Queens of the Mines features the true stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. Horror is revealed in true tales of the violence between races, mystery, rape and murder. We uncover a woman’s lynching, the devestating lack of human rights, the capitil…
Andrea Anderson, Aspiring Gold Rush Historian
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Welcome back to Queens of the Mines. This is Season 4. Yosemite. This season of Queens of the Mines explores the making of Yosemite National Park and true stories of women who were there along the way, and women that were there before. In this episode, I am going to tell you about To-tu-ya, who was later known as Maria Lebrado. She was part of that 5 percent and she was the last survivor born of the Ahwahneechee band that was driven out of the Yosemite Valley by the Mariposa Battalion during the Mariposa War. 5,500 years ago, Indigenous tribes were the first to settle what we now know as Yosemite. The most recent native group to live there was primarily an extension of the Southern Sierra Miwok. They had named the Yosemite Valley “Ahwahnee” and they referred to themselves as the Ahwahneechee. People of the valley. The Ah-wah-nee´-chees had been a large and powerful tribe and 171 years ago, before white men arrived to Yosemite, there were 37 indigenous villages in the area with over 10,000 Miwok living there. After a war, and what the Miwoks called the fatal black sickness, the majority had died or had fled to live with other tribes. When it was all said and done, only around 500 of the 10,000 Miwoks remained. That is five % of their population. Subscribe now for Ad-Free Episodes --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/andreaandersin/message
Have you ever experienced the breathtaking California wilderness? Yosemite National Park is known for its giant waterfalls and granite cliffs. Boasting Giant sequoia groves, grand valley, and lakes and streams. Yosemite receives over 3.5 million visitors annually. Just before the United State's largest migration, the California gold rush, Yosemite remains vastly untouched and was the home of 10,000 California Miwoks. Join me Andrea Anderson through the history of the making of Yosemite National Park and the women that were there along the way, and before. Queens of the Mines- Yosemite Premieres September 19th 2023 Listen for free on Spotify or subscribe for ad free episodes with bonus content.
Julia Cathrine Monnin Ducray. Born Julia Monnin, her family was from Switzerland and they had emigrated to Pennsylvania. Living next to them in Pennsylvania, was the Ducray family. The Ducray's had boarded a steamship in France in 1839. The journey was almost fatal for 15 year old Jean-Baptiste Ducray, his parents and eight brothers and sisters. Southeast of Nova Scotia, the steamship began taking on water. The passengers and crew feared they would sink and began to throw all of their possessions overboard. The Ducray family threw overboard their wooden chest containing $2,000 in gold and everything else they had brought with them. Jean-Baptiste's mother kept only a wooden cross bearing an ivory carving of Jesus. The ship sank, and everyone from the ship was left shipwrecked on what is now known as Sable Island. They went days without food. They were starving, crazed. A passenger from the ship overheard the ship's crew planning to kill and eat Jean-Baptiste and his father. He hid them by burying them in sand. Luckily, only a day later, a passing ship rescued them. They arrived safely, settling in Pennsylvania, next to The Monnin family. Julia and Jean-Baptiste Ducray fell in love and were married. When Jean-Baptiste and his brother Jean Claude went West to mine gold in California, it was barely a year into the gold rush. He was 25 and Jean Claude was 16. They took the Isthmus of Panama route. This is the same trip made by Belle Cora, detailed in my book. The route saved thousands of miles and avoided the trip around the southern tip of South America's Cape Horn. Starting in New York, they made a 2,000 mile voyage by ship to the Port of Chagres on the eastern Caribbean coast of Panama at the mouth of the Chagres river. They took a bungo, a type of Panamanian canoe for $5 (just under 200 bucks today) for a 4 day river journey through the crocodile and jaguar bearing jungle. That was the easy part. The men rode a 50-mile trail on mules through the steaming malaria, yellow fever, and cholera ridden jungle to the small outpost in Panama City. They waited there and caught a ship to San Francisco. Many forty-niners did not make this journey. The brothers had now survived two deadly passages together. Upon arrival, like many immigrants of the time, the brothers Americanized their names. John B, and John C. Ducray. The brothers traveled to Nevada City and set up camp along the Oregon Ravine on Oregon Hill. Julia arrived soon, making the journey by wagon. The couple invested in mining and bought properties. In the spring of 1866 on a claim bought for $36 (almost $1300 today) and while cleaning up an old mudslide on the property, Julia's husband found 265 ounces of gold. Equalling over $5000, equivalent to almost $179k in 2023. Julia's husband Jean Baptiste, or John B, was a descendent of one of the Ducray Nine brothers, known for saving the life of the French King "Henry the Great" in the late 1590's. These nine brothers were knighted and awarded with villages besides the Jura Mountains in France. Their new villages contained hills, forests, orchards and beautiful meadows with flocks. John B was born in a medieval chateau at one of these family villages. It had a fountain, a Roman aqueduct and a mill, powered by the creek that ran through the village. He lived there until he was fifteen and learned about engineering the water flow and studied the geology of the nearby caves and quarry. His knowledge helped him later design wing dams and sluices for gold mining and irrigation on his own property. And his interest in geology and hydrology led to consulting on the first reservoir built for Nevada City's municipal water system. On 35 acres of mining-stripped bedrock in Nevada City, the couple built a fourteen room, two-story home with five bedrooms and large parlors upstairs and downstairs on Orchard and upper broad streets and re-created the nearly self-sufficient French farm that John B had grown up on. They planted vineyards and orchards of walnut, apple, pear, and almond trees. They had a single milk cow for providing milk, butter, and cheese. They kept honey bees and maintained four acres planted in clover for the cow and bees. They had a huge basement beneath the house that was useful for storing their produce and John B.'s wines and brandies. Julie planted large "cabbage roses" around the home. It is said that the 150-year-old pear tree John B. planted there continues to bear delicious, giant Bartlett pears. John B. and Julia's home and orchards on Orchard Street are included in the first map of Nevada City, which was hand-drawn in 1869. Orchard Street was in fact named for John B.'s orchards. For decades the couple would exhibit wines, brandies, honey in comb, peaches, pears, grapes, walnuts, almonds, buckwheat, string beans and potatoes at the local and State Fairs. They bartered or paid in gold for everything that they could not produce themselves. Julia and John B. were fast friends with the French pioneer nurseryman, horticulturist Felix Gillet upon his arrival in town. Felix had opened the town's first barber shop which sold French fineries including pens, stationery, and toys on Commercial Street, just below Pine Street. The couple inspired Felix to plant orchards, and he eventually established a world-renowned 20 acre nursery on Aristocracy Hill. (Barren Hill Nursery) Nursery Street in Nevada City was named for Felix's nursery there. Julia and John B. adopted niece Theresa and raised her as their own. The three of them led a happy life. They attended Saint Canice Catholic Church that was recently built and often went to the state fairs, often accompanied by Felix Gillet, who wrote about the events. Gillet often wrote magazine articles glorifying the Ducray's farm, orchards and produce. So did many newspapers of the time. John B passed away after a battle with pneumonia. Penicillin had not yet been developed. Julia was so heartbroken by his loss, she passed away four months later. They were laid to rest in Pioneer Cemetery, across Orchard Street from their home. They left all their properties to 21 year old adopted daughter Theresa Julia. Felix Gillet and Theresa Julia grew a bond through grief and sorrow and were married. The couple did not mind their difference in age, Felix was 32 years older than Julia Theresa, or height, Theresa Julia was taller. Theresa Julia took her middle name, perhaps in homage to her beloved Aunt. After they married, Felix added the second-story addition to his established Barren Hill Nursery on Nursery Street (named for his nursery) on Aristocracy Hill. Felix and Julia Theresa remained married for 17 years until Felix passed away in 1908. He also left his properties to Julia Theresa. She ran his Barren Hill Nursery (also known as Felix Gillet Nursery), with the help of head nurseryman George Dulac. Dulac was the son of the Ducrays' and Felix's good friends, Nevada City pioneers Louis and Manuela Dulac. She and George grew up in school together. They had been childhood friends since her arrival in Nevada City. They were married a year after Gillet's death. Theresa are laid to rest in Pioneer Cemetery, beside Jean-Baptiste, Julia Catherine and Felix.
John Franklin and Louise Cook were a wealthy couple in California, living off the fortune they earned during the gold rush. Their daughter Louise Arner Boyd was born in San Rafael on September 16, 1887. Louise was offered every advantage imagined by a late young woman in the late 19th century. But instead of living extravagantly with material things, as a socialite, Louise chose experience over material things and used her inheritance to explore the Arctic, in the name of science. “Far north, hidden behind grim barriers of pack ice, are lands that hold one spell-bound.” Today we will talk about Louise Arner Boyd. She was the world's leading female Arctic explorer, geographer and arctic photographer. Louise organized, financed and led seven maritime expeditions without a formal education, limited outdoor expertise and no family members alive to advise her. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West. Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. In San Rafael, the Boyd's put effort into raising Louise to be a socialite, first hiring a governess tutor and then put her in the private school Miss Stewart's to learn the social graces. Louise's father had struck it rich, her mother, an aristocrat. Her mom encouraged her to join in her philanthropist activities and community work while she looked for a husband. But she was bored. Her mind was on other things. She dreamed of, and read about geography, the Arctic in particular. She did not want to sip tea in the parlor of the family's genteel mansion on Mission Avenue. She would rather spend time with her brothers. They rode horses, hiked, hunted and taught her to be a fine equestrian and skilled marksman on the 6 acre estate at Maple Lawn. In 1901, tragedy struck the Boyd family. In that year, both of her brothers died unexpectedly. One boy had complications of rheumatic fever, the other passed while away at boarding school in a riding accident. The Boyd's were devastated. After a while, Louise's father, in an attempt to give her direction and distraction, brought her on to work in the family's investment company. She worked with her parents for twenty years. Until 1919, when her mother died, her father followed a year later. 32 years old, unmarried and without children, she lost her entire family and inherited their Maple Lawn estate and a vast fortune. Fascinated with polar exploration, Boyd went to San Francisco at 19 to see Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen land in the city, after completing the first sea voyage through the Northwest Passage. She decided to travel. She spent the next few years visiting Europe. In 1924, Louise was gliding through icy waters on a Norwegian cruise ship. This is when Louise saw the polar ice pack for the first time, and madly curious, her life was forever changed. No woman before had financed and led an expedition to the polar seas. Oh well, she made a plan to travel north, and two years later, Louise chartered the Norwegian sealer Hobby and crew, and brought some friends, ready for adventure. The departed from Norway, taking stops at Northbrook Island, for photography and botanical collecting, to Franz Josef Land, for a hunt, and others for Arctic exploration. Louise fell in love with the remote land of ice. She killed many polar bears, which at the time, was highly respected. She planned another trip two years later. In Norway, far north in the city of Tromsø, Boyd and her crew were getting the Hobby ready to set sail on their second expedition. Then, news broke that Boyd's childhood hero, Roald Amundsen the iconic explorer, and his French crew had vanished while on a flight to rescue another explorer. A rescue mission was underway, and six European countries got to work organizing ships and airplanes. Wasting no time, Boyd offered the ship, crew and provisions she had on standby to the rescue efforts. She would fund the expedition herself, with one exception, she got to come along. It was a dangerous undertaking, staffed with high-ranking generals, aviators and explorers. The Norwegian government agreed, although no allowances were made for a woman. Good thing too, Louise ended up playing an integral role in the Amundsen rescue expedition. She had no experience, and the men were skeptical, but she took on her responsibilities just as they did. The 10-week rescue mission in the Greenland Sea into the pack ice north, traveling about 10,000 miles along the coast line was unsuccessful. Amundsen was never found. At the end of the summer, the Norwegian and French governments awarded Boyd the Chevalier Cross of the Order of Saint Olav and the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor for her courage and stamina. Following her return to California, Louise's life purpose was solidified. She would be an Arctic explorer. She would commit not just to polar exploration but to polar science, and use her considerable inheritance to pursue her childhood dreams. She would live two lives. At home in the States, she would play hostess, adored by California high society and on the high seas, she would be tough, brave and heroic. Hiring a botanist and a staff of promising young scientists, she planned an expedition in 1931 visiting all the fjords and sounds in the King Oscar-Franz Josef region. The trips were originally planned for photographic reconnaissance but they ended up also serving as a topographical survey and saw a variety of investigations and discoveries. The inner end of Ice Fjord was reached by ship for the first time. The De Geer Glacier, entering the head of this fjord from the north, was discovered and the area between this glacier and Jaette Glacier was subsequently officially named Louise Boyd Land. A previously unsuspected connecting valley between the heads of Kjerulf and Dickson fjords was discovered. Boyd supplied the material for a detailed topographic map of the connection, which was subsequently constructed by the American Geographical Society, from over 200 of her photographs from 50 selected stations. But several thousand photographs were taken. She was also a remarkably fast learner who sought out experts in her fields of interest—including photographer Ansel Adams and California Academy of Sciences botanist Alice Eastwood—to teach her what she needed to know. Two years later, under the auspices of the American Geographical Society, Louise led the first arctic expedition to perform extensive echo sounding with self-recording gear. She equipped the ship with an echo-sounder, sonic equipment that helped them measure the depths of the ocean and the ice. It was the first American expedition to engage in ground photogrammetry. The primary objective of this expedition was the study of glacial marginal features; to supplement the investigations of the physiographer and geologist, as well as to try out new methods of field mapping. The staff included topographers, a physiographer, a geologist and a botanist from the University of Chicago, American Geographical Society, Cambridge, England and Harvard. They sailed from Ålesund, Norway, June 28, spending a few days at Jan Mayen Island on the way out and covering the East Greenland fjord region from King Oscar Fjord to Hold With Hope and returning September 16th. Tide gauge recordings were taken at Jan Mayen Island and at stations in the Greenland fjords and echo-sounding profiles were made of a number of the fjords, and fairly continuous lines of sounding were made on the runs between Norway and Greenland. The Louise A. Boyd Arctic Expeditions of 1937 and 1938 were planned as a unit under the auspices of the American Geographical Society. In 1937, she made another expedition of 8,600 nautical miles, leaving Alesund June 4 and returning September 27. The work was a continuation of the glacial marginal studies of the 1933 expedition, and a botanist was added to the staff with the special objective of examining plant communities associated with recessional features. The 1938 3 month expedition went a few weeks around the South Glacier, Jan Mayen Island and Walrus Bay doing echo-sounding and current measurement work, filling in or improving the blank spaces on their existing charts. They also performed detailed glaciological studies at the Narwhal Glacier area, Agassiz Valley and Tyroler Valley. Even more areas were visited for glaciological and geological examinations. This expedition carried a portable echo-sounder for use in a motor dory in waters too shallow or too ice-filled for ship navigation. In some areas, they found ice two miles thick. Glaciers made navigation dangerous, and after identifying an undersea mountain range, it was decided it should be named in her honor, the Louise A. Boyd Bank. It was, at the time, the farthest north landing ever made from a ship on the east coast of Greenland. They were delayed two weeks due to difficulty getting through the coastal ice barrier. The heavy polar ice had stopped the ship. They turned south to the Franz Josef-King Oscar fjord region. That year, she was awarded the Cullum Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society in 1938. She was the second woman to earn the award. Then, in 1939 both the University of California and Mills College granted her an LL.D. in the United States of America, the LL.D. was only awarded as an honorary degree. It is the equivalent of a Ph.D. Louise paused her traveling at the outbreak of World War II, and began to travel again after she was asked to study the effect of polar magnetic fields on radio communication for the U.S. government in 1941. In 1941 Miss Boyd chartered Captain Robert A. Bartlett's schooner Effie M. Morrissey and spent the period from May to November as a temporary member of the staff of the U. S. Bureau of Standards in charge of a program of radio and ionosphere research and magnetic observation for the Bureau that involved work on both sides of Davis Strait and Baffin Bay as far north as Ellesmore Island and in Hudson Strait. Her mission undertook hazardous journeys to dangerous places. It was a perilous time. Only eight weeks before, a British cargo vessel had been torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat off Cape Farewell just to the south. Effie M. Morrissey navigated its way through a narrow fjord and anchored off the town of Julianehaab. The American ship appeared vulnerable and run-down next to the impressive U.S. Coast Guard vessels Bowdoin and Comanche. As newly minted members of the Greenland Patrol of the Atlantic Fleet, the Bowdoin and the Comanche were responsible for preventing German forces from establishing a base on Greenland and for providing vital support for the Allies. As the Morrissey's passengers disembarked, town residents gathered onshore. Commander Donald Macmillan of the Bowdoin hurried forward to greet the person in charge. Defying all expectations, the leader was no grizzled Navy man. Instead, a stately, well-coiffed California woman of a certain age clambered out of the rowboat and strode toward him. Everyone wondered what she was doing in the company of high-ranking officers engaged in war matters. Well the answer was a secret. Boyd, operating under the guise of her work as an explorer, was conducting a covert mission for the American government, searching for possible military landing sites and investigating the improvement of radio communications in this region. Even the captain and crew of her own ship were unaware of the expedition's true goals. Miss Boyd not only turned over to the War Department her photographic library and her collection of hundreds of maps and miscellaneous publications dealing with the northern countries of Europe as well as the Arctic, but served in Washington from March 1942 to July 1943 as special consultant to the Military Intelligence Division. The National Bureau of Standards commended Boyd for resolving critical radio transmission problems they had grappled with in the Arctic for decades, and a certificate of appreciation from the Department of the Army extolled her “exemplary service as being highly beneficial to the cause of victory in 1949.” But Louise was not universally respected by her expedition participants. Boyd battled shyness and did struggle at times to assert herself. At first, most academics would be pleased with her credentials and her generous offer to join the team, but many ridiculed her behind her back and undermined her position as leader during the expeditions. Whatever. When Louise was 68, she took her last trip to the Arctic. This time, she chartered an airplane and became the first woman to fly over the North Pole. Over her lifetime, Boyd had no interest in being the “first” or conquering territories, she focused on contributing to science. She used her inherited fortune to organize, finance, and conduct seven Arctic expeditions in vessels which she had chartered and equipped. Louise was one of the first women to autograph their Explorers Globe, alongside major explorers and aviators of the 20th century. She pioneered the use of cutting-edge technology, including the first deep-water recording echo-sounder. She pioneered the use of photogrammetry, the science of taking photographs to create models or maps, in inaccessible places. She discovered a glacier in Greenland, a new underwater bank in the Norwegian Sea and many new botanical species. In all but 2 expeditions, she made large botanical collections. The staff botanist covered the other two trips. She also held the role as the official photographer and built up a full portfolio of glacial marginal features, land forms, vegetation, and sea ice, documenting ice patterns along the Greenland coast. Her extensive photographic documentation of Greenland is currently used by glaciologists to track climate change in Greenlandic glaciers. Her expeditions generated new data in the fields of geology, oceanography, botany, and glaciology. Data generated during her expeditions is still cited by contemporary scientists in the fields of geology, geomorphology, oceanography and botany. As a U.S. military consultant, she was an invaluable asset to the Allied war effort. Exploration of the Arctic seascape—with its vast expanses of bobbing ice, the rhythmic sway of the wooden ship as it traversed the surging waves, the soothing solitude of the north—resonated deeply with Boyd and defined who she was and what she did. She spent her remaining years in the San Francisco area writing about her experiences, she had spent most of the family fortune for her explorations and had to sell the family home in San Rafael, California. Today the gatehouse at the Boyd Estate is the present day home of the Marin History Museum and has a permanent exhibit of Louise Boyd's photographs and memorabilia. Louise A Boyd died on September 14, 1972, two days before her 85th birthday. Boyd requested that her ashes be scattered in the Arctic Ocean. It all leads me to wonder, Where do you want your bones to spend eternity? —--------------------- Are you enjoying the podcast? Make sure to subscribe, rate, review and find us on facebook and instagram. You can join the biggest fans behind the scenes at patreon.com/queensofthemines, or give a one time tip via venmo to, @queensofthemines
When Adah Isaacs Menken was a young woman she described herself. “I have always believed myself to be possessed of two souls, one that lives on the surface of life, pleasing and pleased; the other as deep and as unfathomable as the ocean; a mystery to me and all who know me. Today we will talk about the infamous actress, painter and poet, Adah Menken, had claimed to have been born in a half-dozen places. She told different stories of her life to different audiences. Adah Menken lived a short but remarkable life defying the convection of social mores. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West. Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three.
