmus crossing and was used extensively during the Gold Rush (Kemble, 1949). Although it required a longer sea voyage than the other isthmus crossings, it also offered the short land journey, and arrangements to journey from sea to sea were more available (Kemble, 1949). The climate and hardships of travel on the Isthmus and the insufficiency of ships on the
Pacific to carry passengers from Panama proved to many women a delay they would rather not have experienced (Kemble, 1949).
In 1849 passengers arriving in San Francisco tallied 15,597 by way of Cape Horn and 6,489 by way of Panama (Kemble, 1949). Panama gained quickly in popularity as its advantages of speed became known, and ignorance of the dangers and hardships was not dispelled (Kemble, 1949). Thus, in 1859, there were 11,770 arrivals by way of the Horn and 13,809 by way of Panama (Kemble, 1949). What is not known is how many steerage women were aboard these ships and arrived in California during the Gold Rush, as they were not counted in the passenger lists (Riley, 1986).
Women Argonauts were present on the sea and land routes traveling to California during the Gold Rush era, as evidenced in their diaries and letters. They met many challenges and were molded and changed by their experiences. These women endured the hardships and pleasures along their journeys in preparation for their new homes in
California, an unknown world and society, filled with uncertainties and hope for a better future. The next section focuses on the unordered, lawless society that women confronted after their journey to California.
24
Social Fabric of Diggings and Towns
Women arriving in California from their journey overland and across the seas found a very different society than the one they left behind. Their first recognition of troubles in California society was that all newcomers to the area were homeless (Royce,
1886). Most miners sought wealth, not social value (Royce, 1886). They were, as
Americans, trained in the duties of a citizen and had much courage and energy (Royce,
1886). Miners’ first undertaking was to establish a camp near their claim (Royce, 1886).
The origin and growth of a mining camp and its aspects, physical and social, created disorder and social disarray among miners (Royce, 1886). A camp was first an irregular collection of tents near a spot where gold had been discovered (Royce, 1886). Streets were laid out, and if the camp continued, “cloth houses” were substituted for tents, then wooden buildings (Royce, 1886, p. 283). Early camps were located in deep ravines, on river bars, and on gravel deposits called “dry diggings” (Royce, 1886, p. 283). These camps were temporary and left men without comfortable lodging, food, and health.
Many miners had to lie on blankets on the ground and had little food (Royce, 1886).
“The disorganization, lack of domestic necessities, and homelessness in early camps, led men upon immoral paths, for moral growth is impossible without favorable physical conditions” (Royce, 1886, p. 283). Therefore, in the early days of the Gold Rush, the disorganized society of miners was both frightful and adventurous for the few American women who weathered the journey to find prosperity in California.
25
As to the operations of laws at the mines and their effects upon the interests of the community, life was pretty secure in the beginning (Quaife, 1949). Without law, except the code of honor, and without restraint, except that imposed by summary justice
(hanging for stealing and murder), life was comparatively safe: “It was the reign of the rifle and the halter” (Quaife, 1949, p. 294). The principles of a republican government were being adapted to a new and untried social order. When a crime was committed, it was proved in the presence of an impartial jury (Quaife, 1949). The jury announced the punishment, called for a grave to be dug, and chose one person to shoot the accused
(Quaife, 1949). Afterward, the body was buried, and every man went silently back to work (Quaife, 1949). However, with the coming of statehood for California in 1850, civil laws were enacted in the mines, and all crimes were judged (Quaife, 1949). Crimes were committed, and the taunt became “Catch me if you can!”(Quaife, 1949, p. 295).
There was one opinion among the miners: that the system without civil law but with summary justice was better than the system of civil law but without justice (Quaife,
1949). Upon statehood, summary justice ceased to exist, and mining camps and diggings came under civil laws of the United States government (Quaife, 1949). This was the social disarray that women encountered who came to the mining camps early in the Gold
Rush (Jeffrey, 1998).
Writers’ letters home did not reflect the story of home amusements of the miners
(Margo, 1955). Evenings were spent washing socks, playing a quiet game of whist, and writing the logs of the day’s earnings, while sitting up late and giving the beans a stir in
26 the pot for the next day’s meal (Margo, 1955). These were not adventurous and interesting tales to tell; the quiet life was not newsworthy. Newsworthy events were those that struck a discord with expected norms of behavior. The Golden Era was not interested in publishing accounts of normal events that occurred in everyday living
(Margo, 1955). Therefore, letters home told about girls at fandango houses, or the boys over on the next creek shooting up a gambling saloon (Margo, 1955). However, for the average miner, the dance halls, saloons, and violence took up far less time than diversions such as talking, whittling, singing, and playing poker with their cabin mates (Margo,
1955). When diaries contained entries from mining camps about dancing and an evening of fun, the dancers were other miners who wore patches on their pants and were designated as ladies for the purpose of the cotillion (Margo, 1955).
Music making was another staple way to spend time for those who played banjos, bugles, and battered fiddles, while other miners followed in singing. These homesick men with common purpose and experiences, spare time, imagination, and no women around to make fun of them, initiated the growth of folk songs, such as Hangtown Gals
(Margo, 1955). Larger camps in the Sierra foothills offered miners games of billiards, bowling, and foot races. When ordinary billiards grew dull, the men shot them with a pistol (Margo, 1955).
When women were mentioned by men in their diaries and letters, the writers did not necessarily mean all members of the female sex (Margo, 1955). The writers took for granted that there were only two kinds of women (Margo, 1955). The American man
27
coming to the gold fields brought with him a ready-made idea of woman indoctrinated in him by the normal climate of mid-century United States (Margo, 1955). The concept was unwavering: women were virtuous or disreputable (Margo, 1955). Which class women belonged to depended upon their social status and chastity (Margo, 1955). The maiden and wife were considered sacred, and a woman who transgressed and was caught was labeled fallen (Margo, 1955). The writings stating that women were not present in the early Gold Rush times do not take into account those who were dealing Monte (a betting game played with cards) or present at a fandango (a Spanish dance) (Margo, 1955).
Women, pioneer mothers who came across the plains with their husbands, were few (Margo, 1955). Their numbers grew steadily in the 1850s as sailing vessels arrived with wives who had been sent for by their husbands (Margo, 1955). However, in 1849, there were few women in the cities and towns (Margo, 1955). Many accounts of this lack of virtuous women can be read in the journals and diaries of male miners (Margo, 1955).
The women who were present at the masquerade balls of San Francisco and in the saloons and gambling houses of the mining camps were not the virtuous, Eastern white women, but women from Europe and South America who didn’t fit the description of a
Victorian lady. These women wore makeup, dressed in gaudy, sparkling clothes, and were not interested in men’s welfare, only their money (Margo, 1955). They represented fun, not respectability. They had the leisure of learning how to entertain men, and they were certainly there in the gold camps and towns (Margo, 1955). Frenchwomen, dark women with a rebozo over their heads and black hair, were there to entertain the men
28
(Margo, 1955). These women may not have been included in historical data, as they were fallen women, foreign women, Natives, and women of color (Jeffrey, 1998).
The American man away from home and church was torn between what he knew was right and what he could not admit he really liked (Margo, 1955).
Thus, in the opening years of the Gold Rush frontier, the white, American, pioneer women slowly followed the sea routes and overland trails to California entering the cities and remote mining camps, while the foreign women poured off the ships and settled where the prospects looked the richest—San Francisco, Sacramento, and Sonora
(Margo, 1955). American men were forced to re-examine their Puritan attitudes toward women in general, and sometimes changed their attitudes in more ways than they realized
(Margo, 1955).
Gambling and saloon women were not the only form of amusement furnished the men of the gold period (Coy, 1948). Theaters, balls, and bull fights added to miners’ enjoyment and subtracted from their supply of gold (Coy, 1948). It might be thought that the scarcity of women would discourage grand balls, but this was not the case (Coy,
1948).
At the time of the gold discovery, there was but little interest in religious matters in California. The discovery of gold made changes. Clergymen and lay preachers of
Protestant denominations, as well as Roman Catholic, began arriving (Coy, 1948).
Pioneer ministers held a larger place in early California than did the circuit rider (Coy,
29
1948). During the early ‘50s, the influence of churches increased until nearly every denomination’s congregation had its place of worship (Coy, 1948).
Along with religion, virtuous women are a necessity for a well-ordered society
(Coy, 1948). The Gold Rush was not an era conducive to the migration of the virtuous class of women. Many of those who rushed to the gold fields to seek their fortune were of a type whose presence did not improve the social conditions (Coy, 1948). In San
Francisco, in 1848, the census showed 177 women (Coy, 1948). It is reported that in
1849, when the total immigration was approximately 40,000, there were but 700 women in this number (Coy, 1948). The census of 1850 indicates that in California only seven out of every 100 people were women (Coy, 1948). This absence of women spurred Mrs.
Eliza Farnham, the widow of Thomas Jefferson Farnham, who was a great supporter of the Far West, to conceive an idea of bringing a number of respectable young women to
California (Coy, 1948). Mrs. Farnham had been the matron of Sing Sing prison and was a woman of social vision and high motives. She had the support of many men of national fame, including Horace Greely, William Cullen Bryant, and Henry Ward Beecher (Coy,
1948). Although her plan failed, she proceeded to California with three other women and was met with much disappointment by the waiting men. They had hoped to see many women accompanying Mrs. Farnham to California, not just three (Coy, 1948). They were in short supply of virtuous women. However, as time went on, more Victorian Era women arrived, and more families came to California along the trail (Coy, 1948). Homes
30
began to take the place of bachelor quarters and public lodging houses, and society
became more organized and orderly (Coy, 1948).
The coming of families and the preparations for their proper care led to many
improvements in society (Quaife, 1949). The restlessness of the former early days of the
Gold Rush gave way to churches, schools, and women’s feminizing touches to society
(Quaife, 1949). As Eastern white women migrated to California, a gradual and steady improvement of society occurred, and church attendance increased (Quaife, 1949). Soon after their arrival, schools, churches, and social circles were formed; refinement came
upon the disorder and chaos of mining towns (Quaife, 1949). Women accomplished all
this (Quaife, 1949).
It was only after leaving home where her constant presence, her soothing and
animating society, appeared as a matter of course, and removing to a sphere
where she had a better opportunity of displaying her power, that I could estimate
her real worth (Quaife, 1949, p.324).
Thus, women enhanced the lives of miners and helped civilize the diggings,
towns, and social life of American Gold Rush men. Women were present in the gold
fields of California, but the writers from that era of history failed to include ethnic and
culturally foreign women in their statistics and accounts of that era. This fast-paced Gold
Rush society not only provided new and adventurous opportunities for men, but allowed
women to have more freedoms outside of hearth and home, giving them changing roles
in society. They entered the public sphere of the Gold Rush with a fury and changed life
31
forever in the Gold Rush towns of early frontier California. Women’s roles in the towns
and diggings of California will be the focus of the next section.
Women’s Roles in Early California
Historically, the story of the early days in California has been the story of
adventurous men who sought the possibility of sudden wealth (Chartier & Enss, 2000).
Some wanted to create a new life in a wild, unsettled territory (Chartier & Enss, 2000).
However, this historical story also was about the women who came with them across
rivers, deserts, and the steep Sierra Mountains to civilize the raw society in California
(Chartier & Enss, 2000). The journey to California was so demanding that many on the
United States East Coast and Midwest believed only men should be allowed to make the journey west (Chartier & Enss, 2000). “The whole continent of America is not enough to tempt me to consider the danger of taking women into that rugged country” (Chartier &
Enss, 2000, p. 11).
However, the women came by the thousands (Chartier & Enss, 2000). They found the trip strenuous, filled with hardships and horrendous weather (Chartier & Enss, 2000).
When they reached the tent cities of the Gold Rush, they found primitive conditions, lawlessness, and loneliness (Chartier & Enss, 2000). On the trail and sea voyages, women had taken non-traditional roles and entered the male sphere of work to survive the journey to California. The new frontier society that faced women in California also liberated them from traditional roles, as the pure isolation of mining camps and diggings forced men and women to invent their own culture, one very different from East Coast
32
conventions (Egli, 1997). California was different. Miners were aggressive and unencumbered by law, tradition, or family (Egli, 1997). The law that prevailed was one of Darwin’s survival of the fittest and called for quick thinking and improvisation (Egli,
1997). In the early years, this applied to women also (Egli, 1997). They entered the male world of pioneer California knowing they had to work hard to survive (Egli, 1997).
There's big talk from the men about finding a fortune. I want for the finer
things in life too and I shall have it, eventhough folks are against wildcatters
being anything other thanthe male of the species! (Chartier & Enss, 2000, p.12)
While a very few women shoveled gold out of the cold streams and rivers, many lost and won fortunes in other ways (Chartier & Enss, 2000). Contrary to popular belief, not all women of the California Gold Rush were women of easy virtue who earned their livings in saloons, gambling halls, or cribs (Chartier & Enss, 2000). Some may have begun in these places, but many women of the West made their fortunes in other ways
(Chartier & Enss, 2000). Some worked toward political change, while others remained in the domestic arena providing much needed services to the miners (Chartier & Enss,
2000). Women cooked, sewed, cleaned, ironed, washed, danced, poured drinks, or did whatever was required to make their fortune (Levy, 1990). With a little intuitiveness, many women went into business for themselves and earned much more than the average miner (Levy, 1990). Luzena Wilson found that baking biscuits was her pot of gold (Levy,
1990).
33
Luzena Wilson thought of taking in boarders when she first arrived in California
(Chartier & Enss, 2000). There was a hotel near her encampment, and the men ate there for one dollar a meal (Chartier & Enss, 2000). Therefore, she chopped stakes, drove them into the ground, and set up a table to provide meals for miners on her first night in camp
(Chartier & Enss, 2000). She bought provisions at a neighboring store, and when her husband came back to camp that evening from panning gold, he found 20 miners eating supper with biscuits at her table (Chartier & Enss, 2000). As each man finished his meal, he handed her a dollar and said he would be a permanent customer (Chartier & Enss,
2000). She christened her hotel El Dorado (Chartier & Enss, 2000). Luzena's entrepreneur spirit helped her build a business that provided a small fortune to provide for a good life for her family (Chartier & Enss, 2000). She also took in sewing and loaned money to the miners at 10 percent interest a month (Levy, 1990).
Another woman entrepreneur in early California was Mary Jane Caples (Levy,
1990). When her miner husband fell ill, she focused on her talents and thought about baking pies and selling them to the miners (Levy, 1990). Her pie business was so profitable that she moved from the diggings into town, and she and her husband set up a larger business (Levy, 1990). From cooking to boarding houses and hotels, women used their domestic talents to make their fortunes (Levy, 1990). Nevada County's 1850 census records reveal that four out of 13 women in the community that was to become Grass
Valley kept boarders (Levy, 1990). In Nevada City, 12 of the 23 women counted in the census took in boarders and ran hotels with their husbands (Levy, 1990).
34
Another profitable business that women in the mining camps provided was
washing miners' clothes (Levy, 1990). One such woman was Charity Hathaway Hayward
(Levy, 1990). She and her husband settled in Sutter Creek, and she sewed, washed, and
mended for the miners (Levy, 1990). It was backbreaking labor washing clothes in a
stream or pond, as well as kneeling over a washboard, scrubbing and wringing out clothes
by hand (Levy, 1990).
The high price that women were paid for chores they did for free at home helped
many women to prosper, although women who were married could count on a man to
help them prosper more than unmarried ones (Levy, 1990). Mary Jane Megquier, a married woman, wrote in a letter to her daughter about a typical day she had in her boardinghouse in San Francisco (Orsi & Starr, 2000). It started at seven o'clock when she got up to fry potatoes (Orsi & Starr, 2000). She boiled three pounds of steak and as much liver and then continued with other great quantities of food for each meal: beef, lamb pork, turnips, beets, potatoes, radishes, salad, soup (Orsi & Starr, 2000). She also made six beds each day and did the washing and ironing for her boarders (Orsi & Starr, 2000).
She reported that she made more money in one month than she could back home in two years (Orsi & Starr, 2000).
Domestic work offered opportunities for African American women (Orsi & Starr,
2000). Many of these women came to California as slaves, although there are little known records on the exact number, and history has remained silent on this issue (Orsi &
Starr, 2000). However, records indicate that these slaves were able to purchase their
35
Freedom Papers after working for a period of time for their owners in California (Orsi &
Starr, 2000). One such person, the slave George Dennis, worked for his white master (his
father) in the El Dorado Hotel in San Francisco, a flimsy tent that offered Monte tables
by day and women by night (Orsi & Starr, 2000). George saved his money earned by
sweeping the floors of the establishment and eventually saved $1,000 to purchase his own
freedom as well as his mother's (Orsi & Starr, 2000). He arranged to have her rent one of
the gambling tables at $40 per day so she could serve hot meals in the gambling house to
the patrons each day and night (Orsi & Starr, 2000). She averaged $225 a day (Orsi &
Starr, 2000).
Domestic skills benefited Mary Ellen Pleasant, the most famous free woman of
African descent during the Gold Rush (Orsi & Starr, 2000). She came to San Francisco in
1949 as a cook and auctioned off her culinary services, with the condition that she did not
do washing or dishwashing (Orsi & Starr, 2000). She invested her savings in the accounting firm West and Harper and became a wealthy entrepreneur with great influence (Orsi & Starr, 2000).
