Download or read book California Letters of Lucius Fairchild written by Lucius Fairchild and published by . This book was released on 1931 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucius Fairchild (1831-1896) left Madison, Wisconsin, for California in 1849 and remained in the West until 1858. On his return to Wisconsin, Fairchild carved out a remarkable career as a soldier-politician: serving in a Wisconsin regiment in the Civil War, winning election as governor in 1866, and then representing the United States abroad in a variety of diplomatic posts. California letters of Lucius Fairchild (1931) records his overland journey to California, gold prospecting from Calaveras County to Scott Valley, business partnership with Elijah Steele in farming, mining, and butchering in Scott Valley.
Download or read book We the Miners written by Andrea G. McDowell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Financial Times Best History Book of the Year A surprising account of frontier law that challenges the image of the Wild West. In the absence of state authority, Gold Rush miners crafted effective government by the people—but not for all the people. Gold Rush California was a frontier on steroids: 1,500 miles from the nearest state, it had a constantly fluctuating population and no formal government. A hundred thousand single men came to the new territory from every corner of the nation with the sole aim of striking it rich and then returning home. The circumstances were ripe for chaos, but as Andrea McDowell shows, this new frontier was not nearly as wild as one would presume. Miners turned out to be experts at self-government, bringing about a flowering of American-style democracy—with all its promises and deficiencies. The Americans in California organized and ran meetings with an efficiency and attention to detail that amazed foreign observers. Hundreds of strangers met to adopt mining codes, decide claim disputes, run large-scale mining projects, and resist the dominance of companies financed by outside capital. Most notably, they held criminal trials on their own authority. But, mirroring the societies back east from which they came, frontiersmen drew the boundaries of their legal regime in racial terms. The ruling majority expelled foreign miners from the diggings and allowed their countrymen to massacre the local Native Americans. And as the new state of California consolidated, miners refused to surrender their self-endowed authority to make rules and execute criminals, presaging the don’t-tread-on-me attitudes of much of the contemporary American west. In We the Miners, Gold Rush California offers a well-documented test case of democratic self-government, illustrating how frontiersmen used meetings and the rules of parliamentary procedure to take the place of the state.
Download or read book Rough Diamond written by A. K. ]]> and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solider, politician, miner, pioneer, scion of a Founding Father, William Stephen Hamilton led a prolific life. Rough Diamond: The Life of Colonel William Stephen Hamilton examines the tumultuous early Republic period of American history through the life of Alexander Hamilton's son. Born in New York in 1797, the fifth son of Alexander Hamilton, he was only seven when his father was infamously killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr. After resigning from West Point, Hamilton moved to frontier Illinois in 1817. The famous name of Hamilton that may have acquired him rank and prestige at one time was meaningless in a Midwestern frontier society driven by the Jacksonians. Yet, despite being hurled into a clash of economic, political, and cultural cultures, Hamilton determined to live his life by his own rules. A veteran of the Winnebago and Black Hawk Wars, Hamilton was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives before moving to the Wisconsin territory, where he founded the mining town of Hamilton's Diggings (Wiota, WI). When gold was discovered in California in 1848, he traveled west, where he would die in Sacramento in 1850. In Rough Diamond: The Life of Colonel William Stephen Hamilton, author A. K. Fielding expands the story of the Hamilton family. Hamilton's life offers a firsthand account of the formation of the Midwestern states, the realities of life on the frontier, and mass migration caused by the California Gold Rush.
Download or read book The Plains Across written by John D. Unruh and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most honored book ever released by the University of Illinois Press, The Plains Across was the result of more than a decade's work by its author. Here, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Oregon Trail, is a paperback reissue that includes the notes, bibliography, and illustrations contained in the 1979 cloth edition.