In Yosemite, for thousands of years before the discovery of gold, Native Americans traveled through and inhabited the area that the Sierra Nevada's melting snow spills dramatically over rocky cliffs on the walls into the Valley. Waterfalls that sit over three thousand feet above its floor. The treasures the park holds are unduplicated, each wonder differing from the next, each overwhelmingly spectacular. From 1850 to 1851 Native Americans and Euro-American miners in the area were at war, the Mariposa War. Some Euro-American men had formed a militia known as the Mariposa Battalion. Their purpose - drive the native Ahwahneechee people onto reservations. The Mariposa Battalion were the first non-natives to enter Yosemite. When this war ended, Yosemite was then open to settlement and speculation. Today we are going to talk about Jennie Curry, half of the curry couple who founded Camp Curry in Yosemite, and the history of the Yosemite Firefall. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West. Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. Between 1855 and 1864, the Yosemite Valley had 653 visitors.After the completion of stage roads into the valley, the number rose to 2,700 visitors annually within its first decade. Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant on June 30, 1864 and Yosemite Valley was placed under the protection of the state of California. The act preserved the valley for public use and recreation for all time. Some of the earliest visitors were artists, authors, painters, illustrators and photographers who came to publicize the Valley. Hotels were built and stagecoach companies started bringing tourists on the long journey in. Six years later, James McCauley, an Irish sailor and miner, arrived in Yosemite Valley. McCauley took a job in a sawmill, working alongside John Muir. McCauley soon built a horse trail from the base of Sentinel Rock up to Glacier Point. It was over a four-mile route which climbed 3,200 feet. At Glacier Point, he built a small shack which he named the Mountain House. McCauley charged a toll for the trail and the Mountain House provided concessions and lodging to its travelers. One night in 1872, McCauley and his school-aged sons kicked a campfire over the ledge at Glacier Point. The act quite literally sparked the idea of a money-making venture. A firefall. They would collect a fee from tourists in the valley during the day to build a modest fire and push it off the cliff that night. He experimented with versions of fireworks that he lowered on wires from Overhanging Rock nearby. The attempts seemed comparatively insignificant from the Valley floor. Finally he returned to the idea of pushing over the embers. McCauley bought both of his 8 year old boys' mules and the young McCauley twins attended school by riding them down the Four Mile Trail to the Valley. It took ninety minutes. While in the valley, they would collect $1.50 from tourists who wanted to see a Firefall, and then would ride the trail back up to Glacier Point, with a pack mule, packing wood and carrying the provisions for the hotel. On the Fourth of July, a collection often amounted to ten or twenty dollars. Busy days like that required hauling wood up for at least two days. McCauley soon leased Mountain House to others to manage, that was when the state of California took possession of all Yosemite claims in 1874. In 1880, he leased Mountain House back from the state. Fifteen years later, the facility was described as “almost uninhabitable”. The couple was evicted by the state in 1897 for failure to maintain. McCauley was killed accidently in an accident with a runaway horse, and the firefalls stopped. For years they were almost forgotten. In 1899, David and Jennie Etta Curry and their children took the wild ride down the old Coulterville Road with Driver Eddie Webb, to their new home in Yosemite Valley. Both had studied under Dr. David Starr Jordan at Indiana University, where they had both graduated from in 1883. It was unusual at the time for a woman to be a college graduate. Back east, both were Hoosier school teachers. The Curry's had a unique love for nature. Their previous work involved taking parties through Yellowstone with a movable camp. David and Jennie saw an opportunity. They received permission from the Guardian of the Valley, which was the state park at the time, to use the site of its camp. With seven tents, they opened a family campground at the base of Glacier Point, and they called Camp Curry. It is wild if you think about it, furnishing a business in a location like that, before means of modern transportation. Bare tents, burlap for the floors, mattresses, bed springs on wooden legs, clean bedding, chairs, and tables were brought in by wagon from Merced, which was one hundred miles away. Oilcloth covered cracker boxes' that were used for wash stands. There was a dining tent that seated twenty people. Camp Curry opened in June of 1899, charging $2 per night. The first affordable accommodation in the Park. Accommodations at the Sentinel Hotel were $4 a night. She was fondly known throughout the Valley as "Mother Curry". The power behind the throne. Her personality would truly contribute to their success. She was big in mind, soul and body and interested in people and in life. Of course, women's domestic skills were highly valued in the West, but like many pioneering women, Jennie had to find a way to broaden the roles beyond the Cult of True Womanhood, as mentioned in the book and previous episodes. Jennie helped plan additional guest services, made the beds, and packed the box lunches for adventurers. She would say that she had done every job around camp, from baking dozens of pies or loaves of bread to making lye soap from wood-ashes in a huge open kettle. All but the duties of the porter. The Curry's in fact, did do all of the work around camp. With the exception of one paid employee, the cook and two or three students from Stanford, who worked for a designated time in exchange for a week's room and board. During the first season, the camp expanded to twenty-five tents, with almost 300 guests in the season, of the 4,500 people who visited Yosemite Valley that year. Many of the guests came from Curry's educational network. It was a pretty good start. The crowds predicted Camp Curry would fail. It was cold, and isolated. The Curry's were determined. They had ideas. The memory of the firefall was eventually brought up, and Mr. Curry decided to revive the tradition on holidays, or when prominent guests were in the Valley. Men would gather wood on the Ledge Trail, and build a 12 foot wide, four foot tall mound of firewood. At four, they would light the fire, allowing the pile to burn down until it was a hill of glowing embers, for 5 hours until 9 o clock. Nine o'clock in Yosemite meant Fire Fall. It was an unwritten law that everything and everyone in the valley STOPPED at 9pm. David Curry would cup his hands to his mouth, raise his face toward Glacier Point and bellow: “Hello, Glacier Point!” without the aid of a sound system or even a megaphone. This is how Mr. Curry earned the nickname “The Stentor.” Stentor was that famous Greek of antiquity who could command 10,000 troops without a megaphone." The fire tender at the point would reply: “Hello, Camp Curry!” The rest of the exchange followed: “Is the fire ready?” “The fire is ready!” followed by Curry's roaring command “Let ‘er go Gallagher!” “Let the fire fall!” “THE FIRE-ER IS-SSS FALLING!” I am guessing that Gallagher was the regular fire tender. The two men at the top, using extra long-handled wide steel rakes, would alternate strokes to maintain a steady stream of cinders, plunging over the cliffs, to their resting place on a ledge 1,700 feet below. It was a skill. It took practice to be able to push blazing hot coals for an extended period of time, over a cliff in a steady stream down the granite wall. Simulating a continuously flowing waterfall. It was a blazing stream of thousands and thousands of individually discernible red and gold sparks floating down the cliff in complete silence, the sparks flying away like shooting stars. Fifteen minutes later, the fall would grow smaller until it became a mere thread of gold which drew the curtain of night, before darkness descends. Break The railroad reaching El Portal in 1907 made travel to the gold rush in California much more accessible. For the park, it skyrocketed the ability of making improvements in equipment and efficiency. Jennie no longer needed to bring in furniture, food, in fact everything by wagon from Merced. The train ended only fifteen miles away, and the road there was easy. She was able to raise the comfort level of the camp for her ever increasing number of guests with better kitchen equipment, dressers, bed frames and rugs. The firefall continued each night and held 20 minutes of enchantment, where thousands of onlookers felt something in common for that short period of time. Yosemite's grandeur was on full display, how unspeakably tall were its cliffs and how quiet its forest. The act, performed every night for many years, etched the surface of the granite, leaving a 1000 ft white strip. From 1913 to 1916 the Yosemite Firefall tradition was halted by the park service over a disagreement between David Curry and the Assistant Secretary of the Interior. David Curry died in 1917, just before the Firefall was reinstated. Jennie, with the help of her children, carried on with running and expanding Camp Curry, on lease from the government. The tradition carried on for decades, the song “Indian Love Call,” popularized by Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in the 1936 film “Rose Marie,” was eventually performed while the fire cascaded down the rock face. So much for the silence I guess. The firefall was halted during World War II, when park facilities were used by the military. Jennie Curry died in October of 1948. The original purpose of the fire fall was to draw visitors to the park. Five years after Jennie's death, Yosemite received 1 million visitors for the first time. In 1960, President John F. Kennedy visited Yosemite and was, according to various sources, either held up by an important phone call or was still eating his dinner at 9 p.m. The firefall was held for half an hour so he could see it — much to the displeasure of the rest of the visitors. By 1965, annual visitation had reached 2 million. The firefall continued on for nearly two-thirds of the 20th century, the firefall occurred each summer night. Luckily, it never caused any forest fires, but other environmental impacts were mounting: Thousands of visitors were tramping through the meadows, driving their cars off the park roads, trying to get the best view, leaving litter everywhere. There were thefts from the hotels and campgrounds, when visitors would be absent or distracted and lastly, nearly every dead red fir tree accessible by road had been stripped of its bark for use as fuel. Rangers worked late nights untangling traffic jams, while idling vehicles spit out exhaust into the park. There were simply too many people. The park canceled the firefall. About 50 people gathered to mark the end of the tradition, on Jan. 25, 1968. 55 years ago from the recording of this episode. Although the Glacier Point firefall is a thing of the past, a natural, even more awe-inspiring, phenomenon that goes by the same name at Horsetail Falls remains. The organic illusion appears for a few weeks each February. Light from the setting sun hits the eastside of El Capitan at Horsetail Falls at a precise angle seems to be molten lava rushing 1,570 feet to the valley floor, creating a natural "firefall." Ansel Adams captured it on film for the first time, in 1940. The natural Yosemite Firefall can be finicky. Several factors must converge to trigger the Firefall to glow. First, there has to be an adequate amount of snowpack for Horsetail Falls to be flowing and the temperatures must be warm enough to melt the snow. The sky also needs to be clear at sunset. If conditions are cloudy the sun's rays will be blocked, and Horsetail Fall will not light up. If everything comes together and conditions are just right, the Yosemite Firefall will light up for about ten minutes. To see Horsetail Fall glowing blood red is an almost supernatural experience. The sun hits Yosemite Valley at roughly the same angle in October, but the lack of runoff prevents the same phenomenon. The discovery of Horsetail Falls is not well documented. There is no doubt that the Awahneechee Indians who lived in Yosemite Valley for hundreds of years, most likely knew of its existence, but there is no evidence that they passed the knowledge to the white settlers. Love that. Makes perfect sense. The local lore of “elmer” is linked to the Fire Falls. In the 1930's, a child by the name of Elmer would drift off with his friends or something to their own place to watch the Firefall and every night. It was a common thing in Yosemite to hear after the Firefall, his mother calling him back to camp: EL-MER- EL-MER- EL-MER. It all leads me to wonder, what is the most spectacular thing i nature that you have ever seen?
Support the podcast by tipping via Venmo to @queensofthemines, buying the book on Amazon, or becoming a patron at www.partreon.com/queensofthemines Olives, technically classified as a fruit, is a powerful fruit. It would benefit most people to eat around 5-10 olives a day. A rich source of powerful stuff,antioxidants, minerals and vitamins and 80 percent of the calories in an olive come from healthy fats. They are a great way to prevent cancers in today's toxic world, and Bonus! Eating olives improves the appearance of wrinkles by a whole twenty percent! When it comes to the history of olive groves in California, you need to know about Freda Ehmann, the human responsible for the perfect black rings we eat on our pizza today, the ‘Mother' of the California ripe olive industry. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West. Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. Our story takes place in California, where nowadays olive trees are abundant, but fun fact, olive trees are not native to California. It was at the San Diego Mission in 1769, where the first olive cuttings were planted in California. Many of the olive groves in California are up to 150 years old, but olive trees have an average lifespan of 300 to 600 years. Average, some can live as long as 2000 years. The oldest known cultivated olive trees in the world were grown before the written language was even invented.
In 1843, Cathay Williams was born to an enslaved woman and a free black man, ironically in Independence, Missouri. It is hard to know an exact day, because records were not kept for the birth of slaves, and if you were born to an enslaved woman, you were born property. Cathay's childhood was spent on the outskirts of Jefferson City, Missouri, working for years as a house slave on the plantation of a wealthy planter by the name of Johnson. Union forces took over Jefferson City in the early stages of the Civil War. Slaves were released and persuaded to serve in voluntary military support roles. Captured slaves within Union lines were officially designated as contraband. When we say contraband today, usually the first thought would be illicit drugs, or something else forbidden. But back then, humans were labeled Illegal goods, “contraband.” Over 400 women served in the Civil War posing as male soldiers. Today we are talking about Cathay Williams, the only known female Buffalo Soldier. Williams was not only the first black woman to enlist, but the only documented woman to serve in the United States Army, while disguised as a man, during the Indian Wars. She was a pioneer for the thousands of American women serving in armed forces in the United States today. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West. Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. As contraband, Cathay was taken to Little Rock by Col. Benton of the 13th army corps and “pressed” into serving. She did not want to go. Benton wanted her to cook for the officers, so Cathay learned the skill. At 17, her role as an Army cook and washerwoman under the service of Union General Philip Sheridan took her all over the country. She saw the soldiers burn lots of cotton. During these travels, Williams was at Shreveport when the rebel gunboats were captured and burned on Red River, and witnessed Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes relocated to reservations during the Red River campaign in Texas. She was there for the Shenandoah Valley raids in Virginia, and saw the union defeat the Confederates, despite being outnumbered at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Fayetteville Ar. The work brought her to Iowa, Louisiana, Georgia and back home to her home state of Missouri. The lure of independence was undeniably attractive to a female young, unmarried former slave. So, in St. Louis, Missouri, she voluntarily enlisted for a three-year engagement in the U.S. army on November 15, 1866, this time to fight. Despite the prohibition against women serving in the military. The recruiter described her as William Cathay, a 5′ 9″ tall male with black eyes, black hair and black complexion. But in actuality, she was the first black female soldier to enlist with the Army. Only 4 months after Congress passed a law authorizing the formation of six all-black army units, after the Union Army had seen the value of black soldiers in the military and thought they should have the opportunity to join the peacetime army. You would think an Army surgeon should have been able to identify Williams as a woman during the cursory examination, but the Army didn't require full medical exams then. Williams said, “The regiment I joined wore the Zouave uniform,” which was a distinctive jacket, vest, sash, baggy trousers, and fez. She continued to say that “only two persons, a cousin and a particular friend, members of the regiment, knew that I was a woman. They never ‘blowed on me. These particular friends were partly the reason Williams joined the Army. She could shoot, march and stand guard with the best of them and performed regular garrison duties. A garrison is a group of soldiers whose task is to guard the town or building where they live. Soon, orders transferred the new recruits out west to protect pioneers traveling through one of the most dangerous routes to California, called Cooke's Canyon. In April of 1867, her troop marched to Fort Riley, Kansas, by July they had made it to Fort Union Mexico and arrived at Fort Cummings NM on October 1, 1867. They would remain stationed here for the next 8 months. Williams had joined the army's fight against the Indigenous people. Health struggles began to plague Cathay. She became feeble both physically and mentally, and much of the time quite unfit for duty. Smallpox was the most debilitating, but the back-to-back hospitalizations during eight months off sick leave were the most devastating. At Fort Cummings in New Mexico, her body really began to show signs of strain. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the effects of smallpox, or the years of marching. But the biggest blow came when the post surgeon discovered Cathay Williams, or William Cathay, was a woman. The surgeon informed the post commander. She said, “the men all wanted to get rid of me after they found out I was a woman. Some of them acted real bad to me.” Williams was honorably discharged by her commanding officer, Captain Charles E. Clarke on October 14, 1868 at at Fort Bayard, New Mexico, It was the end of her tenure in the Army, but her adventure as William Cathay had just gotten started. Again, dressed as a man, Cathay signed up for the 38th U.S. Infantry, an emerging, segregated all-black regiment. The 38th U.S. Infantry would eventually become part of the Buffalo Soldiers. Cathay and her fellow black comrades were named Buffalo Soldiers by the Plains Indians because they were fierce fighters, and they had short curly hair like the buffalo. The Buffalo Soldiers fought in skirmishes with Native Americans, escorted vulnerable wagon trains, built forts, mapped the territory, and protected white settlers – all with sub-par equipment. They showed tremendous skill. She is the only known black female soldier a part of the Buffalo Soldiers. Williams was adrift after the war but wanted to remain independent and self-sufficient. She was accustomed to the Military providing shelter, education and medical care. She saw it as far superior to the uncertainties of civilian life as a liberated slave. As a newly freed slave, post-war job opportunities were practically nonexistent. The inequality and lack of access was smothering, particularly in the southern states. Most had no choice but to turn to military service to survive. She went back to living under her original name and headed to Pueblo, Colorado, where her mother ran an orphanage and she was able to secure work as a cook. She was married there, but it ended fast after her husband was arrested for stealing her watch and chain, a hundred dollars and her team of horses and wagon. She had him arrested and put in jail. She moved to Trinidad, Colorado, and took on jobs as a seamstress, laundress and part time nurse under the name Kate Williams. But only after first passing as a male by the name of James Cady upon arrival. The kids in town were afraid of her, she was tall and dark with a masculine appearance. He walk had a limp due to her amputated toes. She liked Trinidad. She knew good people there and had dreams of success. She hoped to take land near the depot when the railroad finally came in. She said, “Grant owns all this land around here, and it won't cost me anything. I shall never live in the states again.” Trinidad had its own lil rush in the early 1870's when gold was discovered in the Spanish Peaks. In 1876, Trinidad was officially incorporated only a few months before Colorado became a state. There were about 50 to 60 mine shafts operating there, and one of them was owned and operated by one of Abraham Lincoln's sons. Are you enjoying the podcast? Make sure to subscribe, rate, review and find us on facebook and instagram. You can join the biggest fans behind the scenes at patreon.com/queensofthemines, or give a one time tip via venmo to, @queensofthemines Her life story went public while Williams was in Trinidad. A reporter from her home state of Missouri heard rumors of the black woman who faked her way into the army, and came to Trinidad from St Louis to meet her. She told the reporter, “I wanted to make my own living and not be dependent on relations or friends. Cathay Williams' adventures were breaking news when it was published in the St. Louis Daily Times on January 2, 1876. She became well-known to most Trinidad residents, especially the older ones. In 1891, Williams applied for a disability pension through the Army. She was now 49 years old. At 52, she was suffering from neuralgia, loss of hearing, rheumatism and diabetes. She walked with a crutch, for all of her toes had been amputated. Her pension was denied. She had lied, and posed as a man to serve the country that had enslaved her. But women would not be allowed to serve in the army until 1948. Historians argue about the time and location of her death but most signs point to Cathat Williams passing away in Trinidad in 1924 at the age of 82. It was said that she was very sick and had been without fire or food for several days. Something else that I find fascinating about Trinidad. Trinidad is dubbed the Gender Reassignment Capital of the World. Dr Stanley Biber was a veteran surgeon returning from Korea in the 1960s. He moved to Trinidad, to be the town surgeon. In 1969, he performed his first Gender Reassignment for a local social worker, did a good job and earned a good reputation at a time when very few doctors were performing the surgery. He was performing 4 gender reassignment surgeries a day in his peak years. Haskell Hooks of Trinidad, Co wants to erect a local statue to honor Cathay Williams. If you want to donate to the gofundme you can search Memorial Statue for Ms Cathay Williams, on the gofundme site. Its important to note Cathay is spelled Cathay. He has spent several years researching her story and is attempting to raise $50,000 to have the statue created by a New Mexico sculptor. He has organized several fund-raising events to cover the cost, including T-shirt sales and activities at Flo-Jo's Tavern & BBQ in downtown Trinidad and a gofundme page. I found this quite interesting, considering I just spent two days in Trinidad in November. While I was there, I had no idea who Cathay was, but I managed to stay right next to the location of her old house anyways. She lived at the corner of Second and Animas streets, and on West First Street ; the original homes no longer stand. It all leads me to wonder how far will you go to get what you want ? _____________
Support the podcast by tipping via Venmo to @queensofthemines, buying the book on Amazon, or becoming a patron at www.partreon.com/queensofthemines Today we talk about the incredible life of Hattie McDaniel. She was the First African-American to Win an Oscar, but also, so much more. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West. Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be, disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. From the early 19th to the early 20th century, minstrelsy was a popular form of American theater. Minstrel shows were based on the comic enactment of racial stereotypes. This tradition hit its peak between 1850 and 1870. The earliest shows were staged by white male traveling musicians mimicking the singing and dancing of slaves, with their faces painted black. Minstrel troupes did not welcome actual black performers until after the Civil War. And then, these minstrel shows were the only theatrical medium in which gifted Black performers of the period could support themselves. By the 20th century, women were also appearing in minstrel shows. On June 10 of 1893, Susan had their thirteenth child, a daughter. They named her Hattie. On the account of the family being so poor, Hattie was malnourished, weighing only three and a half pounds at birth. Although the McDaniel family often went hungry, they were tight-knit and creative.
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Support the podcast by tipping via Venmo to @queensofthemines, buying the book on Amazon, or becoming a patron at www.partreon.com/queensofthemines Today's episode features the lives of mother - daughter outlaws, Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen and her daughter, Pearl. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th century women from the Wild West. These stories sometimes contain adult content which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. Carthage, Missouri is America's Maple Leaf City, and the site of the first official engagement of the American Civil War, which took place July 5, 1861. Thirteen years earlier, Myra Maybelle Shirley, was born there on Feb. 5, 1848. They called her Belle. In an attempt to raise her to be a lady, the Shirley's sent their daughter to be educated at the Carthage Female Academy. Belle was intelligent but she was also hot tempered and if unchecked, her mouth could turn a mule skinner's face scarlet. As a result, she got into fights with girls and boys alike at the academy. She would carry this attitude throughout her whole life.
