Working Women in the
California Gold Rush
Jill Elliott
History 283
Dr. Gendzel
December 17, 2008
1
When gold was discovered in California in 1848, no one could have predicted the
mass exodus of people who would traverse the globe in the subsequent years seeking
their fortunes. This era has captured the imaginations of generations of Americans as a
time of great excitement and prosperity. When picturing this great American
adventure, images of cowboys, Indians, saloons, prostitutes, campfires, gun fights, and
gold fortunes come to mind. These images are ingrained in people’s understanding of
this time, with Hollywood movies and novels promoting them. Western history
abounds with these stereotypes, and the California Gold Rush, a subset of western
history, shares them. As more and more historians work to dispel the myths, our
understanding of the California Gold Rush and its major players broadens and
enlightens us. We know that most people who came to California to get rich failed to
do so; Anglo-Indian relations were not romantic—Indians were always on the losing
end of those relations; Mexicans, Chinese, Latinos, other ethnic groups, and women
were present in great numbers, but we generally do not consider them at all. The
romanticism of the West is endearing but crippling; it is our job as historians to chip
away at the stereotypes and attempt to get closer to the truth.
As is true of women’s history in general, California Gold Rush women are often
misunderstood or ignored completely. A specific myth has a stranglehold on women’s
gold rush history and taints their presence in this era: the prostitute. No western movie
or novel would be complete without one (or several). Two stereotypes comprise the
prostitution myth: one is the nature of the occupation itself, including the type of
woman who practiced the profession; the other is the number of women who
2
participated. One imagines a buxom, flirty white woman with curly locks, giggling and
seducing men at saloons. One also assumes that women were doing little else in
California during the Gold Rush besides offering sex to lonely miners. The prostitution
myth is debilitating because it ignores the presence of countless businesswomen during
the Gold Rush, and it does not embody women’s actual experiences or the reality of
prostitution.
Did prostitutes exist during the Gold Rush? Yes. Prostitution, however, was
much different than people would like to imagine. It was a profession embroiled in
desperation, abuse, and exploitation. According to historian Edith Sparks,
[Non-white] women . . . . were the most likely to work as prostitutes in gold rush
California, providing sexual services to men in exchange for typically paltry
sums. The Native American, Chinese, Hawaiian, Mexican, and African
American women who dominated the profession “lived desperate lives that were
shadowed by violence, disease, alcoholism, and crime.”1
Many Chinese women and girls were kidnapped in China, imported to California as
slaves, and sold into prostitution rings. According to historian Susan Butruille,
“[Chinese] girls who escaped foot binding—called ‘Big Feet,’ were relegated to field
work—if they were lucky. Unlucky ones were sold by desperate parents or stolen by
Chinese agents, and shipped off to California . . . . Here, they were sold at auction for
perhaps three hundred dollars in a land that was supposed to be free of slavery.”2
Many prostitutes also came from Latin America and according to historian JoAnn Levy,
Edith Sparks, Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850-1920 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 119.
1
2
Susan Butruille, Women’s Voices from the Mother Lode (Boise, ID: Tamarack Books, 1998), 138.
3
“Many Spanish-speaking women could not afford the fare to San Francisco. In
consequence, hundreds of Latin women . . . . secured passage through indenture
arrangements. Most were destined for the fandango houses, the poor man’s brothel.”3
Prostitutes were expendable members of society—cast-outs and nobodies, and the
plight of non-white women was worse because they were already regarded as thirdclass citizens. No matter where they came from, the choice to be a prostitute (if a choice
were available), was usually out of desperation and accompanied by a life of misery. It
was not a romantic existence, and according to Butruille, “The most common way out
of prostitution was suicide.”4
As we discount the first part of the prostitution myth, we can dispel the other
part as well, as it pertains to this analysis. Were the majority of women in California
during the Gold Rush prostitutes? No. In fact, according to Levy, most women came
with their families. She writes, “Even in 1849 when the most impetuous rushed west
first, nearly every trail diary records the presence of families—wives, mothers, sisters,
and daughters.” She continues, “Thousands of women decided that where men could
go, they could go. Some women came alone, many more with husbands, fathers,
brothers.”5 If most gold rush women had families and did not sell their bodies for a
living, what, then, did women do for a living during the California Gold Rush? What
JoAnn Levy, They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush (Hamden, CT: Archon
Books, 1990), 152.
3
4
Butruille, Women’s Voices from the Mother Lode, 136-37.
5
Levy, They Saw the Elephant, xvi-ii, xxii.
4
did these experiences mean for them and their families? I will attempt to expose
working women’s presence during the Gold Rush and to discover how they earned a
living, while avoiding the subject of prostitution.
The California Gold Rush lured hundreds of thousands of people who dreamed
of finding their gold fortunes, but the harsh reality was that the majority did not fulfill
their dreams. According to Butruille, “In 1849, as many as ninety thousand people,
mostly men, arrived in California, traveling by land and sea. By the time they got here,
most of the placer gold—surface gold—already was gone.”6 An estimated 180,000
people immigrated to California between 1848, when gold was discovered at Sutter’s
Mill, and 1850. Most gold rushers were single, young men, but conservative estimates
reveal that ten percent of immigrants were women.7 It is impossible to know how
many women were actually here, as their presence was often exaggerated toward the
lower end and not well documented, excepting their own diaries, letters, memoirs,
reminiscences, and oral histories. These are the invaluable sources I have relied upon
for my analysis of working women in the California Gold Rush.
JoAnn Levy, the aforementioned historian, is a ground-breaker in western
women’s history and author of They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush.
In her comprehensive study, she details women’s experiences from the westward
migration to eventual settlement in California. In her analysis of working women she
argues, “California’s gold seduced thousands of women. They could and did cook for
6
Butruille, Women’s Voices from the Mother Lode, 9-10.
7
Levy, They Saw the Elephant, xv, xvii.
5
it, sew for it, clean, iron, wash, dance, pour drinks, or do whatever was required and
returned the most. With little initiative and minimal equipment, women often were in
business for themselves and earning as much, and often more, than the average
miner.”8 While Levy is correct, she overlooks a harsh reality: many women had no
choice but to work during the Gold Rush, particularly in the early years. When women
arrived in California, they had to start their lives from scratch and needed to work to
feed their families and survive. Indeed, many women were seduced by California’s
gold and sought ways to make fortunes, but Levy overemphasizes women’s desires to
make fortunes in California and underemphasizes the absolute need for women to earn
money to survive. She also does not mention that provisions in California were
extremely expensive, putting even more pressure on women to earn money to afford
basic foodstuffs and necessities of life. Because miners were in such a precarious
profession, women had to compensate for the uncertainty of their men’s success in the
mining camps and work to supplement or sustain the household income. Women
during the California Gold Rush worked not only because of their desire to make
money, but also because of the basic need to survive and the high cost of living. Their
families depended on them for survival and their success in business meant that they
could support their families and improve their lives. Working women were an integral
part of the California Gold Rush and participated in a variety of money-making
8
Ibid., 92.
6
activities. As we expose their stories and recognize their labor, images of dainty women
in busty dresses seducing men at saloons begin to fade away.