Some women obtained their freedom in a different way. Biddy Mason walked west behind a caravan of 300 wagons and after four years of residing in San Bernardino as a slave, was taken to Texas, a slave state (Orsi & Starr, 2000). A Mrs. Rowen, of San
Bernardino, reported that Biddy's master was putting the family back into slavery (Orsi &
Starr, 2000). The sheriff of Los Angeles County arrested her master, and Biddy appeared at the trial at which she and her family were freed (Orsi & Starr, 2000). Biddy Mason
36 became a confinement nurse, bought property outside of Los Angeles, sold her parcels later for a good profit, and used the proceeds for the good of her race, including paying taxes on church property to be kept intact for her people (Orsi & Starr, 2000). She added to changing California into a more civilized, religious society (Orsi & Starr, 2000).
Values were transformed in Gold Rush California under female direction as role providers for a moral society (Orsi & Starr, 2000). Marriage became more fleeting, as women, more than men, sought divorces to get rid of an abusive husband or to increase their financial well-being (Orsi & Starr, 2000). California law allowed easier divorces after 1850, and women took advantage of this opportunity (Jeffrey, 1998). Mary Jane
Megquier was one such woman (Jeffrey, 1998). Megquier made her fortune in her boardinghouse adventure and returned with her husband to the East (Margo, 1955).
Experiencing marriage difficulties, she returned to San Francisco alone (Margo, 1955).
She described her life in San Francisco as free and happier than living within the boundaries of Eastern Victorian society (Margo, 1955). She was not judged by society in
California for leaving her husband or even making the journey alone to return to San
Francisco (Margo, 1955).
Another pioneering Gold Rush woman, Abby Mansur, described marriage in terms of women being in great demand (Levy, 1990). “Do not think it strange if you see me coming home with some good looking man ... with a pocket full of rocks … it is all the go her for Ladies to leave their Husbands two out of three do I” (Levy, 1990, p. 173).
37
Society was free from the multitude of prejudices and embarrassment characterized by
eastern cities (Levy, 1990). California changed these women (Levy, 1990).
If California society allowed so much freedom and loosening of attitudes about
women's place and Victorian social norms, how did these norms become established?
Women, such as Sarah Royce, helped establish these norms and saw themselves as a
civilizing force (Jeffrey, 1998). They saw their roles in early Gold Rush society as the
Victorian keeper of the moral flame (Jeffrey, 1998). Royce lamented the decay of morals
she observed in society during the Gold Rush (Jeffrey, 1998). She viewed her role, as a
respectable woman in the mining frontier, as a civilizing and socializing agent (Jeffrey,
1998). She set out to change its social atmosphere and its open acceptance of sexual
immorality, using social occasions with other women to voice disapproval of erring
women (Jeffrey, 1998).
An example of one such setting was an entertainment sponsored by women of four churches (Jeffrey, 1998). A wealthy man arrived with a beautifully dressed woman of disreputable character as his companion (Jeffrey, 1998). They made themselves comfortable and were ready to make a large donation to the churches (Jeffrey, 1998).
However, the ladies of this setting would not stand for this (Jeffrey, 1998). Sarah Royce
concluded, “The events of the evening proved to him, as well as others, that while
Christian women would forego ease and endure much labor, in order to benefit any who suffered, they would not welcome into friendly association with any who tramped upon
38
the institutions which lie at the foundation of morality and civilization” (Jeffrey, 1998,
p.162).
Like Royce, the role that many Victorian women saw themselves undertaking in
California was one of a cultural mission to civilize California society (Jeffrey, 1998). As these women counterattacked and sought to eliminate prostitution in the towns and mining camps, they realized that many men were ambiguous about their mission (Jeffrey,
1998). Prostitutes were social and sexual companions of many men, and it was difficult to lump them into the category of bad women (Jeffrey, 1998). Some were disorderly and
did nothing but provide sexual services for men, while others were more delicate and had
what was thought to be womanly decorum, even though virtue had been discarded
(Jeffrey, 1998). Conventional standards defining virtue and vice did not do justice to
these women who were good companions and not vicious (Jeffrey, 1998).
Therefore, men who agreed with the Eastern, Victorian viewpoints held by most
white, respectable women were in a minority (Jeffrey, 1990). High-class prostitutes in
San Francisco, such as Ah Toy, lived an opulent life and made fortunes offering their services to men (Levy, 1990). French, Chinese, and Chilean women all gained their fortunes in adapting to roles that provided to men services that were deemed immoral by
Victorian society (Levy, 1990).
Another role Victorian women undertook to civilize California society was controlling gambling and drinking. They viewed these pastimes of miners as destroying habits of industry and thrift, while drinking reduced men to animals and bred
39 irresponsibility and violence (Jeffrey, 1998). Questionable women worked in gambling establishments and contributed to the downfall of society (Jeffrey, 1998). In response,
Eastern, Victorian women in communities across California organized and spearheaded campaigns to close gambling halls on Sundays (Jeffrey, 1998). They also petitioned to have merchants close their shops on Sunday (Jeffrey, 1998). Some women tackled vice openly (Jeffrey, 1998). They met on streets and in other public places (Jeffrey, 1998).
Women were agitated and publicized their positions about social problems (Jeffrey,
1998). Protestant clergy as well as newspaper editors supported women's causes, and some merchants favored improving the frontier society of the Gold Rush (Jeffrey, 1998).
Women, like Elizabeth Farnham and Elizabeth Gunn, were social reformers who stirred up the public indignation against Sunday entertainments such as gambling, drinking, and bull riding, as well as merchants being open for business on Sunday (Jeffrey, 1998).
White, Victorian women did succeed in clarifying their standard of the true woman, and lines between acceptable and unacceptable institutions and behavior came to the forefront of public awareness (Jeffrey, 1998). These social reforming women had a strong voice in early California society (Jeffrey, 1998).
The emigration of white women to California also had a strong effect on other women—Native American, Hispanic, Chinese, and African-American (in small numbers)
(Orsi & Starr, 2000). Middle-class, Victorian, white women relied on their own cultural standards to judge others, and they found many groups unworthy of social inclusion if they did not adopt Victorian values of behavior (Orsi & Starr, 2000). The presence of
40
wives, mothers, and single women from the eastern United States meant a displacement of other women of color and ethnicity to the margins of what was becoming the dominant society (Orsi & Starr, 2000). Miwok women, who had taught the early miners to use baskets as vessels for scooping up sand and panning for gold, were displaced from the rivers and streams and marginalized from society (Orsi & Starr, 2000). Sonoran women
were excluded from white women's spheres of socializing, as they were Catholic and
dark skinned, not Anglo-Protestant and white (Orsi & Starr, 2000).
Other women in the Gold Rush were on the fringe of respectable society, as they
adopted untraditional roles for women in the 19th century (Sheafer, 1992). One such
woman was Charlie Parkhurst, a stagecoach driver in California, who had a reputation for
being a safe and courageous Wells Fargo driver (Sheafer, 1992). However, her identity as
a woman remained unknown until her death, as women were not expected to drive
stagecoaches and would not have been accepted or hired for this job (Sheafer, 1992).
Charlie was also the first woman to vote in California, although she voted as a man
(Sheafer, 1992). Gender secrecy also followed a miner, Mountain Charley, who mined
alongside men, dressed as a man, and wore short hair. Her gender identity as a female
miner was kept secret, due to her fear of not being accepted and given rights to her
mining claims (Guerin, 1968).
Women's roles changed in California (Jeffrey, 1998). The open, free society of
the early Gold Rush allowed for many ethnic and cultural groups of women to prosper in
roles not accepted by Eastern society (Orsi & Starr, 2000). However, as more Victorian
41
society women arrived from the states, they brought with them the values of true
womanhood and saw their roles as civilizers and socializers of society (Jeffrey, 1998).
California's wild and free society challenged these women's spirits, but they prevailed in
their mission (Margo, 1955). These women changed some Victorian social mores to
include more rights than they had experienced back home (Margo, 1955). They rallied
and were given the right to own property, seek divorce, and work openly in many
working environments, giving California women more roles, opportunities, and changing
attitudes (Jeffrey, 1998). This provided a new, more liberating society for California in
the 1850s (Jeffrey, 1998). The new society being formed had women there to transform
it (Jeffrey, 1998). However, confusion and conflict also occurred as women encountered
foreigners, changing work ethics, gender identity, and an evolving moral structure in
California society (Orsi & Starr, 2000). The next section will focus upon women’s changing attitudes about the Cult of Domesticity and true womanhood in the Victorian
Age in California.
California Women Challenge the Cult of True Womanhood
Revisionist, female social historians have recently researched the view of women in the Gold Rush (Armitage & Jameson, 1987). However, from the new histories written, there are indications that Western women ignored the ideal of the Cult – piety, submissiveness, domesticity and virtue – while adopting its image as their source of power as they civilized the Gold Rush society (Armitage & Jameson, 1987). Each of the attributes that comprised the Cult of True Womanhood underwent change and
42
modification in the Gold Rush as women exerted their influence (Armitage & Jameson,
1987). Women became aware of the majesty of God’s world and how small they were
during times of thunderstorms, prairie fires, raging floods, cholera epidemics, Indian
encounters, droughts, desert heat, mountain cliffs, snow-blocked passes, broken bones, and funerals, yet the women kept going (Royce, 1932).
Once the women settled in whatever primitive housing was available to these women and their families, social events were organized (Royce, 1932). They might ride
40 miles, dance all night, and ride home the next day, for they were enjoying themselves
(Royce, 1932). Women were outnumbered and idolized by the men (Royce, 1932). If
they were married and their husbands objected, some would leave with another man
(Jeffrey, 1998). This suggests that Gold Rush women abandoned the idea of
submissiveness to their men, but the reality is unclear (Jeffrey, 1998). In the face of danger, most women would react to their husbands’ commands without argument
(Jeffrey, 1998). However, in Gold Rush California, many women used their feminine charms to subdue their husbands, as women were in short supply (Margo, 1955).
Besides maintaining the semblance of a home, a domestic atmosphere, women had to work along with men to survive (Levy, 1990). Luzena Wilson declared, “Yes, we worked; we did things our high-toned servants back home would have looked at aghast, and say it was impossible for a woman to do. But the one who did not work in ’49 went to the wall. It was a hand-to-hand fight with starvation at the first” (Levy,1990, pp. 98-
99). Women ran boardinghouses, baked food, operated laundries, mined, broke horses,
43
drove wagons, managed farms and ranches, opened stores and schools, taught, fought,
and nursed (Levy, 1990). These women also continued to be homemakers (Levy,
1990). Sometimes, they were single and alone in their homes or divorced with children
(Griswold, 1988). More than 70 percent of divorce cases filed were by women
(Griswold, 1988). Desertions were the most common complaint against women, while women complained of non-support and cruelty (Griswold, 1988). The Cult of True
Womanhood set the model for most women (Griswold, 1988). However, these California women bore little resemblance to the typical Victorian woman (Griswold, 1988).
The Western woman made good use of her independence (Jeffrey, 1998). In
1853, the San Francisco Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society was formed to provide homes for orphans and relief for victims of natural catastrophes (Jeffrey, 1998). Anti- prostitution and anti-saloon societies were formed (Jeffrey, 1998). Temperance meetings were held (Jeffrey, 1998). Churches and anti-polygamy movements began (Jeffrey,
1998). As quickly as towns were founded, schools and police and fire departments were organized (Jeffrey, 1998). Women pressured for more liberal divorce laws, property rights, and gambling restrictions and got them passed (Jeffrey, 1998).
It is clear that not all Gold Rush women and men believed in the Cult of True
Womanhood (Welter, 1966). It clashed with the responsibilities and necessities of survival on the trail and in early California Gold Rush camps and towns (Jeffrey,
1998). The California woman modified the Cult to suit her own needs and ideals
(Jeffrey, 1998). Men worried over work, women over social ills (Jeffrey, 1998). Often,
44
these worries overlapped as women became entrepreneurs and opened their own
businesses (Jeffrey, 1998). In the East, men and women were given definite spheres of
influence in their roles of work and family (Welter, 1966). In the Gold Rush, survival
was paramount, and these spheres of influence overlapped and changed (Jeffrey,
1998). If men worked with women in the hotels and boardinghouses, did laundry, cooked, washed, and sewed, so women worked the mining claims panning for gold or trekked alongside their men on the overland journey, suffering the same hardships and
enduring the dangers and workload (Jeffrey, 1998). In the West, women were given a
voice in town affairs (Levy, 1990). Women had the right to petition for divorce, maintain
property and personal rights, and were allowed to vote in local elections before the East
would consider such an action (Levy, 1990).
Women postured, maneuvered, and rebelled under the Cult of True Womanhood in the East, while the Western woman enjoyed the benefits of life (Jeffrey,
1998). Women who brought the ideas of the Cult to the mine fields and towns were quick to modify it, abandon it, or limit its precepts as they civilized and socialized the
Gold Rush frontier (Jeffrey, 1998). They realized that they were in short supply and had become a commodity in the gold fields; therefore, they exploited their power to improve societal conditions, life, and status (Orsi & Starr, 2000). They embodied and changed the
Cult of True Womanhood to empower their lives in California (Orsi & Starr, 2000).
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Summary
Victorian Era women were scarce in the early years of the Gold Rush but were
present, in small numbers, in towns and diggings. Their numbers grew as they journeyed
by land and sea to join husbands, seek fortunes, or start a new life for themselves and
their families. Through recent research, historians have discovered diaries and journals
that tell the stories of these women’s plights, across the prairies and aboard ships at sea,
as they traveled to California’s Gold Rush society. The strenuous land journey often
demanded that women adopt chores usually relegated to men, such as herding cattle or
driving wagons. The changing roles women, by necessity, undertook on their journey to
the gold fields challenged their identity as true Victorian women: pious, prudish,
virtuous, and domesticated. These pioneer women strove to survive on the journey west,
as well as in the lawless, free society they encountered once reaching California’s Gold
Rush country. These female Gold Rush pioneers forged ahead in California to emerge as
new, strong, independent women, lobbying for better societal conditions: the end of
gambling, prostitution, and observance of the Sabbath on Sunday. Given the right by the
California Legislature to sue for divorce and own their own property, these women
created a new version of the Cult of Domesticity: wife, motherhood, family, as well as
independence, voting privileges, and entrepreneurship. Women opened businesses and
worked alongside men in this new, open society of California and discovered their own
gold rush as businesswomen, creating fortunes by providing much-needed domestic services to men: washing, cooking, and running boardinghouses. California women
46
civilized the Gold Rush towns and changed the expectations for the 19th-century
Victorian woman in California. The California woman emerged as a strong, independent,
civilizing force in the society of the Gold Rush.
This project asks the question: What would be the content of a curriculum
focusing on how Eastern, white, Victorian Age women changed and adapted the Cult of
Domesticity as they journeyed west and civilized towns and diggings in California’s
wild, lawless, Gold Rush Society?
The next chapter introduces the methodology used in answering this question through data gathering and processing of a learning lab lesson plan researching women in the California Gold Rush. It will describe the lessons and the situations in which data were collected.
47
Methods
Introduction
The definition of a woman’s place was an important aspect of 19th-century
culture. Women were expected to be the moral conscience of society and to remain at
home educating and teaching their children, as well as performing domestic duties. New standards for middle-class female behavior affected white women’s experiences in the
West. The West became a testing ground for the 19th-century understanding of gender
roles. Understanding the emigrant white women struggling for control of resources and
culture sheds a light on their mission to civilize the West.
Most of my information comes from literate white women’s diaries, letters, and
journals, as well as reminiscences and collections found in books and museums. Some
transcripts of interviews with pioneer women also provide a picture of their lives during
the California Gold Rush era. I have spent the last two years attempting to gain an
understanding of their lives and roles as Gold Rush-era women in order to lead students studying this era to an understanding that women were present during the Gold Rush in greater numbers than first recorded in traditional histories. Although the number of sources is limited, as revisionist and women’s history has only surfaced in the forefront of historical research in the last 40 years, my sources give a good picture of the diverse
Gold Rush experiences of white women. Although the number of sources is limited due to the fact that Gold Rush women were too busy to write or failed to record the slight events of their lives, historians have uncovered and exposed these slight events to examine the experiences and feelings of ordinary women during this era.
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Research Question
How did women’s roles during the Gold Rush era change as they civilized and socialized the California Gold Rush frontier? How did the “cult of domesticity” change for these women pioneers? These were my original questions about women during the
Gold Rush era of California. I enhanced these questions over the last two years by placing them into a classroom context. What do these questions have to do with fourth- grade students studying the Gold Rush era of California?
Students of nine or 10 years of age studying California history would, ideally, be able to critically examine women’s lives during the Gold Rush and conclude that women were present during this time as entrepreneurs and contributed to the economic welfare of their families. However, because of curricular limitations, students do not investigate women’s roles, either in their textbooks or during teacher-prepared lessons. Therefore, I decided to create a curriculum that offers the opportunity to examine the presence of women during this era and their impact on the Gold Rush frontier, both economically and socially.
I discovered during my research that little information was available about women in general during this era of time, either for lack of sources or interest by male historians. With the influx of women’s history coming to the forefront in the 1970s and new revisionist histories being written concerning this time period, more information became available from white, middle-class women’s diaries and journals. I decided to limit my examination of Gold Rush women around these white women’s written sources, as I found very little primary documents from other ethnic and culturally different women
49 during this time, although most historical accounts from this period of time refer to women of color and varied backgrounds and cultures. I did examine a few women from these areas in my lessons about Gold Rush women.