Support the podcast by tipping via Venmo to @queensofthemines, buying the book on Amazon, or becoming a patron at www.partreon.com/queensofthemines When Agnes Moulton Coolbrith joined the Mormon Church in Boston in 1832, she met and married Prophet Don Carlos Smith, the brother of Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There, at the first Mormon settlement, Agnes gave birth to three daughters. The youngest was Josephine Donna Smith, born 1841. Only four months after Josephine Donna Smith's birth, Don Carlos Smith died of malaria. In spite of Don Carlos being a bitter opposer of the ‘spiritual wife' doctrine, Agnes was almost immediately remarried to her late husband's brother, Joseph Smith in 1842, making her his probably seventh wife. Today we will talk about Josephine Donna Smith's, who's life in California spanned the pioneer American occupation, to the first renaissance of the 19thcentury feminist movement. an American poet, writer, librarian, and a legend in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community. Season 3 features inspiring, gallant, even audacious stories of REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West. Stories that contain adult content, including violence which may be, disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. I am Andrea Anderson and this is Queens of the Mines, Season Three. They called her Ina. But Sharing your partner with that many people may leave you lonely at times. Not surprisingly, during the marriage, Agnes felt neglected. Two years later, Smith was killed at the hands of an anti-Mormon and anti-polygamy mob. Agnes, scared for her life, moved to Saint Louis, Missouri with Ina and her siblings. Agnes reverted to using her maiden name, Coolbrith, to avoid identification with Mormonism and her former family. She did not speak of their Mormon past. She married again, in Missouri, to William Pickett. Pickett had also converted to Mormonism, and had a second wife. He was an LDS Church member, a printer, a lawyer and an alcoholic. Agnes had twin sons with Pickett. They left the church and headed west, leaving his second wife behind. Ina had never been in a school, but Pickett had brought along a well-worn copy of Byron's poetry, a set of Shakespeare, and the Bible. As they traveled, the family passed time reading. Inspired, Ina made up poetry in her head as she walked alongside her family's wagon. Somewhere in the Nevada sands, the children of the wagon train gathered as Ina buried her doll after it took a tumble and split its head. Ina's life in California started at her arrival in front of the wagon train through Beckwourth Pass in 1851. Her sister and her riding bareback on the horse of famous mountain man, explorer and scout Jim Beckwourth. He had guided the caravan and called Ina his “Little Princess.” In Virgina, Beckwourth was born as a slave. His father, who was his owner, later freed him. As the wagon train crossed into California, he said, “Here, little girls, is your kingdom.” The trail would later be known as Beckwourth Pass. Ina was the first white child to cross through the Sierra Nevadas on Beckwourth Pass. The family settled in San Bernardino and then in Los Angeles which still had largely a Mormon and Mexican population. Flat adobe homes with courtyards filled with pepper trees, vineyards, and peach and pomegranate orchards. In Los Angeles, Agnes's new husband Pickett established a law practice. Lawyers became the greatest beneficiaries, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, acquiring Mexican land in exchange for representation in court contests. Pickett was one of those lawyers. Ina began writing poetry at age 11 and started school for the first time at 14. Attending Los Angeles's first public school on Street and Second. She published her poetry in the local newspaper and she was published in The Los Angeles Star/Estrella when she was just fifteen years old. At 17, she met Robert Bruce Carsley, a part-time actor and a full time iron-worker for Salamander Ironworks. Salamander Ironworks.built jails, iron doors, and balconies. Ina and Robert married in a doctor's home near the San Gabriel Mission. They lived behind the iron works and had a son. But Robert Carsley revealed himself to be an abusive man. Returning from a minstrel show in San Francisco, Carsley became obsessed with the idea that his new wife had been unfaithful to him. Carsley arrived at Pickett's adobe, where Ina was for the evening, screaming that Ina was a whore in that very tiny quiet pueblo. Pickett gathered up his rifle and shot his son in law's hand off. The next few months proved to be rough for Ina. She got an uncontested divorce within three months in a sensational public trial, but then, tragically, her infant son died. And although divorce was legal, her former friends crossed the street to avoid meeting her. Ina fell into a deep depression. She legally took her mothers maiden name Coolbrith and moved to San Francisco with her mother, stepfather and their twins. In San Francisco, Ina continued to write and publish her poetry and found work as an English teacher. Her poems were published in the literary newspaperThe Californian. The editor of The Californian was author Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Also known as, Mark Twain. Ina made friends with Mark Twain, John Muir, Bret Harte and Charles Warren Stoddard, Twain's queer drinking companion. Coolbrith, renowned for her beauty, was called a “dark-eyed Sapphic divinity” and the "sweetest note in California literature” by Bret Harte. John Muir attempted to introduce her to eligible men. Coolbrith, Harte and Stoddard formed what became known as the Golden Gate Trinity. The Golden Gate Trinity was closely associated with the literary journal, Overland Monthly, which published short stories written by the 28-year old Mark Twain. Ina became the editorial assistant and for a decade, she supplied one poem for each new issue. Her poems also appeared in Harper's, Scribner's, and other popular national magazines. At her home on Russian Hill, Ina hosted literary gatherings where writers and publishers rubbed shoulders and shared their vision of a new way of writing – writing that was different from East Coast writing. There were readings of poetry and topical discussions, in the tradition of European salons and Ina danced the fandango and played the guitar, singing American and Spanish songs. Actress and poet Adah Menken was a frequent visitor to her parties. We know Adah Menken from earlier episodes and the Queens of the Mines episode and she is in the book, as she was a past fling of the famous Lotta Crabtree. The friendship between Coolbrith and Menken gave Menken credibility as an intellectual although Ina was never able to impress Harte of Menken's worth at the gatherings. Another friend of Ina's was the eccentric poet Cincinnatus H. Miller. Ina introduced Miller to the San Francisco literary circle and when she learned of his adoration of the heroic, tragic life of Joaquin Murrieta, Ina suggested that he take the name Joaquin Miller as his pen name. She insisted he dress the part with longer hair and a more pronounced mountain man style. Coolbrith and Miller planned a tour of the East Coast and Europe, but when Ina's mother Agnes and Ina's sister both became seriously ill, Ina decided to stay in San Francisco and take care of them and her nieces and nephews. Ina agreed to raise Miller's daughter, Calla Shasta, a beautiful half indigenous girl, as he traveled around Europe brandishing himself a poet. Coolbrith and Miller had shared an admiration for the poet Lord Byron, and they decided Miller should lay a wreath on his tomb in England. They collected laurel branches in Sausalito, Ina made the wreath. A stir came across the English clergy when Miller placed the wreath on the tomb at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Hucknall. They did not understand the connection between the late lord and a couple of California poets. Not to be outdone, the clergy sent to the King of Greece for another laurel wreath from the country of Byron's heroic death. The two wreaths were hung side by side over Byron's tomb. After this, Miller was nicknamed "The Byron of the West." Coolbrith wrote of the excursion in her poem "With a Wreath of Laurel". Coolbrith was the primary earner for her extended family and they needed a bigger home. So, while Miller was in Europe, she moved her family to Oakland, where she was elected honorary member of the Bohemian Club. When her mother and sister soon died and she became the guardian of her orphaned niece and nephew, The Bohemian Club members discreetly assisted Ina in her finances. Ina soon took a full-time job as Oakland's first public librarian. She worked 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, earning $80 per month. Much less than a man would have received in that position at the time. Her poetry suffered as a result of the long work hours and for nearly twenty years, Ina only published sporadically. Instead, Ina became a mentor for a generation of young readers. She hand chose books for her patrons based on their interests. In 1886, Ina mentored the 10-year-old Jack London. She guided his reading and London called her his "literary mother". London grew up to be an American novelist, journalist and social activist. Twenty years later, London wrote to Coolbrith to thank her he said “I named you Noble. That is what you were to me, noble. That was the feeling I got from you. Oh, yes, I got, also, the feeling of sorrow and suffering, but dominating them, always riding above all, was noble. No woman has so affected me to the extent you did. I was only a little lad. I knew absolutely nothing about you. Yet in all the years that have passed I have met no woman so noble as you." One young reader was another woman featured in a previous Queens of the Mines episode, Isadora Duncan, “the creator of modern dance”. Duncan described Coolbrith as "a very wonderful" woman, with beautiful eyes that glowed with burning fire and passion. Isadora was the daughter of a man that Ina had dazzled, enough to cause the breakup of his marriage. The library patrons of Oakland called for reorganization in 1892 and after 18 years of service, a vindictive board of directors fired Ina, giving her three days' notice to clear her desk. One library trustee was quoted as saying "we need a librarian not a poet." She was replaced by her nephew Henry Frank Peterson. Coolbrith's literary friends were outraged, and worried that Ina would move away, becoming alien to California. They published a lengthy opinion piece to that effect in the San Francisco Examiner. John Muir, who often sent letters and the occasional box of freshly picked fruit, also preferred to keep her in the area, and in one package, a letter suggested that she fill the newly opened position of the librarian of San Francisco. In Coolbrith's response to Muir, she thanked him for "the fruit of your land, and the fruit of your brain" but said, "No, I cannot have Mr. Cheney's place. I am disqualified by sex." San Francisco required that their librarian be a man. Ina returned to her beloved Russian Hill. In 1899, the artist William Keith and poet Charles Keeler offered Coolbrith the position as the Bohemian Club's part-time librarian. Her first assignment was to edit Songs from Bohemia, a book of poems by journalist and the Bohemian Club co-founder, Daniel O'Connell. Her salary in Oakland was $50 each month. The equivalent of $1740 in 2022. She then signed on as staff of Charles Fletcher Lummis's magazine, The Land of Sunshine. Her duties were light enough that she was able to devote a greater proportion of her time to writing. Coolbrith was often sick in bed with rheumatism. Even as her health began to show signs of deterioration, she did not stop her work at the Bohemian Club. She began to work on a history of California literature as a personal project. Songs from the Golden Gate, was published in 1895; it contained "The Captive of the White City" which detailed the cruelty dealt to Native Americans in the late 19th century. Coolbrith kept in touch with her first cousin Joseph F. Smith to whom and for whom she frequently expressed her love and regard. In 1916, she sent copies of her poetry collections to him. He publicized them, identifying as a niece of Joseph Smith. This greatly upset Coolbrith. She told him that "To be crucified for a faith in which you believe is to be blessed. To be crucified for one in which you do not believe is to be crucified indeed." Coolbrith fled from her home at Broadway and Taylor with her Angora cats, her student boarder Robert Norman and her friend Josephine Zeller when the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake hit. Her friends took a few small bundles of letters from colleagues and Coolbrith's scrapbook filled with press clippings about her and her poems. Across the bay, Joaquin Miller spotted heavy smoke and took a ferry from Oakland to San Francisco to help Coolbrith in saving her valuables from encroaching fire. Miller was prevented from doing so by soldiers who had orders to use deadly force against looters. Coolbrith's home burned to the ground. Soldiers evacuated Russian Hill, leaving Ina and Josie, two refugees, among many, wandering San Francisco's tangled streets. Coolbrith lost 3,000 books, row upon row of priceless signed first editions, rare original artwork, and many personal letters in the disaster. Above all, her nearly complete manuscript Part memoir, part history of California's early literary scene, including personal stories about her friends Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and John Muir, were lost. Coolbrith spent a few years in temporary residences after the blaze and her friends rallied to raise money to build her a house. Mark Twain sent three autographed photographs of himself from New York that sold for $10 a piece. He then sat for 17 more studio photographs to further the fund. She received a discreet grant from her Bohemian friends and a trust fund from a colleague in 1910. She set up again in a new house at 1067 Broadway on Russian Hill. Coolbrith got back to business writing and holding literary salons. Coolbrith traveled by train to New York City several times for several years, greatly increasing her poetry output. In those years she produced more than she had produced in the preceding 25 years. Her style was more than the usual themes expected of women. Her sensuous descriptions of natural scenes advanced the art of Victorian poetry to incorporate greater accuracy without trite sentiment, foreshadowing the Imagist school and the work of Robert Frost. Coolbrith was named President of the Congress of Authors and Journalists in preparation for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. That year, Coolbrith was also named California's first poet , and the first poet laureate of any American state on June 30, 1915. A poet laureate composed poems for special events and occasions. Then, it was a position for the state that was held for life. The Overland Monthly reported that eyes were wet throughout the large audience when Coolbrith was crowned with a laurel wreath by Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California, who called her the "loved, laurel-crowned poet of California." After several more speeches were made in her honor, and bouquets brought in abundance to the podium, 74-year old Coolbrith accepted the honor, wearing a black robe with a sash bearing a garland of bright orange California poppies, saying: "There is one woman here with whom I want to share these honors: Josephine Clifford McCracken. For we are linked together, the last two living members of Bret Harte's staff of Overland writers. In a life of unremitting labor, time and opportunity have been denied. So my meager output of verse is the result of odd moments, and only done at all because so wholly a labor of love.” Coolbrith continued to write and work to support herself until her final publication in 1917. Six years later, in May of 1923, Coolbrith's friend Edwin Markham found her at the Hotel Latham in New York very old, disabled, ill and broke. Markham asked Lotta Crabtree to gather help for her. Coolbrith was brought back to California where she settled in Berkeley to be cared for by her niece. The next year, Mills College conferred upon her an honorary Master of Arts degree. In spring of 1926, she received visitors such as her old friend, art patron Albert M. Bender, who brought young Ansel Adams to meet her. Adams made a photographic portrait of Coolbrith seated near one of her white Persian cats and wearing a large white mantilla on her head. A group of writers began meeting at the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco, naming their group the Ina Coolbrith Circle. When Ina returned to Berkeley she never missed a Sunday meeting until her death at 87-years-old. Ina Coolbrith died on Leap Day, February 29, 1928. The New York Times wrote, “Miss Coolbrith is one of the real poets among the many poetic masqueraders in the volume.” She is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. My fave. Her grave was unmarked until 1986 when the literary society The Ina Coolbrith Circle placed a headstone. It was only upon Coolbrith's death that her literary friends discovered she had ever been a mother. Her poem, "The Mother's Grief", was a eulogy to a lost son, but she never publicly explained its meaning. Most people didn't even know that she was a divorced woman. She didn't talk about her marriage except through her poetry. Ina Coolbrith Park was established in 1947 near her Russian Hill home, by the San Francisco parlors of the Native Daughters of the Golden Westmas. The park is known for its "meditative setting and spectacular bay views". The house she had built near Chinatown is still there, as is the house on Wheeler in Berkeley where she died. Byways in the Berkeley hills were named after Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Mark Twain, and other literati in her circle but women were not initially included. In 2016, the name of a stairway in the hills that connects Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Miller Avenue in Berkeley was changed from Bret Harte Lane to Ina Coolbrith Path. At the bottom of the stairway, there is a plaque to commemorate Coolbrith. Her name is also commemorated at the 7,900 foot peak near Beckwourth Pass on Mount Ina Coolbrith in the Sierra Nevada mountains near State Route 70. In 2003, the City of Berkeley installed the Addison Street Poetry Walk, a series of 120 poem imprinted cast-iron plates flanking one block of a downtown street. A 55-pound plate bearing Coolbrith's poem "Copa De Oro (The California Poppy)" is raised porcelain enamel text, set into the sidewalk at the high-traffic northwest corner of Addison and Shattuck Avenues Her life in California spanned the pioneer American occupation, the end of the Gold Rush, the end of the Rancho Era in Southern California, the arrival of the intercontinental train, and the first renaissance of the 19th century feminist movement. The American Civil War played no evident part in her consciousness but her life and her writing revealed acceptance of everyone from all classes and all races. Everyone whose life she touched wrote about her kindness. She wrote by hand, a hand painfully crippled by arthritis after she moved to the wetter climate of San Francisco. Her handwriting was crabbed as a result — full of strikeouts. She earned her own living and supported three children and her mother. She was the Sweet Singer of California, an American poet, writer, librarian, and a legend in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community, known as the pearl of our tribe. Now this all leads me to wonder, what will your legacy be? Queens of the Mines was created and produced by me, Andrea Anderson. You can support Queens of the Mines on Patreon or by purchasing the paperback Queens of the Mines. Available on Amazon. This season's Theme Song is by This Lonesome Paradise. Find their music anywhere but you can Support the band by buying their music and merch at thislonesomeparadise@bandcamp.com
Are you ready for more stories of inspiring, gallant, even audacious REAL 19th Century women from the Wild West? Queens of the Mines is returning Jan 15 2023 with it's third Season! You can expect 10 new episodes, coming out every other Sunday. Get early access to episodes and bonus content on patreon.com/queensofthemines. As always, you can still purchase my paperback book on Amazon, and follow us on Instagram @queensofthemines. This season's Theme Song is by This Lonesome Paradise. Find their music anywhere but you can support the band by buying their music and merch at thislonesomeparadise.bandcamp.com.
Buy the book here! Stories of astonishing women from California's 1849 gold rush history. What was it like for the women in California during the 1850's? What hardships did they face? What victories were they able to realize? Who were the first women who came to California, and who was already here? Explore the lives of brilliant people who made their own way, whose stories contributed to the shaping of the future of California and the United States, in a time where women were not so welcome to do so. They are rarely talked about, and I want you to know their names. Including but not limited to, Belle Cora, Ah Toy, Josefa Segovia, Madame Moustache, Mary Ellen Pleasant, Nika, Luzena Wilson, Lola Montez, Lotta Crabtree, and Charley Parkhurst.
It is my birthday week so today I am talking about my new favorite queen, the American poet and writer who became an activist demanding better treatment of Native Americans from the United States government. Her name was Helen Hunt Jackson, and I will share some of her poetry throughout the story. We will start the story with Deborah & Nathan Fiske, in Amherst, Massachusetts. The couple both suffered from chronic illness through their lives. Nathan was a Unitarian minister, author, and professor of Latin, Greek, and philosophy at Amherst College. Unitarians did not believe in the concepts of sin and of eternal punishment for sins. Appealing to reason, not to emotion. They believed that God is one person. They did not believe in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Their daughter, Helen Maria Fiske, was born on October 15 of 1830. Deborah encouraged Helen to have a cheerful disposition and Helen was smart and she worked hard to live up to her father's expectations. As a result of their parent's disabilities, Helen and her younger sister Ann often stayed with relatives. Deborah died from tuberculosis when Helen was fourteen. A few years later, Nathan Fiske was also suffering from tuberculosis. His doctor advised him to find a new climate to alleviate his symptoms. He arranged for Fiske's education to be paid for and left on his last adventure. He was in Palestine in the summer of her 17th year when her father died of dysentery. He was buried on Mt. Zion. Helen's maternal grandfather, Deacon David Vinal, assumed financial responsibility for the sisters. Julius A. Palmer, a prominent Boston attorney and state legislature representative, took on the role as their guardian, and the girls moved into his puritan home. Palmer sent Helen to the private schools and while she was away for education, she formed a long lasting friendship with the young Emily Dickinson. After school, Helen moved to Albany, New York. The following year, a Governor's Ball was held in Albany. Helen went, and met Lieutenant Edward Bissell Hunt, who was also in attendance. Hunt graduated from West Point, was an Army Corps of Engineers officer and a civil engineer. The couple married on October 28th of that year. She lived the life of a young army wife, traveling from post to post. Helen said she was almost too happy to trust the future. A woman's intuition is often right. Helen gave birth to a son the year after the wedding. His name was Murray. Sadly, Murray was born with a disease attacking his brain and he did not live to see his first birthday. She became pregnant soon after and had a second son, Warren, a year after they lost Murray. They nicknamed him "Rennie". Eight years later, Helen's husband was testing one of his own designs of an early submarine weapon for the military when he fell and suffered a concussion, overcome by gunpowder fumes. It was a devastating loss. The perhaps most profound loss next. Up to this time, her life had been absorbed in domestic and social duties. Her son Warren, her last living family member, soon died due to diphtheria. When she was young, her mother had encouraged her to expand on her vivid imagination by writing. Helen also suffered from chronic illness like her parents, and she took inspiration from her mom and started to write poetry, withdrawing from public view to grieve. Two months later, her first poem was published. She emerged months later dressed in all too familiar mourning clothes, but now determined to pursue a literary career. “And every bird I ever knew Back and forth in the summer flew; And breezes wafted over me The scent of every flower and tree: Till I forgot the pain and gloom And silence of my darkened room“ Most of Hunt's early melancholic work grew out of this heavy experience of loss and sorrow. Like her mother, she continued turning negatives into positives in spite of great hardship. She was 36 years old and writing had become her greatest passion. She moved to a lively community of artists and writers in Newport, Rhode Island where she met the women's rights activist, Unitarian minister, author and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He would become her most important literary mentor. “Only a night from old to new; Only a sleep from night to morn. The new is but the old come true; Each sunrise sees a new year born.” After living in Boston for two years, she spent a few years traveling through England, France, Germany, Austria and Italy. She soaked up inspiration and wrote from her writing desk from back home, which she brought with her on all her journeys. She wrote about popular culture, domestic life, children's literature and travel, using her editorial connections to cover the costs for her cross-country trips. Her career began. She became well known in the literary world, publishing poetry in many popular magazines and a book, followed by a string of novels. She used the pseudonyms “H.H.”, “Rip van Winkle,” and “Saxe Holm.” Helen was a good business woman and made connections with editors at the New York Independent, New York Times, Century Magazine, and the New York Daily Tribune. Her circle of friends included publishers and authors including Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who admired and published her poetry. The smart woman used her connections to help her shy and reluctant childhood friend Emily Dickinson get her initial work published. Helen visited California for the first time in 1872. While there, she explored the Missions in Southern California and took an eight day trip to Yosemite. She was enamored with the native populations she met. “When one thinks in the wilderness, alone, many things become clear. I have been learning, all these years in the wilderness, as if I had had a teacher.” Helen received bad news in 1873. Like her parents, she suffered from chronic health issues throughout her life, and now, like her parents, Helen had tuberculosis. When her mother passed away, tuberculosis management was difficult and often of limited effect but people were now seeking tuberculosis treatment in Colorado Springs because of its dry climate and fresh mountain air. At the time, one-third of the people living in Colorado Springs had tuberculosis staying in boarding houses, or sanatoriums with hospital-like facilities. She moved to the small town of Colorado Springs with 3,000 residents and very few amenities and was quickly disappointed. She said, “There stretched before me, to the east, a bleak, bare, desolate plain, rose behind me, to the west, a dark range of mountains, snow-topped, rocky-walled, stern, cruel, relentless. Between them lay the town – small, straight, new, treeless. One might die of such a place alone, but death by disease would be more natural.” She wasn't happy with the challenges of western life at first, but she stayed cheerful. Helen said her mother's tireless “gift of cheer” was her greatest inheritance. Soon Helen understood and appreciated the beauty of the local scenery. She fell in love with the Pikes Peak region. Her admiration for the natural beauty of the west showed in her work, andher work, boosted tourism to the region. Helen said her mother's tireless “gift of cheer” was her greatest inheritance. “Today that plain and those mountains are to me well-nigh the fairest spot on earth. Today I say one might almost live in such a place alone!” William Sharpless Jackson, a trusted business associate of the Founder of Colorado Springs, wealthy banker and railroad executive for the Denver and Rio Grande Railway became fast friends with Helen. They married in 1875. After they wed, Helen took his name and became known in her writing as Helen Hunt Jackson. Helen and William had the most fabulous home in town at the corner of Kiowa and Weber streets. It was a leader in architecture and technology. Inside was one of the first indoor bathrooms in town. William had the exterior of the house remodeled to give Helen a picture-perfect view of Cheyenne Mountain out her window. One of her most popular poems is Cheyenne Mountain. The Jackson's entertained at their home regularly. Helen lavishly filled the rooms with pieces from her travels, reflecting her insatiable curiosity about the world and its people. A lamp hung, attached to a hemp belt embellished with camel hair, Cowrie shells and red and black wool over pottery and an ornately carved Shell Dish, created by Haida craftsmen from the Pacific Coast. There were also many pictures of her loved ones, including her beloved son Rennie that sat on bookshelves next to her purse, made from the inner ear of a whale. The shelves were full of fiction, poetry, natural sciences, travel guides, and books on spiritualism and the afterlife. On the back of a chair, an unfinished Navajo Chief's Blanket produced in 1870, featuring diamonds woven atop an alternating background of stripes, cut from the loom and made into a saddle blanket. There were native woven baskets from a Yokut tribe in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Heavily carved, unpainted wooden Spanish Stirrups, tear-drop shaped with cone and leaf designs, illuminated from the soft glow behind Asian decorative brass lighting fixtures made from incense burners. “Dead men tell no tales," says the proverb. One wishes they could. We should miss some spicy contributions to magazine and newspaper literature; and a sudden silence would fall upon some loud-mouthed living.” Helen traveled to Boston in 1879, attending a lecture by Chief Standing Bear about the creation of the Great Sioux Reservation. During the lecture, Standing Bear described the forced removal of the Ponca from their reservation in Nebraska, and transfer to a Reservation in Indian Territory, in present-day Oklahoma. They suffered from disease, harsh climate, and poor supplies. Upset about the mistreatment of Native Americans by government agents, she became an activist on an all-consuming mission on behalf of the Native Americans. For several years, she investigated, raised money, circulated petitions, and documented the corruption of the agents, military officers and settlers who encroached on the land. She publicized government misconduct in letters to The New York Times about the United States Government's response to the Sand Creek and Meeker Massacres. She wrote on behalf of the Ponca and publicly battled William Byers of the Rocky Mountain News and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz,whom she once called "the most adroit liar I ever knew." The locals in Colorado Springs were not always keen on Helen's fiercely independent nature, or her fiery advocacy for Native rights at the time. In 1881, Jackson condemned state and federal Indian policies and recounted a history of broken treaties in her book, A Century of Dishonor. The book called for significant reform in government policy towards the Native Americans. Jackson sent a copy to every member of Congress with a quote from Benjamin Franklin printed in red on the cover: "Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations." Helen needed rest after some years of advocacy, let's not forget she had a chronic illness. So she spent a significant amount of time among the Mission Indians in Southern California. Don Antonio Coronel, former mayor of the city, had served as inspector of missions for the Mexican government. He was a well-known early local historian and taught Helen about the history and mistreatment of the tribes brought to the Missions. In 1852, an estimated 15,000 Mission Indians lived in Southern California. By the time of Jackson's visit, they numbered fewer than 4,000. “The wild mustard in Southern California is like that spoken of in the New Testament. Its gold is as distinct a value to the eye as the nugget of gold in the pocket.” When the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Hiram Price recommended her to be appointed as an Interior Department agent; she was named Special Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Southern California. She would document the location and condition of various bands, and determine what lands, if any, should be purchased for their use. At one point, she hired a law firm and fought to protect the rights of a native family facing dispossession from their land at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains. In 1883, Jackson completed a 56-page report on the Conditions and Needs of the Mission Indians. In the report, she recommended extensive government relief for the Mission Indians, including the purchase of new lands for reservations and the establishment of more Indian schools. The report was well received and legislation was drawn up based on her findings. The bill passed the U.S. Senate but died in the House of Representatives. She knew she needed a wider audience and decided to write about it for the masses. She said, "I am going to write a novel, which will set forth some Indian experiences in a way to move people's hearts. People will read a novel when they will not read serious books. If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the person of color, I would be thankful for the rest of my life." With an outline she started in California, Helen began writing in December 1883 while sick with stomach cancer in her New York hotel room and completed it in three months. She cared enough to undermine her health to better their lives. In 1884, Helen published Ramona. The book achieved rapid success and aroused public sentiment. In the novel, Ramona is a half native and half Scots orphan in Spanish Californio society. The romantic story coincided with the arrival of railroad lines in the region, inspiring countless tourists to want to see the places described in the novel. Historian Antoinette May argued that the popularity of the novel contributed to Congress passing the Dawes Act in 1887. This was the first American law to address Indian land rights and it forced the breakup of communal lands and redistribution to individual households, with sales of what the government said was "surplus land". When few other white Americans would do so, she stood up for this cause and brought the topic to light. She wanted to write a children's story about Indian issues, but her health would not allow it. Helen was dying. The last letter she wrote was to President Grover Cleveland. “From my deathbed I send you a message of heartfelt thanks for what you have already done for the Indians. I ask you to read my Century of Dishonor. I am dying happier for the belief I have that it is your hand that is destined to strike the first steady blow toward lifting this burden of infamy from our country and righting the wrongs of the Indian race.” Cancer took Helen Hunt Jackson's life on August 12, 1885 in San Francisco. I shall be found with 'Indians' engraved on my brain when I am dead. A fire has been kindled within me, which will never go out. Her husband arranged for her burial near seven cascading waterfalls on a one-acre plot at Inspiration Point, overlooking Colorado Springs. Her remains were later moved to Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs. One year after her death, the North American Review called Ramona "unquestionably the best novel yet produced by an American woman" and named it one of two of the most ethical novels of the 19th century, along with Uncle Tom's Cabin. Helen believed her niece would be a good bride for her husband after she passed, indicating this to William in a letter from her deathbed. After Helen died, William Sharpless Jackson remarried to Helen's niece and namesake. Together William and Helen's niece Helen had seven children in the house in Colorado Springs. Darling,' he said, 'I never meant To hurt you; and his eyes were wet. 'I would not hurt you for the world: Am I to blame if I forget?' 'Forgive my selfish tears!' she cried, 'Forgive! I knew that it was not Because you meant to hurt me, sweet- I knew it was that you forgot!' But all the same, deep in her heart, Rankled this thought, and rankles yet 'When love is at its best, one loves So much that he cannot forget The family took an active role in preserving the legacy of Helen Hunt Jackson's life, literature and advocacy work. Several rooms from the home furnished with her possessions are preserved in the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum. The Helen Hunt Jackson Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Ramona High School in Riverside, California and Ramona Elementary in Hemet, California are both named after her. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1985. Helen Hunt Falls, in North Cheyenne Cañon Park in Colorado Springs, was named in her memory. Visitors can enjoy the view from the base of the falls or take a short walk to the top and admire the view from the bridge across the falls. When Time is spent, Eternity begins. Sources: https://www.cspm.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Helen-Hunt-Jackson-Exhbit-Text.pdf https://somethingrhymed.com/2014/05/01/emily-dickinson-and-helen-hunt-jackson/