Mining was a demanding business, and if a man had any hope of striking it rich,
he had to work tirelessly and had little time for anything else. According to Sparks,
“Most forty-niners had one thing on their minds when they arrived in California, and
that was gold. All mundane daily tasks, such as setting up a place to live, preparing
meals, and cleaning clothes, paled in importance to devoting every waking hour to
mining.” The abundance of men and their unwillingness and/or inability to do daily
chores presented an opportunity for women. Sparks writes, “Every time women sold
their domestic skills, they capitalized on their minority status and wagered that the
single and unattached men who populated the region would pay money for the types of
services they had received for free in the homes they had left behind.” She continues,
Whatever services she provided—whether it was cooking, laundering, or selling
provisions—was inherently valuable in the society of single and unattached men
who peopled the city in its early days. . . . A woman might found a successful
business utilizing little more than a board laid over two barrels where she could
sell her homemade biscuit.9
These single and unattached men not only depended on women to sell them food and
services, but also to support their livelihoods because of the precariousness of their
mining endeavors. According to historians Ruth Moynihan, Susan Armitage, and
Christiane Fischer Dichamp, “[Women] were often the breadwinners and wage earners
9
Sparks, Capital Intentions, 118, 115.
7
who provided crucial capital for male accomplishment.”10 Such crucial capital could be
earned in many ways; California was ripe with opportunities for women to make
money, and one of the most common ways for women to earn a living in California was
to open a boardinghouse. Boardinghouses were in high demand as male transient
miners needed a place to sleep and eat while they sought their fortunes. They provided
a way for women to make money doing something they already knew how to do: run a
household.
Luzena Stanley Wilson typified the experience of a working woman during the
California Gold Rush. She and her husband came to California from Missouri with
their children in 1849. Upon arrival in Sacramento, a miner approached Luzena at her
campfire and offered her five dollars for a biscuit. Taken aback by the amount of
money the man would pay for a simple biscuit, she hesitated. Seeing her hesitation, he
offered her ten dollars for the biscuit and put the gold piece in her hand. She had a
similar experience a few days later when a man approached her fire and requested
breakfast. She recalled the exchange: “’Madame, I want a good substantial breakfast,
cooked by a woman.’ He ate it, thanked me, and gave me five dollars. The sum seems
large now for such a meal, but then it was not much above cost, and if I had asked ten
dollars he would have paid it.”11 Luzena’s mere presence was unique in that men
would pay ten dollars for quality food cooked by a woman; she was a rarity in the
Ruth B. Moynihan, Susan Armitage, and Christiane Fischer Dichamp, eds., So Much to Be Done:
Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), xvii.
10
Luzena Stanley Wilson, ’49er: Memories Recalled Years Later for Her Daughter Correnah Wilson
Wright (1881; repr., Mills College, CA: Eucalyptus Press, 1937), 9, 13.
11
8
mining town and the simple fact that she could cook earned her money in a society of
men who could not cook for themselves.
Luzena was a relatively early arrival to California and an early participant in the
Gold Rush mania that took place over the next several years. She poignantly reflected
on the trying days in the mining camp:
Women were scarce in those days. I lived six months in Sacramento and saw
only two. . . . There was no time for visiting or gossiping; it was hard work from
daylight till dark, and sometimes long after . . . . 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.
To add to her hardships, food was expensive. She recalled, “Nothing sold for less than
a dollar; it was the smallest fractional currency. A dollar each for onions, a dollar each
for eggs, beef a dollar a pound, whisky a dollar a drink, flour fifty dollars a barrel.”
Luzena was able to make money selling food at these exorbitant prices and
remembered, “I sold what little milk was left from my children’s meals for the
enormous price of a dollar a pint. Many a sick man has come to me for a little porridge,
half milk, half water, and thickened with flour, and paid me a dollar and a half a bowl
full.”12 Luzena and her husband came to California with hopes of making a fortune but
quickly found themselves in dire circumstances because they had no money and could
not survive for long without some. They had no choice but to find a way to make
money. Hard work and good sense were ways out of poverty; Luzena realized this and
saw an opportunity in front of her.
12
Ibid., 15-16, 13, 12.
9
Luzena Wilson used her skills to open a boardinghouse, and at separate times
she opened boardinghouses in Sacramento, Nevada City, and in the valley between
Benicia and Sacramento. Her Nevada City boardinghouse was hugely successful and
she became very wealthy. She recalled, “We made money fast. In six months we had
ten thousand dollars invested in the hotel and store, and we owned a stock of goods
worth perhaps ten thousand more.” A fire destroyed the boardinghouse, so she and her
husband had to start over, penniless, in the valley. They chose a location “close by a
tiny spring-fed stream, near the most frequented route from the upper country to
Benicia,” she remembered. They quickly got to work and she recalled, “My husband,
leaving me to my own resources, set hard at work cutting and making hay; and I, as
before, set up my stove and camp kettle and hung out my sign, printed with a charred
fire-brand on a piece of board, Wilson’s Hotel.” Once again Luzena’s boardinghouse
prospered and between that and her husband’s hay-making, they earned a great deal of
money. The thriving town that developed around her boardinghouse eventually
became Vacaville.13 Luzena Wilson was a prime example of a gold rush working
woman. She came with the desire to make money, but at the beginning she had no
choice but to find a way to earn money as it was a constant fight against starvation and
food was expensive. Like so many other women, Luzena used her domestic skills and
capitalized on the opportunities presented by this great American adventure.
13
Ibid., 31, 45, 53, 60.
10
Lee Summers Whipple-Haslam was the daughter of a miner who came to
California from Missouri in 1850. Her mother cared for the children and established a
home while her father worked at the mines. The family sustained itself on two oxen
and a milk cow, which she recalled was “the wonder and admiration of the Flat.
Mother could have sold milk at any price.” Lee also commented on the high food
prices: “All kinds of food stuff was exorbitantly high, and no variety; only the exigency
to sustain life could be procured.” During this precarious time, tragedy struck the
Summers family. In 1856, Lee’s father was murdered in French Bar (La Grange) and her
grieving mother had to find a way to support her family. She wrote,
My dear mother had a problem to solve, alone and unaided. We must live, and
in order to live, we must eat; and to pay the exorbitant prices for provisions
seemed impossible. After mature and deliberate thought she opened a boarding
house, my father having built a comfortable dwelling house the year before. It
was not long until she had all the boarders she could possibly cook for.
Lee’s mother faced an impossible situation, but she managed to succeed in the most
difficult of times because shortly after, “[the men] all wanted to board.” Lee shared a
similar sentiment about survival with Luzena Wilson: “Every succeeding year brought
thousands to California. And, as a natural consequence, the weak went to the wall,
while the braggart often died with his boots on.” Her mother was certainly not a weak
woman and was able to use her skills to keep her family from “going to the wall.”
Years later, Lee reflected on her time in the mountains of California and its significance
in her life: “The mountains have for me the charm of comradeship . . . . In the
mountains, with waving pines, I had known the joys of childhood; also the sorrows of
life. I could no more be happy away from what they give than the fledgling of an
11
eagle.”14 Although Lee experienced tragedy in her childhood with the death of her
father, she had a wonderful role model in her mother who triumphed in the face of
despair.
