It was not uncommon for veterans of California’s Gold Rush to write about their sojourn in the diggings.
Some sent letters home, others wrote and sometimes published diaries they kept while away and still others put their recollections in book form. Andrew Jackson Humphrey (1831-1910) chose to prepare a series of remembrances to appear in his local newspaper, the Waterloo Wisconsin Democrat.
An obliging editor faithfully printed Humphrey’s accounts every two weeks from Sept. 27, 1907, until the final submittal on May 8, 1908.
Waterloo, close to Madison, the state capital, was a rural area when AJ lived there and was noted as an excellent source of granite, primarily for crafting into headstones. The area continues to retain a rural quality even though some Madisonians are relocating there.
Humphrey had the spirit, curiosity, survival skills and persistence of a true adventurer, as well as the ability to recreate the thrill of his adventures on paper, a real find for researchers of American history.
He wrote of the “vice and depravity” of the saloon scene and invites readers inside for a look. He also described a miner’s life and the inside of his cabin.
He mostly mined on Wood’s Creek. His description of Jamestown in 1852 as a “rip-roaring mining camp” is what he saw and joined in. He even takes the reader to the top of Table Mountain to share the spectacular panorama he knew well.
Humphrey’s California years were part of a 14-year ramble in the Wild West, where he explored Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana prospecting for gold and silver deposits.
Sometime before he returned home in 1866 at the age of 35, his family moved to Waterloo where he also settled. A drug store clerk when he left for the mines, he eventually went into business as a pharmacist and ran his own shop, “Old Family Drug Store.” He was also active in Waterloo’s civic and social life.
Illustrations and information for this article were provided by Andrew Mattos, archive and records manager of the Carlo M. De Ferrari Archive in Sonora; Maureen Giese of the Waterloo Area Historical Society and William J. Coffill. Humphrey’s letters were condensed for this article for brevity only.
A glimpse of a miner’s daily life
By AJ Humphrey
In September of ‘52 I left New York for Aspinwall on the old side-wheeler Illinois, loaded to her utmost with young men ranging from eighteen to thirty-five years of age all bound for California with high hopes for a golden reward. Those men and boys were from every grade of society, every calling — farmers, college graduates, every profession and every trade, all Americans from the New England states, twenty-two from Vermont, many of us acquainted and all becoming better acquainted on the trip.
We arrived at the Isthmus nine days from New York, without any mishaps other than seasickness which I fortunately escaped. We hired natives with dugouts to take us up the Charges River to Cruces. From this place it is forty miles west to Panama. My particular chum, William Wright, and myself made the trip on foot between four o’clock a.m. and four p.m. We put up at the American Hotel kept by a Major Bowles, a typical southerner from New Orleans, and as good as a landlord as I have ever met. Had all inmates of his house taken his advice during our stay for twenty-two days on the Isthmus, quite a number who died would have continued the journey with us. But cholera and fever did its work aided by vile whiskey and late hours.
We visited the camps of the railroad diggers, superintended by Col. Baker who was afterwards killed at Ball’s Bluff during the Rebellion (Civil War). We found the men in all stages from sturdy manhood to tottering skeletons; the fresh arrivals were put in a gang by themselves and when they became weakened by disease they were moved to another camp and fresh arrivals took their places. This was kept up until the third camp, the camp of Death, was reached, for final interment. All this was explained to us by Major Bowles. None of our party had any desire for a job in any capacity on the Isthmus.
Our long stay on the Isthmus was occasioned by our steamer breaking into her shaft, but we finally got on the streamer Tennessee, Capt. Totten in command, about fifteen hundred passengers. Wright and myself chose a very commodious and much ventilated stateroom including the whole upper deck which we divided with five hundred other fellows.
After our fourteen days, we were passing through the ever-to-be-remembered Golden Gate. On our left was the rough, ragged, barren mountains of the Coast Range; on our right the high hills, mostly sand. As we rounded Telegraph Hill and Clark’s Point, the bay and its surroundings coming into view made an impression on me as if I was being ushered into a new world. And truly it was a new world to us then and is today to all Easterners.
San Francisco was filled with a motley crowd representing every nation on earth besides many tribes, all dressed in their native costumes excepting the Yanks. They were all clad in grey or red woolen shirts and pants with belts holding pistol and a knife. Many miners, just down from the mines, were distributing their gold dust among the numerous saloons, gambling houses or any other old way you can think of, while we, the newcomers, were gazing into the windows of jewelry stores and assay offices viewing the piles of gold and nuggets from the mines. It was enough to excite us to the highest pitch to go where it all came from and no money could hire us to stop in San Francisco. I was offered $150.00 per month and board to stop, but it was no temptation.