Today we are going to talk about Bridget “Biddy” Mason, the grandmother of Los Angeles, one of the most influential Black women in California. She overcame unimaginable prejudice and inequity and was one of the first prominent landowning citizens of Los Angeles. Briget was born into slavery in Georgia on August 15 of 1818. Her parents were of mixed African American and Native American descent. She wasn't given a last name. Because of this common practice with slaves, many African Americans can only go back so far in their ancestry. Stolen. One of her several slaveholders in Georgia and South Carolina started calling her Biddy. Biddy spent much of her childhood enslaved on John Smithson's plantation in South Carolina, performing tasks in the cotton fields, the South's most important crop. Biddy was forbidden to learn to read or write but she learned about herbs and midwifery from the older enslaved women. Smithson gave her, two other female house servants, and a blacksmith as a wedding gift to his cousins, Robert and Rebecca Smith. The Smiths were successful landowners in Logtown, Mississippi. Biddy was 18. Smith was Mormon convert who cultivated cotton and traded slaves. Although, Mormons were better known as opponents of slavery. For the Smith family, Biddy did domestic work, toiled hard in the cotton fields and performed farm labor. At other times, she worked as a midwife and house nurse — a job she liked. Biddy took care of Rebecca Smith, who was often ill and helped her during the birth of her six children. During her years in Mississippi, Biddy gave birth to Ellen, Ann and Harriet, aged ten, four, and a newborn. It's likely that Smith himself fathered these children. Like countless other enslaved women, Biddy was almost certainly the victim of sexual violence. In 1848, Smith decided to follow the call of the church with his fellow Mississippi Saints in the great Mormon Exodus to Utah. He moved his family and his 14 slaves west to the Salt Lake Valley where Joseph Smith established a new Mormon community seventeen years prior. The area was still part of Mexico at the time but would soon become Utah. Smith, his wife and children sat in the wagon on the journey while Biddy, her daughters and the other slaves walked barefoot behind the 300 wagon caravan. Biddy was in charge of herding the animals for the 1,700 mile trek. While they walked from Mississippi through Illinois and Colorado towards Salt Lake City, Biddy had a ton of responsibilities, including herding the cattle, preparing and serving the campfire meals and setting up and breaking down camp. All this while acting as the midwife and herbalist for the party, and still tending to her three young daughters. The trail must have been disturbing, frightening and strange. There were moments when surely there was a chance to escape, and for this reason, Biddy's value increased on the trail. With young children, she didn't have the option to leave. They lived in Utah for three years until Governor Brigham Young authorized another Mormon community, this time in San Bernardino. Brigham Young warned Smith that California, had been admitted to the Union as a free, non-slave state the year prior. Smith ignored his warnings and set out with his family and slaves and a 150-wagon caravan in 1851, to establish the Mormon settlement and extend the reach of his Church. When Smith arrived in San Bernardino, he became one of the counselors to the bishop and owned a very large property. He was among the wealthiest settlers in San Bernardino. Held in bondage in the Mormon colony were dozens of African Americans as well as an untold number of local Native Americans, as well as an untold number of local Native Americans. San Bernardino was built, in part, by enslaved laborers like Biddy. Even though California was technically a free state, it was a land made up of unfree laborers of various kinds. Many indigenous people weer being forced to work in the Los Angeles "slave mart." This "slave mart" was the second most important source of municipal revenue in Los Angeles after the sale of licenses for saloons and gambling venues. On the weekends, local authorities would seek out and arrest intoxicated natives on dubious vagrancy charges. The Native Americans were thrown in a pen, and their labor for the coming week was auctioned off. If they were paid at the end of that week at all, they were usually paid in alcohol so they could get drunk, be arrested and continue the cycle. In California, Biddy met two sets of couples who were free blacks. Charles and Elizabeth Flake Rowan and Robert and Minnie Owens. They urged her to legally contest her slave status in California. But she did not. Biddy remained enslaved in a “free” state for five more years as Smith maintained his southern way of life in California. He found himself increasingly at odds with fellow colonists and his own church who favorably disposed toward the practice of slavery. In 1855, the leaders of the Mormon colony in San Bernardino thought they were paying top dollar for 80,000 acres of land but had purchased only 35,000 acres. Fine print fuck up. When the colony sued the people who had sold them the land, they lost. The court allowed them to choose up to 35,000 acres anywhere in the larger area. The church chose Smith's ranch. It was turned over to them without any compensation and Smith was pissed. Without his property in California and in fear of losing his slaves, he sold off his cattle and conspired a plan to quietly leave the colony and move to Texas. Biddy and her fellow slaves did not trust Smith and they feared they were going to be sold and separated from their children. Smith lied to Biddy, promising her and her family's freedom in Texas. He needed her cooperation to get there and considered her valuable property. Without his land, he needed a place for them to all stay as he secured provisions for the ride east. He chose a camp of settlers originally from the American South in the Santa Monica Hills. Surely a more hospitable place for a slaveholder than Mormn san Bernardino. One of Biddy's daughters was romantically involved with the Owens son. In December, Robert Owens and Elizabeth Rowan tipped off the local authorities. There was a group of Black Americans that were being illegally held in Santa Monica Canyon and they were about to be taken across state lines to the slave state of Texas. The sheriffs from San Bernardino and Los Angeles approached Judge Benjamin Hayes. Hayes issued a writ of habeas corpus, widely used against slaveholders in free states. Late on the night of New Year's Eve 1855, as Los Angeles residents celebrated the new year, sheriffs raided Smith's camp in the Santa Monica mountains. Biddy's children were taken into protective custody at the city jail at the corner of Spring and Franklin Streets in downtown L.A. They let Biddy stay with the Owens family. Judge Hayes ordered Smith to bear all costs associated with the case and caring for those placed in guardianship of the sheriffs as they prepared for trial. Los Angeles was then still a small town and the three day court hearing, starting on January 19, 1856 was a huge event. Smith argued that Biddy and the rest of his slaves wished to go to Texas with him. Under state law, Black Americans could not testify against white Americans. Judge Hayes brought Biddy and her eldest daughters into his chambers along with two trustworthy local gentlemen who acted as observers. Hayes asked Biddy if she was willingly leaving for Texas and Biddy told him, “I always do what I have been told, but I have always been afraid of this trip to Texas.” Biddy also told the judge about the kind of treatment they had been subjected to over the years. Hannah, who was one of the women enslaved by Smith, gave an unbelievably damaging testimony in the courtroom. She reluctantly said that she wanted to go to Texas. There were long silences. Hannah had given birth to a baby boy only two weeks earlier and was terrified of what Smith would do to her if she refused to go with him to Texas. Hayes sent the San Bernardino sheriff up to talk with her and she said, I promised I would say in court that I wanted to go but I don't want to go. If you bring me back to court, I'll say I want to go but I don't want to go. The sheriff returned with an affidavit saying that, in fact, she did not want to go. Smith's behavior before and during the course of the hearing made it clear she had good reason to be afraid. It was awful. He threatened the Owens family, a neighborhood grocer and a doctor in the courtroom yelling “If this case isn't resolved on Southern principles, all people of color will pay the price.” A gang of Smith's sons and workers went to the jail and tried to intimidate the jailer and lure Biddy's daughters away from the jail with alcohol. Biddy's lawyer abruptly withdrew from the case after being threatened and offered a bribe of $200. Judge Hayes was furious with Smith, and clearly rattled by what he had heard. His family was behaving like thugs. Robert Smith was lying about trying to take them out of California and this disturbed Hayes. Smith, who was not being held, was a no-show on the last day of the trial, Monday, January 21. He ran off to Texas. He knew his reputation was ruined and was unwilling to pay court costs. Judge Hayes stated "all the said persons of color are entitled to their freedom and are free and cannot be held in slavery or involuntary servitude, unless for the punishment of crimes, shall ever be tolerated in this State. It is therefore argued that they are entitled to their freedom and are free forever." Amasa Mason Lyman was the mayor of San Bernardino and a Mormon Apostle. Biddy was a friend of Lyman and was fond of the Lyman family. Biddy took the surname Mason. It was her first last name. With Smith gone, her daughters were released from protective custody and Mason moved her family into the Owens family home. They were now citizens in rough-and-tumble Los Angeles, where only around 80 of its 4,000 residents were Black. Her oldest daughter, Ellen, married the Owens' son, Charles. Owing to her experience and quality of work, she became one of the most popular midwives of that state, using the skills she learned as a slave. Judge Hayes had a brother-in-law famous for being one of the first formally trained doctors in Southern California. Dr. John Strother Griffin, the “Father of East Los Angeles”. Griffin was impressed with her nursing skills and hired her as a nurse and midwife. She made $2.50 per day. That would be about $85 dollars in 2022. About 10 bucks a day for an 8 hour day. Griffin's office was on Main Street in the same county building as the jail in which she'd taken refuge with the 13 other enslaved people fighting for freedom. She offered her services to the prisoners free of charge. Biddy delivered hundreds of babies in Los Angeles and braved a smallpox epidemic, risking her life to tend to the sick. In her big black medicine bag, she carried the tools of her trade, and the papers Judge Hays had given her affirming that she was free. Biddy Mason worked as a midwife for ten years, saving her earnings carefully. When she was 48, she purchased her own property on the outskirts of Los Angeles where there were more gardens and vineyards than paved streets. She was the first African American woman to buy property in Los Angeles. It had a water ditch, and a willow fence running around the plot. Two lots for $250. Mason initially used the land for gardening and lived with the Owens. This purchase made her one of the first pioneers of Los Angeles. A remarkable feat for a woman who had spent the first 37 years of her life enslaved. In her home, she established the city's first child care center for working parents. The First African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest African American church in the city. It was established on her Spring Street property. The initial meetings were held in Mason's home in 1872. She paid taxes and all expenses on church property to hold it for her people. The permanent church was eventually erected on land she donated at Eighth and Towne. Mason was quickly beloved and “known by every citizen” as “Aunt Biddy.” She was also well received in the Los Angeles Spanish-speaking community. She could not read or write, but had become a fluent Spanish-speaker. She befriended Pio Pico, Mexico's last governor in California. Pico, Owens and Griffin were involved in real estate and all encouraged her to invest her money wisely and purchase property. Biddy invested in real estate in what is now the heart of downtown L.A. Finally, in 1884 Mason finally moved to her own land at 311 Spring Street and what is now Broadway. On one of the two lots, she built a two-story brick building which she rented the first floor to commercial interests and lived in an apartment on the second. Los Angeles was booming, and rural Spring Street was becoming crowded with shops and boarding houses. She sold the north lot for $1,500. A gain of nearly $13,000 today. She sold a property she had purchased on Olive Street for $375 in 1868, for $2,800. $82,000 today. Basically, in 1884, Biddy had over a 100,000 year in today's numbers. There were dirt streets and unpaved sidewalks, with curbs and gutters. The drainage system was primitive. Water was still channeled through the city through open ditches and bricklaid channels. Only fifteen streets had sewers running below their surface via riveted iron pipes. Three hundred foot tall poles holding electric lights had recently been erected on the major streets, illuminating with 3,000 candle power. Early that year, storms in February of 1884 caused the Los Angeles River to swell and cut new channels and the city's streets began to flood. The Aliso Street Bridge broke in two, part of the bridge was pushed down the river with half a dozen homes and they all lodged against the First Street Bridge, creating a dam. The water rose, the river overflowed its banks and flooded the streets. Finally, the pressure from the rising water and the piled up homes and portion of bridge was too much for the First Street Bridge. The west bank eroded when the First Street Bridge collapsed and thirty-five more houses were carried away. Along the riverbed, people sifted through the debris. Cradles, baby wagons, doors, cupboards, fences, pigs. Looking for something. Someone. Brooms, chickens, orange trees, beds. It was a dreadful sight. People were killed. Obviously, city lighting could not slow fooding, but it would aid in the recovery from the storm that had put a third of the city under water for hours. After the flood, Biddy arranged a deal with a grocer on Fourth and Spring. All of the families who lost their home were able to sign off for all of their groceries. Biddy Mason would pay the tab. Biddy owned land on San Pedro Street in Little Tokyo and was renting to over twenty tenants on three large plots near the now Grand Central Market. For the next three decades, she continued her real estate venture, participating in the frontier town's transformation into an emerging metropolis. She used her wealth, a fortune of $300,000, the equivalent to $9.5 million in 2022 to feed and shelter the poor. She would visit the jail to leave a token and a prayerful hope with every prisoner. She opened a foster home, an elementary school for black children and a traveler's aid center. She was charming, effective and was deeply appreciated. In so many ways, she became the backbone of society. She helped her family buy properties around the city. She deeded a portion of her remaining Spring Street property to her grandsons “for the sum of love and affection and ten dollars.” She signed the deed with her customary fancy “X.” Still, never learning to read or write. Too busy making that cash. Her success enabled her to support her extended family for generations. Los Angeles had become a bustling city with 50,000 residents in the late 1880's. She was so well-known, at dawn each morning, a line would form in front of Mason's gate. Swarming with people in need of assistance. Her neighborhood developed quickly around her homestead and by the early 1890s, the main financial district of Los Angeles was one block from Mason's property. As she grew old and became too ill to see visitors, her grandson Robert was forced to turn people away each morning. On January 15, 1891 Bridget “Biddy” Mason died at her beloved homestead in Los Angeles. She was 73 years old, one of the wealthiest Black women in the country. When she was buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights, her grave was left unmarked. The family held onto Mason's cherished “first homestead” until the Depression. Today the Broadway Spring Center Parking garage stands on the site. Ninety-Seven years after her death, L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, and members of the church she founded held a ceremony, during which her grave was finally marked with a tombstone. Biddy Mason Memorial Park in downtown Los Angeles was erected one year later in her honor. Behind the Bradbury Building near Third and Spring, a memorial on an 80-foot-long poured concrete wall shows the timeline of Biddy Mason's life. November 16 was declared “Biddy Mason Day” in Los Angeles. Jackie Broxton said this, "She showed people what could happen when they were free and could set their own destiny". Jackie Broxton is the CEO & President of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation. The Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation was established in 2013 and began as an outreach ministry of the church Biddy founded. The Foundation caters to current and former foster youth in the local community. It should also be noted that Biddy's success story was the exception and not the rule. I believe that she attained so much, because she gave so much. As she navigated multiple levels of oppression, Biddy advocated for her community. When it comes to movements advancing our communities, culture, and policies in more equitable directions, it seems that women have always been at the forefront. Biddy Mason once said, “If you hold your hand closed, nothing good can come in. The open hand is blessed, for it gives in abundance, even as it receives.” She is an inspiration that when given the support and opportunity, it is possible to overcome even the toughest of circumstances. Her story is one of resilience, compassion, and triumph. The fight continues today against the inherited systemic racism, sexism, and each and every intersection. Sources: Los Angeles Almanac Free Forever: The Contentious Hearing That Made Biddy Mason A Legend By Hadley Meares The Life of Biddy Mason: From Slave to a Master by Fareeha Arshad Biddy Mason Collaborative National Park Service Biddy Mason: One of LA's first black real estate moguls By Hadley Meares Los Angeles Western Corral Honoring the legacy and 200th birthday of slave-turned-entrepreneur Biddy Mason by Michael Livingston Negro Trail-Blazers of California by Delilah Beasley The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History by Dolores Hayden https://kentakepage.com/bridget-biddy-mason/ Bridget "Biddy" Mason: From Bondage to Wealth - Kentake Page Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation
Today, we are talking about a murder at Dragoon's Gulch, in Sonora, Ca. No evidence of the gulch's murderous past remains on the Dragoon Gulch walking trail area in Sonora. The trail begins at the top of Woods Creek Rotary Park across from the Mother Lode Fairgrounds. When you cross Wood's Creek you reach the bottom of Dragoon Gulch. It is free to walk the trail, and dogs are welcome. Correction: $1,000 in 1851 is worth $37,338.18 today. 1849 it was $38,799.46. $38,385.05 in 1853. one ounce of gold was valued at $20.67 and is worth around $2000 an ounce today. Sources: https://www.sonoraca.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/dragoon-trail-history.pdf http://mygoldrushtales.com/murder-at-dragoon-gulch/ the journal of william perkins the history of california - sonora murders 282 the century vol 63 Over 2.5 million acres burned in California in 2021 but the future of Wildfire Protection is clear. Let Fireback Wildfire Defense Services help protect your home and property with its award winning, non-toxic USFS approved fire retardant technology. Fireback sprays a clear fire retardant to add a layer of protection to your property. With this extreme drought, fire danger is a real threat for home and business owners in California. Fireback is ready to help you protect your home and property all summer long. Schedule a Consultation at www.firebackca.com or by calling 209-288-2376, Follow Fireback on Facebook and instagram. If there's a chance of taking fire your best defense is to FIREBACK - Proudly Serving Tuo Co and surrounding areas Are you looking for something magical for your sacred space this spring? Sisters of the Moon in Sonora, Ca, and online, carries witchy antiques, vintage, handmade items, metaphysical items and organic, farm to jar handmade self care products. So if you are looking for some super awesome gals to support, choose Jenn and Julie for your next shopping spree for mugs, besoms, wreaths, crystals, tarot, incense and more. Sisters of the Moon has two booths in Mountain Treasures at 13643 Tuolumne Road, Sonora CA. You can also shop with Sisters of the Moon online at www.sistersofthemoon31.com and they will ship anywhere in the US. Use the code sisters13 for 13% off online purchases. Find them on social media at sistersofthemoon3. You know, anything can be magical We are seeing a lot of cool ventures pop up that truly serve a purpose. I am super excited to tell you about these new sponsors of the podcast. Jenn and Rosie met while homeschooling during the Pandemic.Together they are walking the road of business owners and single moms who support one another. Soulful Mountain Homestead and Farm is an organic/permaculture/regenerative homestead. A dream rooted in reality after the pressure Jenn endured from shelter in place and the horrific Santa Cruz Mountain fire of 2020. Jenn had a desire to help other single parents get sustainable with their food source and change the way people farm, help the environment, and help parents feed their kids healthy homegrown food. Rosie, the owner or micROWgreenZ, offers highly nutritious microgreens in an array of flavors and species. She has dedication to the quality of microgreens that is unmatched. Roosie founded MicROWgreenZ out of a desire to be able to spend more time with her kids, while helping friends and family heal from sickness and disease through Whole Foods. Both businesses will be available at farmers markets across Tuolumne county, as well as home delivery and pick up from Soulful Mountain Homestead in Soulsbyville. The mission is to heal people through food while healing the earth. Proudly serving Tuolumne County and the San Jose and Bay Area. The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is a friendly, reimagined mid-19th century style full-service grocery store supporting the needs of regional residents of Tuolumne County and the visitors of the living history town of Columbia, California. Experience “Eureka!” moments of discovery and delight shopping for great food and more. You can find quality staples and imported specialties, local meats/poultry, vegan, dairy-free, and GF options craft beer, local wines, OTC pharmaceuticals, hardware, garden, home goods, antiques, and fine art at fair prices, You'll find yourself saying, “Wow! I didn't expect to find THAT in Columbia!” The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is open DAILY from 9 AM – 6 PM, 11245 Jackson Street, CA 95310 USA and they accept SNAP/EBT benefits, cash, all major credit cards and Apple pay. Follow them on FB and Instagram for updates and occasional closures or changes to hours.
Today we are going to talk about the Trail of tears, specifically my grandmother's family's experience on the journey. We start in Georgia, where tens of thousands of acres of land had been occupied and cultivated since the 8000s BC by the indigenous people. During the Manifest Destiny “delusion”, some American officials thought that the best way to solve what they were disgracefully calling an “Indian problem” was to “civilize” the Native Americans. To do this, they encouraged them convert to Christianity, taught them to speak and read English and had them adopt to European-style practices such as individual ownership of land and other property, such as owning African slaves. So, here is a big shocker, in the winter of 1829, gold was discovered in great abundance upon Cherokee soil in Georgia after a little Cherokee boy living on Ward creek had sold a gold nugget to a white trader the year prior. Mining operations quickly sprang up. As prospectors rushed in, so did armed brigands claiming to be government agents, who paid no attention to the rights of the natives who were the legal possessors of the country. Their land was valuable and desired by the white settlers. Tensions with them and the Cherokee increased. They called it the "Great Intrusion". Sound familiar? We talk about the California gold rush all the time on this podcast, but the rush in Georgia came in second for the most significant gold rush in the United States. John Ross, the elected Chief of all the Cherokee Tribes did all he could. Laws were made benefiting the settlers, and the Cherokees homes were burned, fences and crops destroyed and their cattle was mutilated. Men were shot in cold blood as the lands were confiscated. Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross sent Chief Junaluska as an envoy to plead with President Jackson for protection for his people. Chief Junaluska knew President Andrew Jackson after he brought 500 warriors to help Jackson win the battle of the Horse Shoe. 33 of Junaluska's men ended up dead. In the battle, when the Creek had Andrew Jackson at his mercy, Junaluska drove his tomahawk through the skull of the Creek warrior about to kill Jackson. But when Junaluska approached Jackson, his manner was cold and indifferent. “Sir, your audience has ended. There is nothing I can do for you.” The doom of the Cherokee was sealed. In 1830, Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. It was a tiny, wealthy minority of Cherokee who signed a fraudulent treaty that ceded their eastern lands. The Act gave the federal government power to relocate the native population to the west and move Americans into their cotton kingdom. It promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but the boundaries of “Native Land” diminished as the line of white settlement pushed westward. The gold extracted from Georgia those years would equate to over 22 million dollars in 2022. Differences over remaining in their Southeastern homeland or moving to the West had split Cherokees before removal. Some Cherokee asked to postpone removal until the fall, and to voluntarily remove themselves. The delay was granted, provided they remain in internment camps. Only 2,000 Cherokees had left their simple log cabins, cornfields, orchards, and livestock by 1838. So, the government sent General Winfield Scott and thousands of soldiers to gather the remaining families in Eastern Cherokee Territory and put them in concentration camps before the removal. As the Cherokee were arrested and dragged from their homes at the bayonet point that May, the American men looted their belongings and robbed their dead's graves to get their jewelry and other little trinkets. A small child had died during the commotion and was lying on a bear skin couch. His family was preparing the little body for burial. All were arrested and driven out leaving the child in the cabin. Men working in the fields were arrested and driven to the stockades. Women were dragged from their homes by soldiers whose language they could not understand. Children were often separated from their parents. When the troops showed up at the log house of Big and Susie Tickaneeski in May, Big wanted to fight. Big's wife Susie begged him not to battle the soldiers. She told him they would kill him. Like Big, the majority of the Cherokee people, was divided: What was the best way to handle the government's land grab? Because of the 1829 Georgia gold rush, the Cherokee gained enough gold-mining experience to participate in later gold rushes in California in 1849 and Colorado in 1859. By the end of the decade, very few of the natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Truth is, the facts are being concealed from the young people of today. School children of today do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point to satisfy the white man's greed. Future generations will read and condemn the act. Like the women before her, Rebecca proved to be a woman of endurance, strength and adaptability and I am so honored to call her my auntie. My own Aunt. Becky, if you will.
Support Queens of the Mines with a tip! Venmo- @queensofthemines CashApp $queensofthemines Paypal southernminequeen@gmail.com Chineses Camp is terror ridden by the queerest ghost on record. From the SF Chronicle September 1904.