Jerusha Merrill and her husband arrived in California in 1849 from Connecticut.
Upon arrival in San Francisco and after surveying the chaotic scene of thousands of new
immigrants, Jerusha commented, “People are daily arriving from all parts by the
hundreds. Many land with not one penny to help themselves with. Imagine for one
moment what their situation must be. Board at eighteen dollars per week, not one half
can get accommodations at that rate or any other rate.” She saw a financial opportunity
in front of her, opened a twenty-room boardinghouse that held sixty boarders, and
charged eighteen dollars per week. She realized the unique opportunities the California
Gold Rush offered and the hard work required to capitalize on those opportunities. She
wrote, “Never was there a better field for making money than now presents itself in this
place at this time. . . . If anyone thinks to get gold and keep his hands white, [he] had
better be off in the first boat. It is not to be obtained without hard labor. Anything that
is business will succeed.”15
Jerusha soon discovered that running a boardinghouse was expensive and she
was confronted with the high cost of provisions. She remembered,
Provisions are very high, for instance, beef twenty five cents per pound, ham one
dollar, flour varies from ten to twenty, butter one twenty five, cheese one dollar,
Lee Whipple-Haslam, Early Days in California: Scenes and Events of the ‘50s as I Remember Them
(Jamestown, CA: n.p., 1925), 11, 16, 13, 32-33.
14
Jerusha Merrill, “We Are Satisfied to Dig Our Gold in San Francisco,” in Moynihan, Armitage,
and Fischer Dichamp, So Much to Be Done, 16.
15
12
milk fifty cents per quart, potatoes eight dollars per bushel . . . . eggs four dollars
per dozen . . . . Labor of all kinds being very high, carpenters from six to ten
dollars per day. Lumber is selling at four and five hundred dollars a thousand
feet. . . . Property is daily rising; lots that were sixteen dollars when we arrived
have been sold at three, four, and even fifteen thousand according to the location
and still rising.
Despite these prices, Jerusha arrived in California early enough to buy reasonably
priced property and her boardinghouse was a success, “with hourly applications for
more [boarders].” Jerusha agreed with Luzena Wilson about the amount of time
required for work and summed up the experience of living in California during the
Gold Rush: “That large fortunes are being made is true, but in the end many must
suffer. . . . This place is not fit for anything but business. No one has time to spend a
minute for anything else.”16
Mary Jane Megquier and her husband, Dr. Thomas Lewis Megquier, came to
California in 1849. Dr. Megquier opened a medical practice in San Francisco, and Mary
Jane opened a boardinghouse. In a letter to her daughter in 1850, she described the
arduous task of running a boardinghouse:
I should like to give you an account of my work if I could do it justice. . . . In the
morning the boy gets up and makes a fire, by seven o’clock when I get up and
make the coffee, then I make the biscuit, then I fry the potatoes then broil three
pounds of steak, and as much liver . . . . At eight the bell rings and they are
eating until nine. I do not sit until they are nearly all done. . . . After breakfast I
bake six loaves of bread . . . . then four pies, or a pudding, then we have lamb, for
which we have paid nine dollars a quarter, beef, and pork, baked, turnips, beets,
potatoes, radishes, salad, and that everlasting soup, every day, dine at two . . . . I
have cooked [for] every mouthful that has been eaten excepting one day . . . . I
make six beds every day and do the washing and ironing; you must think that I
16
Ibid., 16, 20.
13
am very busy . . . . If I had not the constitution of six horses I should [have] been
dead long ago.17
Mary Jane’s description of her day provided a unique glimpse into the amount labor
required to run a boardinghouse. Mary Ballou, another California immigrant, wrote a
similar account of her daily routine working in a boardinghouse:
Now I will try to tell you what my work is in this Boarding House. Well
sometimes I am washing and ironing, sometimes I am making mince pie and
apple pie and squash pies. . . . I am stuffing a ham of pork that cost forty cents a
pound. Sometimes I am making gruel for the sick . . . . sometimes making coffee
for the French people . . . . Three times a day I set my table, which is about thirty
feet in length and do all the little fixings about it such as filling pepper boxes and
. . . . mustard pots and butter cups. Sometimes I am feeding my chickens and
then again I am scaring the hogs out of my kitchen and driving the mules out of
my dining room.18
Mary Jane Megquier and Mary Ballou came from very different backgrounds; Mary
Jane was the wife of a successful doctor, whose chances of succeeding in California
were much greater than most other men, and Mary was a typical struggling California
immigrant with little money. Despite their socioeconomic differences in their previous
lives, in California, they were on an equal level. Both women had to work
extraordinarily hard to make ends meet because they had no choice; in California’s
early gold rush days, one worked or one starved.
In 1849, a hard-working woman wrote a letter to her children in Maine about her
life in the mines as a boardinghouse keeper. She, like Mary Jane Megquier and Mary
Mary Jane Megquier, Apron Full of Gold: The Letters of Mary Jane Megquier from San Francisco,
1849-1856, ed. Robert Glass Cleland (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1949), 46.
17
Mary B. Ballou, I Hear the Hogs in My Kitchen: A Woman’s View of the Gold Rush (1852; repr., New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962), 8-9.
18
14
Ballou, described the hardships of running her boardinghouse and the small space in
which she worked:
I have ten boarders, two of which we board for the rent. We have one hundred
and eighty-nine dollars per week for the whole. We think we can make seventyfive of it clear of all expenses, but I assure you I have to work mighty hard—I
have to do all my cooking by a very small fire place, no oven. [I] bake all my pies
and bread in a dutch oven, [we] have one small room about 14 feet square, and a
little back room we use for a store room about as large as a piece of chalk.
She also commented on the expensive goods and food: “They have to pay twenty-five
dollars for making a dress. . . . Think of your poor mother, who does not get any fruit or
vegetables excepting potatoes, and those eight dollars a bushel, and as soon as we are
worth ten thousand I shall come home, if I do not find some pleasanter place than this.”
She supplemented her income by taking in ironing when she had time, but she did not
have much spare time. She wrote, “I have not been in the street since I began to keep
house; I don’t care to go into a house until I get ready to go home; not that I am
homesick, but it is nothing but gold, gold—no social feelings—and I want to get my
part and go where my eyes can rest upon some green things.”19 This woman was trying
to make her fortune and she was more likely to earn that ten thousand dollars than
most miners, but it still required her hard work.
Mrs. D.B. Bates, another boardinghouse keeper who came to California with her
husband in 1850, opened her boardinghouse in San Francisco in 1851 after a fire
engulfed the city. She realized that she needed to get started right away and
commented, “No time was to be lost: after a fire in California was the time for
“Running a Boarding House in the Mines,” in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the
Western Trails, vol. 1, ed. Kenneth L. Holmes (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1983), 271-72.
