The Rush for Gold in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century

Two of my Proxy Brides books have some of the hero’s riches coming from gold found further West. The existence of their holdings out west actually cause problems between hero and heroine in both A

Bride for Ransom and my new book releasing next week, A Bride for Hamilton. Ransom’s claim was in Oregon and he was anxious to get back to it. Hamilton keeps his claims a secret from his bride which leads to all sorts of complications. I found it fascinating to research the Gold Rush. Here’s a little of what I found:

The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy, and the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood, in the Compromise of 1850.

The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed

off their lands by the gold-seekers, called "forty-niners" (referring to 1849, the peak year for Gold Rush immigration). Outside of California, the first to arrive were from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and Latin America in late 1848. Of the approximately 300,000 people who came to California during the Gold Rush, about half arrived by sea and half came overland on the California Trail and the Gila River trail; forty-niners often faced substantial hardships on the trip. While most of the newly arrived were Americans, the gold rush attracted thousands from Latin America, Europe, Australia, and China. Agriculture and ranching expanded throughout the state to meet the needs of the settlers. San Francisco grew from a small settlement of about 200 residents in 1846 to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852. Roads, churches, schools and other towns were built throughout California. In 1849 a state constitution was written. In September 1850, California became a state.

At the beginning of the Gold Rush, there was no law regarding property rights in the goldfields and a system of "staking claims" was developed. Prospectors retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, such as panning. Although the mining caused environmental harm, more sophisticated methods of gold recovery were developed and later adopted around the world. New methods of transportation developed as steamships came into regular service. By 1869, railroads were built from California to the eastern United States. At its peak, technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required, increasing the proportion of gold companies to individual miners. Gold worth tens of billions of today's US dollars was recovered, which led to great wealth for a few, though many who participated in the California Gold Rush earned little more than they had started with.

Shortly after the discovery of gold in the Sutter’s Mill in California (which started the California gold rush), another state also started its own lust-for-gold movement: Oregon. Reports of gold discovered in Oregon date back to 1850, but it was not quite enough to spark the Oregon gold rush. Two years later, however, the discovery of rich gold deposits by a group of sailors who headed for Crescent City did the job. The area where the deposit was found is now called Sailors Diggings. Prior to the first documented gold discovery in Southwestern Oregon, the region was pretty much uninhabited, with the exception of Native Americans, fur trappers, and gold prospectors travelling to Mother Lode Country.

In 1854, the Oregon gold rush was on its full-scale. A ditch that stretched about eleven miles long was constructed to deliver water to the rich-placer ground. Soon after that, large deposits were found in three different river drainages including the Rogue, Applegate, and Illinois Rivers. Althouse Creek

was considered one of the richest; some said that it was prospected by more than 10,000 men during the first decade of the gold rush. Many of those men had been in the Northern California before they came to the creek; unfortunately for them, rich grounds had been already claimed by the time they arrived.

The drive for fortune seemed to know no bounds, and it took only a little while until prospectors realized that there were richer grounds in the area. Nearly every tributary for as long as 50 miles north of California border contained gold. The first period of the Oregon gold rush lasted until 1861, but it continued right away as soon as the discovery of gold in Eastern Oregon. The old mining towns in Southwest Oregon were abandoned, but you can still find them today.

A Bride for Hamilton releases March 24^th. You can pre-order it now.

Marry in haste, repent at leisure…

Sadie Fitzsimmons must choose between total destitution and marriage by proxy with someone she’s never met.

When Sadie steps off the train to meet her new husband for the first time, life in Nebraska is not at all what she had expected. Torn between honoring the vows she spoke to a stranger, and her desire to be free of all obligations, Sadie must face the consequences of her choices.

Hamilton Foster had worked hard for his successes. All that was missing from his perfect life was a family of his own. Sending home to Boston for a wife seemed like a good idea until she arrived and she was too pretty to be trusted.

Follow along to see if these two can find their happily ever after.

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A Bride for Ransom

Ransom is just looking for a mother for his orphaned niece. The fact that she’s from Boston is a

Hannah needs a husband. Her new name will protect her siblings. The fact that he lives in the back of beyond gives them a place to hide. She hadn’t counted on him being so appealing.

But what happens when they realize how very permanent their proxy marriage truly is?

bonus. Their arrangement allows him to get out of town.

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Thank you for reading. I'd love to stay in touch. Please join me on Facebook on my page or in my group. Or sign up for my Newsletter on my website.