We took the first boat up the Sacramento for Wood’s Diggings where we arrived by stage from Stockton in due time. As we rode from Knight’s Ferry to Wood’s Creek, twenty-five miles, we found scattering works of miners from place to place and as we had one woman aboard (I won’t say lady) who rode outside with the driver we noticed squads of miners all along the route, waiting to see the woman and swing their hats and cheer her. They had been notified of her being on the coach by the miners near the ferry shouting ‘O Jim’. The cry was taken up and carried forward from place to place so that every man on the route from ferry to Sonora, thirty-eight miles, was notified in less than ten minutes that a woman was on the stage. White women were very scarce at that time, but there were plenty of Mexican women.
Wood’s Creek, afterward called Georgetown, and now called Jamestown, was then the most lively mining camp in the Southern Mines. I got there with just five dollars in my pocket and found a boarding place at the old Zintz House, kept by LaRose, a Canadian-Frenchman. I then started to look for a job at mining and found it the first place at which I applied. I paid the five dollars for a short-handled shovel and they put me into a tail race for an easy place. I found it the hardest place on the job, but I stuck to it, receiving five dollars a day, one dollar more than they agreed to pay me. I was all this time watching how the thing was done in a mining way and soon had enough to buy me a Long Tom.
Then I quit work by the day, took my Long Tom on my back and soon found a place that was not claimed and went to work on my own hook. The first day I washed out one-half ounce of gold dust, the next day a little more and then concluded to hire a couple of men, but could only find a couple of Negroes belonging to a Georgia slave owner by the name of Watson who had brought them as slaves to work for him. I paid him eight dollars a day for the two men. They were good miners and good workers. I kept them until I had worked out my claim and had seven hundred dollars ($28,000/ 2025) to the good.
It was then about the first of February 1853 and the other boys who came from Vermont began to look one another up as we had all scattered on the street, each one for himself. There were twenty-two of us all about the same age, but all had made a little money so we began to meet every Sunday to compare notes and prospects and talk about home as none of us had the remotest idea of making California our home, our object being to make as much as we could in the shortest space of time and get back to Vermont, but that time was far, far from attainment. As we would meet to visit we soon found it necessary to have several drinks of whiskey and as time went on more whiskey and more cards until the 4th of July when we all met in Sonora for a grand celebration. We took in all the gambling houses, saloons, and dance houses but, mind you, we were the ones taken in for what dust we had. I went back to my cabin that night, six miles, one of my companions with me. I went to bed, not to sleep, but to think. The prayers of my dear old mother came vividly to my mind as she took me into her bedroom the night before I started for California and prayed to God to protect and keep me from the wiles of the wicked. And the advice of my father all came to me so real and impressive that I swore I would never drink for sociability again. In the morning when George poked me in the ribs and said, “Say, old fell, it is time to wake up and take a drink,” my answer was, “George, I am done with the damn stuff forever, I swear it. I came here to get gold, not whiskey.” He again poked me in the ribs and laughed and jeered at me, but how well I have kept that promise will show.
I am the only one alive of the twenty-two, the last one dying fifteen years ago, several of them dying with their boots on. They were all good boys, well raised and well educated, but at the time of which I write, California was one open saloon. Apparently everybody drank and gambled, every trading house for miners supplied and set free whiskey for all their customers and I firmly believe that the early days of California cost more lives than the Rebellion and whiskey. Cards and women did the killing. The saddest remembrance of that part of my life is the fate of those dear boys.
I then being out of a playing claim I went prospecting into the Northern Mines and not finding what I went for, came back to Jamestown, and with two of the old boys, opened up the Spanish Gardens for a mining claim. It was ground which I had looked upon as good for some time, as it was being used for gardens by some Spaniards. We expected some trouble, but the mining laws were in our favor so we went to work and got our ditches dug and claims staked. We then went to the gardeners and tried to buy them off, but they refused to sell and threatened our lives if we commenced work.
We went before Judge (A.B.) Preston and he called in some arbitrator to name a price for the damage which was placed at $180.00. We deposited the money subject to the Spaniards’ call. They refused to take it so we opened up our ditches and sent a ground sluice stream down through the garden which sent the vegetables downstream in a hurry. The Spaniards came in squads with their knives in their hands, threatening vengeance but we were well armed and kept at our work. Judge Preston came out and tried to induce the Spaniards to take the money. They refused again, then the Georgia boys who were working a claim further up the creek came down in force, twelve of them, and joined us, assuring us that they would help kill all the Spaniards on this creek if necessary. This took the sand out of the Spaniards so they finally drew the $180.00, but swore vengeance just the same.
We kept on with our rock work until the claim was ordered out. It yielded us twelve thousand dollars ($480,000/ 2025) in four months. I then made calculations to return home to Vermont, but fate ruled otherwise. I had by this time become thoroughly imbued with the spirit of adventure and the free and the independent life of a miner. About this time the Table Mountain excitement was on and securing two claims in the mountain, I went to work tunnelling the mountain for pay dirt with the result of spending all I had made and running twelve hundred dollars in debt for supplies and finally abandoned the claims. Four hundred dollars in debt was my share.