Support Queens of the Mines with a tip! Venmo- @queensofthemines CashApp $queensofthemines Paypal southernminequeen@gmail.com Today, we are talking about an active and daring freedom fighter from California history! For decades after America's largest migration, the gold rush began, the men who came alone to California to seek their fortunes longed for wives and women of pleasure. It was easier for Chinese traders to convince families to sell their daughters rather than their sons. The traders would offer money to the parents for their daughters, some as young as five years old. The parents were straight up lied to. They were told the traders would help their girls find wealthy husbands, or arrange for them to get an education. The girls would became domestic slaves or were sold into prostitution. The young women lived brutal lives. The youngest girls didn't last more than a few years before their worn and abused bodies gave out. They would usually die within five years after they were first held captive. Some who were on the verge of death were put in a solitary room to starve. Chinese gangs known as Tongs, usually headed up the operations. The local government overlooked the crime. San Francisco City Hall took kickbacks from Tong groups at the time so there was little government action against this problem. Donaldina Cameron was born on a sheep farm in New Zealand in July of 1869. She spent the first three years of her life there with her Scottish family including her six older siblings. By the time she was four years old, the entire family had immigrated to the United States of America. They brought their skills and knowledge from the farm and made their home on a large sheep ranch in the San Gabriel Valley in California. San Gabriel Valley is to the east of Los Angeles in present-day Pasadena. Her family and friends called her Dolly. Dolly's childhood was secluded from the outside world. On the ranch, she spent the days picking Johnston's bush lupine and dreaming of marrying. She would have a hard working ranch family and live the kind of comfortable life that her parents had always provided. She knew of nothing else in her new home state of California. When she was thirteen years old, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed, the first piece of federal immigrant legislation in the United States. It was said to be originally passed to prohibit sex trafficking of Asian women and an influx of Asian male laborers. The Chinese slave trade was as much a part of San Francisco history as was the gold rush. Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, any immigrant from any area considered “undesirable” was prohibited from entering the United States. This included most of Asia. Chinese women could not enter the United States unless they were already married to a man living there. A dangerous and illegal system dubbed the "paper daughters” was created, where papers were forged stating the trafficked victims were already members of Chinese families in the United States. Hours north, cable cars were first climbing San Francisco's hills. The city had been built to a massive scale since the gold rush began. Protestant women were launching an attack on “yellow slavery” in San Francisco. Cameron came to the city as a young woman to attend school to be a teacher. In the bay, she fell in and out of love. Her best friend at school had an activist mother, who volunteered at the Presbyterian Mission House in San Francisco. Young Chinese girls who had been shipped from China or kidnapped to work as indentured servants were taking refuge under Maggie Culbertson's team's care. They were provided with “food, shelter, and the teachings of the Christian faith.” At the time, females made up 60 percent of the missionary force. Missionary work, and social work in general, was an example of leadership that was acceptable for Victorian women. Maggie Culbertson, the founder of the Presbyterian Mission House, was ill and needed help. Dolly had recently left a fiance and quit college and decided to join Culbertson's team. She could teach sewing and other useful skills at the San Francisco Mission House. They agreed on a one year term. Dolly arrived in April of 1895. On her first day ever at the Mission House, sticks of dynamite were found around the premises. She then realized the magnitude of her new situation. The gangs often threatened the mission with death and destruction not just from the Tongs, but, by the police who came to roust the illegal aliens. Magggie Culbertson mentored Dolly in the ways of care and justice. Dolly relished in assisting her in providing the safe haven for the young Chinese girls. She was inspired by Culbertson's courage as she worked by her side. Tien Fuh Wu was rescued from a Chinatown gambling den and lived at the home when Cameron arrived. She really didn't care for her and Wu was disobedient for Dolly's first two years at the house. As a child, Wu was told she was going to San Francisco to visit her grandmother. She was taken to a boat in her native province Zhejiang, China. Her father locked her inside a cabin onboard with only a toothbrush and washcloth, told her to eat her supper and left without saying goodbye. Her father had sold her to pay off his gambling debts. The boat brought her one hundred miles north to Shanghai, then she boarded a steamship to San Francisco. She worked as a mui tsai, or, a domestic servant in a brothel in the city until the owner at the brothel fell into debt. Wu was sold to the gambling den on Jackson Street. There, she was subjected to rigorous household chores, and physically abused by her new owner. When she was old enough, she was transferred to a life of sex work. When rescued, Wu's body was covered in burns, cuts and bruises. She arrived at the home on 920 Sacramento Street 15 months before Dolly. At the turn of the century in San Francisco, this kind of trafficking was rampant, and largely ignored by city authorities. Culbertson's health failed when Cameron was 25 years old. Two years later, she took over as superintendent of the Presbyterian Home. Wu changed her mind about Dolly after one of the Chinese women who worked alongside Cameron passed away. The intense grief Dolly displayed showed Wu a new side of the woman. Wu worked for Dolly as a translator during court cases, and helped supervise the Mission House, earning $5 a month. Donaldina Cameron continued Culbertson's mission of the Home. She saved young women from sex slavery and indentured servitude in the worst hellholes of Chinatown. Cameron had an uncanny knack of smelling out the brothels that were often hidden behind trap doors. Secret messages were sent to her from friends and relatives of these captive girls, tipping her off the girl's location. Engaging in chases over rooftops, down dark alleys, hiding in hidden rooms and breaking down doors with an ax. I mean shit worthy of a blockbuster feature action film. At the safe house, the girls however, were not entirely free. They were to concede to Anglo-American ways. Dolly incorporated Chinese food and decorations into their daily living, but the students were forced to convert to Christianity. Most of the immigrant women welcomed the conversion and looked to Dolly as a hero. They called her “Lo Mo” translated it means Little Mother. Yet there were women who had mixed feelings about this forced conversion. The house was also the site of many happy marriages of girls who eventually found worthy men. When they married their chosen suitor, they would wear a white gown, rather than the traditional red. White gowns symbolize funerals in Chinese culture. Wu was her favorite aide. Her ability to translate was a fantastic asset. She was also able to comfort the rescued girls. The brothel and slave owners commonly spread fear of "White Devils" to stop the women in their possession from seeking help. The Tongs had many nicknames for Dolly. Jesus Woman, White Spirit, White Witch, White Devil and the Angry Angel of Chinatown. The Tongs would tell their captives that the “White Witch” would drink the blood of the liberated girls to keep up her vitality. Wu would show them her own scars, ensuring their safety. The scars were evidence of her understanding. She accompanied Cameron on the dangerous rescues that took many months and intense investigation to orchestrate. When the fear of the bubonic plague had been in Chinatown. The roads were blocked off and the neighborhood was under quarantine. They used the roofs to get to the girls they were rescuing. Together, Dolly and her 4' 11" cohort saved the lives of thousands of trafficked Chinese girls and women in San Francisco. Wu was targeted by the Tongs because she herself was Chinese. The gangs saw her as a traitor. The threats were so common that after each major rescue, Cameron would stop Wu from going out alone for weeks at a time. The law wasn't always on her side. Getting legal custody of the girls was nearly impossible for Cameron since child protection laws did not yet exist. Tong leaders would claim that they had a right to the captive as her “sponsor” and the courts often agreed. They would say the captive was a relative, or that she was working voluntarily. If she captured the girl first, she could work the legal problems out later. This way, the girl would be safe in the mission house while the courts hashed out the details. On March 29, 1900 two Chinese men and a police officer arrived at the Mission Home looking for resident Kum Quai, who they claimed was a thief. This was a typical tactic used by the brothel owners to reclaim the women. Quai was arrested, but Cameron would not let her be alone with the men, so she joined on the train journey to Palo Alto. Quai was to be locked in a cell for the night, and Cameron remained with her. At 2 am, the deputy tried to open the door, but Cameron was suspicious of the early morning entry and barricaded them inside until the officers started breaking down the doors. After the train, the men loaded Quai in a buggy, and Cameron attempted to follow. She was pushed out and thrown onto the road. Cameron woke townspeople up right away, panicked. Frustration spread throughout the town. A crowd demonstrated the next day in San Jose at the office of the lawyer who planned the event. “The public uproar led to criminal indictments,” and the men involved were punished. In 1904, she had her attorneys challenge the courts to provide for child welfare laws. It was a breakthrough that would provide her a most useful tool for her rescues. Some of the girls opted for more education, and one of Donaldina's “daughters” became the first Chinese woman to graduate from Stanford University. Another daughter trained to become the first Chinese nurse through the Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yet other daughters stayed on at Cameron House to help with the mission's work. Cameron wrote extensively in publications like Women and Missions and a pamphlet titled "The Yellow Slave Traffic", seeking to gain financial support for her mission. In April 1906, the great San Francisco earthquake and fire forced the evacuation of the Presbyterian Home, which was destroyed in the earthquake. The night the tragedy happened, Dolly ran through the blazing city back to her home to retrieve a logbook that detailed her guardianship over her girls. She did not want them to be forced back into servitude or prostitution. The home was rebuilt the following year. Hidden passages were constructed in the basement of the new structure. A fire that happened years later burned several girls to death who were trapped in the very room that was supposed to keep them safe. It is said that this is ranked as one of San Francisco's allegedly haunted locations and these very women still haunt the building today. The building, now known as The Donaldina Cameron House is San Francisco Landmark #44. The doors to the basement remain sealed. Throughout her career, she kept expanding her work. She tried to overturn the Oriental Exclusion Act, which prevented Chinese from owning property, limited where they could live and denied them the right to testify on their own behalf in an American court. Donaldina also founded two homes for Chinese children and raised awareness about widespread prejudice toward all Chinese. Many of these children were orphans or the children of the rescued women. The Chung Mei Home served young boys, while the Ming Quong Home was for girls. The former Chung Mei house is today part of the Windrush School in El Cerrito, California, and the Ming Quong Home is now a part of Mills College in Oakland, California. Donaldina retired in 1942 and the Presbyterian Home was renamed the Donaldina Cameron House. After retirement, Donaldina moved to the Palo Alto area. Despite living in Chinatown for 40 years, Cameron never learned Chinese. Three years later, she adopted an orphan from Korea. Wu lived next door to Cameron when she was an elderly woman living in Palo Alto. She is credited with saving and educating over 3,000 Chinese immigrant women and girls and was considered a "national icon". Over 800 women are recorded as having lived there between 1874 and 1909 . Cameron was remembered for how close she was with the home's residents and for being kind and caring to all people, despite their nationalities. At the same time, she was part of the larger missionary system, in which “the ethnocentric attitude and national and religious absolutism… cannot be denied”. She made an effort to embrace these women's culture when she arrived at the Mission Home. “Nothing angered Miss Cameron more than the racial discrimination to which Chinese were subjected in housing, employment, and education”. For the time, Cameron was progressive and accepting. However, she still forced the residents to comply with her leadership and culture. Historian Dorothy Gray calls her “perhaps the most active and daring freedom fighter in the history of the West.” Ron Cameron, Donaldina's great nephew, remembers that when visiting the elderly Cameron on her birthday, years after she stopped working, he “would have to get in a line that was about two blocks long of Chinese people who had driven… to wish her a happy birthday She died in Palo Alto, California, in 1968, at the age of 98. Wu is said to have been at her mentor's side, reading from a Bible until the very end. She is buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in the East Side neighborhood of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. When Wu passed away seven years later, she was buried next to her friend in Cameron's family plot at the Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles. The Cameron House still stands today in San Francisco, serving as a multi-service agency serving Asian communities by promoting healthy Christian communities through programs like youth sports, tutoring, and counseling. If you call Cameron House today, the phone is still answered in Chinese. Miranda Raison portrays Donaldina Cameron in the Cinemax TV series Warrior as Nellie Davenport. Ah Toy is also a character in that series. https://cameronhouse.org/ https://truewestmagazine.com/donaldina-cameron/ https://www.kqed.org/arts/13880286/the-child-slave-who-helped-rescue-thousands-of-women-in-chinatown http://www.sfmuseum.net/1906/ew15.html https://truewestmagazine.com/donaldina-cameron/ https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Donaldina_Cameron:_The_Person_Behind_the_Legend
Queens of the Mines paperback, ebook, and hardback novel now available on Amazon. In this episode, we dive into the life of Isadora Duncan. In How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the film from 2003, Kate Hudson's character Andy dons a yellow diamond necklace in one scene that they call the “Isadora Diamond”. That $6 million 80-carat yellow diamond in the necklace was designed by Harry Winston and is named after Isadora Duncan. whose philosophy earned her the title of “the creator of modern dance”. Angela Isadora Duncan, was born in San Francisco on May 26, 1877. The youngest of the four children of banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, Joseph Charles Duncan and Mary Isadora Gray. Soon after her birth, Joseph was caught embezzling from the two banks that he was hired to set up. He used the money to fund his private stock speculations. Joseph was lucky to avoid prison time. Her mother Mary left Joseph and moved the children to Oakland to find work as a seamstress and piano teacher. The family lived in extremely poor conditions in Oakland and Angela Isadora attended school until she was ten years old. School was too constricting for her and she decided to drop out. To make money for the family, Angela Isadora joined her three older siblings and began teaching dance to local children. She was not a classically trained dancer or ballerina. Her unique, novel approach to dance showed joy, sadness and fantasy, rediscovering the beautiful, rhythmical motions of the human body. Joseph remarried and started a new family, they all perished aboard the British passenger steamer SS Mohegan, which ran aground off the coast of the Lizard Peninsula of Cornwall England on the 14th of October in 1898. Only 91 out of 197 on board survived. Eventually, Angela Isadora went east to audition for the theater. In Chicago, she auditioned for Augustin Daly, who was one of the most influential men in American theater during his lifetime. She secured a spot in his company, which took her to New York City. In New York, she took classes with American Ballet dancer Marie Bonfanti. The style clashed with her unique vision of dance. Her earliest public appearances back east met with little success. Angela Isadora was not interested in ballet, or the popular pantomimes of the time; she soon became cynical of the dance scene. She was 21 years old, unhappy and unappreciated in New York, Angela Isadora boarded a cattle boat for London in 1898. She sought recognition in a new environment with less of a hierarchy. When she arrived, ballet was at one of its lowest ebbs and tightrope walkers and contortionists were dominating their shared music hall stages. Duncan found inspiration in Greek art, statues and architecture. She favored dancing barefoot with her hair loose and wore flowing toga wrapped scarves while dancing, allowing her freedom of movement. The attire was in contrast to the corsets, short tutus and stiff pointe shoes her audience was used to. Under the name Isadora Duncan, she gave recitals in the homes of the elite. The pay from these productions helped Isadora rent a dance studio, where she choreographed a larger stage performance that she would soon take to delight the people of France. Duncan met Desti in Paris and they became best friends. Desti would accompany Isadora as she found inspiration from the Louvre and the 1900 Paris Exposition where Loie Fuller, an American actress and dancer was the star attraction. Fuller was the first to use theatrical lighting technique with dance, manipulating gigantic veils of silk into fluid patterns enhanced by changing coloured lights. In 1902, Duncan teamed up with Fuller to tour Europe. On tour, Duncan became famous for her distinctive style. She danced to Gluck, Wagner and Bach and even Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Female audiences adored her despite the mixed reaction from the critics. She inspired the phenomenon of young women dancing barefoot, scantily clad as woodland nymphs who crowded theaters and concert halls throughout Europe. Contracts and the commercialization of the art while touring distracted Isadora from her goal, educating the young on her philosophy of dance. "Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel, and to become one with the general harmony and movement. Let us first produce a beautiful human being. let them come forth with great strides, leaps and bounds, with lifted forehead and far-spread arms, to dance.” In 1904, she moved to Berlin to open the Isadora Duncan School of Dance. The school had around 20 students who mostly had mothers who were the primary breadwinners, and the fathers were either ill or absent. The school provided room and board for the students. For three years, her sister, Elizabeth Duncan was the main instructor, while Isadora was away, funding the school from tour. Elizabeth was not free spirited like her sister and taught in a strict manner. During the third year, Duncan had a child with theater designer Gordon Craig. Deirdre Beatrice, born September 24, 1906. At the school, Duncan created a new troupe of six young girls. Anna, Maria, Irma, Elizabeth, Margot, and Erica. The group was called the "Isadorables", a nickname given to them by the French poet Fernand Divoire. At the start of World War I, the Isadorables were sent to New York with the rest of the new students from Bellevue. Occultist Aleister Crowley founded the religion of Thelema. He identified himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. Isadora and her bohemian companion Desti fell into his circle after meeting him at a party. Crowley fell in love with Desti and she became a member of Crowley's occult order. Crowley published widely over the course of his life and wrote that Duncan "has this gift of gesture to a very high degree. Let the reader study her dancing, if possible in private than in public, and learn the superb 'unconsciousness' — which is magical consciousness — with which she suits the action to the melody." Duncan had a love affair with Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. The fling resulted in a son, Patrick Augustus, born May 1, 1910. A year later, Isadora was dancing on tables until dawn at the Pavillon du Butard hunting lodge mansion in the gardens of Versailles. Paul Poiret, the French fashion designer and founder of the haute couture house, known to throw lavish parties, was recreating the roman festival Bacchanalia hosted by Louis XIV at Versailles. On the table in a Poiret Greek evening gown, Duncan tried to not knock over the 900 bottles of champagne that were consumed by the 300 guests. The following year Isadora acquired the Hôtel Paillard in Paris, which she turned into her new temple of dance called Dionysion. Dionysion was the name of a poem that Crowley had published. Which maakes m e curious how far into Crowleys cult did Isaadora dive? On a rainy afternoon Annie Sims, Isadora's nanny, loaded the children into the car for a drive to meet Isadora in Versailles. Morverand, the chauffeur, had only just pulled onto the road, when a taxi-cab bolted towards the car. Morverand jammed on his brakes, causing the engine to also stop. He got out of the car to check the engine, and turned the starting lever and the car bounded forward towards the river, down the river bank and plunged down 30 feet into the Seine. Morverand was left standing on the street. In the downpour of rain, few were out and about. The only witness, a young woman who watched the car exit the gate then crash, ran back to Duncan's house. Augustine, Isadora's brother, was the only one home. Augustine ran to the scene, seized Morverand by the throat and knocked him down on the bank. A crowd of boatmen stopped the fight and began looking for the sunken car. The search lasted an hour and a half. A motor boat that was dragging the river discovered the car, which was hauled to the surface, where the bodies of the nanny and Isadora's two small children were found inside. Two doctors made efforts to save them but there was no luck. Morverand gave himself up at the police commissary. He explained that he did not understand how the accident happened. All of Paris was sympathetic. Isadora went through a depression while mourning her children, and spent several months on the Greek island of Corfu with her brother and sister. She then went for a stay at the Viareggio Seaside Resort in Italy, where she met the beautiful and rebellious actress Eleonora Duse. Duse wore men's clothing and was one of the first women in Italy to openly declare her queerness. The two had a romantic fling in Italy yet Duncan was desperate for another child. She became pregnant after begging the young sculptor Romano Romanelli, basically an Italian stranger to sleep with her. She gave birth to a son on August 13, 1914 but he died a few hours after birth. She immediately returned to the States. Three months later Duncan was living in a townhouse in Gramercy Park in New York City. Dionysion was moved to Manhattan in a studio at 311 Fourth Avenue on the northeast corner of 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue. The area is now considered Park Avenue South. One month later, The Isadorables made their American debut on December 7, 1914 at Carnegie Hall with the New York Symphony. Mabel Dodge, who owned an avant garde salon at 23 Fifth Avenue, the point of rendezvous for the whole of New York's of the time, described The Isadorables: "They were lovely, with bodies like cream and rose, and faces unreal with beauty whose eyes were like blind statues, as though they had never looked upon anything in any way sordid or ordinary". Duncan used the ultra modern Century Theater at West 60th Street and Central Park West for her performances and productions. The keys were gifted to Duncan by Otto Kahn, sometimes referred to as the "King of New York". Kahn was a German-born American, a well known investment banker, appearing on the cover of Time Magazine. He reorganized and consolidated railroads, was a philanthropist, a patron of the arts and served as the chairman of the Metropolitan Opera. Isadora, somehow, was evicted from the Century by the New York City Fire Department after one month. Duncan felt defeated and decided to once again leave the States to return to Europe to set up school in Switzerland. She planned to board the RMS Lusitania, but her financial situation at the time drove her to choose a more modest crossing. The Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat 11 miles off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 passengers and crew. During her voyage to Europe, Isadora discovered that their manager had arranged for a tour for the Isadorables without her. She was so upset that she stopped speaking to her students, despite the man's actions being completely out of their control. After struggling to keep afloat there, the school was dispelled and the younger students sent home to their families. The girls eventually made up with Duncan and in 1917 Isadora adopted all six Isadorables. Yet troubles ensued. The Isadorables were living in Long Island and Isadora urged them to leave New York. Each girl, except for Gretel, had fallen in love and did not wish to go. When Isadora found out her brother Augustine assisted the group in a performance at the Liberty Theater, she forbade them from continuing, producing a legal contract which prevented them from separating from her. They had no choice but to cancel their time at the Liberty. The girls eventually left Duncan a few years later but stayed together as a group for some time. While Duncan ran another school in Paris that was shortly closed due to World War I, the girls entertained troops in the US. Isadora Duncan went against traditional cultural standards. Her scandalous love life as bisexual made her a controversial figure on the front pages of the papers. She was a feminist, a Darwinist, a Communist and an atheist. Her leftist sympathies took her to the Soviet Union at the end of the Russian Revolution. To her, it seemed to be the land of promise. Duncan opened a school in Moscow and Irma, one of the Isadorables, took the teaching position at the school while Isadora toured and performed. She met the poet Sergey Aleksandrovich Yesenin, eighteen years her junior in Russia and they were married in May of 1922, even though matrimony was against her beliefs. Together, they left for a US tour. Fear of the “Red Menace” was at its height in North America, and the couple was unjustly labeled as Bolshevik agents. On tour in Boston, she waved a red scarf and bared her breast on stage in Boston, proclaiming, "This is red! So am I!" For this, her American citizenship was revoked. As she left the country, Duncan bitterly told reporters: “Good-bye America, I shall never see you again!” Yesenin's increasing mental instability turned him against her and they were ultimately unhappy. He returned alone to the Soviet Union after the tour and committed suicide. Her spotlight was dimming, her fame dwindled. For a number of years she lived out public dramas of failed relationships, financial woes, and drunkenness on the Mediterranean and in Paris, running up debts at hotels. Her financial burdens were carried by a decreasing number of friends and supporters who encouraged her to write her autobiography. They believed the books success could support her extravagant waywardness. On September 14, 1927 in Nice, France Duncan was asked to go on a drive with the handsome French-Italian mechanic Benoît Falchetto in a sporting car made by the French Amilcar company. Desti sat with Isadora as she dressed for the occasion. Duncan put on a long, flowing, hand-painted silk scarf created by the Russian-born artist Roman Chatov. Desti asked her to instead wear a cape in the open-air vehicle because of the cold weather, but Isadora paid no mind. A cool breeze blew from the Riviera as the women met Falchetto at the Amilcar. The engine made a rumble as Falchetto put on his driving-goggles. Isadora threw the enormous scarf around her neck and hopped in. She turned to look at Desti and said "Adieu, mes amis. "Je vais à l'amour", "I am off to love'. They sped off and Isadora leaned back in her seat to enjoy the sea breeze. The wind caught her enormous scarf that, tragically, blew into the well of the rear wheel on the passenger side, wrapping around the open-spoked wheel and rear axle. Isadora was hurled from the open car in an extraordinary manner, breaking her neck and nearly decapitating her. Instantly killing her. At the time of her death, Duncan was a Soviet citizen. Her will was the first Soviet citizen to undergo probate in the United States. In medicine, the Isadora Duncan Syndrome refers to injury or death consequent to entanglement of neckwear with a wheel or other machinery. The accident gave rise to Gertrude Stein's mordant remark that “affectations can be dangerous.” Duncan was known as "The Mother of Dance" was cremated, and her ashes were placed in the columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. On the headstone of her grave is inscribed École du Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris ("Ballet School of the Opera of Paris"). Duncan's autobiography My Life was published in 1927. The Australian composer Percy Grainger called it a "life-enriching masterpiece." A plaque commemorating Isadora Duncan's place of birth is at 501 Taylor Street on Lower Nob Hill, fittingly near the Theater District in San Francisco. San Francisco renamed an alley on the same block from Adelaide Place to Isadora Duncan Lane.
Here is the story of a Mexican-American pioneer, healer, trailblazer, businesswoman and landowner. Her name is Doña Juana Briones de Miranda and she is the woman remembered as the "Founding Mother of San Francisco”, for she was one of the first three settlers in Yerba Buena before it became San Francisco. Juana left an important legacy in California. She was an active and caring person who impacted the lives of many people — Hispanic, indigenous and Anglo-American. In 1769, Marcos Briones and his father Vicente arrived in Alta California from San Luis Potosí, New Spain - today's Mexico. Marcos and Vicente were soldiers in the Portola expedition. In Alta California, Marcos met and married Isidora Tapia. Isidora and her family arrived later, her father Felipe, a soldier on the de Anza expedition in 1776. Star crossed lovers, whose families traveled over 1600 miles on a mission to colonize and explore the region and establish the Mission San Francisco de Asi. Marcos was a founding settler of Villa de Branciforte, in present-day Santa Cruz. Branciforte was the last of only three secular pueblos founded by the Spanish colonial government of Alta California. On the eastern bluff of the San Lorenzo River, facing Mission Santa Cruz, their daughter Juana Briones was born in March of 1802. Juana spent the first decade of her life in a wattle-and-daub house doing chores alongside her brothers and sisters, having fun and gaining an extensive knowledge of herbal medicines through her interactions with Native Americans. The majority of the population there was indigenous. When she was ten, her mother Ysidora passed away. Marcos moved the family to an area called Tennessee Hollow. Marcos began to help build what would become the Presidio of San Francisco. Starting as a fortified military village used for farming and livestock grazing. Juana was shaped by the native people of the region and the language, religion, and institutions of colonial New Spain. She'd learned more about herbs and their medicinal values from the new region from her grandmother, who learned them from native Ohlone women. Herbs like Yerba Buena (which translates to Good Herb), which provided the first name of the city of San Francisco. It was said the community of Yerba Buena was named for her healing mint tea. She was schooled informally by the Catholic priests at the Mission Dolores. With other military children and the Native Americans who had been rounded up and brought to the mission for “conversion” to Catholicism, she attended regular daily mass but she did not learn to read or write. Juana met a handsome soldier stationed at the Presidio named Apolinario Miranda. His parents were of Yaqui descent. The Yaqui were indigenous to the Mexican state of Sonora and the Southwestern United States. Juana and Apolinario were married in 1820 and established a farm at the Presidio near the site of El Polin Spring. It is one of the few remaining springs in the city and runs under the site of her long-vanished home. The spring waters of the were believed to bestow fertility. With that in mind, Juana gave birth to 11 children between 1821 and 1841. In 1828, Juana had a tragic month when three of her children died and a fourth child passed just one year later in the rugged frontier environment. Juana was a strong woman. Apolinario was abusive and Juana's time with him was not happy. So abusive that his military superiors reprimanded him for it numerous times. He had a serious drinking problem and wasn't much of a rancher or businessman. In the area now known as North Beach, near what is now Washington Square, the Briones bought land. Juana was a natural entrepreneur and started a dairy ranch at their new home. They were one of the first three non-indigenous settlers in Yerba Buena who lived somewhere other than on the Presidio or at Mission Dolores. After Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, commerce increased in the San Francisco Bay. Briones excelled in farming and sold milk and produce to the crews of Russian, American and Spanish ships that docked in the bay for the hide and tallow trade. Juana also treated many illnesses such as smallpox and scurvy patients, delivered babies and set broken jaws. You could not count how many children had their broken bones set by this kind woman. Her reputation as a healer was widely recognized. She trained her nephew, Pablo Briones—who was later known as the Doctor of Bolinas or California in medicinal arts. Her aid to the people of Bolinas during a smallpox outbreak was well-known, and she was loved among Hispanic settlers, native people and the Anglo-Americans alike. She taught her own children the value of hard work. As soon as they could walk, they learned to pull weeds and how to load the wagon. Her daughters Presentacion and Manuela were fine seamstresses and they did the sailors' laundry and mended their clothes. Her son Jesus went to the boats to see what the men needed, and delivered goods and messages to Juana. She also harbored four runaway sailors who jumped ship because they wanted to remain in California. Two Americans, a Filipino man and a Native American from Connecticut. The men lived with her and Apolinario until 1832. In 1833, Briones' husband was granted land bordering the Presidio near today's Green and Lyon Streets. Their new home was on another spring called El Ojo de Agua Figueroa. In 1834, Juana adopted Cecilia, a young Native girl whose parents had died. In 1835, the Presidio was temporarily abandoned when Commandante Vallejo transferred his military headquarters north to Sonoma. It was then that her husband's abuse became intolerable. Marriage was considered indissoluble by society at the time. She turned to the Catholic bishop. “My husband did not earn our money. I did,” she told the bishop, “My husband does not support the family. I do.” As her husband, he had access to any property she acquired. The bishop was moved by her plea, knowing full well her husband was a good-for-nothing, and with the mayor's help, the bishop helped her move to the western foot of Loma Alta in the area now known as Telegraph Hill. Her husband tried to force her to return home and legal officials ordered him to stay away, which he didn't. Briones appealed to courts repeatedly with suit against her husband for physical abuse after repeated episodes of violence and in return a justice of the peace seized some of his property. Juana navigated the male-leaning legal system, hiring people to write on her behalf. This was no small step in the patriarchal, hierarchical world of 19th century colonial California. Juana was free and Apolinario Miranda later died. She found the booming city too frantic, and bought a 4,000-acre ranch in Santa Clara Valley from her friends José Gorgonio and his son José Ramon in 1844. She named it Rancho La Purisima Concepción and successfully expanded her cattle and farming interests. The Briones family ranch was a home, social hall, and hospital all rolled into one. Briones' status as a female landowner was unusual in an era where women generally could only possess land they inherited from a deceased husband. Yet she was an independent woman who was prospering on her own. Her children also prospered. In 1848, Mexico ceded this land to the U.S. under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill. Almost overnight, the sleepy little mission became a busy city, filled with all manner of men who came to get rich overnight and ‘ladies of the night' who hoped to liberate the men from their gold dust. Juana wasn't bothered by the U.S. coup at all, in fact, when her Anglo friends suggested she become an American citizen, she did. Across the nation, Boston traders sought out her “California banknotes,” as they called her cowhides. She entertained lavishly, with European and American guests attending her fiestas. “Anglo, Hispanics, and Native Americans came for bear fights, calf roping, and pig roasts. Sick people also came to recuperate under Juana's watchful gaze.” When the U.S. made California a state in 1850, all Mexican landholders were put through many hurdles with proving they had title to their property. The original landowners were required to certify their land ownership before the U.S. Land Commission. The legal process was too difficult or expensive for many people, especially the women and racial minorities who had owned land under Mexican law. Many were cheated out of their land. In 1852, the U.S. Government informed Juana it intended to seize her land that had originally been granted in her husband's name. Apolinario Miranda was dead by then, and the government said she had no legal right to the property. She fought for 12 years to retain the title to her lands in both San Francisco and Santa Clara counties and many of the Anglos she'd helped over the years came to assist her in the fight for her rights. The battle went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. She won ownership of her ranch and the property in Yerba Buena. Juana left portions of her rancho La Purisima Concepción to her children, who bore their father's name, Miranda and sold the rest to members of the Murphy family, who came to California with the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party. Briones purchased other tracts of land and eventually settled the town of Mayfield. Briones' was one of the founding members of today's Palo Alto. She built a home there in 1884 and remained in Mayfield for the remainder of her lifetime. Juana Briones died in a cow stampede in 1889 at the age of 87. In 2010, her house at 4155 Old Adobe Road in Palo Alto was listed as one of the 11 most endangered historic places in the country by The National Trust for Historic Preservation. Despite a big fight between the owners and educators, historians, architects, neighbors, and business and community leaders, a demolition crew arrived a year later to dismantle her modest home. The property was sold the following summer for $2.9 million. Doña Juana Briones de Miranda is remembered as the "Founding Mother of San Francisco” and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Menlo Park, California. She lived here under three flags and helped found the eighth-largest city in the United States. During her lifetime, Juana was known and loved by many people because of her energy, her business sense and her concern for others. Even so, today she is still relatively unknown, but more people deserve to know about her. In San Francisco, she is commemorated at the northeast corner of Washington Square near her once her dairy farm. A historical plaque is on a bench at the bottom of The Lyon Street steps. In Palo Alto, her memory is preserved by the Juana Briones Elementary School, Juana Briones Park, and several street names incorporating either Miranda or first names of her children. Queens of the Mines is brought to you by Youreka Productions. Andrea Anderson researched, wrote and produced this series.