19
15
immediate action. That day we found an unoccupied house, a little over the ridge of
the hills.” She and her husband went to work finding whatever scraps they could to
furnish the house, including “two bedsteads, with a miserable straw bed upon each;
quite a good cooking-stove, with a few appurtenances attached; a pine table,
constructed of unplaned boards; and old boxes, in lieu of chairs. Dishes, knives and
forks, and spoons, we had picked up from the heterogeneous mass of half-consumed
rubbish upon the former site of Mr. B--'s store.” Her boarders did not mind the
improvised supplies and she recalled, “At such a time as that, if one could get anything
to eat, he never stopped to see if his fork was blessed with one prong or three; and, if
the knife was minus a handle, it was just as well, provided the blade was good.” Mrs.
Bates explained the cost of boarding at her house and the expensive provisions: “We
were to receive twelve dollars per week for board. . . . That was cheap board, when you
take into consideration the exorbitant price of provisions. For butter we paid one dollar
and a half per pound; beef steak, twenty-five cents per pound; and all else in
proportion.”20
The Bates’s soon moved to Marysville, where they rented the Atlantic Hotel and
opened it as a boardinghouse. Mrs. Bates described the physical demands: “The house
was always filled to its utmost capacity; and the prospect of future success was
flattering in the extreme, provided I had strength give me to sustain the weight of care
and labor necessarily devolving upon me. Often . . . . I would be compelled to work
Mrs. D.B. Bates, Incidents on Land and Water, or Four Years on the Pacific Coast (Boston: J. French,
1857), 108-9.
20
16
early and late, for days and weeks in succession.” Soon after the Bates’ opened their
boardinghouse, Mrs. Bates fell ill and her husband had to set-up a canvas shanty where
she was confined for two months on a bed of straw. Her husband devoted his efforts to
caring for her and she had frequent doctor visits. They had to shut down the
boardinghouse and without it, their income ceased, as did their livelihood. Upon her
recovery they rented another hotel and once again took boarders.21 Mrs. Bates was an
example of someone who experienced the worst of California, including a great fire and
her own physical illness, yet despite this, she ran several successful businesses. Her
family depended on her for income; without it they faced destitution, as seen when she
was ill.
Margaret Frink and her husband were overland travelers who made their
journey with several families. When they arrived in the mining town of Ringgold,
Margaret immediately took advantage of the cost of goods in California and tried to
charge a man five dollars for a flat-iron. She remembered, “They inquired of us if we
had any flat-irons to sell. I had the very article . . . . and now thought there was a
chance to make something, freight-money at least. But when I asked the man five
dollars apiece, he only laughed at me, saying, ‘I guess you have learned all about
California prices.’” The Frink’s travel companions split up and most headed to the
mines, but the Frinks stayed in Sacramento and set to work opening a boardinghouse.
Margaret’s husband rented a house with little else than a floor and crack-filled walls.
He made a table and benches, bought a stove for $50, and they established Frink’s Hotel.
21
Ibid., 137-39.
17
The state of the hotel did not matter, as their customers were eager to stay there and eat
a woman’s cooking. She recalled how much the men savored their home-cooked
breakfast:
Our first customers were two men, who, seeing there was a woman in the house,
came in and asked for breakfast, which I quickly made ready for them, setting it
on the counter, as the table and benches were not yet finished. I had only the tin
cups and tin plates we had crossed the plains with, but the men were delighted
to stand up and eat their breakfast, for which they willingly paid $1.00 each.
This was our beginning in business in California.
In an attempt to compete against other boardinghouses, the Frinks developed a unique
marketing strategy and decided to buy several cows so they could put fresh milk on the
table, as opposed to selling it. Their boarders found this irresistible and she wrote, “All
the milk was used on the table. This was a great attraction to men, many of whom had
not tasted milk for one or two years. No other hotel in the city set it free on the table for
their guests to drink. People would come from distant parts of the city to get meals on
account of the fresh milk.” Margaret and her husband eventually sold their
boardinghouse and continued purchasing dairy cows and selling the milk, which paid
about $150 per month. Although Margaret had her husband’s support, the success of
their boardinghouse would not have been possible without her; she washed, cleaned,
and cooked to ensure its success. After years in California, Margaret looked back
fondly on her time during the Gold Rush days: “The progress of time only confirmed us
more strongly in our choice of a home, and we never had occasion to regret the
18
prolonged hardships of the toilsome journey that had its happy ending for us in this fair
land of California.”22
Oftentimes women did not run boardinghouses, but simply worked in them or
in general stores. Sarah Royce, an overland traveler in 1849, recalled her encounter with
a traveling companion who got a job as a cook for a boardinghouse. She wrote, “She
called one day and in quite an exultant mood told me the man who kept the boardinghouse had offered her a hundred dollars a month to cook three meals a day for his
boarders . . . . [She] evidently felt that her prospect of making money was very enviable.
Her husband, also, was highly pleased that his wife could earn so much.”23 Her
husband was pleased because they relied upon her income while he worked at the
mines.
Sarah’s husband and his business partner opened a general store in Sacramento,
and Sarah helped run the store. Supplying the store was expensive and Sarah described
the high cost of food: “Fresh meat was half a dollar per pound, butter a dollar, and
other things in proportion. . . . In Sacramento City, one of our number paid a dollar for
an onion, and another twenty-five cents for a quart of milk, and then saw the seller put
water into the measure; we ceased to wonder at such charges.” Although not an
entrepreneur, Sarah was an acute observer and understood the uncertainty of the
mining industry and the emotional and mental price many men paid for the hope of
Margaret A. Frink, Journal of the Adventures of a Party of California Gold Seekers (1897; repr.,
Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1987), 105, 110, 112-14.
22
Sarah Royce, A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California, ed. Ralph Henry
Gabriel (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932), 83.
23
19
striking it rich. In one of the more telling accounts of the harsh business of mining, she
wrote,
Among this moving crowd, thus working and eating, buying and selling, sounds
of discontent and sadness were often heard. Discontent; for most of them had
come to California with the hope of becoming easily and rapidly rich; and so,
when they had to toil for days before finding gold, and, when they found it, had
to work hard in order to wash out their ‘ounce a day’; and then discovered that
the necessaries of life were so scarce it took much of their proceeds to pay their
way, they murmured; and some of them cursed the country, calling it a ‘God
forsaken land,’ while a larger number bitterly condemned their own folly in
having left comfortable homes and moderate business chances, for so many
hardships and uncertainties.
The decision to run a boardinghouse or a general store, as in the case of Sarah Royce
and the many aforementioned women, was a much sounder choice than mining, as
successful outcomes were almost certain. Nevertheless, the chance of making a fortune
was often too enticing. Sarah continued, “And still, many of them kept repeating this
same folly, by being easily induced . . . . and [would] rush off after some new discovery,
which was sure to be heralded every few days, by the chronic ‘prospectors’ who then
. . . . kept the whole community in a ferment.”24 While the mining community was in a
ferment, the boardinghouse keepers remained steadfast, knowing lonely, desperate,
hungry, and destitute miners would willingly pay them for their services and
accommodations.
The boardinghouse was a landmark in the California Gold Rush; many were
owned and/or operated by women and through their hard labor and intellect, they
were able to profit during a time when miners were not. They used their cooking,
24
Ibid., 89, 86-87.