~ Happy Reading ~

Place

by Rain Trueax

"Where we choose to be-- we have that power to determine our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being." 

Sena Jeter Naslund. 

In my own books, place is almost always key. My characters are often a product of the region in which they grew. It's not everything, but I've considered it one of the characters for how it shapes someone. It's why I only put my stories in places I have either lived or spent time. Not all writers need this for their stories, but I always have wanted it. Of course, imagination adds to it. One of my books is an Oregon Trail story, and even though I didn't follow the whole Trail, I've been on major sections of it. Even more, the dream of what these pioneers would find when they got to Oregon, I understood from my own experiences.

So what I want to write about today is how place has helped shape who I am as well as my stories. This is about the land where I have lived 42 years. My place is on a year round stream. Water is key to life and this stream has quite a story it could tell.

In the Oregon Coast Range, the quiet lays round the spring, buried in ferns, sheltered by large trees. Water rises up through layers of basalt and clay. It bubbles to the surface and heads on a journey. As with all coastal streams, it is a product of springs. It is not fed by snow melt as this is a mostly temperate climate. The surface springs here are fed by rainfall. Far below their surface is an old lake where its waters are much different for their chemical makeup. The streams do not depend on it.

When the water reaches the thirty acres outside my windows, it has traveled less than twenty miles from its origin. It has been added onto by those springs on the hills. Here it’s eight to ten feet wide and most places no deeper a foot or two except when in flood. The water takes on a new name when it plunges into a river about a hundred feet from our home.

The water I can touch as it passes the farm will be carried through canyons and farm lands, past forests, cutting through cliffs of clay and sandstone before it enters rivers that grow

larger before it reaches the Pacific Ocean. With time, it will return to this land as rain and start all over again. This is part of an ever changing ecosystem for a host of insects, birds and animals. They live out their lives here, taking their life for granted. I never take my time here for granted.


The deer, raccoon, turkey, fox, bear, cougar, duck, steelhead, and trout seem unlikely to have named my stream. Wild things know where these places are but don’t need to title them. Humans like to name things. The Kalpuya probably had a name for it. It’s lost to time if they did. Over centuries, they traveled in a yearly cycle and here they fished, hunted, dried meat, gathered berries, dug roots, and ground acorns as they camped along the banks.They left behind arrowheads and grinding bowls as well as hidden burial sites.

The first Europeans who came to these beaver-rich valleys, were trappers and explorers. It is thought they may have brought with them malaria which decimated the numbers of the indigenous already here.  When the first settlers arrived, they talked of seeing a few Indians walk past. It was a peaceful coexistence. There were no Indian wars fought in these valleys. I've been told that the ones here knew of the burial of one of the Kalapuya on a knoll—a hidden grave. Maybe it's not far from where the first pioneers established their cemeteries-- both a family and community one. There are other small family plots behind many of the farms with only a few left to know their place or tend them.

The early settlers did name the creek as they claimed the land, built cabins and barns, birthed babies, and died along these banks. When I wade the creek, I find evidence of all who came before me from Kalapuya to settlers where broken pottery and parts of equipment were buried in the sandy soil. When we first got here, there was a steel cable across the creek which was used by loggers to move their logs to the nearby river and get them to the sawmills that were here when we first came. Jump dams stop the stream enough to float them down as they released the water.

Below our barns was where wagons forded the stream on solid sandstone-- before bridges. I've been told that in the seven oaks there would be metal rings that were used to tether horses. One logger said that if you try to cut down some of those old trees, your chainsaw would run into them. I'd only cut one down if it became dangerous to the house due to disease or old age. Ours are now well over a hundred years and a hundred feet tall-- huge, precious oaks shelter this house and saw what I've only read about. Their acorns fed families and now feed sheep.

I’ve only been here forty-two years, making me a piker in this rural community where some have always been here. Although I also grew up in a home on the edge of wilderness, it was not this one. None here knew me as a child, but my children have many who can say they knew them back then.

What I learned when we first came to this valley is that my family had come here when they left South Dakota for health reasons. One of the homes still standing had family who hosted them until they could get settled in another nearby community. I had distant relatives here that I had no idea. Does place draw us in ways we don't really know consciously?

Is place important to who we are? Some would say no and that we bring us with us wherever we go. Others know it's the core of their being. In this Oregon valley where I live, there are people who have never lived anywhere else, have barely been out of these hills. For some, their parents were born on the land they still occupy. Of those I met when we first arrived, many are now buried in the country cemetery above the church as are my parents and that of Ranch Boss'.