Were you in the Herring Creek Area between December 3-6 of 2021? The Sheriff's Office is seeking information from anyone who was. Please call 209-694-2910 if so. After seeing the positive impact the RAD Card program has had on local business and consumers, The Sonora Area Foundation has thrown another 100,000 into the pot. So if you missed your chance for a Rad card, hurry up and fill yours up now! An individual is only allowed a max of $100 to be doubled, but the app will continue to allow you to add unmatched funds on it, so you can use contact free payments at local businesses if you please. Originally, $500,000 of federal American Rescue Act funds was used for the program; those funds ran out in one week. The new funds will be available soon, so download the app and keep your ears open! Ok, moving on! The Temperance movement began when, across the country, different groups began arguing that alcohol was morally corrupting and hurting families economically. Claiming men would drink their family's money away. This temperance movement paved the way for some women to join the Prohibition movement, which they often felt was necessary due to their personal experiences dealing with drunk husbands and fathers, and because it was one of the few ways for women to enter politics in the era.
Samuel Clemens arrived in Angels Camp in 1865 in the middle of a rainstorm so intense that it left Clemens stranded in Calaveras County for the next two weeks. Many local townspeople gathered at the Angels Hotel at the corner of Main at Birds Way to pass the time. While local residents were sharing stories, a local man told the tale of his friend who possessed a frog that he had trained. Clemens found the story amusing and took notes in the corner. Later that year he embellished the story when he wrote “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” under his new pen name, Mark Twain. It was his first published short story. Sixty-three years later in honor of the legend, a frog jumping contest was held on the Main St of Angels Camp. Over 15,000 people swarmed the streets for the tournament on the sloping street. In the coming years, the event grew in attendance so much, that the frog jumping contest was moved to the county fairgrounds they called Frogtown in 1928. But we are not here to talk about the Frog Jumps in Calaveras County. We are here to talk about the brothel that operated was across the street and down the road from Frogtown. After America's largest migration, the gold rush, brothels thrived in the California foothills for over 100 years. In my book Queens of the Mines, I wrote about Belle Cora, who ran the Sonora Club, one of the many bawdy houses that were in operation in Sonora, Ca during the gold rush. The Sonora Club, which was somewhere along Woods Creek, accumulated a profit of over one hundred and twenty six thousand dollars in less than a year. That would equal the spending power of 4.4 million dollars in 2021. To buy that book, visit queensofthemines.com. 14 miles away, Vallecito was the home to over eighty ladies of the night in 1855. Some of these so-called houses of ill repute continued operation until the 1950's. But none were as famous as the last brothel in Calaveras County. This is Queens of the Mines, where we discuss untold stories from the twisted roots of California. We are in a time where historians and the public are no longer dismissing the “conflict history” that has been minimized or blotted out. I'm Andrea Anderson. The preceding episode may feature foul language and adult content including violence which may be disturbing some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised.
Firmly gripping the hand of her five year old daughter Charlotte, Mary Ann Crabtree scanned the sea of men that crowded the docks, in San Francisco, looking for a familiar face. Her husband John, who had finally sent for them in New York, was nowhere to be seen and Mary Ann was nearly a professional when it came to accepting anxieties. Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. In this episode, we meet the Nation's Darling and The Golden West's Gift to Vaudeville, California's 19th Century Queen of Captivation. I am Andrea Anderson, This is a true story from America's Largest Migration, The Gold Rush. This is Queens of the Mines. John Crabtree had left his family and position as a bookseller in New York and left for California in the search for gold in 1851, two years prior. His wife and daughter dutifully waited for his call, and when it had finally come, she sold the bookshop off Broadway, and made the exhaustive journey here to the Isthmus of Panama, crossing by land before picking up a second ship to California. Now, John Crabtree was nowhere to be found. Charlotte remained secluded while her and her mother were given a temporary home with a group of popular actors of the 19th century, including the Chapmans, and the child actress Sue Robinson, whom Mary Ann had befriended. In the Presidio of San Francisco, Mrs. Crabtree kept up with the trends and all of the glamourous and disheartening stories from the rough mining camps. The gossip finally came and Mary Ann heard that John had been seen living in a little town in the Sierra. People were becoming rich all around her, and she was raising Charlotte on her own. The wheels began to turn for Mary Ann. It was a brand new environment for the shrewd and thrifty woman, who was small in figure with an unshakeable will. Here, among the theatrical crowd and actors in San Francisco, a most tantalizing scene had presented itself. She zeroed in on the theatre gossip and dreamt up a career of stardom for her cheerful, animated daughter, Charlotte, or, like her mother called her, Lotta. Lotta had hair that was an even brighter red than Mary Ann's, and she was sturdy with roguish black eyes and an unquenchable laughter, yet she seemed far off from stage ready. During a celebration at her school near the Presidio, it was requested that Lotta sang Annie Laurie for the crowd. She barely made it to the platform before the young girl, to her mother's dismay, lost control and broke down, sobbing. She wept so hard and for so long, Mary Ann had to take her daughter home. That night in bed, Mary Ann went over her daughter's chances of success singing and dancing at the mines. The next morning, an optimistic letter vaguely mentioning a project involving gold, came from her husband John in the high Sierra's, from a town called Grass Valley. Although the letter had no mention of any progress, it was requested that Mrs. Crabtree and Lotta proceed to him at once. In California, anyone could make a dazzling fortune overnight. Mary Ann, battling skepticism and the prospect of a bonanza, packed their belongings. At dawn, Lotta stood by the luggage as her mother procured a place for two in a rickety, yet affordable stagecoach. The young girl slept much of the journey, but she awoke as they rolled past embers of a few dying fires where men were waking up. They moved into a torch lit shadowy settlement and Lotta observed the intimidating shapes that danced across the scene, cast by the torches. She was excited to see her father, it had been over two years since she had last seen him. She wondered if she would recognize him as he went to hug her? There was no embrace, John patted Lotta's head and took them to a hotel where they all shared a small bed for the night. That next morning, the family took a walk, admiring what the Sierra spring had to offer. Nestled in the rich green slopes, and fertile deep gullies they saw the promise of luck, as, towards the valley, melting snow fed the clearest streams they had ever seen. Already, men were attending their claims in an air of conquest, working tirelessly digging tunnels, sinking shafts, bridging gorges, and piping water in flumes across the foothills. John told his family stories of men literally stumbling upon rich mines, pulling gold out of the earth with a knife, and how he once left a claim prior to the "big strike." But luck had not been with John Crabtree. With all the excitement around them, John Crabtree only offered Mary Ann disappointment. Passing by peddlers with sealing wax, baubles and trinkets, and luxurious fabrics, Lotta approached a cart that held paperbacks, and ran her finger down the spine of a Dickens novel. She noticed if a vendor was not prosperous enough to possess mules, they carried their goods strapped into a pack that was worn on the shoulders. As Lotta looked at the books, John asked his wife “Why not keep a boarding house? Everyone spends lavishly here, and rich merchants in town need homes! We could do no less than get rich”. Mary Ann was disappointed, she was not familiar in the kitchen. In New York, she worked in upholstery and had a servant who did the household work and cooked. Yet, she still agreed. To Mary Ann's surprise, she did a fantastic job maintaining the boarding house and not to her surprise, John's participation quickly diminished as he wandered away to prospect, and Mary Ann continued her duties, and saved her money, in a pure atmosphere of rebellion. Two doors down from the Crabtrees, that summer in 1853, a famous showgirl moved in. It was not long before the woman had transformed the home into a true salon that was constantly abrupting with singing and laughter. Lotta soon attracted the attention of the eccentric woman who had a pet parrot and a monkey! Typically, Mary Ann would always keep her daughter Lotta under her watchful eye. By doing so, Lotta's life had been incredibly innocent. Yet Mary Ann was entirely lenient while Lotta was in company with this new, exotic companion, whose name was Lola Montez. The unlikely pair of Lola Montez and Lotta Crabtree became fast friends. In the parlor of the Montez home, Lola gave Lotta daily dance lessons and it was apparent that Lotta had a better sense of rhythm than Lola. Lotta learned fandangos and intricate ballet steps. Lola taught her the jigs reels and the Irish flings from her own childhood. She gave the young child singing lessons, teaching her ballads and Lotta was allowed to play in Lola's trunk of stage costumes, and play Lola's German music box. Lotta fit right in as she mingled with the trolling players, entertainers and witty theatrical company visiting the star. Lola Montez had recognized genuine talent compared to her force of personality and encouraged Lotta's enthusiasm for the performance. They did not stop at the indoors, Lola also taught Lotta to ride horseback. On one sunny morning, the two went for a ride, Lola on a horse and Lotta on a pony. They ended up in the town of Rough and Ready, where huge fortunes were gambled away, recklessly. The street was lined by gaming houses and saloons with bullet-riddled ceilings. Lola and Lotta sauntered in to one. Lola stood Lotta on a blacksmith's anvil, and they young child danced for the group of miners that sat at the bar. It was a refreshing change for the men, who considered the small child a hit. Irishmen made up a sizable fraction of the miners, Lotta's jigs had reminded them of home. They threw a more than generous amount of gold nuggets at her feet. Lola brought the gold home to Mary Ann and declared Lotta should go with her to Paris. The next morning, John reappeared. With the news that they were again moving, forty miles north of Grass Valley, to Rabbit Creek. Mary Ann was not happy, compared to the somewhat civilized, law-abiding Grass Valley, Rabbit Creek was a small but busy and violent camp where murders were as frequent as each pocket of gold was found and exploited. When the family arrived, John found the hardier characters had found the ground first, and he eventually found nothing. There was an intense drought that summer which affected the prospectors, who needed water for washing gold. John chose to spend his time drinking in the saloons and rambling away mysteriously on quote unquote prospecting missions. Without his support for months, Mary Ann's only option was to open another boarding house, which she did, that winter. That is when the italian Mart Taylor, a musician and dancer arrived in Rabbit Creek. He was tall and had a graceful figure, with long hair and piercing black eyes. He opened a saloon with a connecting makeshift theatre. When the business slowed in the saloon during the afternoons, Taylor conducted a dancing school for children. His first prerequisite was music and he was impressed by the 8 year old red-haired girl. Her eyes would flash as her small feet traced the intricate steps he taught her. She looked six years old, and he knew she could be a sensation with the audiences who were eager for child performers. Taylor gave her a place to exhibit her talents before the miners. He played the guitar and hired a fiddler and Mrs. Crabtree played the triangle. Lotta Crabtree had become a nightly attraction, dressed in a green tail-coat, knee breeches, tall hat and brogans her mother sewed. Lotta would often get stage fright, and it would show when she shoved her hands in her pockets. So Mary Ann, sewed them shut. She danced jig after jig only pausing to change costumes. At the finale, she would return to a storm of applause to then sing a ballad. Lotta Crabtree would shake the house with emotion. Gold nuggets shone at her feet. She completed the repertoire for the company, and her family now had more money than ever. Naturally, Mrs. Crabtree became her daughter's manager. Few child stars had training, and Lotta, was trained by Lola Montez. She would be a gold mine. Once the roads had reopened in the spring, Lola Montez rode over to Rabbit Creek to see her protege. Lola was to go on tour to Australia and wanted to bring little Lotta with her. Mary Ann saw a future for Lotta with Mart Taylor, who she had become fast friends with, and declined. Mary Ann then made the most of her refusal to Lola's request to take the child to Australia, this even furthered Lotta's growing reputation. That summer, Mary Ann discovered that she was to have another child and Lotta's baby brother, John Ashworth, was born, just as John Sr. returned home. Lotta continued to work for Taylor while her mother recovered. After years of performing in Rabbit Creek, the next move seemed obvious to Mary Ann, Lotta should tour the mines. On a late spring morning in 1856, Mary Ann left her husband John three loaves of fresh bread, a kettle of beans and a goodbye note. They left with Taylor's troupe, traveling by wagon, Lotta sat next to her mother with her baby brother in her arms. As they toured in the California mining camps, Lotta started to make a name for herself as a dancer, singer, and banjo player in saloons. For an audience of men, whom she had never seen before, on a makeshift stage set up on sawhorses with candles stuffed into bottles served as footlights arranged along the outer edge. Mary Ann never had a moment to relax, traveling the dangerous higher Sierra by horseback, trees snapping and blocking their path, and boulders, rolling down mountain sides, after being loosened by mining operations. The 8 year old Lotta, watched as a lone rider, far ahead, plunged into the bottom of an abyss in front of her eyes. Once she lay ducked on the floor after one performance, in their room, as bullets burst through the canvas walls while a brawl from the opposite side of the hotel commenced. Yet Mary Ann remained cool, and kept Lotta in good spirits. Mary Ann would coax Lotta, telling her funny stories and persuading her for an hour or more and even when it was time for the stage, Mary Ann always had to give Lotta a little push to get her on the stage. Once onstage, Lotta would perfectly execute her Irish jig. At every performance's conclusion, Lotta would appear angelically. A face scrubbed clean, hair smoothly combed, a white dress with puffed sleeves while Mary Ann, exhausted from costuming, coaching, and playing the triangle, collected the gold in a basket, scraping every fragment of dust from the boards. Mary Ann Crabtree was her daughter's mentor. Using the knowledge she had picked up by observing the actors she met in the Presidio and at the home of Montez. She distrusted theatre folk at heart but would listen to every word, resisting its attraction. But if she mistrusted its people she did not mistrust the theatre itself. As busy as Mary Ann was, she still found time to become pregnant again, with another younger brother for Lotta. Taylor's company was then forced to break up in Weaverville. Mart Taylor took Lotta's brother, Ashworth jr. to San Francisco and Lotta was sent to stay with the family of James Ryan Talbot, who was a pioneer, in Eureka. In the Talbot household in Eureka, Lotta thoroughly enjoyed life, and would go through her acts as in a game for the other children and would frolic and song the stage Irish song Barney Brallaghan," I've a howl in my heart big enough to roll a cabbage round in". Mary Ann's health had finally permitted her to go to Lotta in Eureka in the spring of 1856, where she gathered her and her belongings. Mary Ann, Lotta and her newest brother, George then caught a schooner to San Francisco. In San Francisco, gamblers crowded the halls, natives rode on spirited horses through the streets, and silk lined carriages dashed around. The city had become legendarily violent. Charles Cora had just been hanged for the murder of the United States Marshal Richardson by the second Vigilance Committee, yet the days of lawlessness were not yet gone. The exuberant scene was exciting for Mary Ann, and Lotta was more than impressed. San Francisco had grown to bold proportions, with longer wharves, and elaborate buildings and it did not seem to be the same city Mary Ann left years ago. Lotta followed her mother into the Bella Union, eyeing the women in lurid clothes who were dealing cards to a group of shady men. Taken backstage quickly, Lotta performed, Mary Ann got paid, and took her away before the wild atmosphere of the saloon could leave a lasting impression. At least that's what she hoped for. Mary Ann was booking Lotta all over the city, enforcing the hard bargains she drove, hungry for gold yet still protecting Lotta passionately. When Lotta appeared in The Dumb Belle, Lotta was to carry a bottle onstage, place it on a table and exit, there was an older actresses who insisted on having the role but Mrs. Crabtree was sure to not let it happen. Mary Ann instructed Lotta to do an elaborate pantomime that in itself, became its own act. The audience showered the stage with money and roared with laughter. Lotta wasn't going anywhere. She was an instantaneous success with great audience-drawing power. The family started touring, first traveling by schooner across the bay, then up shallow Petaluma Creek, carrying Lotta's costumes in champagne baskets, and all of Lotta's earnings in gold, in a large leather bag. The shrewd Mary Ann did not trust banks nor paper money. When this became too heavy, it was transferred to a steamer trunk. When the steamer trunk became too heavy, she invested Crabtree's earnings in local real estate, race horses and bonds. She made good profits in Sonoma County. Lotta was then in demand in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. She gained a new skill in Placerville when a skilled black breakdown dancer taught Lotta a vigorous and complicated soft-shoe dance. She also began smoking small, thinly rolled black cigars like her dear friend Lola. It was considered to be not a very lady-like thing yet it became a trademark for Lotta. She often, on stage and off, wore male clothes. The fact that Lotta smoked cigars kept her out of the prominent ladies social group, Sorosis. This infuriated Mary Ann. Lotta could also laugh at herself. She once slipped in the street and called out “prima donna in the gutter“. By 1859, she had become "Miss Lotta, the San Francisco Favorite", who mastered the suggestive double entendre long before Mae West. She played in Virginia City, and the famous Bird Cage Theater in Tombstone, Arizona then toured the east coast, acting in plays in theaters, a favorite for her portrayals of children due to her petite size. Her youthful appearance led The New York Times to call her “The eternal child” with "The face of a beautiful doll and the ways of a playful kitten, no one could wriggle more suggestively than Lotta." They also said in reference to her skills as a dancer, “What punctuation is to literature, legs are to Lotta”. By the end of the decade the "Lotta Polka" and "Lotta Gallup" was quite the rage in the United States. When Lotta sat down to write a letter to a friend in San Francisco in 1865 she wrote "We started out quite fresh, and so far things have been very prosperous. I am a continual success wherever I go. In some places I created quite a theatrical furor, as they call it. I have played with the biggest houses but never for so much money, for their prices are double. I'm a star, and that is sufficient, and I am making quite a name. But I treat all and every one with the greatest respect and that is not what everyone does, and in consequence I get my reward." In 1869 Lotta purchased a lot, on the south side of Turk street, east of Hyde, paying $7,000, a portion of her earnings at a recent show which would be 132k today. She began touring the nation with her own theatrical company in 1875, hitting the height of her success for another decade. Still a teenager she was shocking audiences by showing her legs and smoking on stage. Mary Ann was still managing her career, finding locations, organizing troupes of actors and booking plays,for the then highest-paid actress in America, who was earning sums of up to $5,000 per week, nearly 155K today. In September of 1875 she gave the city of San Francisco a gift of appreciation to the people, a fountain modeled after a lighthouse prop from one of her plays at the intersection of Market and Kearny streets. Politicians, respectable citizens and even hellions gathered to dedicate the city's new public drinking fountain. Lotta had many admirers, including the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, and Brigham Young. She was proposed to many times but never married. From newspaper boys, European royalty, to lawyers and well known actors, Lotta time after time turned them down saying “I'm married to the stage”. Some said her mother would not allow it as it would end her ability to be considered forever young, and her career left little time for a social life. Some say she was only interested in women. It was whispered in the backstages of the theatres tha Adah Isaacs Menken ws Lotta's secret lover. Lotta was a bit of a rebel in her day,advocating women's rights and wearing skirts too short that she shook while laughing at society matrons. Lotta had many celebrity friends she was close with, including President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, the great Harry Houdini, President Ulysses S. Grant always made it a point to visit her whenever she was performing in Washington DC while he was president, and actor John Barrymore, who referred to Lotta as “ the queen of the American stage”. In New Orleans Lotta had “ The Lotta Baseball Club”. When Lotta came to visit they presented her with a gold medal and a beautiful banjo Lotta traveled to Europe with her mother and brothers, learning French, visiting museums and taking up painting. The people of San Francisco missed their very own star while she was away. After her tour ended, she went home to San Francisco to perform at the California Theatre. In 1883, The New York Times devoted much of its front page to "The Loves of Lotta." In 1885, Mary Ann had an 18-room summer cottage built in the Breslin Park section of Mount Arlington, New Jersey, as a gift for her daughter Lotta. It was a Queen Anne/Swiss chalet style lakefront estate on the shores of Lake Hopatcong. It sat on land that sloped down to Van Every Cove. It is 2-1/2 stories on the land side and 3-1/2 on the lake side. She named it Attol Tryst (Lotta spelled backward). They gave parties, rode horses, and pursued her painting. It's "upside-down" chimneys had corbels that flared outward near the top. There was an expansive porch, including a semi-circular section that traced the curve of the parlor, wrapping around three sides of the house. Inside, there was a wine cellar, music room, library, and a fireplace flanked by terra cotta dog-faced beasts. The billiard room's massive stone fireplace once featured a mosaic that spelled out LOTTA in gemstones. After a fall in the spring of 1889 while in Wilmington, Delaware, Lotta recovered lakeside and decided to retire permanently from the stage, at age 45. later resisting calls for a farewell tour. She was the richest actress in America and made quite a spectacle as one of the first women to own and drive her own car that she called “Red Rose”. She got out on top. During her retirement, Lotta traveled, painted and was active in charitable work. One final appearance was made in 1915 for Lotta Crabtree Day in San Francisco at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Lotta was a vegetarian for years and took time to visit inmates in prisons. Mary Ann died and Lotta's serious side emerged. After Mary Ann's death, Lotta seriously wanted to have her sainted. But she eventually settled on having a $20,000 stained glass window decorated with angels made for her, which is today in St. Stephen's church in Chicago. The last 15 years of Lotta's life was spent living alone at the Brewster Hotel, which she had purchased in Boston, a dog at her feet, regularly traveling to Gloucester to paint seascapes, with a cigar in her teeth. She died at home on September 25, 1924 at age 76. She was described by critics as mischievous, unpredictable, impulsive, rattlebrained, teasing, piquant, rollicking, cheerful and devilish. Boston papers recalled Lotta as a devoted animal rights activist who wandered the streets, putting hats on horses to protect them from the sun. She was interred at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York. Lotta's Fountain still stands at the intersection of Market and Kearny streets in San Francisco. It is the oldest surviving monument in the City's collection. After the earthquake, it was a known gathering place and one of the only locations to get potable water in the city. It is the site of the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake every April 18. She left an estate of some $4 million in a charitable trust for “anti-animal experimentation”, “trust to provide food, fuel and hospitalization for the poor”, “help for released convicts”, “support for poor, needy actors”,” aid to young graduates of agricultural colleges”, and “relief for needy vets of WWI”. Over 59 million today. The trust still exists today. The estate ran into complications when a number of people unsuccessfully contested the will, claiming to be relatives, and a woman claimed to be Lotta's adult child. A long series of court hearings followed. The famed Wyatt Earp even testified at one of the hearings, being a friend of the family. A medical exam was conducted at the autopsy and it was confirmed that Lotta Crabtree died a virgin. Lotta's legacy is not preserved as well as entertainers that came after her, no video or audio of her performing. She was the queen of the stage, but retired before the days of Hollywood. Lotta's influence is all around us today in the domino of effects from the money and support she has given to farmers, animals, prisoners, soldiers, and actors. Her style was groundbreaking, and helped shape modern entertainment. Her strong influence on animal rights, women's rights, and human rights have forever shaped society and she left a legacy of love with fountains, paintings, and by promoting the arts. Crabtree Hall, a dormitory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is named for Lotta. The Attol Tryst stands today and in recent years it has been restored. Lotta started the tradition of daytime performances for women and children, now commonly known as the afternoon matinee. Lotta was against wars, but very supportive of the members of the military, and America. Lotta has been credited as being an influence on Mary Pickford, Mae West, Betty Hutton, and Judy Garland. The Academy Award nominated 1951 movie musical “Golden Girl” was based on Lotta's exciting life, starring Hollywood Walk-Of-Famer, Mitzi Gaynor as Lotta. I am Andrea Anderson, thank you for taking the time to listen today, let's meet again when we continue the story of Lotta Crabtree, The Queen of Captivation Chapter 8 Part 2, next time, on “Queens of the Mines. In light of the BLM movement and the incredible change we are seeing, I would like to mention a quote said by Marian Anderson. "No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." Until recently, historians and the public have dismissed "conflict history," and important elements that are absolutely necessary for understanding American history have sometimes been downplayed or virtually forgotten. If we do not incorporate racial and ethnic conflict in the presentation of the American experience, we will never understand how far we have come and how far we have to go. No matter how painful, we can only move forward by accepting the truth. Queens of the Mines was written, produced and narrated by me, Andrea Anderson. The theme song, In San Francisco Bay is by DBUK, You can find the links to their music, tour dates and merchandise, as well as links to all our social media and research links at queensofthemines.com