20
cleaning, and homemaking skills to make money; these were skills they had used at
home every day in their prior lives and were not paid for. California presented unique
money-making opportunities for women, and they did many other things to make
money besides running boardinghouses, such as cooking, washing, ironing,
dressmaking, cattle raising, and farming.
A woman came to California in 1852 in a covered wagon and started a successful
pie-making business in a mining town. She explained her livelihood and being a
working woman in California:
I have made about $18,000 worth of pies—about one-third of this has been clear
profit. . . . I bake on average about 1,200 pies per month, and clear $200. This, in
California, is not thought much, and yet, in reality, few in comparison are doing
as well. I have been informed that there are some women in our town clearing
$50 per week at washing, and I cannot doubt it. There is no labor so well paid as
women’s labor in California.
The woman, as so many others, had to engage in hard manual labor at first, and if there
was work to do, she had to do it herself. She wrote, “One year I dragged my own wood
off the mountains and chopped it, and I have never had so much as a child to take a
step for me in this country . . . . It is hard work to apply one’s self incessantly to toil, but
a few years will place you above want with a handsome independency.” This woman
valued her independence and wrote that she was grateful that eventually she had “none
to toil for but myself.”25
Mrs. E.A. Van Court would have sympathized with the pie-making woman, as
she could not get help with the cooking at her hotel. She wrote, “I had no mother, sister
25
“An Enterprising Woman in California,” in Holmes, Covered Wagon Women, vol. 3, 282-83.
21
or friend to even give me a thought, and worked very hard from five o’clock in the
morning till nine at night. From four to a dozen men stopping for meals any time of the
day, had to make all my bread, pastry, no bakery for twelve miles; could not get help
anywhere.”26 Gold rush women had to depend on themselves for independence and a
sustained livelihood, as they were often separated from other family members, and
their husbands were off doing work of their own.
Abby Mansur, a pioneer woman who lived in Miner’s Ravine (Roseville), wrote a
series of letters to her sister in New England. She described dressmaking and washing
as ways for women to make money who were willing and able:
She might have made her fortune before now at dressmaking. We have to pay 20
and 25 dollars to get a nice satin dress or silk-made, and 5 dollars for cutting and
basting. Even now we have to pay that and they find the trimming which costs
only from 3 to 5 dollars. . . . 3 dollars a dozen for washing; just as much as you
can do all the time; cash down when they take the clothes. The[re] is a lady
[who] lives close by me that takes in washing. She has good health, she has no
children herself and [her] husband and their partner [are] in business, they are
farming. She has them to wait on and her work to do, and she makes from 15 to
20 dollars a week washing . . . . You can see that women stand as good [a] chance
as men. If it was not for my heart I could make a great deal, but I am not stout
enough to do it.
Abby did not give herself much credit, as she helped her husband run a boardinghouse
as well as raised dairy cows, hens, and turkeys.27 But she was correct in that women
did stand as good a chance at making money as men in California, if not better.
Mrs. E.A. Van Court, “Reminiscences,” in Moynihan, Armitage, and Fischer Dichamp, So Much
to Be Done, 28.
26
Abby Mansur, “MS Letters Written to Her Sister, 1852-1854,” in Let Them Speak for Themselves:
Women in the American West, 1849-1900, ed. Christiane Fischer (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977), 55-56,
50.
27
22
Mary Ballou, the aforementioned boardinghouse keeper, did many other things
to earn money, including nursing, childcare, cooking, sewing, flag-making, and soapmaking. She wrote that she “nursed a French Lady one week; she made me a present of
[a] fifty dollar gold piece for my week’s work.” Other times she was “making soups
and cranberry tarts and baking chicken that cost four dollars a head, and cooking eggs
at three dollars a dozen,” she recalled. Sometimes her days consisted of multiple
money-making tasks. She wrote,
I washed in the forenoon and made a Democrat flag in the afternoon. [I] sewed
twenty yards of splendid worsted fringe around it, and I made a Whig flag. . . . I
had twelve dollars for making them, so you see that I am making flags with all
[the] rest of the various kinds of work that I am doing, and then again I am
scouring candle sticks and washing the floor and making soft soap. . . .
Sometimes I am making mattresses and sheets.
Mary struggled with her life in California and wrote that she “would not advise any
lady to come out here and suffer the toil and fatigue that I have suffered for the sake of
a little gold. Neither do I advise anyone to come.” She continued, “[I] felt badly to
think that I was destined to be in such a place.”28 Her experience typified what many
women faced upon arrival in California: a strange environment that lacked the comforts
of home, makeshift, dirty homes, a scarcity of provisions, and the absence of family
members. Sarah Royce described the hardships of being away from home: “The
conveniences of civilized life, the comforts of home, can not be keenly appreciated, or
even fully seen, by those who have never been, for a time, shut out from them.
Repeatedly in the days that now followed, did I find myself feeling that I had never
28
Ballou, I Hear the Hogs in My Kitchen, 6, 8, 9, 12.
23
before known the brightness of the evening lamp-light, nor the cheeriness of the
morning breakfast room.”29 Mary would have sympathized with these sentiments, but
she nevertheless made the best of her circumstances and earned a living doing many
tasks she would have done in her prior life without pay.
Mrs. E.A. Van Court shared similar feelings about the Gold Rush days with Mary
Ballou and admitted that her time in California was particularly hard for Eastern
women who were accustomed to a more refined life. She remembered, “I will say here
that many women that I knew in the early days crossing the plains in ’49-50 and ’52
suffered more than I, yet the most of them had been raised on the frontier when many
states were unsettled and they were used to hardships which the Eastern women knew
nothing of, the settling up of new countries, and that made it hard to endure.”
Nonetheless, Mrs. Van Court and her husband stayed in Oakland, California for the rest
of their lives and she looked back on those early days fondly: “I thank God for my life,
my health and beautiful Oakland, where I hope to spend my last days. Whenever the
call comes I will be able to say, ‘My work is done, I am content.’”30
Eliza Gregson and her husband were English, but came to Oregon, and then
California from Rhode Island in 1845, before the Gold Rush. Her husband prospected
in the mines in 1848 and 1849 while Eliza took odd jobs to sustain the family’s income.
She wrote about the early days in the mines and the expensive goods: “In 1848, goods
began to arrive in the mines and every kind was very high priced: flour, $1 per pound,
29
Royce, A Frontier Lady, 103.
30
Van Court, “Reminiscences,” 35.
24
coffee, $10 per pound, tea, $18 per pound, and other things in proportion, eggs, $18 per
dozen, $1 [a] yard for common calico. We women folks took in all the sewing such as
making overalls. We could make $10 per day.” Eliza’s family fell on hard times when
Mr. Gregson and their daughter fell ill. Eliza had no choice but to work to support her
family. She recalled her daughter’s illness and the impact it had on her life:
Our oldest daughter, her teeth dropped out of her mouth and she was a poor sick
child for some months, during [which] I took in washing and ironing and sewing
to help support my family. The price of every thing was very high. Well, so we
worked along that winter as best we could. I would sew until 1 or 2 o’clock in
the night, and in the day I would wash and take care of the two babes.