Download or read book The Pacific Historical Review written by Anna Marie Hager and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1976 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Arresting Dress written by Clare Sears and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-20 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1863, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a law that criminalized appearing in public in “a dress not belonging to his or her sex.” Adopted as part of a broader anti-indecency campaign, the cross-dressing law became a flexible tool for policing multiple gender transgressions, facilitating over one hundred arrests before the century’s end. Over forty U.S. cities passed similar laws during this time, yet little is known about their emergence, operations, or effects. Grounded in a wealth of archival material, Arresting Dress traces the career of anti-cross-dressing laws from municipal courtrooms and codebooks to newspaper scandals, vaudevillian theater, freak-show performances, and commercial “slumming tours.” It shows that the law did not simply police normative gender but actively produced it by creating new definitions of gender normality and abnormality. It also tells the story of the tenacity of those who defied the law, spoke out when sentenced, and articulated different gender possibilities.
Download or read book When the Great Spirit Died written by William B. Secrest and published by Quill Driver Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most persistent enemy of the native Californians was the firmly rooted white philosophy which preached that, one way or another, the Indian was doomed. Beyond the callous references to "Diggers" and "Poor Lo", the single most important catchword of the period was "extermination." It was used early and often and picked up by the newspapers and repeated in the army reports, letters, government documents, and journals of the time. It was a word that set the stage for slaughter. When the Great Spirit Died is a sad and tragic story that will haunt our country forever.
Download or read book Gold Rush Capitalists written by Mark A. Eifler and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the interaction of capitalism and community in the founding of the gold rush city of Sacramento, and of the clashes between miners and city founders.
Download or read book Continental Reckoning written by Elliott West and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2023-02 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elliott West lays out the main events and developments that together describe and explain the emergence of the American West and situates the birth of the West in the broader narrative of American history between 1848 and 1880.
Download or read book The Genealogist s Virtual Library written by Thomas Jay Kemp and published by Wilmington, Del. : Scholarly Resources. This book was released on 2000 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growing availability of full-text books and journals on the Internet has made vast amounts of valuable genealogical information available at the touch of a button. The Genealogist's Virtual Library is a new volume that directs readers to the sites on the web that contain the full text of books.
Download or read book Roaring Camp written by Susan Lee Johnson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the dynamic social world created by the Gold Rush in the Sierra Nevada foothills around Stockton through snapshots of prose that enter the encampments of some of the pioneers who forged ahead out West. 15 photos and one map.
Download or read book The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West written by Michael L. Tate and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2001-10-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reassessment of the military's role in developing the Western territories moves beyond combat stories and stereotypes to focus on more non-martial accomplishments such as exploration, gathering scientific data, and building towns.
Download or read book The World Rushed In written by J. S. Holliday and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2015-03-16 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When The World Rushed In was first published in 1981, the Washington Post predicted, “It seems unlikely that anyone will write a more comprehensive book about the Gold Rush.” Twenty years later, no one has emerged to contradict that judgment, and the book has gained recognition as a classic. As the San Francisco Examiner noted, “It is not often that a work of history can be said to supplant every book on the same subject that has gone before it.” Through the diary and letters of William Swain--augmented by interpolations from more than five hundred other gold seekers and by letters sent to Swain from his wife and brother back home--the complete cycle of the gold rush is recreated: the overland migration of over thirty thousand men, the struggle to “strike it rich” in the mining camps of the Sierra Nevadas, and the return home through the jungles of the Isthmus of Panama. In a new preface, the author reappraises our continuing fascination with the “gold rush experience” as a defining epoch in western--indeed, American--history.
Download or read book What Lies Beneath written by Gail L. Jenner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-09-15 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unearth the Mysteries of Those Who Lie Beneath the Oldest Graveyards in the Golden State In each of California’s 58 counties there are hundreds (and hundreds) of cemeteries, burial sites, and abandoned graveyards, some tucked away behind storefronts or under paved streets. “Burying grounds” are found in neighborhoods, pastures, fields, downtowns, backyards, or deep in the woods. In What Lies Beneath: California Pioneer Cemeteries and Graveyards, author Gail L. Jenner exhumes the stories of these pioneers buried beneath the soil, pavement, and rocks, or under the waters of this state. This guide also provides descriptions of headstone features and symbols, and demystifies the burial traditions used by the Native Americans, Spanish, Chinese immigrants, and early California pioneers and settlers.