The Research Process
Knowing I wanted to explore the history of women in the Gold Rush with fourth- grade students, I decided to attend the California Social Studies Conference in
Sacramento and signed up for a visit to Coloma and Placerville (Hangtown) to visit some of the actual Gold Rush diggings and camps. Visiting Coloma gave me insight into the beginnings of the Gold Rush with the discovery at Sutter’s Fort, and the history docent answered many questions for me concerning women who were present during this time, such as Jenny Wimmer, Nancy Gooch, and Charlie Parkhurst.
New questions arose: How were these women’s experiences similar and how did they differ? What role changes occurred in California for them, if any? How did they affect the towns and diggings they lived in economically and socially?
My search for the answers to these questions began with asking questions of the docent, but also a visit to Placerville’s downtown bookstore opened a treasure chest of books and pamphlets written about women of this period. I purchased eight of these sources and next took a trip to the Sacramento State Library. There, the historian in the
Sacramento Room, a room devoted to California history, led me to primary and secondary sources concerning not only these women, but others of interest to my research.
I first read letters and documents in the historical collection of the Sacramento
50
Library that were primary and secondary documents concerning Charlie Parkhurst. I then explored the annals focused upon the first woman hung in California, Juanita. From these explorations I realized what diverse characters these women were and, therefore, there must be other women that were not so unusual but were ordinary, everyday, middle-class women. This led me to begin reading the seminal works on pioneer women on the trails west during this time period, particularly Lillian Schlissel’s Women’s Diaries of The
Westward Journey; Julie Joy Jeffrey’s Frontier Women; the oldest seminal work about mining life, The Shirley Letters by Louisa Clappe; With Great Hope: Women of the
California Frontier, by JoAnn Chartier and Chris Enss; Josiah Royce’s book A Frontier
Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California; and Apron Full of Gold: The
Letters of Mary Jane Megquier, edited by Polly Welts Kaufman. More recent published historical accounts I encountered included Joann Levy’s They Saw the Elephant and
Kevin Starr and Richard Orsi’s California Legacy book Rooted in Barbarous Soil, which has various academic historians devoting a chapter to the historical story of California.
Of special interest to my research was Nancy Orsi & Starr’s chapter, Weaving a Different
World: Women and the California Gold Rush. Online museums, such as the San
Francisco Virtual Museum, The California State Museum in Oakland, and the Huntington
Museum, provided primary documents to further my research on Gold Rush women.
Other Gold Rush books by various male authors provided background information and descriptions of towns, diggings, and the lawless society of the Gold Rush era.
I became excited when I began reading similar information from primary source letters and diary entries from women pioneers who crossed the prairies or sailed the seas
51
to arrive in California. However, I noticed a distinct difference between women’s letters
versus men’s letters and diaries. Women documented family life, death, social
gatherings, and emotional trials along the way, whereas men’s diaries and letters were more about the scenery and their daily life and chores. Men’s diaries were very careful not to admit to any slack in their morals or actions, whereas women wrote in detail how they had changed roles and taken on men’s duties as well as neglecting to honor Sunday church services and personal tidiness and cleanliness due to the hardships along the trail and seas. Many of the documents, diaries, and letters I researched provided support for the lessons in my two-week curriculum. Before I began to develop this curriculum, I needed to establish a purpose for teaching this subject: Women were present in the Gold
Rush performing many roles and civilizing the frontier.
Justification for the Curriculum
Students need to develop the ability to critically analyze historical accounts in history, looking for various points of view and encompassing all cultures, people, and gender. They need to learn to analyze the historical stories they read and distinguish between fact and fiction, or what is true or not. Most historical accounts of the Gold
Rush period in California history have been written about men in the Gold Rush.
However, contrary to popular belief, women were also there, present in the towns, diggings, and the frontier of California. Women seized the opportunity to take on more than traditional women’s roles. These women came west also in search of a fortune.
Their contributions are many and their stories intriguing. These women had enough strength and desire to make the strenuous trip, filled with unexpected hardships such as
52
food poisoning, animal attacks, disease, hunger, and horrendous weather (Chartier &
Enss, 2000). When they reached the tent cities of California, they found the same
primitive conditions they had experienced on the trail and seas: lawlessness, disease,
loneliness, and uncivilized conditions (Jeffrey, 1998). The story of these brave and intrepid pioneer women has just begun to be told. Many journals and diaries are still part of family treasures, waiting to be explored and made public by historians. Their stories hold many fascinating details of their life on the journey and in the towns and diggings of the Gold Rush. I hope this lesson piques the curiosity of students who will then go forth
and seek to find the missing information about the women of the Gold Rush era in
California and, in turn, fill in the missing pieces of the story that women reveal in their
diaries.
Curriculum Development
During this last year of searching for the stories of Gold Rush women, I created a
12-hour, curriculum-based study and learning lab teaching fourth-grade students how to question and think like a historian (see Appendix Q). I used a fourth-grade classroom at
Trinity Valley Elementary School to pilot six assignments within the unit of study and took notes to document the success and failure of each lesson. This lesson plan was focused upon independent research and examining primary sources. I discovered that this class of fourth-grade students had no experience with primary or secondary sources, nor even knew what they were. My second discovery was how time-consuming research
is, especially with young students who have little experience with research in books,
libraries, and internet sources. I concluded I needed to model how to think like a
53
historian and model how to research and evaluate pictures and sources through
questioning and interpreting documents. Incorporating what I learned in my Educational
Psychology Class and Pedagogy Class, I followed the ideas from B. Murray Thomas’
Human Development Theories and from Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory. I
realized I needed to create a setting in which students would be led and supported by an
expert, the teacher, and also learn from each other in groups. I wanted to create a
curriculum that allowed students to learn, according to their cognitive development,
realizing that I needed to address Howard Gardener’s theory of multiple intelligences and
Jean Piaget’s theory of development, where fourth-grade students were in the concrete-
operational stage of development. My curriculum needed to encompass, with an
analytical eye, primary source documents that incorporated the story of women into the
Gold Rush of California. I needed to develop a way to address abstract thinking and
schemas for problem solving and reflective thinking. I also wanted to build academic
language throughout the process. Visual images to the content vocabulary would allow
students to remember and incorporate the vocabulary into their memory. Mathematical
problems and problem solving would address their stage of development, as well as age- appropriate language and visual activities. These activities would allow students to develop abstract thinking that would aid in memory retention of facts concerning women during the California Gold Rush.
As I researched and wrote my literature review, I began to notice a common thread throughout the collection of my resources. Most historical accounts of this time period reiterated that women were few in the early years of the Gold Rush. However, I
54
then began to notice when the historical accounts were written. Most accounts were
written by men before the 1960s and 1970s. These accounts briefly mention women,
unless discussing gamblers, entertainers, or prostitutes. The story of Victorian Age women from the east was left out of most male authors’ accounts, unless the story being told was seen from the male perspective through letters and correspondence home. The stories of the female, pioneer women were very scarce and hard to find in the decades before the ‘60s. I discovered most historical accounts of individual women pioneers were written by women authors in the last half of the 20th century. These revisionist women historians were including gender in their historical accounts, stories from a woman’s point of view. This was the centerpiece of my curriculum, women’s new historical accounts. Using a slideshow of historical drawings and daguerreotypes became the focus of my lesson hook for my curriculum and found that questioning the lack of women in these pictures appealed to students as they focused and searched the visual images for women. Not only did these fourth-grade students begin looking at photographs and drawings with a more discerning eye, but they began questioning where the women were? Why weren’t they represented in most of the slides? An ongoing discussion began to develop among the students and I had 100 percent of their attention on the images on the screen. I decided that images and questions concerning the images was an angle that would create interest in these young students.
In addition to the first hook, I incorporated three other successful lessons that I piloted in my final curriculum: the PowerPoint lesson using primary sources concerning women on the trail and sea, and in the diggings during the California Gold Rush; the
55 diary entries of Mary Jane Megquier, Catherine Haun, and Louisa Clappe; and the historical accounts from secondary sources concerning the lives of Juanita and Charlie
Parkhurst. I incorporated questions for each PowerPoint slide that would make students explore these slides with a critical eye discerning new discoveries about the motives for women to come to California; the hardships of the journey; and the changing roles of women on the journey and on the California frontier.
The original curriculum revolved around journal entries created by students and looking in class at primary documents during a discussion led by the teacher. When I attempted to conduct these lessons in a fourth-grade classroom, students became less focused during a 50-minute discussion with primary documents. The students did not have enough background knowledge or the skill development necessary to enter into the discussions or interpret the primary sources I shared with them. The final curriculum provides students with extensive experience in primary source analysis. Through teacher-led activities, as well as student-centered activities using teacher models and examples from classmates, students learned about the women involved in the Gold Rush frontier and analysis skills that are useful in other subject areas. They practiced looking closely at documents and answering questions such as, Where are the women in this photograph? What does this woman’s dress suggest about her role in this photograph?
Combining their analysis of primary sources with information learned from secondary sources, particularly the information provided by the teacher during each lesson, students developed an acute eye for women’s history and their neglect in the books and resources of the past years. Students shed a light on the strength of these pioneer women by writing
56
a journal of a woman’s travel to California during this period of time as homework each
night for the two-week lesson plan.
By the time students entered the second week of this unit, they worked in small
groups to develop a poster using a rubric to analyze their document. I incorporated many
lessons throughout this two-week period that modeled this important skill, so that
students with little or no experience with this skill had the opportunity to shed light on the
inquiring process of analyzing primary documents. Hopefully, students questioned things
they saw in the document concerning women’s roles during the Gold Rush era. Ideally,
they have learned to question traditional histories of this period where women were
ignored or only briefly mentioned.
Overview of Instructional Delivery
My instruction encompasses a lecture format, individual activities in language arts
or math incorporating historical content, and group research and individual journal
creations about a woman’s life during the California Gold Rush. Students deliver an oral
presentation of both the journal and poster on the last two days of this unit. I delivered a pre-test during my first lesson to serve as a baseline for knowledge, and then presented a post-test after the last lesson, to evaluate knowledge gained after the two-week lesson
plan. Answers to these questions for the teacher are included in the appendices. I
incorporated a PowerPoint slide presentation that holds many primary documents, as well
as listing secondary information for student and teacher.
Teachers need to read the material thoroughly and copy the appendices to use
with each lesson. There is a list of books for a teacher to use included in the References
57 section, as well as websites for students to explore for researching the life and times of
Gold Rush women.
Conclusion
Finally, it is important for students to realize that many historical accounts are not written in textbooks or nonfiction resources and biographies. Much of the new history can be found in family diaries and journals housed in museums and archives throughout the nation. Many families have diaries and journals that have not been published and, therefore, much history about women during this time is still emerging. The curriculum that follows in the next chapter provides students with twelve days of varying experiences in which they investigate, analyze, and uncover the roles of women during the California Gold Rush era and the economic and social impact these women had on the trail, seas, and frontier of California. I hope that as they engage in this curriculum about 1850s Victorian Age California Gold Rush women, they gain experience creating questions about these women’s accounts during this time. I hope that students apply their new knowledge gained about women’s roles during the Gold Rush and develop an appreciation for revisionist history. The truth can always be told, but the participants in the event may not always gain light in historical accounts, such as this one. I hope students learn to ask the question, “What has been left out of this history?” Hopefully, they will search for these answers in their future endeavors in life.
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Lesson Plans
Lesson Day One
The history of the Gold Rush in California during the 1850s is a story about the
wild and unlawful times that men experienced while searching for a dream, one of
striking it rich in the gold fields of California. Traditional histories report that there was
an absence of women in the mining towns and diggings in this new frontier. However,
the purpose of the following 10-day lesson plan is to introduce strong and visionary
women who were present on this Gold Rush frontier and left diaries, letters, and journals
to reveal their stories and their presence in this predominately male population during the
Gold Rush. Their stories have just begun to be revealed, as women histories are now being explored through family diaries and letters, becoming public in books, museums,
online websites, newspapers, and all modes of public communication.
Most women’s stories in history have remained part of family genealogies and not
been presented for public view. However, with the onset of the 1970s, women’s
revisionist histories began to be written and many women’s stories began to unfold about
their experiences during the Gold Rush era in California. Their stories of traveling to
California by land and sea reveal a change in their domestic lives and a cultural change
for these women once arriving in California. The following lessons will explore some of
these women’s stories from primary documents that have been discovered, diaries and
letters describing their lives and times journeying to California and, ultimately, living in
the diggings and towns. These women brought forth strength of character and forged
new lives on the frontier, changing the way men and women viewed their lives and roles
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as culturally defined on the East Coast during the Victorian Era. For these frontier Gold
Rush women, the “cult of domesticity” began changing on their journey and developed a
different cultural realm once living in California. Women such as Mary Jane Megquier,
Catherine Haun, Biddy Mason, Sarah Royce, Eliza Farnham, Louisa Clappe, Charlie
Parkhurst are but a few of the stories presented in the following lessons. Women were
there in the towns and diggings, socializing and civilizing the populace as men set aside
their wild, lawless ways when in the presence of women. The following lessons will tell
some of their stories.
Women were present on the land trails to California as well as the sea routes to
California. They were present in the towns and diggings of the Gold Rush frontier, but
little is known about their presence, as paintings, pictures, and daguerreotypes from this era do not reveal their images. The following lesson will explore images of the Gold
Rush era in California to clarify this point.
(One 60-minute session.)
Note to teacher: Have your computer ready to present both of the hooks on the appropriate websites, or they may be downloaded to the teacher’s computer ahead of time. An IT person might be able to help you set up if this poses a problem. Prepare for this lesson by having the following video and PowerPoint presentations ready:
Gold Rush (2:37 minutes)
Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/gold-rush-of-1849
Art of the Gold Rush (PowerPoint presentation can vary in length according to time
spent on slides and discussion, 10-30 minutes)
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Retrieved from http://museumca.org/goldrush/fever01.html
Introduction.
Today we are going to begin a study of revisionist history that has been revised to
include women’s accounts of their experiences during the California Gold Rush era. As a
background, we will look at traditional accounts of this era and discuss reasons why
women were not included in much of the artwork and historical accounts of this era.
Hook.
While viewing the video Gold Rush of 1849, display the following questions on the whiteboard or blackboard. Have students take notes and answer, as best they can, the following questions.
• Is the Gold Rush of 1849 told from a man’s viewpoint or a woman’s viewpoint?
(traditional account from a man’s viewpoint)
• As you watch the story unfold, is there any mention of women pioneers included,
and if so, in what ways are these women depicted? (Few women depicted and
most are standing with men on the porch of a house or riding in a wagon.)
While viewing the PowerPoint of the artwork from the California Gold Rush era,
display the following questions on the whiteboard or blackboard and discuss the
questions as a whole group at the end of the slideshow. Slides can be revisited as
students and the teacher discuss the questions.
• If the California Gold Rush was an important factor in the development of
California society, why do you think the story of women and the absence of
women in many drawings and daguerreotypes are left out of this story? (Women
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were not part of men’s public sphere even though present in the California Gold
Rush. Most of the artists and daguerreotypists were men and held to the Victorian
values that women were not to be publicized with pictures, etc. They told history
from their perspective, so women were mostly seen as part of family groups and
in domesticated roles.)
• What mode of travel did the California forty-niners use to come to California?
(They used sailing vessels by sea and wagons by land.)
• How would you describe a typical Gold Rush digging? (It was a very rough or
crude small cabin or tent close to a stream with a few men in the scene dressed in
pants, shirts, and sometimes wearing a hat.)
• Are any women seen in the diggings portrayed in the artwork? (One at Auburn
Ravine standing by a gold mining site with several men.)
• What women’s portraits are displayed in the artwork? (Lola Montez, an actress)
Transition.
After students finish viewing both the video and PowerPoint, divide the whole group into small groups of four. Within this small group, use the Pair/Share activity
(Appendix C). Have each group report their answers from the activity to the whole class at the end. Each group should choose a spokesperson to report their collaborative answers.
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Content.
Note to teacher: Women were protected by their husbands, as well as men in
society, and their roles as wives, mothers, and single women didn’t include dressing in
men’s clothes, panning for gold, driving stagecoaches, running hotels and
boardinghouses, or acting as bankers, as well as assuming men’s roles in society.
However, diaries and journals that women wrote during this time period, the Gold Rush
era, tell stories of women crossing the societal barriers and assuming roles that were
considered “men’s work” to survive on the sea and land journeys, as well as pioneers in
the early years of the California Gold Rush frontier.
Discuss the input from all groups during their Pair/Share activity and guide a
discussion toward understanding that 19th-century Victorian, Eastern women were expected to behave according to the social attitudes that women were homemakers and
educators and were pious and pure.
In each lesson, students will find it necessary to understand words and/or phrases
used in numerous lessons. Part of the first lesson will focus on developing an
understanding of these vocabulary words. Discuss meaning for words: Victorian
women, pious, men’s work, public sphere, daguerreotypes, diggings, women’s history,
revisionist history, domesticity, Victorian Age, broadside, bison, diggings,
boardinghouse, dry diggings, claim, vigilante law, primary source, secondary source,
cause and effect, compare and contrast, features, women’s history, revisionist history.
Hand out the following activity to begin completing in class (Appendix D).
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Homework.
Complete the Vocabulary Worksheet (Appendix D).
Conclusion.
The Gold Rush women were not seen in the daguerreotypes and drawings in the
PowerPoint or artwork of the Gold Rush era, nor their voices heard during the video.
Traditional history did not include many women’s viewpoints in their written history nor in pictures and drawings, except as part of family units. This history was written before the revisionist and women historians began their research and is still the main focus of
historical accounts of this time period. In the next 11 days we will be exploring women’s
accounts of their journey traveling to the California Gold Rush, as well as experiences
and roles women assumed in the towns and diggings of frontier California.