The Gregsons had to deal with Mr. Gregson’s illness as well as the uncertainty of his
success in the mines. Despite this, Eliza had a positive outlook and seemingly did not
feel sorry for herself. She described more of her work and assured her readers that her
life was not completely miserable:
During the winter and spring of 1848 & 49 and all through that summer I took in
washing and sewing to support my family, and I toiled as best I could. The
reader of this must not suppose that I had no enjoyment or friends, for Mr. &
Mrs. Bruner were very kind and got me employment so that we did not lack for
food or clothes, although it took all that I earned.
The Gregson family eventually settled down in Sonoma County and remained there for
years. Eliza summed up their daily life and with a tone of contentment wrote, “Well
nothing of importance transpiring, only the common routine of business incidental to
farming and such kind of work, such as plowing and clearing, planting out orchards
and vineyards and raising stock and milking cows, trying all ways to make a living.
Our girls and boys [are] getting large enough to help us so that we might be able to pay
25
our debts.”31 Eliza Gregson was a prime example of someone who did everything she
could to support her family and used her washing, sewing, and ironing skills to make it
through hard times. She also dealt with the added hardships of her husband and
daughter’s illnesses and her husband’s uncertain endeavors in the mines.
Louisa Clapp was one of the most famous women of the California Gold Rush,
because of letters she wrote to her sister from the mines using the alias “Dame Shirley.”
The letters were later published and called The Shirley Letters and are one of the most
treasured accounts of gold rush history that exists today. Louisa was not a working
woman; she and her husband Fayette were upper-class New Englanders who came to
California in 1849 with a sense of adventure. They began their journey in San Francisco
and moved to the mining town of Rich Bar. Even for a woman of Louisa’s status, the
prices of materials to build a home in California were startling. She wrote,
This impertinent apology for a house cost its original owners more than eight
thousand dollars. . . . Everything had to be packed from Marysville, at a cost of
forty cents a pound. Compare this with the price of freight on the railroads at
home, and you will easily make an estimate of the immense outlay of money
necessary to collect the materials for such an undertaking at Rich Bar.
Louisa, who considered herself a “frail, home-loving little thistle,” was impressed by
California’s working women. She took notice of a washerwoman in Rich Bar and what
this woman could do. She wrote, “But is it not wonderful, what femininity is capable
of? To look at the tiny hands of Mrs. R--, you would not think it possible that they
could wring out anything larger than a doll’s night cap.” She continued, “I have known
Eliza Marshall Gregson, The Gregson Memoirs, Containing Mrs. Eliza Gregson’s “Memory” and the
Statement of James Gregson (1876; repr., San Francisco: L.R. Kennedy, 1940), 14-15, 18.
31
26
of sacrifices requiring, it would seem, super-human efforts, made by women in this
country, who at home were nurtured in the extreme of elegance and delicacy.” In
California, women did not have the luxury of “elegance and delicacy,” as there was
work to do. Louisa observed another hard-working woman who struggled to make
ends meet:
But what interested me so much in her, was the dogged and determined way in
which she had set that stern, wrinkled face of hers against poverty. She owned
nothing in the world but her team, and yet she planned all sorts of successful
ways to get food for her small, or rather large family. She used to wash shirts,
and iron them on a chair . . . . But the gentlemen were too generous to be critical,
and as they paid her three or four times as much as she asked, she accumulated
quite a handsome sum in a few days.32
Even though Louisa was in the unique position of not having to work, her accounts are
still telling. She understood that many women faced poverty and that survival required
hard work.
Elizabeth Keegan was a pioneer teenager who wrote a letter to her family from
Sacramento in 1852 and agreed with Louisa’s assessment of housing prices. She wrote,
“Rents are extravagantly high. For a house containing two rooms you will have to pay
$300 per month. That is [in] the business part of town, however, a little outside of the
limits, you will, for a 1 story frame hardly fit for cattle containing 2 rooms, [pay] $75 per
month. It will cost $800 to put up such a shanty as I have named.” She continued about
the high prices of other goods and wrote, “Expenses are so high, I mean in the way of
eating and drinking.” Elizabeth was young, but an astute observer nonetheless. She
Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe, The Shirley Letters from the California Mines, 1851-1852, ed.
Marlene Smith-Baranzini (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1998), 19, 1, 36, 166-67.
32
27
wrote about the triumphs and tragedies of many a gold-seeker: “See what gold can do,
it brings men from all nations here to this distant shore to make their fortune. Many go
home worse than when they came, others have wealth, countless wealth. Thus it is
some must fall that others may rise.”33 Pertaining to this analysis, the hard-working
women were the ones who rose.
Mrs. J.W. Likins, a later arrival to San Francisco, faced a desperate situation when
a fire destroyed her home and her husband fell ill in 1868. She had to find a way to feed
and take care of her family. She described the desperate feeling of poverty: “As I look
around the room, I see nothing but want and poverty on every hand. Something must
be done to get out of this place. . . . Never before did I know the meaning of the word
poverty. Now I feel it in all its keenest pangs—everything looked dark and cloudy.”
Confronted with her hopeless situation, she set out to find employment. She found a
job at a local bookstore as a sales agent, selling engravings of General Grant door-todoor and on the streets of San Francisco. She was delighted about her new job and
wrote that she “left the store with more elastic steps than I had since my arrival in
California.” She was also able to make enough money to support herself and her family
and to send her daughter to school. While selling her engravings on the street, she was
confronted with a rude remark from a man who told her she “looked old enough to be
married and have a family, and ought to be at home taking care of them.” She
responded angrily, “I told him I knew I looked old, but he need not remind me of it;
Elizabeth Keegan, “A Teenager’s Letter from Sacramento, 1852,” in Holmes, Covered Wagon
Women, vol. 4, 30-31, 29.
33
28
that I had a family and was trying to make an honest living for them.” In California,
working women were indeed taking care of their families, as Mrs. Likins explained.
The experience of being a sales agent was a positive one for Mrs. Likins, as she was able
to support her family during a desperate time. After a few months of success, she
reflected, “I could see new beauties in almost everything. In fact, in the former times, I
was so home-sick I scarcely noticed anything. But the prospects looked much brighter
to me now.”34 The experience of working for pay and successfully taking care of her
family shifted her attitude and she became a happier person. This was quite an
accomplishment for someone who faced poverty a few months earlier.
Opportunities for women in California came in a variety of forms, and farming,
cattle-raising, and dairy farming were other options. Clarissa Burrell and her husband
were cattle ranchers and dairy farmers in the Los Gatos area. They sold cattle for
slaughter as well as for milk, butter, and cheese in what is now the South Bay Area. She
remembered,
We are all very busy now; we have taken between 140 & 50 head of cattle and
calves to ranch for a man living in San Jose, about 70 are cows. We are to take
care of the stock and make the butter and cheese for two thirds of the profit.
They are not remarkably good cows for a dairy; we milk 28 now and make about
60 lbs of butter per week. The cows are coming in very fast, and I suppose we
shall soon commence cheese making.