Lola's mother had found out about new life in Europe, and she went into mourning as if her daughter was dead, sending out customary funeral letters on stationary edged in black. Lola could have easily been the richest woman to ever live, had she preferred her own advantage over political freedom. Lola's identity had been revealed at Her Majesty's Theatre, it led to an arrest on a charge of bigamy. Lola's wealthy new husband George Trafford Heald bailed her out of jail and they ran to Spain. The feisty and sometimes violent Montez and Heald were not getting along and the couple eventually decided to split while in Portugal. When George Heald suddenly and mysteriously drowned there in Portugal, Lola gained Heald's large inheritance. Lola, with her new fortune, was ready to find a new start. It was 1850, and she left for the land the whole world had been rushing to, The United States of America. On the stages up and down the east coast of the New World, Lola Montez debuted a southern Italian folk dance, her own gussied up version of a lively tarantella. She wore tights in the color of her flesh, and layers and layers of petticoats in every color that bounced with her quick, flirtatious steps. In her act, she was playing the part of a maiden in the country, who had spiders in her clothes. The spiders hung from her gloves and gown and hid under the layers of her petticoat. As she shook off and stomped away the toy spiders that riddled her costume and the stage, she exposed her shapely legs and as she lifted her skirt, the men cheered for her to find each and every spider. Lola lifted her petticoat so high that the men in the audience went crazy, for they could see, onstage, Lola wore no underclothing at all. Lola Montez was a smash. Although not everyone impressed, and some believed her performance was unprofessional, and talentless. Lola stirred up excitement on that side of the new world for two years. After one particular show at an East Coast theatre, the manager openly criticized her spider act. Backstage, the sassy star retaliated with the bull whip she used onstage, busting the manager's face open. Denying the assault later, Lola said instead “there is one comfort in the falsehood, which is, that this man very likely would have deserved the whipping.” It was soon decided that she may be a better match with the lawless west. Without telling anyone, Lola caught a ride via a Pacific Mail paddle-wheel steamer in New Orleans, headed for California. After the passage along the isthmus of Panama, and finally on the last ship of the voyage, Lola stood on the deck with a male distinguished fellow passenger looking out over the water. He asked her about her life. “My father was Irish, she told Brannan. “Irish! Well, then where did you get the name Montez?” Lola Montez stared out into the still ocean, “I took it”. She said. Just like I have taken everything I ever wanted.” He chuckled, approvingly. This man was Sam Brannan. California's first millionaire. Brannan was on his way home after doing business in Boston and New York, he had a wife and 4 children at home in California yet he was paying much attention to his glamorous shipmate. The 29 year old Lola was by now an epic tabloid sensation in The United States. Her political schemes, erotic expolits and violent temper had made the top headlines through out the world. Yet no one would be at the long wharf to greet her when she stepped off the ship into San Francisco in 1853. She was arriving unannounced. On the northeast corner of Sansome and Halleck streets, stood the American Theater. The American Theatre was the first brick large building built on the newly made soil along Sansome Street on land reclaimed from Yerba Buena Cove. During its opening night two years earlier in 1851, The American Theatre was so crowded that the walls sunk a couple of inches from the weight. The irish satirist Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy "School for Scandal” was playing, and Lola Montez was playing Lady Teazle. The theater was able to charge $5 for the best seats. An outrageous price. The reason being, the men in the audience truly desired to see her famous risque Spider Dance they had read about in the East Coast papers, and with that it was more than a dance they wanted to see. If you know what I mean. Lola obliged on the second night, to the delight of the mostly male audience her body exposed by her contortions. She won the people over through naked charisma and pure force of personality. The act was reasonably well received by some, and it outraged others who felt they were obliged to look for the spiders in improper places. Lola Montez was an eccentric woman who fascinated the masses entirely. She wore trousers and she carried a bull whip. She had an uncommon for ladies' fondness for hand-rolled cigarettes, and smoked openly! She became the first woman to ever be photographed while smoking. She straddled highbrow and lowbrow classes, rejecting the restrictive social codes associated with Victorian notions of “true womanhood.” Lola had the appearance of a Duchess. As she spoke the royal illusion evaporated. Her vial mouth would have been considered to be unacceptable even in the wee hours of the city's most provocative men's smoking clubs. Although they watched her every move, and even sometimes copied her style, San Francisco's respectable classes never truly embraced Lola Montez, and she really felt it. Lola was being courted by the married Sam Brannan. He was spoiling her in finer style than her Bavarian King Ludwig had ever provided her. Quite an impressive feat. Sam Brannan had an income of one thousand dollars a day, which is over 30,000 in 2020. He owned one hundred and seventy thousand acres, over 250 square miles where present day Los Angeles County lies. He lived well and lavishly, drinking and womanizing freely. Ann Eliza Brannan, his wife eventually divorced Sam, and when she did, she took half of everything he had. Lola moved on. In San Francisco's early years, attending the theatre was a mostly male centered activity for they were the majority of the population. By 1853 it had become a highbrow sophisticated activity for audiences of both genders. Giving a place that countered the degrading, debilitating atmosphere of the times. The American Theatre had a rival theatre that was aptly named The San Francisco. One of the first original plays staged in the city was put on at the theatre San Francisco. "Who's Got the Countess?", a satire that profited off of Lola's deflating balloon. For two weeks, the burlesque packed the house. Some audience members accused the play of going too far. A writer for the Herald said the show was "an exceeding coarse and vulgar attack upon one who, whatever her faults and foibles may have been, has proved herself a noble-hearted and generous woman." Lola Montez was performing onstage one evening in Sacramento, when someone laughed during the Spider Dance. Lola berated the audience and then stormed offstage. In the papers, it read that it was believed Montez had papered the house with her supporters. A letter challenging the editor to a duel soon surfaced, assertedly from Lola that read "You may choose between my dueling pistols or take your choice of a pill out of a pill box. One shall be poison and one shall not." When Lola first sailed to San Francisco, on the same trip she met Brannan, she also met Patrick Purdy Hull. He was an irish reporter and the owner of the newspaper The San Francisco Whig. Lola said Patrick Hull could tell a story better than any other man she had known, and that was why she fell in love with him. On 1 July 1853 at the Mission Dolores, in a catholic ceremony, Lola Montez and Patrick Hull were married. Making Lola a US citizen. Lola did not want to live among the ridicule in the city, and instead bought a mine in a swelteringly hot ravine. The property was close to two of the richest mines in Nevada Country, California, Empire Mine and North Star Mine. She left San Francisco for the unincorporated town of Grass Valley. Three years prior to her move to Grass Valley, the town held its first election under a large oak tree and one year later a building was constructed on the site. It was first used as the office for Gilmor Meredith's Gold Hill Mining Company, and then as a schoolhouse. Lola Montez purchased the building at 248 Mill St in Grass Valley and made it the home where her parrot, pet monkey, herself and Hull would live. The town's disdain for the woman was proven by Grass Valley's Reverend when he spoke in a sermon denouncing Montez, warning the locals of the newest evil in town, calling the woman a hussy. Word passes to Lola, who was outraged at the statement and decided she would prove the quality of her act to the man herself. That night, she stormed into the Reverend's house where he was sitting to eat dinner with his wife. Lola Montez demanded the couple watch her full performance. She stomped and clapped and shook around his living room until he finally agreed she was in fact, a professional. Montez ended up hated her life with her newest husband, and rather spent her days in Grass Valley with the young girl next door. Patrick Hull was tired of the parties and extremely spiteful of his wife's popularity. When a baron who was visiting from Europe attended one of Lola's social gatherings, he gifted her a grizzly bear to add to her exotic collection of pets. She named him Major. Patrick Hull was insanely jealous, and this final straw yanked a tear in the relationship that could not be mended. Hull sued Montez for divorce, naming a german doctor as the co-respondent. A few days later, the doctor was found in near-by hills, shot dead. The neighbors, who ran a boarding house, had a daughter who was fascinated with the clearly unique Lola Montez and her private menagerie. It was not long before Lola was equally fascinated by the little girl, who was genuinely talented. She taught her to sing and dance and live wildly and allowed her to play in her extravagant costumes. Lola taught the young irish girl to sing ballads and perform ballet steps, fandangos, jig reels and Irish Highland flings from Lola's own childhood. The little blonde child's sense of rhythm surpassed Lola's, and she impressed the theatrical elite, strolling players and entertainers who came to the lavish parties Montez hosted. The unlikely pair rode bareback together, on a horse and pony. Despite the townspeople's opinion, the mother of the girl liked Lola and appreciated the time she spent with her daughter. In the two years that Lola lived in Grass Valley, the California Gold Rush was ending, yet there was another gold mining rush in full swing. She hired Augustus Noel Folland, a married American actor as her new manager, hired a company of actors, and within two weeks, they were all sailing to Sydney Australia, aboard the Fanny Major. By the time they arrived, two months later, she had taken her new manager on as a lover. The following week, Lola's show opened at the Royal Victoria Theatre in a show titled 'Lola Montez in Bavaria'. That night, Montez fired some of the company, and they quickly sued her for damages. As Lola and Folland were waiting to depart Sydney for Melbourne on board the Waratah, A sheriff's officer boarded the ship with a warrant of arrest, demanding she paid the sacked actors. Lola ran to her cabin, where she undressed. She sent out a note inviting the officer in to arrest her and drag her out. He left empty handed. Audiences began to diminish at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne as Montez performed in her Bavarian role. Monttez made the decision to bring out her 'Spider Dance'. It was an instant hit for the men in the audience, again, Montez raising her skirts so high that the audience could see she wore no underclothing at all. The papers roared that her performance was 'utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality'. The theatre began to show heavy losses when respectable families ceased to attend the theatre. One even summoned the mayor of Melbourne to issue a warrant for her arrest for public indecency, but he refused the application. Months later in Ballarat, packed houses miners were showering gold nuggets at her feet yet again, the papers attacked her notoriety. Lola by now had a motto, “Courage---and shuffle the cards". When Lola ran into the Ballarat Timeseditor Henry Seekamp at the United States Hotel, she retaliated by publicly horsewhipping him. Resulting in the rest of her tour being canceled. Folland and Montez quarreled excessively as they left for San Francisco on May 22 1856. On the journey near Fiji on the night of July 8th, Folland mysteriously fell overboard and drowned. Some believed he committed suicide after there fight, other believe he was pushed. No official investigation followed. When Lola arrived back in the United States in 1856, she was different, subdued. Whatever happened on that ship, changed Lola Montez.Her previous lover from the past Alexandre Dumas once said 'She is fatal to any man who dares to love her'. Uncharacteristically, she sold her jewelry and gave the proceeds to Folland's children. She began using the remains of her bank account to give homeless and less fortunate women food, water and money. She decided to spread knowledge rather than performance, and began lecturing on her life, fashion, beauty, and famous women. "I have known all the world has to give -- ALL!" She began to write her book titled The Arts of Beauty, Or, Secrets of a Lady's Toilet: With Hints to Gentlemen on the Art of Fascinating. Dance with all the might of your body, and all the fire of your soul, in order that you may shake all melancholy out of your liver; and you need not restrain yourself with the apprehension that any lady will have the least fear that the violence of your movements will ever shake anything out of your brains. I never claimed to be famous. Notorious I have always been. She moved to New York, and reinvented herself once more. Embracing christianity, and with the Reverend Charles Chauncy Burr she arranged to deliver a series of moral lectures in Britain and America written by him. She returned to Ireland and did her final lecture in Dublin, “America and its people”, speaking in Limerick and Cork. Then returned to America in 1859. Later that year, the Philadelphia Press wrote Lola was iving very quietly up town, and doesn't have much to do with the world's people. Some of her old friends, the Bohemians, now and then drop in to have a little chat with her, and though she talks beautifully of her present feelings and way of life, she generally, by way of parenthesis, takes out her little tobacco pouch and makes a cigarette or two for self and friend, and then falls back upon old times with decided gusto and effect. But she doesn't tell anybody what she's going to do. Within two years, Lola Montex began showing the tertiary effects of syphilis, the last contribution to the marriage from Patrick Hurdy Hull, and her body began to waste away. Lola, 39 years old, suffered a massive stroke and died alone in poverty on January 7th 1861. She is buried in the Greenwood cemetery, in Brooklyn. The marker simply reads “Mrs. Eliza Gilbert / Died 7 January 1861.” You can read Lola's own writing, The Arts of Beauty, Secrets of a Lady's Toilet: With Hints to Gentlemen on the Art of Fascinating, Lectures of Lola Montez, Anecdotes of love, and Timeless Beauty: Advice to Ladies & Gentlemen. Lola's restored house at 248 Mill St in Grass Valley is now a registered California Historical Landmark. Mount Lola, Nevada County and the Sierra Nevada's north of interstate 80 highest point at 9,148 feet, is named in her honour as well as two lakes you can find in the Tahoe National Forest. Named the Upper and Lower Lola Montez Lakes. Now, let's talk about song lyrics, you many have heard this famous lyric. "Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets". "Whatever Lola Wants” was written by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross for the 1955 musical play Damn Yankees. The saying was inspired by Lola Montez. Or what about “Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl, With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there", even Copacabana by Barry Manilow was inspired by our girl Lola. In light of the BLM movement and the incredible change we are seeing, I would like to mention a quote said by Marian Anderson. "No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." Until recently, historians and the public have dismissed "conflict history," and important elements that are absolutely necessary for understanding American history have sometimes been downplayed or virtually forgotten. Lola constructed an identity as a “Spanish dancer” when Anglo Americans in California swayed between appreciating aspects of non-white cultures and rejecting them. If we do not incorporate racial and ethnic conflict in the presentation of the American experience, we will never understand how far we have come and how far we have to go. No matter how painful, we can only move forward by accepting the truth. I am Andrea Anderson, thank you for taking the time to listen today, let's meet again when we meet Lola's neighbor, the little irish girl in Grass Valley, next time, on “Queens of the Mines. Queens of the Mines was written, produced and narrated by me, Andrea Anderson. The theme song, In San Francisco Bay is by DBUK, You can find the links to their music, tour dates and merchandise, as well as links to all our social media and research links at queensofthemines.com
Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. These are true stories, with some of my own fabrication of descriptive details. It is recommended that you start this series from the first episode. In this episode of Queens of the Mines, we will meet a theatre and burlesque sensation with a secret past, who will reveal herself as California's 19th century Queen of Temptation. This is a true story, from America's Largest Migration, The Gold Rush. In Berlin, 1843 in a cyclone of cigarette smoke and sexuality, Tsar Nikolai I of Russia and King Friedrich Wilhelm IV were indulging in a private dance from the seductive Spanish dancer and burlesque performer Donna Lola Montez. Lola Montez enchanted or appalled everyone she met. While Montez was there in Prussia, Prince Albrecht, the King's brother, soon took the showgirl as his lover for a wild affair. Yet, like her kind, Donna Lola Montez was more than normally vain, selfish, ruthless, and immoral and the seductress had eventually tired of the prince's company. One afternoon, she greatly embarrassed him publicly during a royal picnic. Humiliated, in front of the entire court, he demanded that she leave his realm. “That's not such a long trip,” she said with sass as she turned dramatically towards her carriage and away she went, to Russia. Montez believed it was her destiny to be royalty, she wanted a castle. While in Russia, she was courted by one of the great magnates of St. Petersburg, Prince Schulkowski. Lola failed to secure her royal marriage with the Russian Prince and then headed to France. In Paris Lola Montez began a relationship with the former English Hussar, Francis Leigh. Lola's jealous tendencies were less than to be desired, and she ended up running him off with a pistol in a rage. Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. These are true stories, with some of my own fabrication of descriptive details. It is recommended that you start this series from the first episode. In this episode of Queens of the Mines, we will meet a theatre and burlesque sensation with a secret past, who will reveal herself as California's 19th century Queen of Temptation. This is a true story, from America's Largest Migration, The Gold Rush. The preceding program features stories that contain adult content including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. Lola spent the following year in Paris, frequenting high-society saloons with the most fashionable bohemians of the day. There was something provoking and voluptuous about her. The purity of the dancer's white skin, her mouth like a budding pomegranate, blue eye tameless and wild, wavy bronze hair with dark shadows, like the tendrils of the woodbine curled almost childishly back from her face. Montez led the most extravagant lifestyle, and it was financed by the collection of wealthy men she had seduced. In that year, she became the mistress of the author responsible for The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas. As well as the famous Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. The composer fell deeply in love with her, so much so that he dedicated a sonata, a long piece of classical music to their love. She ended the year by marrying the part-owner of the French Newspaper La Presse, Charles Alexandre Dujarier. Months after the wedding, during a night of drunken gambling, her new husband offended a man and was killed in a duel. Lord Momsbury, the elderly and proper Englishmen had taken pity on Lola after her husband's death, and Montez as usual, took advantage of the kindness of her admirers. Lord Momsbury hosted a benefit concert for Lola, where she made connections there that would eventually lead to an engagement at her majesty's theatre in London and funded her further travels. After the performance at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, Lola made her way back to Prussia. The following year, she found herself performing for the ageing King Ludwig I of Bavaria. After she performed a private burlesque performance for him, the King was intrigued. The robed man pointed inquiringly toward her well-formed bosom and he asked the woman, ‘Nature or art?' Lola responded by cutting open the front of her dress, exposing nature's endowment. The King instantly fell in love with Lola Montez. He spoiled her rotten, and made her dream a reality when he gave the showgirl her own castle, with a pension. The King named her the Countess Marie von Landsfeld, but he personally called her Lolita. As Countess Marie von Landsfeld, Lola Montez was able to win support from the radical university students in Bavaria. However, the Bavarian aristocracy and even the middle class had refused to acknowledge her as Countess. One general was even said to have declared, “I've never seen such a demon! She said I would see what a spirited woman could accomplish when she set all the levers of intrigue into motion. During her time in Bavaria, entire ministries had risen and fallen at the beautiful seductress' doing. Thousands gathered and rioted the streets, on February 7, 1848 demanding the expulsion of Lola Montez. The crowd echoed with the chanting, “down with the whore”. The King gave in to his people, and his Lolita had vanished to Switzerland then to London. In London, George Trafford Heald her newest husband had bailed her out after an arrest. Heald put his hand on his wife's knee, in a weak attempt to comfort her. Lola hastily pulled it away, turning her body to the window, gazing at the scenery as they were approaching Madrid. He had by now had given up in the attempt to console the stubborn woman during the last hours of their journey. He was only a British cavalry officer, but attracted the woman when he had received a large inheritance. Heald was 20 to her 27, the age difference as well as Lola's notoriety scandalised his wealthy family. The life of royalty and great political influence was now three years behind her, and it was taking some getting used to. A decade before Heald and Montez were in that carriage, rolling into Madrid, on the same road, the young irish Eliza Rosanna was ready to start fresh and the culture there in Spain was new and exotic to her. Her father's regiment had been posted in India as a toddler, and he died of cholera when she was three and her mother was seventeen. Her mother married the Major John Craigie who was a general of the British army in India. They sent Eliza to a boarding school in England and when Eliza was 16 years old, she received word that she was to return to India. Her mother and step father had arranged her to marry a wealthy, 64-year-old judge. On the passage to India, Eliza met a handsome, 30-year-old Irish lieutenant returning home on sick leave. His name was Thomas James. She nursed James back to health in his cabin during the voyage. The two of them did not remain in India long, and to avoid the arranged marriage, Eliza and Lieutenant Thomas James eloped and set off for Ireland. There, she soon found out that her new husband was a violent man and their scandalous marriage was ultimately unhappy. When James needed to rejoin his regiment in 1839, the couple returned, and her beauty made her the new toast of British India. A title previously held by her mother. While living in India, James strayed with the wife of another captain, Eliza saw it as an easy way out. She decided to leave him, and return to Britain. As the ship left the dock, a dashing army officer caught her eye. George Lennox, the grandson of the Duke of Richmond. Surrounded by peeping eyes, their affair blossomed and the couple perhaps enjoyed putting on a show. The door of Lennox's cabin had swung open rather too often, revealing him lacing Eliza's corset or sitting on the bed, watching her rolling up her stockings. The Captain was so infuriated that he barred Eliza from George's table. When they arrived in London, Lennox set Eliza up as his mistress and introduced her to several influential men. The news of her affair eventually made its way back to Thomas James and he sued her for divorce. Eliza lost everything in the separation on the ground of her adultery on a shipboard with another soldier, even though it was James who strayed first. The terms of the divorce prohibited neither party to remarry, as long as they were both living. The affair with Lennox did not last long, and he soon abandoned Eliza. She was left with no means of support. She now faced the dilemma that many 'fallen' women in that era faced, virtually unemployable as a governess or a lady's companion. So, there Eliza Rosanna stood on the dusty street in Madrid, looking up and down the street in either direction, and then back into the window of the establishment where she was to begin studying dance that day. Mobs of men and horses pulling carts were barely dodging the brave nineteen year old girl. “That was then, and this is now,” she said out loud. Snubbing out a cigar in the dirt, she stood up tall, and walked in as if she owned the damn place. HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE June 3, 1843 SPECIAL ATTRACTION! Mr. Benjamin Lumley begs to announce that, between the acts of the Opera, Donna Lola Montez will have the honour to make her first appearance in England in an Original Spanish dance. Mr. Benjamin Lumley sat with Lola in his office at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. "If you make a hit," he said, "you shall have a contract for the rest of the season. It all depends on yourself." Lola, smiled and nodded to the man. She wanted nothing better. As she left the managerial office, she felt as if she was treading on air. Lola stood at the wings, in a black satin bodice and flounced pink silk skirt she waited for her cue. Lumley passed her one last time, giving her a nod of encouragement. "Capital," he said, rubbing his whiskers. "Most attractive. You'll be a big success, my dear." The conductor lifted his baton, and she took in a deep breath. Everything had led up to this moment. The heavy curtains slowly were drawn aside and her heart began to race with excitement. Under a cross-fire of opera glasses, Lola bounded on to the stage and executed her initial pirouette. Her slender waist swayed to the music as she swept round the stage. Her graceful head and neck bent with it like a flower that bends with the impulse given to its stem by the fitful temper of the wind. There was a sudden hush at the finish of the number, she stepped up to the footlights and awaited the verdict. All was well, a storm of applause filled the air. Past the footlights, she could see Lumley from his place in the wings, he was beaming with approval. His enterprise would be greatly rewarded with the débutantes success. There was no doubt about it. Lola thought to the moment where she would sign her contract with him and Her majesty's Theatre. Then, breaking her daydream, an ominous hiss suddenly split the air. It was coming from the occupants of Lord Ranelagh's stage box. The audience gasped in astonishment, and looking to Lord Ranelagh, he shouted, "Egad!" he exclaimed in a loud voice, "that's not Lola Montez at all. It's Eliza Rosanna James, an Irish girl who had committed adultery against Lieutenant Thomas James and vanished. Ladies and gentlemen, we're being properly swindled!" Eliza, unable to remarry under her own name, had reinvented herself as a Spanish aristocrat's daughter with an imperious manner. Donna Lola Montez, well, Eliza Rosanna rushed behind the curtain in tears, the audience was in an uproar. She was left penniless, and Lola fled to Prussia, where she then bore all to King Ludwig 1 and became a Bavarian Countess. Frontier pioneer Eliza Inman wrote in her journal in 1843, “If Hell laid to the west, Americans would cross Heaven to reach it.” It looks like she was right. I am Andrea Anderson, thank you for taking the time to listen today. Let's meet again next time, as we continue the story of Lola Montez, theatre and burlesque sensation with a secret past, as she makes her way to California, On “Queens of the Mines. Queens of the Mines was written, produced and narrated by me, Andrea Anderson. The theme song, In San Francisco Bay is by DBUK, You can find the links to their music, tour dates and merchandise, as well as links to all our social media and research links at queensofthemines.com Before we start the episode, I would like to read this dedication written by Lola Montez in her book the Arts of Beauty. “To all men and women of every land, who are not afraid of themselves, who trust so much in their own souls that they dare to stand up in the might of their own individuality to meet the tidal currents of the world.” You may remember Sam Brannan from the very first episode as the man who brought news of the discovery of gold to San Francisco, chanting, "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River". When Brannan first arrived in 1846 on the ship Brooklyn, he was the leader of a Mormon colony who intended to start a self-sufficient colony with 238 Saints. His entourage of carpenters, blacksmiths, farmers, bakers and everything a community might need, doubled or tripled the population of San Francisco. He had brought a printing press and used it to publish San Francisco's first newspaper, the Alta. Sam Brannan and his people quickly jump-started the local economy in California, settling mormon island on the Sacramento Delta. Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. These are true stories, with some of my own fabrication of descriptive details. It is recommended that you start this series from the first episode. In this episode, we continue and complete the story of Lola Montez, the burlesque sensation with a secret past who will reveal herself as California's 19th century Queen of Temptation. This is a true story, from America's Largest Migration, The Gold Rush. I am Andrea Anderson, and this is Queens of the Mines.