Assessment.
The informal assessment is student participation and individual contributions to
the Pair/Share discussion, as well as notes from each student to be collected at the end of
the lesson. Use whatever “check for understanding” system you use for today’s
discussion. Administer Pre-Test (Appendix E).
Notes to teacher.
The decade that encompassed the Gold Rush and the early years of California statehood, 1848-1858, is one of the most important eras in California history, with a far- reaching effect on our nation’s history. In a short 10 years, California was transformed from a small, settled Mexican frontier made up of a few seaport towns, scattered Native
American tribes, small farms, and large ranchos into a mad-hatter free-for-all filled with
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adventurous, gold-seeking people from all over the world. Within this short span of
years, California had joined the Union, hundreds of thousands of emigrants had arrived,
gold worth millions of dollars was found, and the work of establishing the social,
economic, and political foundation of the newest of the union states was begun.
Students should have read the historical accounts of the Gold Rush in their textbooks and be familiar with the different aspects of the historical significance of this time period for California. The purpose of this two-week lesson plan is to provide further information and revisionist historical interpretations from the viewpoint of women Gold
Rush participants and their impact on this time period of California’s historical event.
Women were present in the beginning of the Gold Rush era, women of Native and
Mexican descent. Women from the Midwest and East Coast began arriving shortly after the discovery of gold, and their stories are part of the ever-growing research of revisionist historians who have discovered journals and diaries that these Victorian Age women kept of their journeys and early years in California. The Huntington Museum and the San
Francisco Virtual Museum contain many excerpts from journals and diaries as well as primary source documents that give a voice to many women’s struggles during this time period. Authors such as JoAnn Levy, Lillian Schlissel, Louisa Clappe and Julie Joy
Jeffries have written several historical books that include the diary excerpts of remarkable women that crossed the plains, sailed the oceans, and braved the miners’ diggings to establish a civilized society on the Gold Rush frontier. These strong and remarkable women are the subject of this 10-day lesson plan that addresses their changing roles from
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domesticity to pioneer women along the trail and along the sea routes, as well as their
subsequent settlement on the California Gold Rush frontier.
Lesson Day Two
After viewing the images of the California Gold Rush era and watching a small
video clip about this period of history in Lesson Day One, this lesson will begin to
explore some of the women that traveled the California Trail, the Panama Route by sea,
and the sea route around Cape Horn to the California Gold Rush frontier. Students will
begin to study historical excerpts from journals, diaries, and letters to reveal these
women’s perspectives on traveling to California.
(One 50-minute session.)
Introduction.
Traveling to California by sea or land was a choice men and women had to make
during the Gold Rush era. As we studied yesterday, women were expected to remain out
of the public sphere and their stories were not presented in traditional histories in the past.
Today’s lesson will begin with several primary and secondary documents for our class to
study and interpret together in groups and as a whole class. Review the meanings of
primary and secondary documents from students’ word study in Lesson Day One.
Hook.
Display Document 1 (Appendix F) on the image projector or overhead screen.
Read the broadside document aloud and discuss with the class the advertisement for jobs
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and pay offered in California. Display Document 2 (Appendix G) on the image projector
or overhead screen.
Primary Document 1: Broadside depicting emigration to California advertisement.
Primary Document 2: Catherine Haun’s Diary Entry.
Content.
Have students complete the activity page from Document 1, interpreting the meaning of the document through questions. Have students complete the activity page from Document 2 and answer the questions. Ask students at the end of the activities which documents were primary sources and what information was a secondary source.
Homework.
Hand out journal scoring sheet/rubric (Appendix H) and explain to students how they will be completing one page each night in a journal (notebook you give them) about a woman’s journey to the Gold Rush. The woman chosen can be real or fictitious.
Assessment.
Check students’ activity pages for correctness and understanding of concept.
Give credit/no credit for assessment.
Conclusion.
Both modes of travel, by sea or land, were a difficult journey, especially for
women. However, the enticements of money and jobs in California offered a woman a
great opportunity with more pay and independence than she could have in the east.
Students should be able to understand, at the end of the day’s discussions and activities,
the hardships and dangers women experienced when traveling to California. Students
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should also understand that job advertisements were enticing for women, as the pay in
California was almost equal to a man’s wages. This was unheard of in 19th-century society.
Lesson Day Three
(One 75-minute session.)
Introduction.
We now know that women were present on the California frontier during the Gold
Rush. Eastern and foreign-born women traveled over the land and seas to arrive in the chaos of the Gold Rush. Their route traveled and the hardships and struggles they endured will be the focus of today’s lesson.
Hook.
The teacher will use the document reader and computer to display and hear how people, including women, traveled to California in search of a better life using the links below:
Retrieved from http://museumca.org/goldrush/fever09.html
Retrieved from http://museumca.org/goldrush/fever10.html
Transition.
Read aloud diary entries from Mary Jane Megquier and Catherine Haun, highlighting their travels to California (Appendices G and I).
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Content.
Allow time in the computer lab or on a class computer for students to research traveling to California by land or sea during the California Gold Rush era. Students will use the following websites for research.
The Gold Rush
Retrieved from http://www.america101.us/gold_rush/home.html
The Oregon Trail
Retrieved from http://www.america101.us/trail/Oregontrail.html
Gold Fever
Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/
Gold Rush Index
Retrieved from http://www.ellwood.goleta.k12.ca.us/gold_rush.html
Class discussion.
Ask students, in a whole group discussion, the following questions and have them elaborate on their answers.
• What kind of hardships did Gold Rush pioneers suffer on the land/sea routes to
California? (lack of water, loss of animals, sickness, death, little food, getting lost
on the trail, storms, snow, women had to collect buffalo chips for fuel, harness the
oxen to the wagon, fix all the meals, drive the wagon, etc.)
• What was the cost of traveling by land? sea?( Women or men from the East and
Midwest must be upper middle class to travel by sea or Isthmus of Panama
because the fare was expensive, whereas the cost of traveling overland was a lot
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less and many farmers and lower-income families and single men and women
could better afford this mode of travel.)
• Did you find many accounts by women pioneers addressing their travel hardships
by land or sea? If so, what details did they describe in their accounts? (Ex: Eliza
Farnham was separated from her son in Valparaiso, Chile; Mary Jane Megquier
encountered natives and steamy jungles, as well as waiting for six weeks in
Panama for a ship to arrive and take her to California; Sarah Royce described the
heat of the trail and the wastelands of the desert, as well as her necessity to
assume men’s roles on the trail in order to survive; Charlotte Pengra described
gathering buffalo chips for fuel and harnessing ox to the wagons.)
What were the similarities and some of the differences students discovered about the journeys by land and sea? List them on the board. Next, draw a Venn diagram.
Have students draw small Venn diagrams on plain white paper you hand out to them.
Together, complete the diagrams; the teacher completes one on the board while students complete one in their seats. Enter the appropriate similarity or difference, as well as things that were alike, in perspective spots on the diagram.
Students will begin to compile information that includes historical facts that will help teach others about a real woman’s life, significant experiences, and general perspective during the Gold Rush. They will take notes on all information accumulated in today’s lesson.
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Homework.
Complete one page in your journal concerning traveling to California.
Assessment.
Use whatever assessment you choose for time spent by each student researching
travel modes and answering discussion questions.
Conclusion.
As students compare and contrast the journeys women made my land and sea,
they will begin to discover the hardships and role changes that women endured in their
travels to California. Women had to do men’s chores as well as their own on the
overland trail to survive the long and dangerous journey to the gold fields. They
experienced childbirth, illness, and death, and survival depended upon their strength and
fortitude to survive. On the sea, women experienced boredom, lack of food and water,
corrupt society in foreign ports, illness, storms, and death, as well as overcrowded ships
and unruly captains.
Notes to Teacher.
Although pioneering was usually initiated by men, they were by no means the only ones engaged in that endeavor. Many single men—and married men acting as temporary bachelors—seduced by the thought of rich lands and lodes, traveled west, but settlement was often contingent on the possibility of making and maintaining families there. Thousands of women, therefore, trudged the Overland Trail after 1840 when the great westward migration took off. Most of these women were married, and while some were forced to make the move, many others insisted on accompanying their men, for they
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were determined to maintain family unity despite the great potential risks to their health
and safety. Some of the single women married on the trip or soon thereafter, while
numerous married women were widowed. Many of these female pioneers had to deal
with the rigors of the journey while pregnant or while caring for young children. Taken
away from civilization, they were determined to take civilization with them. While the
journey was liberating for a few women, most battled the constant challenges to their
feminine and domestic identities. Catherine Haun, young, newly married, and of the
middle class, was one of the women who met the challenges with considerable strength
and grace.
Lesson Day Four
The journey by sea or land was dangerous and full of wonderment for these
pioneer Gold Rush women. Having revealed some of their stories in the previous lesson,
this lesson will begin to explore these women’s lives as they arrived and lived on the
Gold Rush frontier of California. Continuing with the exploration into Gold Rush
women’s lives in California, today’s lesson will focus upon Biddy Mason, a black slave.
(One 50-minute session.)
Introduction.
There were many industrious and brave women who traveled to California and found a new life on the frontier. In our last lesson we heard diary entries from Mary Jane
Megquier and Catherine Haun, as well as researched the dangers of traveling by sea and
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land. This lesson will focus upon one woman who traveled by land, an African-
American slave named Biddy Mason.
Hook.
Show a picture and information sheet on Grandma Biddy Mason with an image
projector or on the overhead screen hooked up to your computer. You will be able to
enlarge areas and focus upon specific images and information as manipulated by your
using the sliding bar at the top of the image or enlargement and focus.
Retrieved from
http://imgzoom.cdlib.org/Fullscreen.ics?ark=ark:/13030/hb0g50073p/z1&&brand=calisp
here#
Ask the students the following questions as you view the information on Biddy
Mason.
• Why did Biddy’s master try to take her back to the south from California?
(California’s constitution forbade slavery in California. When California became
a state, it entered the union as a “free state,” no slavery allowed. Yet, as we see in
the example of Biddy Mason, many Southerners brought their slaves to the gold
fields and didn’t give them their freedom for several years, or returned home with
them later.)
• How was Biddy able to remain in California? (The sheriff of San Bernardino
arrested her master for keeping slaves.)
• What contributions did Biddy make to black communities in Los Angeles during
the Gold Rush era? (She funded and gave land to churches. She paid for food for
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the poor. She funded an orphanage. She was a midwife and a nurse and risked
her life during a small pox epidemic in Los Angeles).
Transition.
After viewing the image and information, discuss with students her life and role
as a woman Gold Rush participant. Then explain to students that they will, individually,
complete a math activity concerning the life of Biddy Mason.
Content.
Hand out the activity sheets to each student to complete individually (Appendix
J). They will be given 20 minutes to read the information and complete the math activity.
Ask the class to look over their sheets and ask any questions they may have about the
directions of activity. Students are to complete the assignment and read a book, quietly,
when finished, until all assignments are completed.
Homework.
Have students complete a page in their journal about arriving in California.
Conclusion.
From today’s lesson, students should focus upon a woman that began her life as a
slave, and through her strong commitment to freedom, was able to remain in California
and give back to her black community as a strong, spirited humanitarian. Her life was in the shadows and not part of most historical accounts about black women until revisionist and women historians honored her sacrifices and her life with a plaque and monument in
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the late 1990s in Los Angeles. Students should understand how difficult it was for a
black woman in slavery to gain her freedom and success on the frontiers of California.
Assessment.
The activity sheet on Biddy Mason will serve as an assessment of what students
learn about her life in slavery and freedom in California.
Notes to teacher.
Biddy Mason won freedom from slavery, worked as a nurse/midwife, and then became a successful entrepreneur and a generous contributor to social causes. She made a strenuous 2,000-mile cross-country trek with her master, Robert Marion Smith, and his wife, Rebecca. Biddy was responsible for herding the cattle, preparing the meals, acting as a midwife, and caring for the children. In 1851, Smith moved his household to San
Bernardino, California, where Brigham Young was starting a Mormon community. We do not know whether Smith knew that California was admitted to the Union in 1850 as a free state and that slavery was forbidden there. However, in 1856, Biddy Mason petitioned the court and won freedom for herself and for her daughters. She moved to
Los Angeles.
She was very frugal and six years later bought a site of land for $250 in Los
Angeles. She was one of the first black women to own land in Los Angeles. She continued to buy and sell land, making wise decisions in her business and real estate transactions, and her financial fortunes continued to increase until she accumulated a fortune of almost $300,000. She gave generously to charities and provided food and
75 shelter for the poor of all races. She founded the first African Methodist Episcopal church, L.A.’s first black church.
Nearly a century after her death, a tombstone was erected to mark her grave, and
Biddy Mason Day was declared November 16, 1989, honoring her achievements.
Revisionist women’s history sparked this memorial, as more information has been uncovered concerning her life.
Lesson Day Five
(One 50-minute session.)
Introduction.
Yesterday the class learned about Biddy Mason’s contributions to society during the era of California’s Gold Rush. Today’s focus will be upon a woman who hid her identity in order to work in a job she loved.
Hook.
Students will view two videos, one a story of her life and the other an original song telling the story of her life.
Charlie’s Choice: The Life and Times of Charlie Parkhurst
Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFUXbqQMQyM&feature=channel&list=ULThis
Song of “Charlie’s Secret”: Mary K. Croft and “The Secret of Charlie Parkhurst”
Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BOdWcZkn90&feature=related
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Transition.
Today we will focus upon Charlie Parkhurst, a woman who defied the odds.
Show this slide on your document camera or overhead and read aloud to the class,
including the epitaph on the gravestone.
Content.
The teacher will hand out the questionnaire on Charlie Parkhurst (Appendix K) for students to complete while watching the videos and during any discussion concerning their depiction of her life. Break into groups of two, allowing students to share
information as they complete this activity. Next, share the following pictures of “One-
Eyed Charlie” and ask students to decide whether these drawings and pictures are
primary or secondary sources (secondary source, for no actual picture exists of Charlie in
historical archives).
Retrieved from:
www.mcguiresplace.net/Rough,%20Tough%20Charlie%20Parkhurst
Retrieved from:
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/photos-oldwest/Charley Parkhurst.jpg
Charlie Parkhurst/Rough tough
Retrieved from:
http://blogs.wellsfargo.com/guidedbyhistory/2009/03/charlie-parkhurst/
Homework.
Complete one page of your journal about riding with Charlie Parkhurst on her
stage route.
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Conclusion.
One-Eyed Charlie, otherwise known as Charlie Parkhurst, is famous for being a stagecoach driver when women were not allowed to enter this profession. She dressed and acted as a man throughout her life to keep her secret to allow her to become a “jehu.”
Students will gain an understanding of how difficult women’s lives became when they took on male roles during this period of time in California history. Our next lesson will address women participating in different roles during the Gold Rush.
Lesson Day Six
(One 50-minute session.)
Introduction.
The last few lessons have addressed two women with very different lives and roles in frontier California. Today’s lesson will introduce the histories of women entrepreneurs, artists, actresses, miners, pie makers, and others who were present during the California Gold Rush. These women will set the stage for a historical poster presentation for students to create in the next few lessons as part of a lesson lab about women during this era.
Hook.
Show the PowerPoint of Women of the California Gold Rush and discuss/answer the questions posed on each slide (Appendix L).
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Transition.
The women, primary and secondary documents, slideshows, and movies previously studied in the beginning lessons of this unit helps provide a backdrop for today’s historical journey into JoAnn Levy’s website on Gold Rush Women included in the PowerPoint. The slides about Juanita, the first woman hung in California, and Dame
Shirley, author of the Shirley Letters, considered to be the best primary source for life in
the gold camps of California, provide a backdrop for our next few days’ lesson lab plans.
Content.
Begin discussing each slide in the PowerPoint presentation. Break students into
groups of three and assign each group a number. Then, as each slide is shown, call out
that number and have that group read aloud the slide. Ask each student in that group a
question from the slide. If a student is unable to answer, open up the discussion to the
whole class. The teacher should also be ready to give feedback and interpretations of
pictures, as well as answer questions that students are unable to answer. The teacher
should guide the discussion and give feedback as needed
Homework.
Complete one page in your journal. Begin writing about your woman’s
experiences in California.
Notes to teacher.
Answers to PowerPoint slide questions concerning information and pictures.
Slide 1: There is a woman in a bonnet and dress standing between two male
miners at a sluice box near a river. She appears to have a basket with her. The men have
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shovels and appear to be mining for gold, as we can see picks, buckets, a sluice box,
water and material in the sluice box, buckets, and a river. The woman is not dressed for
panning for gold or she would be in pants and a shirt, etc. She appears to have a basket in
her hand, so she may be bringing food to the miners.
Slide 3: The broadside is a sheet of paper that is advertising something and is
usually nailed to a post or building for public display. This broadside is advertising for
people, men and women, to come by ship to California. It is advertising jobs for women
that pay as much as jobs for men. It is meant to lure women to the gold fields of
California by offering them good wages and jobs.
Slide 4: The ocean is rough, wild, and dangerous around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. Many ships are lost at sea due to the swells and waves that could envelop a sailing vessel and sink it. A passenger aboard this ship, probably, was down below in a lower birth seasick and miserable, fearing for her life and praying for safe harbor for the ship. Elizabeth Farnham might have experienced this feeling as she sailed around the Horn.