Clarissa’s dairy cows produced more than she thought they would and “for the last
four hundred weight of butter we sold, we received two hundred and eighty dollars,”
Mrs. J.W. Likins, Six Years Experience as a Book Agent in California, Including My Trip from New
York to San Francisco via Nicaragua (1874; repr., San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1992), 48, 49, 51, 54.
34
29
she wrote.35 Although Clarissa had her husband’s help in the business, they would not
have been successful without her because she did the manual labor to make the goods
they sold.
Eliza Farnham faced quite a predicament when her husband died in California
while she was still in New York. She organized a group of single, educated women to
accompany her to California in 1849 in order to tend to her husband’s affairs and take
over the farm he left her in Santa Cruz. Ms. Farnham, with the help of her children and
some hired hands, successfully constructed and ran her husband’s farm. Being new to
the farming business and unaware of the potential profits, she had an amusing
experience when she realized how much money she could make from her crops. She
explained the encounter she had with her neighbor:
One of our neighbors, whose garden I rode to see, a few weeks after it was
planted, told me some time after, that he expected to realize $900 from his crop.
As there was only a small cabbage-plot visible and a few potatoes, I said, “then
you have another piece planted besides the one I saw?” “No,” he replied, “but
there are six hundred cabbages there, and I reckon they will bring a dollar and a
half apiece.” This was California farming and reckoning both! I do not know
how the event corresponded with his calculation, but I know that several
enterprises, of little greater magnitude, resulted in profits that would surprise
our plodding neighbors at home as much as this amused me.
Through her experience and success in the farming business, she understood how
women’s capabilities could be realized in California, particularly in the area of farming.
She wrote,
To the struggling advocates of Woman's Rights, it may seem a hopeful sign of
the times that one of their sex should put forth a book claiming to be in any
Clarissa Burrell, The Burrell Letters, ed. Reginald R. Stuart (Oakland, CA: privately printed,
1950), 40, 43.
35
30
degree descriptive of farming, especially when they make the delightful
discovery that the writer speaks in a great measure from personal experience in
the business. But it must not be forgotten that life in California is altogether
anomalous, and that it is no more extraordinary for a woman to plough, dig, and
hoe with her own hands, if she have the will and strength to do so, than for men
to do all their household labor for months, never seeing the face nor hearing the
voice of a woman during that time.
The lack of women in California forced men to partake in “women’s work,” and the
rugged lifestyle required women to engage in “men’s work,” thus forcing both sexes to
cross traditional gender lines. Ms. Farnham was a wonderful example of a woman who
crossed gender boundaries and succeeded in a “man’s world.” She was empowered by
her newly realized capabilities and remembered the awe she felt when she discovered
her abilities exceeded those of the men she had hired. She wrote, “My first participation
in the labor of [the house’s] erection was the tenanting of the joists and studding for the
lower story, a work in which I succeeded so well, that during its progress I laughed,
whenever I paused for a few moments to rest, at the idea of promising to pay a man $14
or $16 per day for doing what I found my own hands so dexterous in.” Ms. Farnham
was not ashamed to be doing manual labor and she recalled, “I found myself so much
at home in my working costume that I was no longer watching the various approaches
to the house, lest I should be caught in it. If I saw a man coming, I did not stroll away to
the shanty, to keep out of sight till he was gone, or to change my dress. This was a great
victory.” Ms. Farnham understood the importance of one’s inner-strength for surviving
in California and wrote a cautionary note to women considering making the journey:
The necessities to be served here are physical; washing linen, cleansing houses,
cooking, nursing, etc., and I would advise no woman to come alone to the
country who has not strength, willingness, and skill for one or other of these
31
occupations; who has not, also, fortitude, indomitable resolution, dauntless
courage, and a clear self-respect which will alike forbid her doing anything
unworthy herself, or esteeming anything to be so, which her judgment and
conscience approve. . . . None but the pure and strong-hearted of my sex should
come alone to this land.36
Indeed, the women examined here exude those qualities of strength, willingness, skill,
fortitude, indomitable resolution, dauntless courage, and self-respect. They did not
think of themselves as such, but they were ground-breakers because they were
successful in business, and sometimes more successful than men, in a “man’s world.”
Caroline Churchill was a traveler in California during the 1870s, and although
she was a later arrival and did not work, she was an acute observer and a feminist. Her
writings often detailed the plight of the female sex and discriminatory laws and
practices of the time, such as the inability of women to vote. She had great respect for
working women and had much to say about them. She wrote,
There is encouragement for respectable unmarried females, to go to California;-especially industrious ones, qualified for useful labor; and they may rely upon it,
labor is respected there, as it should be every where. . . . No where on earth
would her sex be a better protection. . . . The employment would be the keeping
of boarding houses; that of seamstresses; ordinary household labor, &c.
Caroline traveled all over northern California, and in Truckee she noticed a female
barber. “She is fat, fair, forty, and a success in the business,” she wrote. “All the men in
that vicinity keep closely shaved. Much praise is due the woman who dare do a
legitimate business, notwithstanding the barbarous opinions of so-called civilized
society.” In the valley, Caroline was awed by a lady farmer “who is strong minded and
Eliza Farnham, California, In-Doors and Out; or, How We Farm, Mine, and Live Generally in the
Golden State (New York: Dix, Edwards, 1856), 142, 28, 107, 133, 156.
36
32
at the same time beautiful, who carries on a farm, attending to all the business the same
as a gentleman farmer. She raises fruits, grapes, grain, cattle, horses and hogs, hires
farm-hands, manages and discharges them at pleasure, besides attending the duties of
her house.”37 Although Caroline was not a working woman, she understood that
women were physically and mentally capable and that they could be successful in
business and at home at the same time. “For physical strength, she might have been
outdone, but never in plucky effort to overcome almost insurmountable obstacles and
difficulties.”38 This was certainly true of California’s gold rush women.
Caroline Churchill’s opinions of women were ahead of her time; during the
nineteenth century, upper- and middle-class white women in the United States and
Great Britain practiced “The Cult of Domesticity” or “True Womanhood” ideology.
This ideal of womanhood stressed that women should exemplify four characteristics:
piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. A woman’s place (or “sphere”) was in
her home, where she was expected to serve and obey her husband, raise her children,
tend to her home, and practice and teach religion and morality. Women were
considered child-like, unable to make decisions for themselves and responsible for only
that which pertained to their homes and children.39 Gold rush women shattered these
strict social mores.
Caroline M. Nichols Churchill, “Little Sheaves” Gathered While Gleaning After Reapers, Being
Letters of Travel Commencing in 1870, and Ending in 1873 (San Francisco: n.p., 1874), 148, 53, 92.
37
38
Caroline N. Churchill, “Active Footsteps,” in Fischer, Let Them Speak for Themselves, 167.
39
Butruille, Women’s Voices from the Mother Lode, 24.
33
As demonstrated by the numerous women in this analysis, California’s gold rush
women were an anomaly within the greater social structure of the nineteenth century.