Times have changed-- yet in many ways not so much as we still do what we came here to do-- raise cattle and sheep, which we market as grassfed. I no longer buck bales but still love the land and its stories. I sought this life of ranching and despite its pain, sometimes tragedies, and the hard work, I feel blessed to have experienced a place so deeply as I have on the banks of this stream. Does being a country woman define me? Not totally, but it has been an important part of what has for most of my life.

The other thing that helps define us are our stories. I have one to share with my December blog in Sweethearts. It was told me, and I have also researched it. It's about one of those first families, settlers to the land on which I live today. 

My first book about a family and the journey west on the Oregon Trail. Round the Bend

My romances are historicals, contemporary, and paranormal 
with more about them at Rain Trueax 

Wild Turkeys -- summer

by Rain Trueax

Living on  little ranch in the Oregon Coast Range, we have wildlife as our neighbors. Sometimes that's worrisome like coyotes with sheep. Other times, it's such a blessing. Such is with the wild turkeys that live part of the year in our yard and pastures. I learned a bit about them out of curiosity as to how they fit into history.

In Oregon, they don't. It is claimed that the first wild turkeys were introduced here in 1961. I thought maybe they'd been over hunted as they had other places but apparently no evidence to show that they were ever here. They were elsewhere in the United States and have played a role in even stories about pioneers and Native Americans.

Of the four subspecies of turkeys, we have two in Oregon. The Merriam's wild turkeys were the first. They were live-trapped in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Montana. Today, it's believed that they hybridized with Rio Grande

wild turkeys brought to southwestern Oregon in 1975. They were native to riparian zones and scrub woodlands from the southern Great Plains into northeastern Mexico. They flourish in places like our ranch land here in the Coast Range.  
In researching, I learned wild turkeys evolved more than 11 million years ago although probably not exactly as they are today.  There are five subspecies of wild turkeys with different ranges and feathers. 

Ancient civilizations, like the Aztecs revered the birds and held religious festivals twice a

year. They thought the turkey was a bird manifestation of one of their gods-- a trickster. In the Mayan and Aztec culture, turkey feathers were used to adorn jewelry, clothing and headdresses. Although they regarded the turkey as of spiritual significance, they did also eat them. Navajos, in the American Southwest, penned wild turkeys to fatten them. 
In pagan and nature based religions, the turkey represents spirituality and Earth Mother. The red wattle, which is that flap of skin that originates from the forehead and is seen on the toms, is said to represent the energy center of intuition. 

The stories of them with the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving are well known. Maybe less so is that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird. He considered the proud, adaptable turkey superior to the eagle, whom he had little use for.

Most of the West had turkeys and then they were nearly hunted to extinction along with their natural habitat being reduced. It was time for an intervention and that was begun as hunting was limited to seasons and the birds were moved into areas, like Oregon, where they had never been. 

We had long seen them around us but two years ago is the first time that they began to raise their broods here where it's a natural habitat for them with the oaks and meadow like pastures. 

Some think of them like domestic turkeys, but they are not. Domestication takes a lot out of any animal. Wild turkeys have a wide variety of sounds they make to call each other, fight, or just express enjoyment. To hear them outside is one of the more enjoyable part of my life here in Oregon. 

Most often, we see the toms and hens together with the chicks but they are not monogamous birds. It's about the community. A tom may mate with several females but the hens only with one. They lay about twelve eggs, one egg a day for two weeks. The hens sit on the nest until the eggs hatch after four weeks. She stays there to protect those babies from all that would eat the eggs. 

When the poults hatch, they are up inside of a day. They must walk to find food as this isn't like the birds that can feed their young. The job of the flock is to get the young to food sources. Until the chicks get their flying feathers, they are vulnerable on the ground to snakes and other predators. Turkeys can be very aggressive and don't have spurs on their legs for nothing. One year, Ranch Boss watched a sad story as a hawk was attacking a chick that appeared crippled. The hen fought with him but the battle was hers to lose.

Something many don't know is adult wild turkeys fly quite well. They roost in trees as soon as their babies have enough feathers to fly. Ours here roost about 40 or 50 feet up. To hear them take off for their big branches is like a whirl of wind. They come down with less noise. The sounds in the trees range from gobble gobble to tweets and almost purring sounds. 