Then I commenced to prospect again and finally struck pay on a spur of Table Mountain, paid up my debts and had several hundred left. In 1903 I visited the tunnels again and found that some more work had been done, but nothing like pay had ever been found. The tunnels as we left them were 700 feet and 1,100 feet, over half in rock.
The early influx to the gold fields of California was unlike any other, in regard to its make-up, ever before known. It was simply a conglomeration of all kinds and all classes of every nation on earth coming together for the one purpose, gold, and the gold was there in plenty for all who went after it in a systematic and determined way. Now, this mass of humanity, coming together for the main object, gold, had to fraternize, and the result that fraternization has produced is now known as the ‘man of the west’ whose personality is known and recognized the world over.
The gold miners are in a class by themselves and are unlike any other miner in every respect. We had the Yank clan, the South clan, the English, Irish, German, French and Spanish clans. Then there were the gamblers of all nations, and bad men of every degree who were constantly trying to mix with the better class. It seems strange, but is yet true, that those who were disposed and honest seemed to know by institution others of like kind, and this God-given faculty or instinct was the saving of not only California, but all the Pacific states. It brought order out of chaos largely by the use of well organized and rightly conducted vigilant committees.
The mining class was the backbone of the population and when anything came up to be done for the good of the population or help for the needy, whether it was to build a church, schoolhouse or for any charitable purpose, it was miners on whom you could rely. Many instances I have known of voluntary contributions to the unfortunate man or woman such as raising money to send a sick one home, or to the hospital or paying the expenses of sickness and nursing. Surely the miners’ record in this line is written in letters of gold to his credit and compares with charitable donations of the rich.
No miner or other man ever applied for food or shelter in vain or asked for a loan without receiving it. And when the Indians became troublesome, it was the miners who were on hand to do the fighting while the gamblers and bad men skulked in town for safety. The so-called hardships and privations were rough, it is true, but not hardships at all. We had plenty to occupy our minds as well as our muscles. Reports of new diggings were frequent. Then there would be a stampede for the new find. Frequent claim disputes would occasion a miners’ meeting to adjust the dispute and put in possession the rightful owner. Then the sluice robbers had to be attended to. At many of our miners’ meetings some rough-looking miner would bob up and give us a string of eloquence that would electrify the crowd. We would ask: ‘Who is he?’ Someone in the know said ‘Oh, he is Prof. Bob, but he is a graduate from Yale or Oxford or some other university as the case might be.
The lure of gold had taken hold of the women as well as the men and they came in squads. Composed of good and bad, and many of the good (I am sorry to say) becoming bad in getting used to the climate or to her surroundings. Yet there was enough of the good true women to form a nucleus of good society, and we soon had a church and a school house.
Now let me show you a picture of vice and depravity in order that you may realize what those good women had to contend with and overcome and how hard the task, even with God for a “backer.” Let me take you into a large gilded hall resplendent with every attraction that art and science can produce. On one side is a bar over 100 feet long backed by a mirror the entire length and furnished with the most expensive and attractive fittings that money can buy, or the world produce. Behind the bar are genteel looking young men faultlessly attired for their business. In front of the bar a bevy of young girls dressed to look as attractive as possible. Through the center of the room are two rows of gambling tables surrounded by a crowd of busy devotees of the different games. On the tables are piled stacks of coins of all denominations from the silver dollar up to the fifty dollar “slugs” and stacks of dust which some foolish miners brought in.
In the rear of the hall is a beautifully arched alcove facing both ways. At the right of the alcove is an opening with rich curtains hanging to the floor. The alcove is filled with expert musicians and discoursing music that thrills every nerve. Part those curtains and go in. For a moment you will be dazed, then charmed by the scene presented. You will see from 20 to 30 (sometimes more) beautiful women, their beauty enhanced by the brilliant surroundings, dressed in silks and glittering with jewels, moving about in dance with the grace of movement peculiar to their class.
On one side of the room you will see it is divided off into small rooms fitted up with tables and other furniture. The entrance to each room is protected by a heavy curtain falling to the floor. After each dance the dancers repair to these rooms or to a long decorated table to drink wine or liquors, the men paying according to his order, one dollar or more. This goes on, dance after dance, drink after drink, ‘til the “we sma” hours or broad daylight.