Slide 5: There is a chain, horse shoe, a curve board for, perhaps, a breastplate for the horse to pull the wagon, a wagon hub with broken spokes, a shover, a sock or boot, a hate, and a dead horse with his ribs showing. This scene could be saying that someone or
some people made it so far and found no food for their horse and the travelers died. This
is a sad scene of death on the trail. Perhaps, also, they died of cholera and no food.
Catherine Haun might have witnessed such a scene on her journey to California.
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Slide 6: The guide was written for men and not for women, since few women were expected on the trails to the Gold Rush. The picture on the front, also, does not show a woman, only men.
Slide 7: There is no legend or compass rose that gives information about the map for understanding symbols or direction.
Slide 8: The travelers are crossing a river and a monkey is in a palm tree. One mule is rising up and looks like it may have thrown off its passenger. There is a native on
a white mule wearing a Panamanian hat, white trousers, and a shirt. They are in the
jungle hearing the exotic animal sounds and seeing new plants and fauna.
Slide 10: At the top of the sheet there are miners searching for gold, striking it
rich, and filling a bag with lots of nuggets. Down the sides there is a woman with a
bonnet, indicating she is on the journey by trail to California. There are other men behind
her with shovels and bags. There is a man kissing a woman, indicating he is leaving her
behind to go the gold fields. A man is advertising something on a sign and more men are
following him with loads of gold, supposedly coming home from California. Golden
measure refers to a measure of music or, in this case, California gold, and a golden fleece
is a piece of goat or sheep’s coat of gold, worth more than a man could imagine.
Slide 11: The Frenchmen think they can bring their wives and children to the gold fields and have a servant do all the work mining. The master stands over the servant and supervises his work holding a stick. The servant is in a white tunic for working, while the master is dressed in a coat and pants watching the servant dig up gold. The view of
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the “cult of domesticity” is that women do not work but take care of their children and
follow their husband wherever he may go.
Slide 12: This picture infers that women collect the gold and sit watching their
men mine for the gold. She is wearing a dress and has a parasol, which means she is not
working and is relaxing, keeping the sun from herself. She is holding a bag of gold that he has mined from the rock. The role of women, as this picture shows, is to relax and watch the man bring in all the gold nuggets. This is a spoof on women’s roles. Most women worked hard and became entrepreneurs, bringing in the cash flow to keep their families alive, while men worked their claims and mostly had no luck striking it rich!
Slide 13: In this picture the man is stuffing women in a box to send them to
California because there is a lack of women in the Gold Rush regions. Women help to socialize and civilize the men on the frontier. They need wives. The image above this picture/cartoon shows men with a wheelbarrow filling it up with large nuggets of gold lying on the ground.
Slide 17: Women were vessels if purity and innocence, according to 19th-century codes of behavior for women. For a woman to sell her jewelry and buy products to sell, or to become an entrepreneur, was not an image that women on the East Coast displayed or practiced. However, Gold Rush women had suffered many hardships and found many ways to economically support their families, since gold was not an easy thing to find and riches were not found easily.
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Conclusion.
Women were present in all geographic and economic areas of the Gold Rush.
Historians are beginning to uncover more women’s diaries and journals that detail their
lives during this era. The PowerPoint is only a window into the life and times of some of
these women Gold Rush participants and their contributions to the economic and social life on the Gold Rush frontier. Native women were present during this time, also. The following lessons address their plight during this historical period in California history.
Lesson Days Seven and Eight
(Two 50-minute sessions.)
Introduction.
White women were present in small numbers during the beginning of the Gold
Rush era. Miners turned to Indian women for pleasure and to help them survive the harsh
lives they were experiencing on the California frontier. Albert Hurtado, author of
Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender and Culture in Old California, suggests that economic, political, and power relationships influenced cultural development of society during this time of history and women were used as chess pieces, their influence and power determined by their ethnic and cultural background. Native American women were on the lowest rung of the ladder. M. Kat Anderson, in her book Tending the Wild, refers to the environmental aspects of the Gold Rush and the devastation of Indian lands, as well as destruction of California's natural resources. This, she claims, was due to the lack of
stewardship by miners. Heretofore, California resources had been tended as renewable
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resources by the Native population. These authors’ views portray the female Native
American as one who preserved the natural flow and balance of nature in the California environment and as an intimate partner for Gold Rush miners used as a pawn in the cycle of developing a civilized society in California.
Hook.
Watch the You Tube Video, Gold Rush Indians 2, and discuss its content with the whole class.
Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkmTLaT7iVI
Transition.
Discuss the images from the video and any impressions the students may have concerning this video. Use the following URLs for further information:
http://americanindiantah.com/lesson_plans/ml_NorthernCalifornia.html
http://www.originalvoices.org/Homepage.htm
Content.
Lesson I: See Teacher Notes at the end of this lesson plan.
Discuss the implications of the Gold Rush era on the Native American population.
Describe the changing environment and damage to Native lands, as well as the laws
passed that degraded Indians to the level of slaves and opened the door to “massacres
and murders” in Native villages. Use the Elmo or overhead projector to display the
following items for a whole class discussion:
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• Describe the landscape and environment of California prior to 1846 and the
beginning of the Gold Rush era.
• Describe the landscape and environment of California during and after the Gold
Rush era.
• How were Native Americans treated during the 1850s in California? What were
their rights?
• What laws were passed to degrade and control the Native American population in
California from 1850-1865?
• Describe and explain how Native Americans, especially women, were treated by
the miners and immigrants migrating to the gold fields of California?
• Why were Indians called “Diggers”?
Lesson II (Optional for more mature classes): See Teacher Notes.
• Describe and discuss the changing influence of culture involving power and
influence of women during the Spanish Mission era, Mexican era, and the Gold
Rush/statehood era in California. Be sure to include the treatment of women and
Native Americans and the “Indian question” (What to do with Indians?) during
each era.
• How did the Spanish clergy handle the problem of enculturizing and reducing the
powerful influence of the Native American in California?
• What were the missionaries’ plans for enculturation and gaining power and
influence for Catholicism and the Spanish culture in California?
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• During the Mexican era, how were Native Americans treated and what were their
rights?
• How were women viewed and treated during this era, especially Native women?
• During the Gold Rush era, how were Native Americans treated and what were
their rights? How were women viewed and treated during this era?
Assessment.
Have students look at this drawing (Appendix M). Students then form groups of
four and discuss the artist’s interpretation. Students should write a half-page response in
their groups and choose a reporter to report their findings and comments to the class.
Conclusion.
The attempted genocide of the Native Americans in California, as well as the destruction to California’s environment, are documented facts and part of the history of
the Gold Rush era in California. It is not an easy topic to discuss and is a sensitive topic when we look at the inhumane treatment the Native Americans received during this time.
However, we must understand and learn from our historical mistakes in order not to
repeat such awful, historical episodes in our future.
The past lessons provide a background for the following learning lab lessons, in
which students will create a poster based upon research and information gained about a historic woman from this era presented with primary and secondary documents.
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Notes to teacher.
The Native American population in early California lived a fruitful, peaceful, quiet, pastoral life. They gathered acorns for making soups and mush; they gathered bear grass from the marshy meadows by rivers and streams to dry and make beautiful baskets; they hunted the forests for animals to provide meat; and they gathered berries and nuts for food in the fall. There were minor skirmishes and disagreements between tribes, but the hunter-gatherer communities lived, most of the time, peacefully and contentedly as they lived in harmony with the earth, preserving the delicate balance of nature by always giving back to the earth and preserving the natural abundance of food, animal life, and environment.
Along the western edges of the Modoc Plateau in California lies the Central
Valley with its dry climate and rugged foothills. This was the home of the Maidu, the
Yana, the Nisenan, the Yahi (Ishi’s tribe), and the Konkow. The creeks and streams flowing down from the Sacramento River had an abundance of white oaks that provided the acorns for the dietary staples of these people. The huge fall harvest was an important event. Gathering was women’s work. The acorns had to be dried, hulled, and pounded into flour, then placed in a sandy pit and leached by pouring hot water over a bundle of bulrush twigs to remove the tannic acid that makes them bitter. The flour could then be made into mush or baked for bread. Seeds, berries, roots bulbs, and tubers were dug and gathered. Fish, deer, rabbits, and game birds provided meat (Anderson, 2005).
On the North Coast of California, similar events took place. This was the home of the giant redwood forest and rugged mountains of the Klamath, Trinity, Shasta, and
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Siskiyou areas of California. This region was home to many Native people, like the
Tolowa, the Wiyot, and Yurok of the coast; the Chimariko, Hoopa, Karuk, Shasta, and
Whilkut peoples further inland; and the Nomlaki, the Wiyot, and the Yana in the south.
Most of these tribes depended on rivers like the Eel, the Klamath, and the Trinity for
subsistence. Salmon were netted and women gathered bear grass in the forests and on the
river banks to feed their families and to make Indian baskets for storage, cooking, and
carrying their young. The California Indians had a rich culture and enjoyed California’s
natural abundance of food.
In 1849 this all changed. Indians found themselves trespassers on their own lands where their ancestors had lived for centuries. Nonrenewable gold was uncovered at the expense of the renewable fisheries on which many Indians depended. Gold panning, cradling, and sluicing muddied rivers, devastating the major salmon runs (Anderson,
2005). Joaquin Miller describes the failed attempts of Indians along the Klamath River to fish after it had been mined for gold: “The trout turned on their sides and died; the salmon from the sea came in but rarely, What few did come were pretty safe from the spears of the Indians, because of the colored water; so that supply, which was more than all others for their bread and their meat, was entirely cut off” (Anderson, 2005, p.86).
Indians practiced renewal of the land in their daily lives. The Gold Rush pioneers used the land for what they could get without thought of “renewable resources.” They took the gold, decimated the environment, and left mayhem and destruction behind in once- peaceful Native lands of clear running rivers, fruitful supplies of food, and beautiful, untouched wild scenery. They replaced this beautiful landscape with muddy waters,
88 churned-up land leaving piles of boulders and rocks behind; mercury-laden rivers and streams; and burned-out Indian villages where once women and children had gathered food and woven baskets.
The Gold Rush brought many men and few women to this lawless frontier called
California. Indians were scorned and treated with less dignity than the lowest human on this earth. The women were enslaved, raped and exploited for all their womanly values, and then cast aside by miners to starve to death. Women who had been valued and looked upon with pride in their tribal communities were reduced to prostitutes and slaves to help their tribal families survive.
The following two accounts tell the sad story of the women and children and the suffering that they endured during the early statehood of California.
Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/sfeature/natives_02.html, source for the two following accounts:
The following excerpt is from the historian James Rawls.
I had the occasion of visiting with an elderly Pomo woman several years
ago, who shared with me a story from her family history. She said her village was
attacked somewhere along the Navarro River, by a group of white raiders. She
thought perhaps they were trying to seize children for the Indian slave trade at the
time. She wasn't sure. But she knew that they were under attack.
And so a native woman fled with her family, trying to get her children
away. She left her smallest child, which was still in a cradleboard, under some
brush, and got away across the river. After the whites had left, she returned,
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trying to find her family. And she could see that her smallest child was still apparently safely there, under this brush. But when she lifted it up, she found that the child had been pinned to the earth with a knife that the raiders apparently had regarded that child as too small to worry with, but they managed to kill the child instead.
And as this woman told me that story, the tears came down her cheeks as
if this had just happened. And that made me realize that even though these events
we're talking about occurred 150 years or more ago, they still are living memories
of native people in California. There are wounds that are still unhealed and are
very tender and very deep.
The following excerpt is from April Moore, Nisenan Maidu.
One of [my grandmother's] stories that really stuck with me, it was so
emotional, the way she portrayed it. It was an event that happened to her aunt and
her two great-aunts. It was some time during the early part of the morning. These
aunts, two aunts and this baby and other family members were living out in this
small village site, and they'd heard this noise, and it had woken them up. They
weren't quite sure what it was.
And suddenly all this noise started up – the gunfire, the screaming, and the
shouting – and then they heard all these different people screaming and shouting.
So they ran out to look, to see what was going on, and had seen these soldiers on
horses that were taking people and killing them, slamming children against rocks
and trees, and just running down men and shooting them. And they were
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violating the bodies by cutting them up. So these two aunts grabbed the baby
because they couldn't find their sister, the mother of the baby, because she'd fled
in fear, apparently.
So they grabbed this infant and ran as far as they could go, and hid.
And in order to keep the baby from crying and drawing attention to them,
they would put their hand over her nose and her mouth, like that, to stop the baby
from crying but not cut off her air, just long enough to keep her quiet.
And eventually the sun rose. And they stayed hidden until it was mid-
morning and they couldn't hear anything. And they went back and found just all
this carnage. So they gathered what they could find, which wasn't much because
they basically burned this whole village site down, and walked to the nearest
village that they knew of, and informed this group of people, who were actually
their relatives also, that this had happened, to beware.
Beyond the environmental and tribal devastation and death, there existed in the
Gold Rush a political and economic imbalance among the races and ethnic groups in
California, especially between Anglos and Native Americans. To the white men coming to the gold fields of California, Native women were only pawns to be used for sexual pleasure and then discarded. They had no land or economic value to the white men.
They were politically branded as outcasts and undesirable in the socializing and civilizing forces taking place during the 1850s. As California became a state and the civilizing influences of the Eastern women were coming into play, more white women arrived on the frontier. Native American women were cast aside and became unimportant in the
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scheme of socialization and power. They had no power and no influence; therefore, they
were not considered a viable resource to further a white man’s political and economic
future.
Gender and sex had political and economic value on the California frontier for
Native women. First, the Spanish missionaries came and tried to “wipe out” the Native
population by building missions and having Spanish men marry Native women to have
children and indoctrinate them into the Catholic religion and Spanish culture. The
Spanish missionaries hoped to influence the population and ownership of the land, as
well as influence the cultural control of California. This failed. Next, the Mexican
occupation of California occurred. They created and developed large ranches and land
holdings. Many Mexicans married Native women and had children. However, these
women were treated well and had respect and a place in the cultural power and influence
during this time period. They had rights and were treated respectfully by their Spanish
husbands. Then, the Gold Rush era emerged on the quiet scene and the “World Rushed
In” with many cultures, ethnic groups, and people vying for power and domination of
California. The Anglo white man dominated and influenced history from this point on.
Indians were treated disrespectfully and scorned. Native women were abused, abducted, raped, and cast aside to die or starve to death. Some became indentured servants to white families, others became prostitutes for survival. California law was against the Natives and the U.S. policies and treaties were written to control and “rid California” of Native influence and culture. Use the following URL for explanation of laws and treaties:
Retrieved from http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/02/14/02-014.pdf
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The power of Native women was reduced in this new climate of statehood and their economic worth was next to nothing; therefore, these women suffered much abuse and humiliation during this period of history.
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If you look at the maps of the tribal lands and the Gold Rush areas in California, you will see why conflicting cultural contacts occurred by realizing that these were
Native lands that Gold Rush miners controlled and occupied. They pushed the Natives to the outlying areas of desert and drier lands, which yielded little food and resources for
94 their survival. The Native Americans reacted by raiding and stealing food and supplies, thereby angering the miners and causing conflicts that erupted into massacres and near genocide for the Native Americans.
Lesson Day Nine
(One 75-minute session.)
Introduction.
From the research presented in the previous lessons on Gold Rush women, today’s learning lab lesson will focus on preparing a historical poster about a Gold Rush woman, including primary and secondary documents, as well as maps and pictures, based upon the knowledge gained in previous lessons, and further research to be performed in the next three days in class and at home.
Hook.
Using the overhead or document reader, display a model of the poster (Appendix
N). Discuss each section with the class.
Transition.
Divide the class into groups of two to begin research on their woman.
Content.
Divide students into three groups to go to different areas of the classroom or computer lab to begin their research. Hand out research guideline papers to each group.
Be sure all groups have paper and pencils with which to take notes. Each group that uses a computer should have a blank disk to save information on (provided by the teacher for
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computer use). Explain that all they need to do is Google their woman’s name and
“California Gold Rush woman” to begin their research. The teacher should provide books from county and local libraries for classroom research use. If using a computer lab, all students can use computers. If no computer lab is available, divide students so some may go to the library for research and some may use class computers. Also provide books in the classroom (use county, university, and local library sources) for students to
access for research. Supervise students and circulate throughout the room to help further
students’ research skills and answer any questions. All students return to classroom after
50 minutes of research.
Homework.
Enter one page about your woman’s life in California.
Assessment.
Supervise students and assess their success in researching about their woman
using any method that is easy for you to use, i.e., checklist, etc.
Conclusion.
As students research their California Gold Rush woman they will become familiar with various forms of information to be used on their poster board presentation.
Lesson Day 10
Students will culminate their research and begin to prepare their backboard and journal to present to the class as part of tomorrow’s lesson.
(One 75-minute session.)
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Introduction.
Today’s lesson will continue with students researching a historical Gold Rush
woman and preparing a poster presentation of this woman. Time will be given for
students to use online sources in the computer lab, classroom, and library.
Hook.
Display the poster rubric (Appendix O).
Transition.
Divide students into groups of two according to their research study topic.
Content.
Divide students into three groups according to where they conducted research in yesterday’s lesson. Rotate these groups: library to classroom; classroom to computer lab; computer lab to classroom. Handout discs to the library group for saving their research.
Circulate through the room and help students with research questions and begin helping them to organize their poster topics. Students will work 50 minutes on their research and return to the classroom. Remind students with discs to put their Gold Rush woman’s name on them and store them in their desks.
Homework.
Students should enter one page about the life of their woman in their journals.
Assessment.
Use a checklist or any assessment that is easy for you to assess each student’s progress in their lesson lab research
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Conclusion.