They generally will not stay one place for long. Even though we put out some grain for sheep and birds, they never linger but always move on. I expect them to not stay on the farm here although they get along quite well with the sheep. Both like the grains from tall grasses and what drops off the hay bales. It appears we have four flocks with varying ages of chicks. Earlier as the chicks were growing, it seemed the toms hung with the flock for protection. Now, they are hanging more together than with the hens and chicks. 

We have taken a lot of photos but haven't had much luck in capturing the sounds they make. They are very defensive and if you watch them in a flock, some will be looking behind and some ahead for predators.

What I have seen besides photos are a LOT of feathers. I don't know why they drop so

many, but they seem to be most heavily below where they roost. I am trying to figure out if I can use these in any productive way. Someone told me it's illegal to keep any feathers, even from game birds. I need to do some research on this. The striped ones look like many Native American headdresses, where they suggest eagle feathers. Some say their feathers have spiritual significance.

This week, when I had to deliver a message to Ranch Boss at the barns, walking down the gravel and dirt road, there were two hens ahead of me, without their chicks. As Ranch Boss

approached from the other barn side, the hens saw they had a problem. They ran toward him, then looked back at me. I was standing still. I knew that soon they'd have to choose to fly, something they prefer not doing. First one, then the other took to the air, very cool to watch and part of the joy of living with wildlife.
They are hunted in Oregon in two seasons-- spring and fall. I guess it's a popular sport, but nobody better try shooting the ones on our land. This is a sanctuary. :) They are not as afraid of us anymore, but they still run when we approach, which is good. Not all humans can be trusted. 

All photos are from our Oregon home from June to August.

From There to Here

by Rain Trueax

Much as I love learning about other writers, from where they came, and what motivates them in their writing, when it comes to write something about myself, to introduce myself to those who don't know me, I freeze up. What to tell? What is interesting? What matters? 

Many times, I've written about living on a sheep and cattle operation in the Oregon Coast Range with my husband of 53 years. Our home is on the banks of a creek and where we raised two children to adulthood and enjoy having four grandchildren visit when they aren't too busy with their activities. I've written less about from where I come and how that has impacted what I write today.

My parents' story probably influences some of that. Mom, born in Oregon, was a professional musician who traveled around the country including Mexico, with all girl orchestras where she played bass and sang. Dad, born in South Dakota but moved to Oregon with his parents, was a stagehand at the Portland theater where her band was playing. He was a carnie, a guy who dropped everything to travel with the carnival through the summers. They dated. Then, leaving without a word, he stood her up. One of the hands told my mom that he'd never amount to anything for her. He returned at the end of the summer. By May, he'd changed her mind, and they were married. A little older, they weren't sure children were in the cards but turned out two were. 

A WWII baby, as I became a child, the United States was coming off a major war, and we were under the threat of a nuclear holocaust. If we could forget that, our schools had bomb shelters where we were supposed to go in the event of an attack (exactly what those were supposed to benefit us, I'm not sure as we all knew about the dangers of radiation).   

The First White Women to Cross the Rockies

By Anna Kathryn Lanier

On July 4, 1836, the 60th anniversary of America’s independence, a group of trappers, Native Americans and missionaries traversed  the Continental Divide.  Though by this time many white men had made this journey, this caravan had two special people with them:   Eliza Spaulding and Narcissa Whitman, the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains.  The women accompanied their husbands, Henry Spaulding and Marcus Whitman, missionaries who were on their way West to spread the Word of God to the Natives. 

As the caravan made its way down the side of the mountain, they were beset upon by fifteen or so riders on horseback, whooping and hollering and shooting off their rifles. The travelers scrambled in fright to defend themselves, but soon realized it was not a raiding party, but a greeting party.  Word had been sent ahead of their arrival and the trappers who had gathered for great rendezvous had sent out the group to escort the caravan, and its two females, to the gathering.

Word  of the arrival of the white women spread quickly and mountain men and Indian alike surrounded the women in awe.  Narcissa preferred to spend her time in the company of the trappers, laughing, talking and visiting.  Eliza was more on the quiet side and spent her free time with the Nez Perce, learning their language.  Both women found the hospitality, warmth and kindness of the Indians impressive.

From the great rendezvous point, in what is now southeastern Wyoming, the two couples planned to make their way to Oregon.  The fur company that had gotten them this far would return East, the trappers would return to the mountains and the missionaries would be on their own. Consultations were held with the Indians and a route that followed the Snake River was chosen.  The Nez Perce offered to take them part of the way, but in the end a group of fur traders from the British Hudson’s Bay Company arrived and offered to escort them the full length of the journey.