Although they were not exempt from adhering to gender roles, they often did not abide
by a strict social ideology because in the West, unique circumstances required women
to participate in activities outside their “sphere.” In California, many societal norms
were disregarded and Butruille contends,
Ladies heading for western lands, some wearing bloomers, carried with them the
seeds of female revolution as well as seeds to plant in the earth. Imagine True
Womanhood on the trail. When your child has died of cholera, when your
husband insists on taking a dangerous cutoff, when you can barely speak or see
because of endless alkali dust, when your clothes are in rags and there’s no water
even to wash the grime off your face—True Womanhood takes a back road to
survival.
Once in California, women had to continue to survive and Butruille continues, “Gold
rush women broke many of the rules right up front . . . . Traveling as single women,
leaving children behind, being in mostly male company—all broke the code. And so,
California women got a reputation for being uppity—strong-minded women, they were
called.”40
Women continued to dominate domestic activities in California, not necessarily
because they embraced the “True Womanhood” ideology, but because it was the work
they knew how to do and continued to do. According to Sparks, “Women did not
choose such jobs to satisfy some abstract social ethic regarding their role as nurturers
but because they knew how to do the work, because they knew there was a demand for
40
Ibid., 26.
34
these services, and because these jobs fit with their family and household
responsibilities.”41 As we have seen, those who made the most money during the
California Gold Rush were usually doing something else besides mining, and women
participated in such activities as readily and successfully as men. They overcame
difficult circumstances with their hard work, skills, and wit. The staggering cost of
goods in California added to their hardships. Nevertheless, by using their domestic
skills they were able to make money and provide for their families. Sometimes they
even made fortunes, as in the case of Luzena Wilson. Caroline Churchill eloquently
described her thoughts about the women she encountered in California: “I could but
think why did not the Gods create a few more such strong minded women to make glad
the hearts of humanity? If I were disposed to worship any thing that moves in this
mundane sphere, it would be a noble, free, independent practical woman.” Indeed, the
women of the California Gold Rush were noble, free, independent, practical women.
Perhaps these women set the precedent for women across the country, and twenty
years later when women like Caroline Churchill came to California, they were
impressed with the things women had accomplished in business, thus potentially
lighting the spark for the advancement of women’s rights. According to historian
Roger Levenson, “Not the least of the changes was the transplant of ideas, and thus the
41
Sparks, Capital Intentions, 37.
35
woman’s movements also arrived as more and more females came West to join or seek
husbands, to find work, to follow freedom or to find adventure.”42
Women had the opportunity to do anything in California and “any woman who
can stand her own company . . . . and is willing to put in as much time at careful labor
as she does over the washtub, will certainly succeed.”43 Many women did succeed, and
whether they made enough money to simply feed their families or to make a fortune,
their hard work has earned them an important place in history, far-removed from the
legacy of the prostitute.
Roger Levenson, Women in Printing: Northern California, 1857-1890 (Santa Barbara, CA: Capra
Press, 1994), 41.
42
Elinor Stewart, quoted in Lillian Schlissel, Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey (New York:
Schocken Books, 1982), 84-85.
43
36
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES
“An Enterprising Woman in California.” In Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters
from the Western Trails, vol. 3, edited by Kenneth L. Holmes, 282-83. Glendale,
CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1983.
Ballou, Mary B. I Hear the Hogs in My Kitchen: A Woman's View of the Gold Rush. 1852.
Reprint, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962.
Bates, Mrs. D.B. Incidents on Land and Water, or Four Years on the Pacific Coast. Boston: J.
French, 1857.
Burrell, Clarissa W. The Burrell Letters. Edited by Reginald R. Stuart. Oakland, CA:
privately printed, 1950.
Churchill, Caroline N. “Little Sheaves” Gathered While Gleaning After Reapers, Being
Letters of Travel Commencing in 1870, and Ending in 1873. San Francisco: n.p., 1874.
----------. Active Footsteps. In Let Them Speak for Themselves: Women in the American West,
1849-1900, edited by Christiane Fischer, 166-76. Hamden, CT: Archon Books,
1977.
Clappe, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith. The Shirley Letters from the California Mines, 18511852. Edited by Marlene Smith-Baranzini. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1998.
Farnham, Eliza W. California, In-Doors and Out; or, How We Farm, Mine, and Live
Generally in the Golden State. New York: Dix, Edwards, 1856.
Frink, Margaret A. Journal of the Adventures of a Party of California Gold Seekers. 1897.
Reprint, Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1988.
Gregson, Eliza Marshall. The Gregson Memoirs, Containing Mrs. Eliza Gregson's ‘Memory’
and the Statement of James Gregson. 1876. Reprint, San Francisco: L.R. Kennedy,
1940.
Keegan, Elizabeth. “A Teenager’s Letter from Sacramento, 1852.” In Covered Wagon
Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 4, edited by Kenneth L.
Holmes, 29-31. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1983.
37
Likins, Mrs. J.W. Six Years Experience as a Book Agent in California, Including My Trip from
New York to San Francisco via Nicaragua. 1874. Reprint, San Francisco: Book Club
of California, 1992.
Mansur, Abby. “MS Letters Written to Her Sister, 1852-1854.” In Let Them Speak for
Themselves: Women in the American West, 1849-1900, edited by Christiane Fischer,
48-57. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977.
Megquier, Mary Jane. Apron Full of Gold: The Letters of Mary Jane Megquier from San
Francisco, 1849-1856. Edited by Robert Glass Cleland. San Marino, CA:
Huntington Library, 1949.
Merrill, Jerusha. “We Are Satisfied to Dig Our Gold in San Francisco.” In So Much to Be
Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier, edited by Ruth B.
Moynihan, Susan Armitage, and Christiane Fischer Dichamp, 15-22. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
Royce, Sarah. A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California. 1932.
Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977.
“Running a Boarding House in the Mines.” In Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters
from the Western Trails, vol. 1, edited by Kenneth L. Holmes, 271-72. Glendale,
CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1983.
Stewart, Elinor. Quoted in Lillian Schlissel, Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey.
New York: Schocken Books, 1982.
Van Court, Mrs. E.A. “Reminiscences.” In So Much to Be Done: Women Settlers on the
Mining and Ranching Frontier, edited by Ruth B. Moynihan, Susan Armitage, and
Christiane Fischer Dichamp, 26-35. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
Whipple-Haslam, Lee. Early Days in California: Scenes and Events of the ‘50s as I Remember
Them. Jamestown, CA: n.p., 1925.
Wilson, Luzena Stanley. ’49er Memories Recalled Years Later for Her Daughter Correnah
Wilson Wright. 1881. Reprint, Mills College, CA: Eucalyptus Press, 1937.
SECONDARY SOURCES
Butruille, Susan G. Women’s Voices from the Mother Lode. Boise, ID: Tamarack Books,
1998.
38
Levenson, Roger. Women in Printing: Northern California, 1857-1890. Santa Barbara, CA:
Capra Press, 1994.
Levy, JoAnn. They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush. Hamden, CT:
Archon Books, 1990.
Moynihan, Ruth B., Susan Armitage, and Christiane Fischer Dichamp, eds. So Much to
Be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1998.
Sparks, Edith. Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850-1920. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.