Students should have wrapped up their research. Students should be ready to start
organizing their research notes and downloads from the computer to begin their posters
tomorrow.
Lesson Day 11
(One 75-minute session.)
Introduction.
Continuing with the research from yesterday, students will be given the whole
afternoon to conduct research and begin preparing their backboard/journal presentation.
Hook.
Display the model poster on the overhead or document reader. Read an excerpt
from a fictional diary entry of a Gold Rush woman that models what the students will
need to read aloud from their own journals.
Transition.
Break students into their groups of two to begin their research for their poster
presentations.
Content.
Allow students to choose the area – classroom, library, computer lab – for completing their research study. Be sure to monitor how many students go to each area to avoid overcrowding. Help students in the room begin their poster board/journal presentations.
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Homework.
Complete last journal entry tonight.
Conclusion.
Have students store all their research materials in a spot in the room. Tomorrow will be the last day to complete their research and posters.
Lesson Day 12
(One 50-minute session.)
Introduction
Students will culminate their research and begin to prepare their backboard and journal to present to the class as part of tomorrow’s lesson.
Hook.
Display model poster (Appendix N). Model how to present a poster presentation
(use your own method of presentation to model it).
Transition.
Students will break into their groups of two in the classroom.
Content.
Have students find a corner of the room to complete their posters and begin practicing their presentation of their Gold Rush woman. Be sure to remind them to choose one of their fictional diary entries that each student will read aloud after their presentation of their Gold Rush woman poster.
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Homework.
Practice reading aloud diary entry. Be sure all entries are accounted for and
included in your journal to be turned in tomorrow in class.
Assessment.
Check all students’ posters. Remind students to look at their rubric scoring guides
(Appendix O) and remind them to check their rubric to be sure they’ve met all
requirements.
Conclusion.
Gold Rush women were an important part of the social fabric of the California
Gold Rush. Students should now have an understanding that history, as written, should
always be questioned and verified by research and collaborating evidence from many
sources. New revisionist histories should be compared with traditional histories on the
same subject to expose missing information and interpretations. One should always
search for as many sources of information as possible to corroborate what historians write
about past events.
Lesson Days 13 and 14
(Two one-hour sessions.)
Introduction.
Students will present their research on a historical Gold Rush woman to the class.
Previous lessons and student research will provide the historical backdrop for this
presentation. Students will also read an entry from their journal/diaries concerning their
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fictionalized account of a woman traveling and living in Gold Rush California in the
1850s.
Hook.
Read aloud an excerpt from Luzena Stanley Wilson’s diary of her first day arriving in the gold camps of California (Appendix P).
Transition.
Have students break into their groups of two to present their posters and diary excerpts.
Content.
Note to teacher: Prepare number cards from 1 to 15 for each group of two students.
Teacher will hand out number cards, randomly, to each group of two students.
Students will then listen for their number to be called, signaling their turn to present their presentations. Both students will come to the front of the class with their poster and diary entries. Remind students that you will be filling out the rubric and grading their presentations. The journals will be graded, separately, when each student turns their journal in to the teacher at the end of class. A rubric will be used to grade the journal, as
well as the presentation of the poster. Students receive individual grades on their
journal/diary entries, but a group grade for their poster presentation.
Assessment.
Using the scoring guide for rubrics on posters and journals, score each student’s
contribution of their posters and journals. Administer the Pre/Post Test (Appendix E) to
101 all students in class at the end of the presentations. Complete both the poster rubric and the journal rubric for each student as part of their assessment for this unit. Score the oral presentation any way you wish, as students are just learning to give oral reports.
Conclusion.
At the end of all students’ presentations, the total population of students in class will have a more accurate view of the Gold Rush era and the women who participated in its inception, civilizing and socializing the mining towns and diggings. These strong women created a new social arena and altered the “cult of domesticity” that tied them to traditional, 19th-century Victorian values and moral systems. These Gold Rush women underwent a transformation of gender role adaptations, as well as civilizing the social atmosphere of frontier California.
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Results
The story of women’s influence during the Gold Rush of California is one that needs to be told. New generations of female students inhabit our classrooms and when they read their required social studies textbooks and engage in discussions concerning what they have read, they learn about very few women. The focus of historical accounts is written about men, from men’s points of view, and women’s stories are not the focus for textbook authors. Students become aware of our American history through accounts of men’s heroic lives, but little text is devoted to women’s heroism. Using diaries and journals adds to the information students learn in the traditional texts about women’s experiences during the California Gold Rush concerning the lives and times of Victorian women during the Gold Rush.
Limitations of the Research
Searching through online sources, books, journals, state parks, and museums, I unearthed remarkable information to help me design my lessons on women’s experiences during the Gold Rush. Information obtained from primary sources brought a new perspective in history to the students in the fourth-grade class to which I presented my content chapter lessons. I tested each lesson I presented and made changes daily in the lesson plan, as necessary, but my time with the class was short and I was able to present only five days of the lesson plan.
I presented the Gold Rush pre-test to the fourth-grade students and obtained a sample of their previous knowledge and understanding of this period of time. Twenty- three students took the test, and this sample illuminated their lack of historical
103 information concerning the history of the California Gold Rush. Even though my pilot group was from only one classroom, I realized I needed to include background information concerning this period of time in order to present my focus on women. I also was unable to present the post-test and, therefore, was unable to assess how much information from my lessons students remembered. I expect teachers, using this curriculum, to judge what information is needed as background to enable the presentation to their class about women.
Teachers with limited technology may find this curriculum difficult to present. It involves several PowerPoint presentations and video segments. A teacher without access to a computer will not be able to view the videos, but can print out the PowerPoint presentation ahead of time, as well as the primary documents included in the Appendices section. These resources can be shared on an overhead projector, although it will take more time and effort on the teacher’s part to prepare the lesson. Hopefully, for students’ research and poster project, a teacher can find several computers for their access. This curriculum would be difficult for fourth-grade students if no computer were available for their use, due to the fact that most information on women can be found on websites, journal articles, and newspapers. To access this wealth of information without a computer for students would require a tremendous amount of teacher time, researching and gathering books, printing out information ahead of time for these lessons, and organizing the information for the groups. It would make this lesson plan very difficult for a teacher to use.
Another problem a teacher might have to work around is the presentation of
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videos. The curriculum hook of two videos provides background information for
students. Without these videos, a teacher would have to spend extra time scaffolding
students’ understanding and provide their own summary of this period of time.
Implications of Future Research
The story of women’s influence during the California Gold Rush is a perspective
that has been ignored during traditional histories of this period. The women’s history
movement, as well as new revisionist history, has opened up the gender question in
historical accounts. Much information is still hidden in family papers and trunks.
Without this information, much history lays dormant and may have been discarded by
families. Only by bringing the importance of women’s historical accounts to the
forefront of academic accounts presented in the classroom will the inquiry process
concerning women’s history be generated, teaching students to unearth these hidden
documents, perhaps in their own family treasures or neighbors’ and family friends’ documents. Ignorance of the importance of family genealogies and women’s experiences has kept this history hidden. Our youth need to be enlightened to the fact that history is everywhere. It doesn’t exist only in their textbooks. Teachers’ lack of time and the era of teaching to the state tests have put research and the inquiry process for students on the back burner. Today in the classroom many teachers lack the time, knowledge, and information to give their students a better understanding of historical episodes from all cultural, gender, and ethnic perspectives. Our textbooks provide only a small sliver of information due to their breadth and need to include the major points from traditional historical accounts told from men’s perspectives. This bias in our textbooks provide
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students with a gender specific view of history, that of a man’s written account.
Another area of further research concerns Native women’s accounts and foreign-
born women’s accounts of this period of history. Our history of the United States comes
from an amalgamation of families brought together from all areas of the world. Much
research still needs to be done concerning women from other countries that came to
California during the Gold Rush. Where are their stories to be found? Do these women’s
accounts lie in family papers around the world? How can these hidden women’s
accounts be discovered? The answers to these questions can be found in newspapers,
anecdotal storiesm, and oral stories, but they deserve academic study to round out the history of the Gold Rush. California’s greatest population growth in history, per capita, occurred during this historical period of time. Women were there! We only have some of their stories available in historical accounts and much research needs to be done to unearth other accounts from around the world of women’s experiences.
The ethnic, cultural, and Native American experiences are of great interest and would add important information to the story but are only briefly mentioned and are beyond the scope of this research project, the ultimate goals of which are to help students develop a curiosity about women’s history and to introduce them to the idea of becoming historians, doing history rather than memorizing history. It is my fondest wish that this curriculum will inspire young women and young men to research in their own past histories and uncover a body of knowledge about women, a history that may still be hidden in their family genealogies and trunks of historical papers and artifacts.
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Appendices
Appendix A
Chronology of 16 women of the Gold Rush era and their influence: civilizing/socializing California Gold Rush towns.
The allure of gold was like a magnet pulling people to California. As gold fever intensified more emigrants came by sea and land. Seagoing emigrants found that travel was expensive. The first letters written home were filled with enthusiasm and excitement, which soon gave way to descriptions of the tedious, dangerous, boring voyage. Some emigrants sought what appeared to be a faster route by sailing the Atlantic coast of the
United States to the Caribbean, then crossing the continent by land at Panama, Nicaragua, or at several parts of Mexico to ensure they would get to the gold fields early. The heat, humidity, animals, and insects made their treks through the rainforest harrowing and agonizing, and often they would have to wait at the Pacific shore for ships to carry them on to San Francisco. Other emigrants elected to travel overland and had to determine which route to follow. The land journey was long and tedious and filled with epidemic disease, such as cholera, long periods without water, or snow-blocked passes in the
Sierras that starved and killed many along the trail.
1848: Elizabeth Jane Wimmer was a Mormon who came overland from Utah to work as a cook/laundry woman at Sutter's Fort when gold was discovered. She, ultimately, proved the nugget found was indeed gold by dropping it in her bucket of lye and washing and sifting through the remains to prove it was gold. She contributed to the beginning of the Gold Rush era by settling the question of proving if the nugget was
115
really gold and settling the argument the men were having at Sutter's Fort concerning the
“truth of the gold find.” She may have prevented fights and angry behavior as men tend to argue with more physical violence when a woman is not present.
(Eighty thousand or more gold seekers headed for California. It's hard to say how
many women were among the forty-niners. Some say 2% while others say 10% or more.
Census figures don't tell the whole story because prostitutes, children, and Indians were not included. Those not classified as “ladies” are hard to track during the Gold Rush.
The “real ladies” were light-skinned English speakers, generally North American. Proper
ladylike dress and behavior, even in the mining camps, was expected. The Victorian Era
was ever present and the influence of the “American image of womanhood” was even felt
in the gold diggings as women of “color” were mistreated and looked down upon when
“white women” arrived. Before the “presence of white women,” Indian, French,
Chinese, and Mexican women were revered and sometimes even treated with respect, but
on the arrival of “white, Anglo women,” a class society began.)
1848-1858: Ah Toy: Prostitution came to represent the lax moral standards and
happier times of the pre-moralized West. The West had to wait for morals: in the early
years it was too rugged, the frenzy of discover, despair, and fortune making it difficult for
the gentle woman of the East to soften the West with her morals, churches, and domestic
life. It was mean and male, crude and rude, loud and proud, and was not a place for a
faint and grail woman of Victorian times. “The Western prostitute was, for a while, a
truly American woman; someone that would not exist again until women could vote. Not
only did she represent the entrepreneurial spirit, but also fluidity, the restless spirit,
116 evolution in reaction to the environment and individualism—one of which women would experience for fifty years. The frontier was the first time that women were able to profit immensely off of being women. Prostitutes held such an elevated position in society that the prestige drew women to the profession—something that puzzled the East. ‘Hats were removed and bows executed as the prostitutes passed on the streets, they were mentioned politely in the press,’ and welcome at society functions, such as concerts and plays. In the early frontier, women were scarce to the point where they were almost a novelty.
‘What a woman was did not matter so much as the fact that she was a woman’”
(Holman, ?). “In a frontiersman’s vocabulary, the term lady was not necessarily linked with manners and morals. It implied old-fashioned quality of charity, faith, energy, generosity, cleanliness and loyalty to friends” (Holman, ?). Ah Toy came to San
Francisco in 1850, across the Pacific from Canton. Her husband died aboard ship. She was very beautiful and was the first Chinese prostitute in San Francisco’s Barbary Coast.
She enamored herself with several influential white men who helped her buy her freedom from slavery and she then established herself as an importer of prostitutes from China.
She worked as a famous madam and won many court trials because of her acquisition of the English language and her influence among the wealthy, elite white men of San
Francisco. However, because she was a “woman of color” she had to go to court, whereas many white prostitutes and women never crossed the thresholds of the judicial system because of their “white” heredity.
1849: Sarah Royce came across the plains with her young daughter and husband before settling in Grass Valley. Sarah Royce's story tells of her family's trip across the
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continent in a covered wagon and her observations on the life style and morals in the
various mining camps she lived in afterward. Sarah's Christian faith shines through her
various struggles as she trusts God. Sarah's domestic skills earned her $100 a day at a
Weaverville boardinghouse and supported her family while in this gold town.
1849: Mary Ellen Pleasant. Domestic skill also benefited Mary Ellen Pleasant,
probably the most famous free woman of African descent. She traveled overland to San
Francisco in 1849 with an inheritance of money gained from the death of her husband.
She was an excellent cook and her reputation spread. She auctioned off her culinary
services to the highest bidder: $500. She invested her savings with an accounting firm,
West and Harper, and went on to much greater success and became a formidable woman
during her time.
1849: Elizabeth Farnham, former matron of Sing Sing. She published an open letter in a New York newspaper soliciting 100 to 130 virtuous and efficient women to
accompany her to California, believing that the women would be one of the surest checks
upon many of the evils that are apprehended there. Applicants provided testimonials
from their clergymen as to their character, and brought $250 to cover sea voyage. Only three women ultimately made the voyage around the Horn with Mrs. Farnham and arrived in California. She went on to further women’s rights and “civilize” the frontier of
California in the 1850s.
1849-1850: Mary Jane Megquier, a doctor's wife from Maine, left her children
behind with relatives. She traveled by sea and spent two months in Panama waiting for a
ship to California. She was older than most women coming to California but had an
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indomitable spirit to be successful. She opened hotel/boarding houses in mining towns
and through the dirt, lawlessness, long hours, and backbreaking work, she fed and housed the miners.
1850: Margaret Frink proved that women as well as men went for the “gold” as she opened her hotel and fed the miners. Danger, discomfort, and deprivation surrounded her journey to Sacramento. Her overland journey included seeing people starving and sharing what little her family had with others. Her family traveled alone and made it to success in the gold fields of California.
1850: Luzena Wilson, her husband, and two children forged through the travels across the plains to the gold fields of California and settled in Nevada City diggings. She opened a boardinghouse and she became a banker for the miners' gold and provided needed lodging, food, and safety for miners’ monies. She used her entrepreneur skills to build a fortune while providing a needed service to the miners, as well as civilizing their behavior in her boardinghouse, as her presence as a white woman brought forth better moral behavior and manners from her patrons. She paid the taxes on her local church and helped to build Protestantism into her community.
1850: Nancy Gooch (Monroe Family): Nancy Gooch and Peter Gooch were brought to California across the plains by their owners, as they were slaves. Shortly after,
California became a free state and they were freed. Nancy worked for the miners, performing domestic chores such as cooking, washing and sewing. She saved every penny and bought the freedom of her son and his wife from Missouri. They all settled in
Coloma with Nancy and her husband. There is not much information on her life in
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Coloma, but she was a remarkable woman with a spirit that embodied women pioneers in
Gold Rush country. She was admired by the community of Coloma during her life and brought forth better racial relationships amongst the town members because of her unyielding determination to provide for her family.
1851: Biddy Mason drove sheep across the prairie from Mississippi to California behind 300 wagons of her master's wagon train. She worked as a midwife and nurse, and arriving in Los Angeles went to the sheriff and secured her freedom in 1856. She became well regarded as a nurse and midwife, assisting in hundreds of births to mothers of all races and social classes. She became financially independent and was one of the first black women to own land in Los Angeles. She crossed racial lines and was one of the strong women who began the road to racial, as well as gender, equality in California.
1851: Charley Parkhurst drove the Wells Fargo Stagecoach dressed as a man
from Santa Cruz to the gold diggings of the Sierras. If Eliza Farnham opened the door a
crack for independent, self-supporting women, Charlotte Parkhurst opened it with a bang.
She first dressed as a male to make her escape from an orphanage, and probably never
again dressed as a woman. Employment for a young girl in those times was out of the
question, but boys could apprentice themselves in a business and Charlie did just that.
She handled a team of horses as well as any man and came west to California to drive
stagecoaches on nearly every road in the Mother Lode. Her reputation grew as being one
of the safest and fastest drivers in California. Only upon her death was her identity as a woman exposed. She was probably the first woman to vote in California, although she voted as a man with the signature “Charlie Parkhurst.” She perhaps embodied the
120 essence of women dressing as a man in order to pursue a career or job that wasn't open to
“white women” or any woman in the Victorian Age.
1851: Juanita was the first woman hung in California in Downieville, as she stabbed and killed an intruder into her home. She embodies the disrespect shown to
“women of color” when the “white ladies from the East” arrived to remind men of “true womanhood.” Had she been white, I daresay she never would have been convicted.