Download or read book Our Better Nature written by Philip J. Dreyfus and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-11-19 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few cities are so dramatically identified with their environment as San Francisco—the landscape of hills, the expansive bay, the engulfing fog, and even the deadly fault line shifting below. Yet most residents think of the city itself as separate from the natural environment on which it depends. In Our Better Nature, Philip J. Dreyfus recounts the history of San Francisco from Indian village to world-class metropolis, focusing on the interactions between the city and the land and on the generations of people who have transformed them both. Dreyfus examines the ways that San Franciscans remade the landscape to fit their needs, and how their actions reflected and affected their ideas about nature, from the destruction of wetlands and forests to the creation of Golden Gate and Yosemite parks, the Sierra Club, and later, the birth of the modern environmental movement. Today, many San Franciscans seek to strengthen the ties between cities and nature by pursuing more sustainable and ecologically responsible ways of life. Consistent with that urge, Our Better Nature not only explores San Francisco’s past but also poses critical questions about its future. Dreyfus asks us to reassess our connection to the environment and to find ways to redefine ourselves and our cities within nature. Only with such an attitude will San Francisco retain the magic that has always charmed residents and visitors alike.
Download or read book In the Looking Glass written by Rebecca K. Shrum and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-08-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[An] utterly fascinating reading of the multiple uses and meanings of mirrors among European Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans.” —Journal of Social History What did it mean, Rebecca K. Shrum asks, for people—long-accustomed to associating reflective surfaces with ritual and magic—to became as familiar with how they looked as they were with the appearance of other people? Fragmentary histories tantalize us with how early Americans—people of Native, European, and African descent—interacted with mirrors. Shrum argues that mirrors became objects through which white men asserted their claims to modernity, emphasizing mirrors as fulcrums of truth that enabled them to know and master themselves and their world. In claiming that mirrors revealed and substantiated their own enlightenment and rationality, white men sought to differentiate how they used mirrors from not only white women but also from Native Americans and African Americans, who had long claimed ownership of and the right to determine the meaning of mirrors for themselves. Mirrors thus played an important role in the construction of early American racial and gender hierarchies. Drawing from archival research, as well as archaeological studies, probate inventories, trade records, and visual sources, Shrum also assesses extant mirrors in museum collections through a material culture lens. Focusing on how mirrors were acquired in America and by whom, as well as the profound influence mirrors had, both individually and collectively, on the groups that embraced them, In the Looking Glass is a piece of innovative textual and visual scholarship. “A superb reflection of the many meanings held by an object usually taken for granted. Highly recommended.” —Choice
Download or read book The Great Medicine Road Part 2 written by Michael L. Tate and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early weeks of 1848, as U.S. congressmen debated the territorial status of California, a Swiss immigrant and an itinerant millwright forever altered the future state’s fate. Building a sawmill for Johann August Sutter, James Wilson Marshall struck gold. The rest may be history, but much of the story of what happened in the following year is told not in history books but in the letters, diaries, journals, and other written recollections of those whom the California gold rush drew west. In this second installment in the projected four-part collection The Great Medicine Road: Narratives of the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails, the hardy souls who made the arduous trip tell their stories in their own words. Seven individuals’ tales bring to life a long-ago year that enriched some, impoverished others, and forever changed the face of North America. Responding to often misleading promotional literature, adventurers made their way west via different routes. Following the Carson River through the Sierra Nevada, or taking the Lassen Route to the Sacramento Valley, they passed through the Mormon Zion of Great Salt Lake City and traded with and often displaced Native Americans long familiar with the trails. Their accounts detail these encounters, as well as the gritty realities of everyday life on the overland trails. They narrate events, describe the vast and diverse landscapes they pass through, and document a journey as strange and new to them as it is to many readers today. Through these travelers’ diaries and memoirs, readers can relive a critical moment in the remaking of the West—and appreciate what a difference one year can make in the life of a nation.