Wood’s Creek in the rainy season was a raging torrent but in the dry season would hardly give two sluice streams. It was mined for over 20 miles but there were barren spots here and there. Now the camp I will try to describe was called at that time Georgetown, afterwards Jamestown. At the time I write it was a genuine rip-roaring mining camp and the trading point of some 4,000 miners, besides the transients. The town was supplied with several general trading houses, two so-called hotels, several gambling houses, two dance houses (or Fandangos), several saloons and bars selling whiskey. (There were no license to pay, and everybody apparently drank whiskey at 25 cents per drink).
Of course, the gamblers and bad men were in evidence as they always are around a mining camp, so gunfights and knife fights were quite frequent and it was pretty dull times when a week passed without a man or two for breakfast. Now around the town for several miles were the miners’ cabins, sometimes in clusters around a spring or scattered here and there close by their claims. The cabins were all about of the same pattern, some built of logs, some of boards, about 10 by 12, door in one end and a fireplace in the other, a row of bunks, on one side (one above the other) and the table on the other side and a dirt floor. Now we lived in those little cabins and lived pretty well. We had plenty of bacon, beans, bread and beef with vegetables and dried fruit. Generally 3 to 4 lived in each cabin. We took turns in cooking and changed cooks each week.
We had an Englishman who had been on the stage in London. He could spout Shakespeare for hours and do it well. We had a Yale graduate. We called him the "Curiosity Shop” as he could produce anything you called for in the shape of historical events or any other knowledge you might call for. We used him for a substitute for an Encyclopedia and we could rely on him, but he was a poor stick for a miner. We had fairly good violinists and other musicians. We had good singers and good storytellers. So we had many good enjoyable times and often got together for a night’s fun and frolic.
I worked at mining for a few months at Montezuma Flat 5 miles south from Jamestown. Some 200 to 300 men were working there on the flats and vicinity. A congregational minister from Boston made his appearance there and was on a vacation for his health. He would visit the boys in their cabins and on their claims for a chat about their work, their mode of life, and so forth.
Saturday evening was “setting up” time. After supper the table would be cleared off and the gold scales brought out and all interested gathered around. The cook’s purse would be replenished with sufficient dust to carry us through another week, then what was left of the week’s “wash out” would be equally divided, each taking his share to deposit or spend.
Sunday in the mines was generally devoted to house cleaning, washing, mending and visiting, also exploring neighboring hills for sight seeing or hunting game. Old Table Mountain was a favorite resort for a Sunday ramble as it was several hundred feet above the valley on either side. It was on old Table Mountain that your humble servant had a most enjoyable, yet ultimately a sad and laughable experience. I had a double barreled gun — one barrel shot and one rifled and was fond of hunting. It was rumored around that deer were seen on top of the mountain and I made up my mind that some venison would be good for a change. I got up one Sunday morning and I got onto the top of the mountain before daylight and selected my place where I thought the game would be most likely to come into view, and to view sunrise and enjoy the beautiful scenery from the summit. I heard a noise in the direction of the trail and soon I saw a head raise up over the edge of the mountain. It stopped and looked around to see if the coast was clear (as deer would do). I was afraid he would see me so I concluded to wait no longer. I drew a bead on that head and let it go. I eagerly ran to the spot and there sure enough was a deer. I got out my knife to cut its throat when all of a sudden I discovered that it was a nanny goat. A feeling of disgust, of shame and various other feelings took possession of me and banished all the enjoyment I had experienced up to that time.
I needed to find out who owned the goat and pay for it, and then pay hush money, as no money would tempt me to have the boys get hold of it.
Coming down to the foot of the mountain I came onto an emigrants’ camp and concluded that I had found the owner of the goat. Now how to approach him was a question, but after a short combat with myself I bid him good morning and asked him if he knew who owned a nanny goat, that I wished to buy one. His answer was: “I own one but don’t wish to sell it,” but says I, “How much would it be worth in case you sell it?” He replied: “Why somewhere around 6 or 7 dollars, I guess.” I took a ten dollar gold piece and said I must have that goat and here is the cash. He cast a wishful eye on the coin and hesitated, finally he said, “I will ask my wife.” He went to the tent and soon I heard her say, “Take it, we need the money more than the goat.” So he came back, took the money and commenced to call the goat. I told him to never mind calling the goat as she would not come for I had shot her for a deer, and she lays near the top of the mountain dead. He gave me a regular horse laugh and when I explained how it all happened and he grasped my hand and said, “Well, you are of the right sort for sure.” I asked him to keep it to himself and not give me away and he promised to do so, but I failed to pledge his wife so in a very few days it was out and I cost me another 10 to make good with the boys.
We were in California not only to prospect for gold, but to enjoy that indescribable feeling of perfect liberty, enhanced by the slight dangers incident to the life of the gold hunter. To sum it all up, we loved our mode of life; we were not only living close to nature, but felt ourselves a big part of it, though in fact a very small part, and as I now look back to that part of my life I feel that I would not exchange the remembrances of it for all the wealth of a Rockefeller.