1851: Mary Ballou and her husband ran a boardinghouse in the gold mining town of Negro Bar, California. She profited from the rough housing, violence, and high prices during the Gold Rush. She describes the limited number of women among the flood of male miners and how important they were to each other for companionship and consolation. She has “hogs in her kitchen” that she constantly runs out and she also washed out gold in a cradle during her time in Negro Bar. She saves a man's life in her dining room by pleading with one man not to shoot because of his three children and wife. She reminds him of his humanity, and because of her plea as a lady, he spared the man's life. She also includes in her diaries her worries and homesick feelings for her sons, Seldon and Augustus. Even outside of the churches, the entrenched notion of female purity gave respectable women increased power.
1851- 1852: Louise Clappe was a forty-niner who sailed around the Horn with her doctor husband. In her letters she describes a plethora of colorful women during her voyage, from riding a mule to Rich Bar diggings and encountering Indian women, seeing them through the lenses of her own culture, to boardinghouse women, prostitutes, wives, and fighting on the Sabbath Day. Her rich descriptions of 1851-1852 in the diggings is
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seen through her lens as a “white, respectable lady.” Letters from her log cabin at Indian
Bar describe the entrance of law and order into the diggings, as well as vivid descriptions of the “best log house on the river” and the presence of French men and the Mexican territorial roads, as well as the fights and the changing focus of mining for gold, such as looking for “quartz veins.”
1853: Lotta Crabtree entertained the miners in the Sierras of northern California as a little “fairy,” giving an intermission to the miners’ loneliness, dirt, and disappointments that came with the search for God. In 1853 Lotta entered the stage. She arrived in Grass Valley in 1853 as a child, was Lola Montez's protégé, and learned to dance and act from her. Lotta began traveling to all the mining camps performing ballads and dancing for the miners. She brought forth needed entertainment and relaxation for miners and reminded them of the art and culture left behind in the cities to the east. She brought art to the gold towns with creative dance and song.
1854: Madame Eleanor Dumont traveled with one of the best gambling emporiums in northern California on Broad Street. She would not allow cursing in her presence, rolled her own cigarettes, drank champagne, and deftly kept men at arm's length, telling them all tactfully that she was a lady. She was pretty, charming, vivacious, and won most games, as she attracted a number of players as a pretty female dealer. They thought they were privileged to be in her presence as she would sweetly express regret to the losers. As the gold played out, she would travel from mining town to mining town setting up her table in hotels and boarding houses entertaining the miners. Her presence reminded miners of their gentlemanly manners and she civilized their behavior in her
122 presence. She was one of the “gambling ‘white’ women” who demanded respect and civility from her patrons.
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Appendix B
Language arts standards grade four.
Word Recognition
4.1 Read narrative and expository text aloud with grade-appropriate fluency and
accuracy and with appropriate pacing, intonation, and expression.
Research and Technology
1.5 Quote or paraphrase information sources, citing them appropriately.
1.6 Locate information in reference texts by using organizational features (e.g.,
prefaces, appendices).
1.7 Use various reference materials (e.g., dictionary, thesaurus, card catalog,
encyclopedia, online information) as an aid to writing.
1.9 Demonstrate basic keyboarding skills and familiarity with computer
terminology (e.g., cursor, software, memory, disk drive, hard drive).
2.1 Write narratives:
a. Relate ideas, observations, or recollections of an event or experience.
b. Provide a context to enable the reader to imagine the world of the event
or experience.
c. Use concrete sensory details.
d. Provide insight into why the selected event or experience is memorable.
2.4 Write summaries that contain the main ideas of the reading selection and the
most significant details.
Grammar
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1.3 Identify and use regular and irregular verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and
coordinating conjunctions in writing and speaking.
Punctuation
1.4 Use parentheses, commas in direct quotations, and apostrophes in the
possessive case of nouns and in contractions.
1.5 Use underlining, quotation marks, or italics to identify titles of documents.
Capitalization
1.6 Capitalize names of magazines, newspapers, works of art, musical
compositions, organizations, and the first word in quotations when appropriate.
Spelling
1.7 Spell correctly roots, inflections, suffixes and prefixes, and syllable constructions.
Using the speaking strategies of grade four outlined in Listening and Speaking Standard
1.0:
2.1 Make narrative presentations:
a. Relate ideas, observations, or recollections about an event or
experience.
b. Provide a context that enables the listener to imagine the circumstances
of the event or experience.
c. Provide insight into why the selected event or experience is memorable.
2.2 Make informational presentations:
a. Frame a key question.
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b. Include facts and details that help listeners to focus.
c. Incorporate more than one source of information (e.g., diaries, books,
newspapers, journal articles, websites and online stories, posters, pictures).
2.3 Deliver oral summaries of articles and books that contain the main ideas of the
event or article and the most significant details.
Structural Features of Informational Materials
2.1 Understand how text features (e.g., format, graphics, sequence, diagrams,
charts, maps) make information accessible and usable.
2.2 Analyze text that is organized in sequential or chronological order.
Comprehension and Analysis of Grade-Level-Appropriate Text
2.3 Discern main ideas and concepts presented in texts, identifying and assessing
evidence that supports those ideas.
2.4 Draw inferences, conclusions, or generalizations about text and support them
with textual evidence and prior knowledge
Social Studies Standards Grade Four
4.1 Students demonstrate an understanding of California’s physical and human geographic features that define places and regions.
4.2 Students describe the social, political, cultural, and economic life and the interactions among people of California during the Gold Rush.
4.4 Students explain about the political and cultural development of California since the
1850s.
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Mathematics Standards Grade Four
Number Sense:
3.0 Solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division of whole numbers
Algebra and Functions:
1.0 Use and interpret variables, mathematical symbols, and properties
Statistics, Probability, Data Analysis
1.0 Organize, represent, and interpret data
Social Studies Standards Grade Eight
8.8 Students analyze the divergent paths of the American people in the West from 1800 to
the mid-1800s and the challenges they faced.
8.8.2 Describe the purpose, challenges, and economic incentives associated with
westward expansion
8.8.3 Describe the role of pioneer women and the new status that western women
achieved
8.12 Students analyze the transformation of the American economy and the changing
social and political conditions in the United States in response to the Industrial
Revolution.
8.12.4 Discuss entrepreneurs, industrialists, and bankers in politics, commerce,
and industry
8.12. 5 Examine the location and effects of urbanization, renewed immigration,
and industrialization (e.g., the effects on social fabric of cities, wealth and
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economic opportunity, the conservation movement).
Language Arts Standards Eighth Grade
1.0 Word Analysis, Fluency, and Systematic Vocabulary Development
Students use their knowledge of word origins and word relationships, as well as
historical and literary context clues, to determine the meaning of specialized
vocabulary and to understand the precise meaning of grade-level-appropriate
words.
2.0 Reading Comprehension (Focus on Informational Materials)
Students read and understand grade-level-appropriate material. They describe and
connect the essential ideas, arguments, and perspectives of the text by using their
knowledge of text structure, organization, and purpose.
3.0 Literary Response and Analysis
Students read and respond to historically or culturally significant works of
literature that reflect and enhance their studies of history and social science.
1.0 Writing Strategies
Students write clear, coherent, and focused essays. The writing exhibits students’
awareness of audience and purpose. Essays contain formal introductions,
supporting evidence, and conclusion.
Research and Technology
1.4 Plan and conduct multiple-step information searches by using
computer networks and modems.
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1.5 Achieve an effective balance between researched information and original ideas.
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Appendix C
Think, pair, share learning strategy.
Think-Pair-Share is a strategy developed by Frank Lyman and his colleagues in Maryland. It is an easy activity to assess student knowledge and understanding about a topic and/or concept. It is also a nice way to allow students the opportunity to talk with each other in a structured manner, and increase their learning.
Think
Provide students with a question, observation or writing prompt. Allow a minute or so for them to think individually about the question. Have students may write notes about their thinking.
Pair
Students pair up to talk about the question or prompt. Pairs can be determined in a variety of ways. Allow a minute or two for them to discuss their thoughts and answers, and decide on one or two that they agree are best, most convincing, or most unique.
Share
Each pair has the opportunity to share their thinking with the rest of the class.
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Appendix D
Understanding words.
Student Name______
The following words relate to terms that you will be hearing and using the next two weeks. On a large 12” X 18” paper, write the vocabulary word and make a drawing or cut out a picture that will illustrate the meaning of the word. You may use more than one sheet of paper. (Use glue to adhere pictures by words)
1. public sphere: an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems
2. daguerreotype: a simple process of producing a picture on a negative by allowing sunlight to enter a dark, covered negative (early form of photography)
3. women’s history: the study of the role that women have played in history, assuming that the more traditional recording of history have minimized or ignored the contributions of women and the effect that historical events had on women as a whole.
4. revisionist history: alternative views of our past that may be closer to the truth than the currently accepted version
5. “cult of domesticity”: women were supposed to abide by a set of virtues and responsibilities. They were the “moral guardians” of society, meaning they were supposed to be loving, faithful to their husbands, and good mothers who taught their children to be responsible, righteous human beings. Women were given the role to “better society” by being submissive, caring, moral people who stayed at home to take care of the house and children.
131
6. Victorian Age: During the reign of England’s Queen Victoria when women did not have suffrage rights, the right to sue, or the right to own property and the “cult of domesticity” was in full force.
7. broadside: a large sheet of paper, printed on one side , announcing events, proclamations, or advertisements
8. bison: buffalo
9. diggings: any piece of land where miners dug for gold
10. boardinghouse: a place where miners slept and ate and paid for their lodging and food
11. dry diggings: gravel bars and streambeds where water to wash the gold has dried up, but gold is still in the rocks and soil
12. claim: a miner’s right to a piece of public land with a written title to it that is registered with a public entity
13. vigilante law: a group of individuals who undertake law enforcement without legal authority; taking the law into one’s own hands and attempting to administer justice according to one’s own understanding of right and wrong.
132
14. secondary source: created after primary sources and they often use or talk about primary sources. Secondary sources give additional opinions (sometimes called bias) on a past event or on a primary source. Secondary sources often have many copies, found in libraries, schools or homes. History textbooks, biographies, published stories, movies of historical events, art, music recordings all tell of an event that happened long ago and are created after the event occurred.
15. primary source: original, first-hand accounts created at the time of an event, or very soon after something has happened. They are often rare or one-of-a-kind, but some primary sources exist in many copies if they were popular and widely available at the time they were created: diaries, letters, photographs, art, maps, interviews, newspapers, magazine, published first-hand accounts, or stories, etc.
16. cause and effect: the cause is the reason why something happens, while the effect is the action—the “something that happens,” i.e., because the hammer hit the nail (cause), the nail entered the wood.
17. compare and contrast: describe what is the same and what is different in two things
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Appendix E
Gold rush test (pre and post).
Name: ______
1. What phrase was used to refer to the Gold Rush, and what did it mean?
2. What type of role changes occurred to women in California because of the Gold Rush?
3. What impact did the Gold Rush have on men?
4. What impact did the Gold Rush have on women?
134
5. Describe what a mining town was like.
6. Identify three women from the Gold Rush, and describe their importance.
7. Describe the women most likely to go to California in search of gold?
8. List the three routes pioneers used to get to California, and give two advantages and two disadvantages for each route.
135
Appendix F
Broadside advertising the lure of California.
• What kind of jobs is this broadside advertising? • What does it say about women’s jobs? • Do you think women would respond to this? Why or why not?
136
Appendix G
This ford was one of the notable sites on the California Trail and was
mentioned in a lot of the emigrant diaries. The trail split here; one fork
went down each side of the Humboldt River all the way to Big Meadows.
The north side trail was known as the bluff trail or the dry weather route
and received the greatest use. The south side of the river near the ford had
grass and a camping area so many of the emigrants crossed the river here
and then continued down the south side trail (Trails West, 2010).
137
Using excerpts from Catherine Haun’s diary
At the height of the party, a strange white woman with her small daughter rushed into the gathering. Haun describes the following scene:
She was trembling with terror, tottering with hunger. Her clothing was
badly torn and her hair disheveled. The child crouched with fear and hid her face
within the folds of her mother’s tattered skirt. After she had partaken of food and
was refreshed by a safe night’s rest she recovered and the next day told us that her
husband and sister had contracted cholera on account of which her family
consisting of husband, brother, sister, herself and two children had stayed behind
their train. The sick ones died and while burying the sister the survivors were
attacked by Indians, who, as she supposed, killed her brother and little son. She
was obliged to flee for her life dragging with her the little five year old daughter
(Schlissel, 1982, p. 181).
Death Along the Trail
Catherine Haun describes a scene above about the dangers of traveling to
California. No one knows for sure how many people died on the route, but the number was very high. Some people think that 1 out of 17 people who started the trip died along the way, disease causing most of the deaths. Too often, travelers had to stop and bury a friend, mother, father, sister, or brother and then continue on their way. Cholera was in epidemic at this time and many pioneers came down with cholera during the day, and were dead by evening.
138
Catherine Haun described in her diary the many graves and markers that were seen along the California Trail, as many as three to five markers every mile on the trail from Independence, Missouri, to Fort Laramie.
• If there were 3 graves for every mile, how many graves altogether would
Catherine have seen between Independence, Missouri and Ft. Laramie, a
distance of about 700 miles?______
• After the Gold Rush was over, it was estimated that there had been about 10
deaths per mile for the entire trip to California on the Overland Trail. If the
trail was 2000 miles long, how many deaths were there, altogether, along the
entire trail? ______
• Cholera is caused by germs in drinking water. However, cholera arrived in
California not only by Overland Trail pioneers, but also by ship in 1850. A
Gold Rush doctor estimated that one out of every five people in San Francisco
died in the years from 1850 – 1852.
• How many people would have died of every 10 people in San
Francisco?______
• How many people would have died out of every 50 people in San
Francisco?______
• How many people would have died out of every 100 people in San
Francisco?______
• How many people would have died out of every 500 people in San
139
Francisco?______
• Sacramento was hit by this horrible epidemic of cholera at the same time. If
there were 1,000 deaths, what was Sacramento’s population during this
time?______
140
Appendix H
Name:______
Journal assessment rubric research worksheet.
Score Criteria
10 Your character is fully developed and you have included all of the
information required. Your journal entries give insight to your woman’s
personality. You have no grammar or spelling errors. You have greatly
exceeded expectations and made your character sketch of a Gold rush
woman unique.
9 Your character is well developed and you have included all of the
information required. Your journal entries give insight to your woman’s
personality. You have no grammar or spelling errors. You have exceeded
expectations and made your character sketch unique.
8 Your character is developed and you have included all of the information
required. Your journal entries represent your character. You have no
grammar or spelling errors. You have met all the expectations.
7 Your character is fairly developed and you have included almost all of the
information required. Your journal entries represens your character. You
have very few grammar and spelling errors. You have met the majority of
the requirements.
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6 Your character is not very developed and/or you have included only some
of the information required. Your journal entries do not give details about
your woman character. You have grammar and spelling errors. You have
not met the majority of the requirements.
5-0 Your character is not developed and/or you have included very little of the
information required. Your journal entries do not give details about your
character. You have many grammar and spelling errors. You have not met
the majority of the requirements.
Journal
Start typing the text of your paper here.
142
References
Insert References Here – place the cursor at the beginning of this line, and then,
on the CiteWrite menu, click Format, Write Bibliography.
For more help with your references, click Start, Programs, Dr Paper, Dr Paper
Help, and go through the instructions under Using CiteWrite for your
References. If you just have one or two references, you might want to just
type them by hand, following these examples:
Hall, K. G. (2005, August 29). Web page title. Website title. Retrieved from
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/12506343.htm
Smith, A. (1999). Article title. Journal name, 8, 243.
Wilson, J. B. (1999). Book title. Place of publication: Publisher.
Make sure you delete this text before you turn in your paper!
143
Appendix I
Diary excerpt from Mary Jane Megquier.
Mary Jane crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1849 and wrote this entry in her
diary of her Chagres River journey:
“The birds singing monkeys screeching the Americans laughing and joking the
natives grunting as they pushed us along through the rapids was enough to drive
one mad with delight.”
She cheerfully described the sights, including the church at Gorgona, which was “overrun
with domestic animals in time of service…. A mule took the liberty to depart this life
within its walls while we were there, which was looked upon by the natives of no
consequence.”
Mrs. Megquier wrote this passage on a later journey as she traveled through
Nicaragua with two women:
“We spent three days very pleasantly although all were nearly starved for
the want of wholesome food but you know my stomach is not lined with
pink satin the bristles on the pork, the weavels in the rice and worms in the
bread did not start me at all, but I grew fat upon it. Emily, Miss Bartlett
and myself had a small room with scarce light enough to see the rats and
spiders…”
Lucilla Brown, a more critical traveler, crossed the Isthmus late in 1849, in a
company that included “seven females.” She intentionally did not write ladies, “for all do not deserve the name” (Levy, 2004).
144
Appendix J
Lesson on Biddy Mason: Read and answer questions.
Name______
Bridget (Biddy) Mason was born as a slave on a plantation in the South in 1818.
In 1851, the plantation owner moved his family and slaves to southern California. Biddy walked all the way across the country, herding the cattle and cooking food for everyone along the way. California was admitted to the Union as a Free State, which meant that it was illegal to own slaves there. This plantation owner ignored this, and settled in
California keeping his slaves. In 1856, after Biddy wrote a letter to the local sheriff she was being taken against her will back to the South by her master to remain as a slave, she was set free and her master was arrested for keeping her and others as slaves in
California. In 1856 California courts set Biddy and her daughters free. The judge said she and her family were entitled to their freedom and were free forever.
