Black History in California
As Black History Month (February) winds to an end, I decided to post a bit of Californian history about African Americans and about my African American characters. I’ve posted before about African American history in the Oregon Territory. California was marginally more receptive to Blacks in that era, but not by much. The Tanner family […]
Another Trip to the Nelson-Atkins: California Gold Rush Daguerreotypes
I’ve written before about viewing exhibits at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. I was there again shortly before Christmas, this time to see a temporary exhibit of daguerreotypes taken of miners and locations associated with the California Gold Rush. Since this was the subject of my novel, Now I’m Found, I considered […]
The Vagaries of Mail Service During the Early California Gold Rush
One of the issues I have dealt with in my novel about the California Gold Rush is long-distance communications in the West between 1848 and 1850. I have characters living in Oregon, others in California, and they have relatives in Missouri and Massachusetts. The only way people could communicate over distance was through letters, but […]
Why Don’t I Write About the Chinese During the California Gold Rush?
The novel I’m currently writing alludes to race relations between whites and Native Americans, Hispanics, and African Americans during the California Gold Rush years. However, I do not touch on the Chinese influx into California. Why not? Because my novel takes place in 1848-1850, before the large wave of Asian immigration to California began. The […]
How Much Gold Was Enough in the California Gold Rush Years?
In my research into the California Gold Rush, I’ve read about prospectors who struck it rich and returned to their homes wealthy men, about others who made a fortune and then spent it, and about still other men who never made a dime. And I started wondering how much it took to become wealthy in […]
Researching the Etymology of Words for Historical Fiction
I try to keep the language I use in my historical novels true to the time period I’m writing about. This is particularly important in the dialogue between characters and in the thoughts of my point of view character. The accuracy of the language I use is as important to the verisimilitude of the novel […]
How the Great Fires Shaped Early San Francisco
The last survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake died earlier this month. William Del Monte was three months old when the earthquake struck and 109 when he died on January 11. Reading the news articles about his life and death brought to mind all the novels I’ve read about the earthquake and the fires […]
Sacramento in July 1849
As I searched for a topic on the California Gold Rush to write about this month, I came across issues for the Sacramento Placer Times in July 1849. At that time, Sacramento was a burgeoning outpost at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers. It still was not an incorporated town. The location had […]
Banking in the American West in the 1840s—Before and After the Gold Rush
I’ve blogged about some boring topics related to my research for my Oregon Trail and Gold Rush novels, but this post may discuss the most boring—banking. Yet one of the biggest problems I had in plotting my novel was how my protagonist could move money from the East Coast to Oregon, and then between California […]
How the California Gold Rush Changed Emigration Patterns to the West
The Great Migration of 1843 was the first significant group of emigrants to head west. That year between 700 and 1,000 emigrants left for Oregon, mostly families seeking free land. In 1843, it was still uncertain whether the United States or Great Britain would govern the Oregon Territory, but it was clear the land was […]