The Hudson’s Bay Company controlled this area of the Northwest even more so than Great Britain or the United States, both of whom laid claim to the Oregon country.  Dr. John McLoughlin, who oversaw the business, was likely the most powerful individual in the territory.  He, however, realized very quickly what the arrival of two white women meant. More white women, with families, would follow and soon enough, the Americans would come to control the land where once only trappers and Indians had lived.

As it turned out, less than a year later, Narcissa proved him right by giving birth to the first white child born west of the Rockies, Alice Clarissa.  Tragedy struck just two years later, however, when Alice drowned in the Walla Walla River.  Marcus believed in the work of the mission and the couple stayed at the Whitman Mission to serve and guide the influx of settlers who arrived in the territory over the next few years. They gave food, shelter, supplies and medical attention to those just arriving from the hard cross-country journey.  They even took in orphans, including the seven Sager children after both parents died while traveling from Missouri. (Learn about the Sager Orphans HERE and HERE).

In 1847, a measles epidemic affected the nearby Cayuse Indian tribe, as well as many of the white settlers. Half the tribe died from the disease and the Cayuse blamed Marcus for the deaths.  Warriors attacked the mission on November 29, 1847, killing 14 people, including Marcus and Narcissa.

Even in their deaths, however, the Whitmans encouraged further settlement.  Joe Meek, mountain man, persuaded Congress to establish the Oregon Territory to protect the settlers and capture Whitmans’ murderers.  By 1850, just three years later, more than 12,000 whites lived in Oregon and all because two women were brave enough to accompany their husbands on a journey of a lifetime.

Resource:

TRUE TALES OF THE WILD WEST by Paul Robert Walker

Anna Kathryn Lanier

www.aklanier.com

Tabitha Brown, Mother of Oregon

by Anna Kathryn Lanier

 I wrote about Tabitha Brown’s covered wagon journey to Oregon in a previous blog (find it HERE) and made short mention about her story after her arrival in Oregon.  For those unfamiliar with Mrs. Brown, she started the 1846 cross-country journey in her sixties, already a widow.  Her older brother-in-law traveled with her.  They arrived at the end of the trail with only the clothes on their backs.  It was then that Tabitha discovered that what she thought was a button at the end of a glove’s fingertip was really a six-and-one-fourth cent piece.  She used the meager amount to “purchase three needles and traded off some of my old clothes to the squaws for buckskin, and worked it into gloves for the Oregon ladies and gentlemen.” During her first winter, she profited $30.

In October 1847, about a year after arriving, Mrs. Brown visited her son on the West Tualatin Plains, (now called Forest Grove). There she met the Reverend and Mrs. Harvey Clark, missionaries in the area, and learned many children arrived as orphans when their parents died on journey west.  She was moved by this revelation and asked The Reverend Clark “Why has Providence frowned on my and left me poor in this world? Had He blessed me with riches as He has many others, I know right well what I should do. I should establish myself in a comfortable house and receive all poor children and be a mother to them.”  Believing in her sincerity, Rev. Clark provided Mrs. Brown with the means to start up a school for orphans.  In the Spring of 1848, she “found all things in readiness for me to go into the old meetinghouse and cluck up my chickens for the next Monday morning.”

The first school in the territory to board children, local families also sent their children to be educated. Those who could afford it paid a dollar a week per child.  By 1851, her ‘family’ had 40 people at Tualatin Academy.  In 1854, the territorial legislature altered the academy’s charter to provide for the creation of Pacific University.  The academy and the college thrived under Mrs. Brown’s tutelage. The growth of a local public high school caused the Tualatin Academy to be closed in 1915 and Pacific University stood on its own -- a pioneer institution of higher education.   The University still thrives today, thanks to a woman who wanted only to care for and education orphans.

Pacific University

For her representation as a person of “distinctive pioneer heritage, and the charitable and compassionate nature, of Oregon's people,” Tabitha Brown was proclaimed The Mother of Oregon and is one of only six women whose name is inscribed in the legislative chambers of the Oregon State Capitol.

Tabitha died in 1858 and is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Salem, Oregon.

For further reading:

Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1849 by Kenneth L. Holmes

http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/brown_tabitha_moffat_1780_1858_/#.U8NeUpRdWSo

Anna Kathryn Lanier
Romance Author, A GIFT BEYOND ALL MEASURE

http://aklanier.com/

Never let your memories be greater than your dreams. ~Doug Ivester