Biddy had learned many useful skills while she was a slave. She went to work as
a midwife, delivering babies. She also worked as a nurse, risking her own life during a
smallpox epidemic. She saved her money and eventually bought land. She spent $250
for two lots in Los Angeles. She was the first African-American woman in Los Angeles
to become a property owner. After this first land purchase, she saved money and bought
and sold property until she had saved $300,000. But she hadn’t forgotten her roots and
her life before California. She wanted to give back to others who had suffered also but
145 hadn’t been as fortunate as she. She founded an orphanage, daycare centers, and a church. She never forgot what it felt like to be poor!
Biddy died in 1891 and was buried in an unmarked grave. A century later, Los
Angeles realized how much she had contributed to the beginnings of Los Angeles City.
A tombstone was erected at her grave and a mural depicting her lifetime accomplishments was created. She was a strong, Gold Rush-era woman who gave to her community for the good of her fellow men and women!
Questions to answer about Biddy Mason: Read the story and circle all the dates, as you will need them to solve the following problems. Space has been left after each question for you to show your work and answer.
1. How old was Biddy when she walked to California?
2. How old was she when the judge granted freedom to her and her daughters?
3. California’s state constitution was written in 1849 declaring slavery outlawed in
California. How many years after that did the judge declare Biddy free from
slavery?
146
4. A tombstone was placed on her gravesite in 1988. How much time elapsed from
her death until she finally was recognized with a tombstone and mural honoring
her life?
5. Biddy saved her money for 10 years to buy her first two lots in California in 1866.
How old was she then?
6. How many years went by from the time she was granted her freedom and the time
she erected a church in 1872?
147
Appendix K
Questionnaire on Charlie Parkhurst.
Student Name: ______
(Fill out after viewing video and listening to song)
1. Who was Charlie Parkhurst?
2. Where did she grow-up?
3. What made her become a stagecoach driver?
4. How did she lose her eye?
5. Why did she dress as a man?
6. What routes did she drive during the Gold Rush and finally at the end of the Gold Rush era?
7. Where did she finally settle to live?
8. When did she vote in the presidential election? Could women vote then?
9. When did she die?
10. Why is she an important woman of the Gold Rush era?
148
Appendix L
Women of the California Gold Rush PowerPoint final.
Cover Slide
Women of the California Gold Rush
(Levy, 1997-2012)
• What is the woman doing? • Is she dressed, in your opinion, to mine for gold? • Why or why not?
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Slide 1
Slide L-1
Travel by Land and Sea
• Women were present on the trails and on the seas as they traveled to the California frontier
to find a new life and strike it rich in the Gold Rush!
– Catherine Haun endured the hardships of traveling overland.
– Mary Jane Megquier traveled by sea to the Isthmus of Panama, overland across the
Isthmus, and by sea, again, to San Francisco, CA.
– Eliza Farnham traveled around the Horn and lost her passage in Valparaiso,Chile.
– Her son and governess sailed on to California.
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Slide 2
Slide L-2
Travel by Sea Encouraged by Clipper Ship Owners
(Hastings, 1845)
• Look at this broadside. • What is a broadside? • What is this broadside advertising?
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Slide 3
Slide L-3
Travel by Sea
• The Ship Argonaut off Cape Horn
(Oliver, ?)
• Describe this ocean in this scene. • What do you think it would feel like to be aboard this ship in this ocean scene? • If you were a passenger on this ship, what might you be thinking as you are traveling to California? • Make a comment in your journal about this painting as if you were on this ship.
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Slide 4
Slide L-4
Scene on Emigrant Trail
(Bruff, 1849)
• This is a drawing of the Emigrant Trail in 1849. • What articles in this drawing do you see strewn on the ground? • Describe the horse’s appearance. • What clues does this give you about this scene? • Write a short diary excerpt about this scene as if you were observing it as a participant in the Gold Rush migration to California.
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Slide 5
Slide L-5
Emigrant's Guide to the Gold Mines,1848
(Hastings, 1845)
• Do you think this emigrant’s guide includes information for women travelers about dress, food, etc., to pack? • Why or why not?
154
Slide 6
Slide L-6
Isthmus of Panama
(Lloyd, 1849)
• Find Chagres and try to find the trail or path to the Pacific Ocean that Mary Jane Megquier might have taken. • Where is the legend or compass rose?
155
Slide 7
Slide L-7
Through Woods to Panama
(Revere, 1849)
• What does the scene show at the top of this page? • Describe it as if Mary Jane Megquier were seeing it.
156
Slide 8
Slide L-8
Mary Jane Megquier to Milton Benjamin, letter (May 14— 20, 1849)
Return to The Great Migration
Mary Jane Megquier to Milton Benjamin, letter (May 14—20, 1849) MQ 10
Read Mary Jane Megquier's letter to her friend Milton Benjamin.
California 150 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
(Megquier, 1849)
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Slide 9
Slide L-9
The Good Time's Come at Last, or the Race to California: A Comic Song
(Sankey, 1849)
• Describe this scene. • How many women are present in the scene? • What is the man doing with the woman? • Is she joining him or staying home? • What gives you clues to this assumption? • Are there any other women present in the scene? • Read the title and written comments on this sheet. What do the words “Golden measure” mean? • What is a golden fleece and what does this mean when used here in this sheet? • What is the irony depicted here?
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Slide 10
Slide L-10
A Frenchman’s Interpretation of California and the Gold Rush
(Scherer, 185?)
• What view did the Frenchmen have of the California Gold Rush? • Who is doing the work? • Who do you think the man with the stick represents? • Look at their clothing and compare/contrast each man. • What is the woman doing? • What does this tell you about the view of the “cult of domesticity”?
159
Slide 11
Slide L-11
What does this drawing infer about women in the Gold Rush?
(Unknown, 1849)
• Look at her clothing. • What is she doing? • What is the man doing? • What is she holding in her hand? • What is the role of women, according to this picture? • From what you know about women in the Gold Rush, is this an accurate portrayal of their roles?
160
Slide 12
Slide L-12
What do these two cartoons infer about gold and the immigration of women to the frontier of Gold Rush California?
(Cham, 1849)
• Why is the man stuffing women in the box? • Where are the women going? Why? • What is needed on the California frontier during the beginning of the Gold Rush? Why?
161
Slide 13
Slide L-13
Women had many roles.
• 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 (Levy, 1997-2012)
162
Slide 14
Slide L-14
Luzena Stanley Wilson
• 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 (Levy, 1997-2012)
Luzena's remarkable Gold Rush memoir is well-known to historians as brimming with dramatic stories and vivid language. Ken Burns quoted and referred to her in his PBS series, "The West." In addition, numerous anthologies on Western women have showcased her writings while interactive displays celebrating the Gold Rush Sesquicentennial at the Oakland Museum have celebrated her voice. Luzena's extraordinary life has also recently been chronicled in the book Outrageous Women of the American Frontier by Mary Rodd Furbee.
163
Slide 15
Slide L-15
Madame Moustache
• 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 • Madame Moustache was the pseudonym of Eleanor Dumont, a notorious gambler on the American Western Frontier, especially during the California Gold Rush. Her nickname was due to the appearance of a line of dark hair on her upper lip. • (Levy, 1997-2012)
164
Slide 16
Slide L-16
Women in the Gold Mining Camps
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 (Levy, 1997-2012)
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Slide 17
Slide L-17
Women defy the Cult of Domesticity
• 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 (Levy, 1997-2012)
How does this quote explain how some women on the Gold Rush frontier broke away from the expected 19th-century image of a pure, Victorian, domestic woman?
166
Slide 18
Slide L-18
Women witnessed and were victims of prejudice in an uncivilized, violent society in Gold Rush California
• Victim
(Whittle, 2011)
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Slide 19
Slide L-19
Women were tourists along the journey to the gold camps, as well!
• 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 (Levy, 1997-2012)
168
Slide 20
Slide L-20
From the letters that “Dame Shirley” written to her sister about living in Rich Bar California, 1851.
• 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 (Levy, 1997-2012)
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Slide 21
Slide L-21
Charley Parkhurst, Stage Coach Driver Born: unknown Died: December 29, 1879 in Watsonville, California
• Charlie Parkhurst (Charlotte) was an American stagecoach driver and early California settler. Born female, Parkhurst lived as a man for most of her life and may have been the first biological female to vote in California.
(Griffith, 1998)
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Slide 22
Slide L-22
Louisa May Clappe’s Letters
CLAPPE THE SHIRLEY LETTERS FROM CALIFORNIA MINES The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 by Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe (1819 - 1906)
Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe moved to California from Massachusetts during the Gold Rush of the mid-1800’s. During her travels, Louise was offered the opportunity to write for The Herald about her travel adventures. It was at this point that Louise chose the name “Shirley” as her pen name. Dame Shirley wrote a series of 23 letters to her sister in Massachusetts in 1851 and 1852. The “Shirley Letters”, as the collected whole later became known, gave true accounts of life in two gold mining camps on the Feather River in the 1850s. She described these camps in northern California with vividness in portraying the wildness of Gold Rush life. The letters give detailed accounts of the vast and beautiful landscape that was the background to the hustle and bustle of mining life. Louise’s perspective as a woman provided a contrast to the typically all-male mining camps that she occupied. The letters were later published in the Pioneer, a California literary magazine based out of San Francisco (Clappe, 2008).
171
Slide 23
Slide L-23
Audio of The Shirley Letters From The Mines: 1851-1852:
• www.archive.org/details/shirleyl etters_0808_librivox
• Enter URL and search the internet. • The webpage will appear. • Click on it to view webpage for audio of the Shirley Letters, 1-23.
172
Appendix M
A time of change.
This pencil sketch was created by Josh Lewis, a sixteen year-old student. He is from the Yurok and Tolowa culture which are very similar. He grew up in Tolowa traditions because he lives on the Smith River in Tolowa territory. He began drawing at a very young age and as he learned about his culture he drew tradition things.
In this art piece, he is showing how Indian people were destroyed both physically and culturally. The miner is pouring away the Indians and their cultures and trying to get to the gold. By panning, the Indian gets rid of what he doesn’t want and it washes away. The gold rush pioneer gets rid of the Indian, and whatever gets in his way, even if it means extermination, according to Josh Lewis.
173
Appendix N
Research project.
Choose one of the women listed on the “Gold Rush Women” handout given to
you by your teacher. When prompted by your teacher, tell her your choice as she
records each student’s choice of women on a recording sheet. You will be paired with
another student to research the life of this Gold Rush woman during computer lab time or
within the classroom in order to prepare a poster board presentation of her life. Be sure to
include pictures, maps of route taken to California, method of travel to California with
highlights of journey listed; detailed livelihood, once reaching California; and your
conclusions about this woman and her significance in the Gold Rush era. Boards will be
provided by your teacher. You will be giving an oral presentation in front of the class on
your Gold Rush woman project. You will have three days, working in the classroom, library or computer lab for 50 minutes each day, to prepare your backboard and presentation.
To be included on backboard:
• Any primary source document found on this woman with your explanation of the picture,
document, diary entry, etc.
• Secondary source information on her life
• Map of journey to California and method of travel
• Any significant experiences encountered on journey
• Job/livelihood once reaching California with highlights about it
174
• Conclusions or comments about this woman’s significance during the California Gold
Rush era
175
Appendix O
Names______
Assessment rubric research worksheet /poster presentations.
Score:______
Score Criteria
6 The presentation is clear, interesting, and informational. Students present
the information using both visuals and written information. The
documents, charts, pictures, etc. used are clear and pertinent. The written
summary gives an excellent overview of the material, and is free of
spelling and grammatical errors. Both members of the group participate
in the presentation.
5 The presentation is clear, interesting, and informational. Students present
the information using both visuals and written information. The written
documents, charts, pictures, etc., used are clear and pertinent. The written
summary gives a good overview of the material, and is free of most
spelling and grammatical errors. Both members of the group participate
in the presentation.
4 The presentation is clear. Students present the information using both
visuals and written information. The written documents, charts pictures,
etc. used are clear. The written summary gives a fair overview of the
176
material, and is free of most spelling and grammatical errors. Both
members of the group participate in the presentation.
3 Most of the presentation is clear. Students do not use both visuals and
written information to present the information. The written summary
gives a poor overview of the material, and has frequent errors in spelling
and grammar. Both members of the group do not participate in the
presentation.
2 The presentation is not clear. The written summary and visuals contain
frequent errors. Both members of the group do not participate in the
presentation.
177
Appendix P
Excerpt from Luzena Stanley Wilson’s diary.
It was a motley crowd that gathered every day at my table but always
at my coming the loud voices were hushed, the swearing ceased, the
quarrels stopped, and deference and respect were as readily and as heartily
tendered me as if I had been a queen. I was a queen. Any woman who had
a womanly heart, who spoke a kindly, sympathetic word to the lonely,
homesick men, was a queen, and lacked no honor which a subject could
bestow. Women were scarce in those days. I lived six months in
Sacramento and saw only two. There may have been others, but I never
saw them. There was no time for visiting or gossiping; it was hard work
from daylight till dark, and sometimes long after, and I nodded to my
neighbor and called out "Good morning" as each of us hung the clothes
out to dry on the lines. Yes, we worked; we did things that our high-toned
servants would now look at aghast, and say it was impossible for a woman
to do. But the one who did not work in '49 went to the wall. It was a hand
to hand fight with starvation at the first; later the "flush" times came, when
the miners had given out their golden store, and every one had money
(Project, 2001).
178
Appendix Q
Methods for historical investigation of Gold Rush women.
Slide 1
Methods For Historical Investigation of Gold Rush Women
The underlying assumption of all lessons and strategies presented in this project: • collaboration • teachers should assume they will probably learn as much from students as students will learn from these lessons • you are strongly encouraged to use, adapt, or completely reinvent this material • the ultimate goal is student success in managing information and in becoming a productive citizen in information literacy
179
Slide 2
Students do history: collect information
The story of Gold Rush women contains a variety of historical impacts from political to social which gives students the opportunity: • to investigate • to judge • to provide their own interpretation of the significance of this event
These aspects promote learning opportunities for students to “do history”: • ability to frame questions • gather data from primary and secondary sources • organize and interpret that data • share their work with different audiences
180
Slide 3
Teachers and students establish personal connections
Teaching the California Gold Rush provides: • students and teachers the chance to establish personal connections to a local event that forever changed the future development of the State of California
In the process of “doing history,” students: • encouraged to place themselves within the historical study • take the perspectives of the individuals they are studying
181
Slide 4
Analyze Primary Documents
Students are able to do history in this project: • analyze primary sources • organize the information • discern bias from personal accounts of history
This process allows students to: • practice their skills of historical thinking • better understand the ways that historians study the past • manipulate information
182
Slide 5
Be it their memory of 4th grade curriculum, a family vacation, a field trip, or their own inquisition about why California is considered the “Golden State,” most 4th grade students possess some background understanding of this event.
The teacher can question the students: • describe what they think the Gold Rush looked like • investigate Gold Rush women through the use of sources • compare and contrast their original reasoning with any new interpretation • they might have gained
183
Slide 6
Thinking Historically
No matter the historical subject, thinking historically invites students: • to explore historical issues, problems, ideas, values, behaviors, interests, motives • and personalities • to study the past beyond simply knowing what happened • to implement the ability to determine why and how it happened • to judge, analyze, interpret, and reason while studying the past
184
Slide 7
Viewing the past in context different than present
Doing historical research determines that students: • struggle to view the past beyond the lens of the present • differentiate between the past and the present • place into context the motives and actions of women who lived in conditions very different from modern times
185
Slide 8
California Gold Rush Women 1848 and Beyond
For example, when applying students’ thinking to the Gold Rush women: • students living in California may incorrectly place this event in the context of the heavily populated and developed society that they are familiar with today • students must place themselves in the landscape of small, underdeveloped, and sporadic mining communities that were truly representative of the years following 1848 • help students avoid the practice of “presentism”
186
Slide 9
Historical Perspective
Teaching through the interconnected objectives laid out within the Historical Thinking Standards presented by the National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS): • teachers can encourage students with limited historical background knowledge and have a false sense of what it means to study history • variety of techniques and strategies that will help students approach history through a more structured historical perspective
187
Slide 10
Chronological Thinking
Chronological thinking: • the student is able to distinguish between past, present, and future • identify temporal structure of narratives and the temporal order of their own narratives • measure and calculate calendar time; interpret data in timelines • explain historical continuity and change
188
Slide 11
Historical Comprehension
Historical Comprehension: • students identify sources and access its credibility • identify central questions • differentiate between historical facts and interpretations • read historical narratives imaginatively • draw upon historical sources in order to organize data
189
Slide 12
Historical Analysis
Historical Analysis and Interpretation: • the students can compare and contrast different ideas and perspectives • analyze cause-and-effect relationships • challenge arguments of historical inevitability • hold interpretations as tentative • evaluate major debates among historians
190
Slide 13
Historical Research Capabilities
Historical Research Capabilities: • the student is able to formulate historical questions • obtain historical data • identify gaps in the available sources • support interpretations with historical evidence
191
Slide 14
Historical Issues-Analysis and Decision- Making
Historical Issues-Analysis and Decision-Making: • students will be able to identify issues and problems in the past • collect evidence of antecedent circumstances • identify relevant historical antecedents • evaluate alternative courses of action • formulate a position • evaluate the implementation of a decision
192
Slide 15
Goal of Methods in this Project
The overall goal of this project: • to provide methods that foster historical thinking skills that can be applied to any historical event • teach about women in the California Gold Rush as an avenue to highlight the importance of a neglected event in the elementary American history curriculum • to provide an example of how to integrate historical teaching methodology into the classroom