Until february of 1850, Sonora was known as the Sonorain camp, then named Stewart, then to Sonora. The History of Tuolumne stated that according to the California blue book the word Tuolumne meant “many stone houses or caves” having a similar meaning as the word Shasta in another native tongue. I love this because Shasta is my sister's name! Tuolumne County was a wild and rough country in the gold rush days, and not all of the local history was squeaky clean. The region was full of diversity among the merchants, miners, gamblers, drunkards and women of leisure. From the research that lead up to todays episode, I was thrilled to learn how Sonorians had came together in the past to push back against any discrimination that came to the town's attention. During America's largest migration, the gold rush, indentured servitude was one way people secured their passage to California. By their own choice, they would barter their labor for a specific amount of time as collateral with their chosen Master. The Master paid their fare to California and boarded them while they were working for them. Today I will share two stories of indentured servitude from Sonora, California in the 1850's. I found these stories in an old book called Justice in Sonora from my grandpa's collection. I am not sure if I have ever mentioned it, but my grandfather was Tuo Co sheriff Wally Berry circa 1980s. “This is Queens of the Mines, where we discuss untold stories from the twisted roots of California. I'm Andrea Anderson. We are in a time where historians and the public are no longer dismissing the “conflict history” that has been minimized or blotted out. We now have the opportunity to incorporate the racial and patriarchal experience in the presentation of American reality. The preceding episode may feature foul language and or adult content including violence which may be disturbing some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. It was a hot August day in the gold rush town of Sonora, California. On a crowded Main Street, which is now known as Washington, bookstore owner and City Council member W.H. Mintzer walked past the tented hotels and busy saloons that lined the dusty street in 1850. In the sea of people from all over the globe, Mintzer was approaching a crowded cluster of poverty-ridden brush covered ramadas when he heard a miserable sound. Mintzer stopped to see if he could make out the noise among the multiple languages murmuring and shouting in the streets. It was the sound of a person groaning. Someone was in trouble and he knew he had to find them. Mintzer moved closer to the makeshift homes in the Mexican neighborhood, following the sound of someone in pain. Eventually, he found the tent that the tragic moaning was coming from. Lifting the flap that served as the door to the tent, Mintzer became overwhelmed by a cloud of flies swarming so thick, he could hardly see who was inside. As his eyes adjusted, he moved closer. Crouching in the corner, was a young Mexican boy, without clothes. Estás bien? He asked the boy, who motioned to the other side of the tent, Mintzer swatted the flies away, revealing another boy, lying in the fetal position. The child was about 12 years old and it was obvious to Mintzer that he was dying. Mintzer knew that he did not have the supplies or knowledge to help the boys and in a panic, he rushed to the nearby shop of Dr. Marius Chapelle. He yelled to the doctor to hurry, and showed him the way to the tent. When he found the boy, Dr. Chapelle realized he himself was also helpless. The boy was close to death. The two men sat with the boy, as he took his last breaths, and then comforted the other child, who was his brother. Word spread around the town about the two boys as quick as wildfire. The streets were buzzing with townspeople as they joined forces to search for the responsible party. It was a man named Bryan, and he was soon found and put on trial before acting judge, justice of the peace, Richard C. Barry. In the early 1850's, Major Richard Barry took on the role as one of the justice of the peace of the towns, alongside Judge Tuttle and John G Marvin. Barry was born in Ireland, and immigrated to Texas. This was while Texas was still a province of Mexico and while there, he dedicated himself to the struggle for independence and became a Major for the Texas Rangers. Barry had a tenderheart for the suffering. There was a trial, on August 15, 1850, Judge Barry confirmed the conditions of the boys were awful. Simply proven that one boy was naked and the other boy was very sick. The first witness put on the stand was the young surviving boy. He told the judge that his father had given Bryan consent, against the wishes of his mother for indenturement. Without shoes, the two boys, brothers walked for 50 days from Mazatlan to San Jose and then to the plains. Once arriving in Sonora, Bryan left him and his brother alone. The court then called bookstore owner W.H. Mintzer to the stand. Mintzer explained how he had discovered the condition of the boys after hearing the groans while walking up Main street. The Frenchman Dr Chapelle then testified that after the boy's death, he took the surviving boy to his shop, cleaned him up, had his hair cut and gave him clothes and plenty of food. He gave the boy a job washing dishes and he stayed out around the store, selling Chappele's french luxury items. There was no doubt the boy was in good hands. A man named H.E. Masden corroborated statements of the two men. Uinte Zapedu, who lived in the front of the tent where the boy died, was called to the stand. She testified that the boys were without clothes. A week before his death, Zapedu said the boy did have a sore throat. One of the boys told her he was sick, the other said he was hungry. She would have helped, but her own condition was equally poor and bare. Next to be sworn in was the countryman Bien Tauster, who was acquainted with the man in charge of the boys, his name was Bryan. Tauster and Bryan had known each other since birth and the two men had come to California on the same ship. He also told the judge of the possessions the boys had, the sick boy had a pair of white pants and a shirt which he had worn since leaving Mazatlan, the younger boy had a hat and a mat. He told Judge Barry that Bryan was kind to the boys and treated them as if they were his own. With the assistance of an interpreter, some members of the local Mexican community then testified that the boys were being treated well. Tauster also knew the boy's parents in Mazatlan, and explained they were brought here in indentured servitude with consent from the boy's parents. A contract was signed, to keep the boys, providing food and shelter for them. If Bryan did not find gold during this trip, he was to bring them back home. Two young boys, far away from their family and home, dependent on a stranger striking gold. Bien Tauster attended to the brothers every night, he was one of the people that Bryan had delegated to take care of the boys. Soon the older boy had swelling in his throat and could not work. Tauster told Judge Barry he gave the sick boy sago, a starch extracted from palm stems and rice. He believed the food to be suitable for a sore throat. Tauster did not call for a doctor. Henry Angill, the area's official grave digger was called to testify. Angill told the court he did not know Bryan, but he had seen the sick boy the day before his death in horrific condition. The following day, two Americans called upon him to tell him the boy was dead and that they wished to bury him. Bryan was in Monterey when the boy became sick and there is no statement from him in the court records. When the evidence portion of the trial was concluded, The Court ordered Dr Chappelle to take care of the young boy until a new guardian could be appointed. Bryan was taken to the jail and was charged $12.50 (428 in today's dollars) for Judge Barry was always alert that cost should be remembered. What was it like for the women in California during the 1850's? What hardships did they face? What victories were they able to realize? Who were the first women who came to California, and who was already here? Explore the lives of ten brilliant people who made their own way, in a time where women were not so welcome to do so. Their stories contributed to the shaping of the future of California and the United States. The undermined people were often rendered voiceless, leaving them ghosts of our past, dismissed and forgotten. They are rarely heard of, and I want you to know their names. Queens of the Mines, the Paperback Novel is available. I am booking a winter book release tour. If you or your town would like to host Queens of the Mines, let us know! Find it on queensofthemines.com Now, back to Sonora... In the summer of 1849, a year prior to the discovery of the young Mexican brothers, the majority of the population of Sonora were Chileans who were working in the mines. The Chileans were the first miners in California to start to extract gold from the quartz once the placer gold ran out around Sonora. Our last quick story for the day is about Sofia, a beautiful Chilean young woman who wanted to get herself to the goldfields in the Mother Lode. So Sofia made a deal back home in Chile. She would travel north to California, via an indentured servitude contract with an older couple living in Sonora. The arrangement was that Sofia was to repay the cost of her passage to California over time with her labor. For over a year, Sofia worked hard for her Masters. Yet the balance she owed never seemed to get any smaller. She was accomplishing so little towards her own freedom. Her master was taking advantage of her, and not only that, her master was abusive to her in many ways. Sofia did not know how to get out of the trap she was in, and continued to do the couple's chores. One chore that Sofia did find rather pleasant, was accompanying her mistress to the Mexican tienda, or shop on Main Street. A young handsome Chilean man helped around the shop and Sofia found herself thinking about him often. Sofia began an eye to eye courtship with the man she often saw at the shop. A susceptible young man in the country does not keep his eyes on the ground and even a girl with her eyes lowered is not blind. They found a way to communicate directly with each other, and it was quickly decided, they were in love, and they would be married. One night, he snuck her out of the older couple's home. He was devastated to find that she had been beaten and bruised and that her life at her new home had been utterly miserable. Her master noticed she was missing, and immediately suspected the young man from the shop had taken her. He stormed into the sheriff's office and reported the crime. He went to the casa with the support of a constable and violently hauled Sofia back to his house. The young chileno man was in a rage and turned to his American friends who eagerly briefed him on American ideas of liberty and justice. So he went and made a complaint himself. The young man had made it clear to the judge that he wanted to marry Sofia. Justice Jenkins was not a slave to legal patterns nor would he let a young woman be maltreated. Judge Jenkins then issued a subpoena for Sofia's presence in court. To everyone's annoyance, the wrinkled old man who kept her appeared instead and he insisted that he was her compadre. He told the judge that he had jurisdiction over her. This was a distasteful idea to the Americans who swarmed the courtroom. A constable with a more forcible order was sent to fetch the girl. When she arrived, Justice Jenkins performed the marriage ceremony right there and then. The whole town celebrated the outcome and they wished the young couple well. Their next step was to sue for back wages which he considered due to his mujer. Lewis C Gunn, displayed his pleasure in the story with a happy ending in his May 7, 1853 edition of the Sonora Herald. -a poem taken from The early history of Tuolumne County, California Alright, love you all, be safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask, stay positive and act kind. Thank you for taking the time to listen today, subscribe to the show so we can meet again weekly, on Queens of the Mines. Queens of the Mines is a product of the “Youreka! Podcast Network” and was written, produced and narrated by Andrea Anderson. Go to queensofthemines.com for the book and more.
The famed Alcatraz prison on Alcatraz Island was in operation from 1934 to 1963. For most, the thought of Alcatraz may bring up a Hollywood film or some of the most notorious criminals in America. But the island carries a different symbolism to the native coastal peoples of California. The California Ohlone Mewuk which translates to coastal people, passed down an oral history that tells us that Alcatraz was used by their Native population long before anyone else “discovered” the San Francisco Bay. Trips would be made to the island in tule boats for gathering foods, such as bird eggs and sea-life. It was also used as a place of isolation, or for punishment for naughty members of the tribe. The island was also a camping spot and hiding place for many native Americans attempting to escape the California Mission system. In 1895, the island was being used as a US fort and military prison and 19 Hopi men served time on Alcatraz for trying to protect their children from being sent to federal Indian boarding schools, which we discussed last week. “This is Queens of the Mines, where we discuss untold stories from the twisted roots of California. This week's episode is coming out a few days early in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day. Today we will talk about The Occupation of Alcatraz and the Red Power Movement which demanded self-determination for Native Americans to better the lives of all Indian people. To make it known to the world that they have a right to use their land for their own benefit by right of discovery. We are in a time where historians and the public are no longer dismissing the “conflict history” that has been minimized or blotted out. In 1953, U.S. Congress established a policy towards American Indians: termination. This policy eliminated most government support for indigenous tribes and ended the protected trust status of all indigenous-owned lands. It wiped out the reservations and natives had the choice to assimilate or die out. So the BIA began a voluntary urban relocation program where American Indians could move from their rural tribes to metropolitan areas, and they would give them assistance with locating housing and employment. Numerous American Indians made the move to cities, lured by the hope of a better life. It was a struggle for them. Many struggled to adjust to life in a city with these low-end jobs, they faced discrimination, they were homesickn and they totally lost their cultural identity. Giving a person a home and a job, yet taking away everything that they are, that is defining a human only in economic terms. So, after they relocated and got job and housing placement, as soon as they received their first paycheck, the assistance was done. Termination. This Episode is brought to you by the Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH. Are you facing criminal charges in California? The most important thing you can do is obtain legal counsel from an aggressive Criminal Defense Lawyer you can trust. The Law Office of Charles B. Smith has effectively handled thousands of cases. The Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH do not just defend cases, they represent people. Charles is intimately familiar with the investigative techniques the police and prosecutors use and is able to look at your case and see defenses that others can, and do, miss. Visit cbsattorney.com for more information. Even during the gold rush, no one liked attorneys, and Charles, you will love. Now, back to Alcatraz. When Rosebud Sioux Belva Cottier heard the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was closing in 1963 and that the property was going to be given to the City of San Francisco, she thought of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Treaty that allowed Native Americans to appropriate surplus federal land. So, she and her cousin Richard McKenzie retrieved a copy of the treaty and thought, if the property was surplus land of the government, the Sioux could claim it. Belva organized a demonstration to raise awareness and planned to take court action to obtain the title to the island. On March 8, 1964 her group of Sioux activists, photographers, reporters and her lawyer landed on Alcatraz. About 40 people. The demonstration lasted only four hours. It was "peaceful and in accordance with Sioux treaty rights” but the demonstrators left under the threat of felony charges. The idea of reclaiming “the Rock” became a rallying cry for the indigenous population. Five years later, on October 10, 1969, there was a fire that destroyed the San Francisco American Indian Center. It was a detrimental loss for the native community because the center provided Native Americans with jobs, health care, aid in legal affairs, and social opportunities. An activist group formed, known as “Indians of All Tribes” with Pipestone Indian Boarding School graduate Adam Fortunate Eagle and the handsome, Mohawk college student Richard Oakes. Richard had co-founded the American Indian Studies Dept at SF State and worked as a bartender in the Mission District of San Francisco which brought him in contact with the local Native American communities. The goal was to take immediate action towards claiming space for the local Indian community and they set their sights on the unused federal land at Alcatraz, which would soon be sold to a billionaire developer. Adam and Oakes planned a takeover of the island as a symbolic act. They agreed on November 9, 1969. Richard would gather approximately 75 indigenous people and Adam would arrange transportation to the island. The boats did not show up. Nearby, a sailor was watching the natives waiting, some wearing traditional ceremony dress and Adam Fortunate Eagle convinced him, the owner of a three-masted yacht to pass by the island with him and 4 friends on board. As the boat passed by Alcatraz, Oates and two men jumped overboard, swam to shore, and claimed the island by right of discovery. At this moment, Richard became the leader of the movement. The five men were quickly removed by the Coast Guard. Later that night, Adam, Richard and others hired a boat, making their way back to the island again, some students stayed overnight before they were again made to leave. Richard Oakes told the San Francisco Chronicle, “If a one day occupation by white men on Indian land years ago established squatter's rights, then the one day occupation of Alcatraz should establish Indian rights to the island.” Eleven days later on November 20, 1969, Richard and Adam met 87 native men, women and children, 50 of whom California State University students at the No Name bar in Sausalito just after closing at 2, met with some free-spirited boat owners and sailed through San Francisco Bay towards Alcatraz, not knowing if they'd be killed, ignoring warnings that the occupation of the island was illegal. Indians of All Tribes made one last attempt to seize Alcatraz and claim the island for all the tribes of North America using unarmed, body and spirit politics. As they disembarked onto the island an Alcatraz security guard yelled out, may day! May day! The Indians have landed! Three days in, it became clear - this wasn't going to be a short demonstration. Richard Oates soon addressed the media with a manifesto titled “The Great White Father and All His People.” In it, he stated the intention was to use the island for an Indian school, cultural center and museum. Oates claimed Alcatraz belonged to the Native Americans “by right of discovery”. He sarcastically offered to buy the island back for “$24 in glass beads and red cloth”, the same price that Natives received for the island of Manhattan. Now I'll read the manifesto “We feel that this so-called Alcatraz Island is more than suitable as an Indian Reservation, as determined by the white man's own standards. By this we mean that this place resembles most Indian reservations, in that: It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of transportation. It has no fresh running water. The sanitation facilities are inadequate. There are no oil or mineral rights. There is no industry and so unemployment is very great. There are no health care facilities. The soil is rocky and non-productive and the land does not support game. There are no educational facilities. The population has always been held as prisoners and kept dependent upon others. Further, it would be fitting and symbolic that ships from all over the world, entering the Golden Gate, would first see Indian land, and thus be reminded of the true history of this nation. This tiny island would be a symbol of the great lands once ruled by free and noble Indians. “We hold the Rock” The Nixon administration sent out a negotiator, and as the two sides debated, the natives continued to settle onto their new land. Native American college students and activists flocked to join the protest, and the population of Alcatraz often swelled to more than 600 people. They moved into the old warden's house and guards' quarters and began personalizing the island with graffiti. Buildings were tagged with slogans like Home of the Free, Indian Land, Peace and Freedom, Red Power and Custer Had It Coming. This episode is brought to you by Sonora Florist. SONORA FLORIST has been providing our community with beautiful flower arrangements for whatever the occasion since the early 1950s. You can visit sonoraflorist.com, or search Sonora Florist on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. There is a special website for wedding florals, visit sincerelysonoraflorist.com to see their wedding work, read reviews, or to book a consultation with one of their designers if you are getting married in the area. Thank you Sonora Florist. And if you have not checked out the mural on the side of the shop, on the corner of Washington and Bradford in downtown Sonora, in honor of the local Chinese history, do so! It was a fight to get it up, and it was worth it! This episode was also brought to you by our main Sponsor Columbia Mercantile 1855, Columbia Historic Park's Main street grocery store. Teresa, the owner, carries a mix of quality international and local products that replicate diverse provisions of when Columbia was California's second largest city after San Francisco. I love the selection of hard kombucha, my favorite. It is common to hear, "Wow! I didn't expect to find that here in Columbia". The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is located in Columbia State Historic Park at 11245 Jackson Street and is a great place to keep our local economy moving. At a time like this, it is so important to shop local, and The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is friendly, welcoming, fairly priced and accepts EBT. Open Daily! Now, back to Alcatraz The occupation sought to unify indigenous peoples from more than 500 nations across America, the Western Hemisphere and Pacific. Everyone on the island had a job. The island soon had its own clinic, kitchen, public relations department and even a nursery and grade school for its children. A security force sarcastically dubbed the “Bureau of Caucasian Affairs” patrolled the shoreline to watch for intruders. All decisions were made by unanimous consent of the people. A Sioux named John Trudell hopped behind the mic to broadcast radio updates from Alcatraz under the banner of “Radio Free Alcatraz.” “ We all had things to offer each other,” resident Luwana Quitquit later remembered. “Brotherhood. Sisterhood.” The federal government initially insisted that the protestors leave the island and they placed an inadequate barricade around the island. The demonstration was a media frenzy and the protestors received an enormous amount of support. There was a call for contributions and a mainland base was set up at San Francisco's Pier 40, near Fisherman's Wharf. Supplies such as canned goods and clothes were shipped in. Visitors and volunteers were sailing in, and thousands of dollars in cash were pouring in from donors across the country. The Black Panther Party had volunteered to help provide security and celebrities like Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda and Merv Griffin visited the island in support. The band Creedence Clearwater Revival gave the Indians of All Tribes a boat, which was christened the “Clearwater.” Things started to change in early 1970, there was a leadership crisis. The organizers and a majority of the college students had to return to school. Many vagrants who were not interested in fighting for the cause moved in, taking advantage of the rent free living and drugs and alcohol, which were originally banned on the island, started to move freely among a select crowd. Then tragically, Richard and Annie Oakes's daughter Yvonne fell 5 stories to her death from one of the prison's stairwells in the guards quarters. Oakes and his wife left Alcatraz in the wake of the accident, leaving groups of warring activists to fight it out for control of the island. In May of 1970, the Nixon administration cut the electricity to Alcatraz, hoping to force the demonstrators out. Let's face it, the government was never going to meet the demands of the Indians of All Tribes. Next, they removed the water barge which had been providing fresh water to the occupiers. Three days following the removal of the water barge, a fire was started on the island, destroying the warden's house, the inside of the lighthouse which was important for SF bay navigation and several of Alcatraz's historic buildings. No one knows who started the fire. It could have come from either side. Was it - Burn it down? Or get them out? Two months later, President Richard Nixon gave a speech saying, “The time has come…for a new era in which the Indian future is determined by Indian acts and Indian decisions.” The U.S. government later returned millions of acres of ancestral Indian land and passed more than 50 legislative proposals supporting tribal self rule. The termination policy was terminated. In the meantime, the FBI, Coast Guard and the Government Services Administration stayed clear of the island. While it appeared to those on the island that negotiations were actually taking place, in fact, the federal government was playing a waiting game, hoping that support for the occupation would subside and those on the island would elect to end the occupation. At one point, secret negotiations were held where the occupiers were offered a portion of Fort Miley, a 15 minute walk from the Sutro Baths, as an alternative site to Alcatraz Island. The occupation continued into 1971. Support for the cause had diminished after the press turned against them and began publishing stories of alleged beatings and assaults; one case of assault was prosecuted. In an attempt to raise money to buy food, they allegedly began stripping copper wiring and copper tubing from the buildings and selling it as scrap metal. Three of the occupiers were arrested, tried and found guilty of selling some 600lbs of copper. In January 1971, two oil tankers collided in the entrance to the San Francisco Bay. Though it was acknowledged that the lack of an Alcatraz light or fog horn played no part in the collision, it was enough to push the federal government into action. A few holdouts continued to live on the Rock for another year. “I don't want to say Alcatraz is done with,” former occupier Adam Fortunate Eagle lamented to The San Francisco Chronicle in April 1971, “but no organized Indian groups are active there. It has turned from an Indian movement to a personality thing.” Citing a need to restore Alcatraz's foghorn and lighthouse, President Nixon gave the go-ahead to develop a removal plan to be acted upon with as little force as possible, when the smallest number of people were on the island. The government told the remaining occupiers they would have news on the deed the following Monday morning. They were told no action would be taken until the negotiations were settled. That was a lie. On June 10, 1971 armed federal marshals, FBI agents, and special forces police descended on the island and removed five women, four children, and six unarmed men. the last of the indigenous residents. The occupation was over. An island ledger entry reads “We are about to leave for Alcatraz, maybe for the last time, To this beautiful little Island, which means a little something, which no one will ever understand my feelings.” It is signed by Marie B. Quitiquit of Stockton. Beneath Quitiquit's words someone wrote in capital letters “I SHALL NEVER FORGET, MY PEOPLE, MY LAND ALCATRAZ”. Oakes, who had once proclaimed that “Alcatraz was not an island, it was an idea”, never left the idea behind and continued his resistance. As a result of his activism, he endured tear gas, billy clubs, and brief stints in jail. He helped the Pit River Tribe in their attempts to regain nearly 3 million acres of land that had been seized by Pacific Gas & Electric and had plans to create a "mobile university" dedicated to creating opportunities for Native Americans. Soon after he left the occupation, Oates was in Sonoma where Michael Morgan, a YMCA camp manager was being accussesd as a white supremacist, and being tough with Native American children. 30 year old Oakes reportedly confronted Michael Morgan. Morgan said he was in fear for his life, when he drew a handgun and fatally shot Richard Oakes. Oakes was unarmed. Morgan was charged with voluntary manslaughter, but was acquitted by a jury that agreed with Morgan that the killing was an act of self-defense, even though Oakes was unarmed. Oakes supporters contend the shooting was an act of murder, and that Morgan received support from a racially motivated jury and district attorney. So, over the course of the 19-month occupation, more than 10,000 indigenous people visited the island to offer support. Alcatraz may have been lost, but the occupation gave birth to political movements which continue today as injustices inflicted on indigenous people is an ongoing problem. The Rock has also continued to serve as a focal point of Native American social campaigns and it left the demonstrators with big ideas. Indian rights organizations, many of them staffed by Alcatraz veterans, later staged occupations and protests at Plymouth Rock, Mount Rushmore, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and dozens of other sites across the country. Federal officials also started listening to calls for Indian self-determination. The occupation of Alcatraz was the first demonstration of its kind for the American Indians. It was a spiritual reawakening for the indigenous peoples and renewed interest in tribal communities. Many natives did not know what it meant to be native, and they learned of and about their heritage in light of the media attention the occupation received. It was the first chance they were able to feel proud of their indigenous background. A beginning for Native pride, the kickstarter for a move back to a traditional identity. A revival of language, traditions. Awakening the native people, the tribes, the media, the government and Americans. The “return of the buffalo”. Dr LaNada War Jack, Shoshone Bannock Tribe, one of UC Berkeley's first native students & demonstration leader tells us, “We wanted to bring to the forefront that every single one of (more than 500) treaties were broken by the fed government.” The boarding schools, genocide, relocation, termination, , everything that historically happened to American Indians — continues to impact them today. They are still here. Now, that is a real theft of freedom. A theft of freedom from the ones who were here first. So, I do not want to hear a damn word about your loss of rights for having to wear a damn mask. You want to fight for freedom? Stand up for your local indigenous people. Alright, love you all, be safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask, stay positive and act kind. Thank you for taking the time to listen today, subscribe to the show so we can meet again weekly, on Queens of the Mines. Queens of the Mines is a product of the “Youreka! Podcast Network” and was written, produced and narrated by Andrea Anderson. Go to queensofthemines.com for the book and more. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-11-19/alcatraz-occupation-indigenous-tribes-autry-museum https://www.history.com/news/native-american-activists-occupy-alcatraz-island-45-years-ago The Alcatraz Indian Occupation by Dr. Troy Johnson, Cal State Long Beach https://www.nps.gov/alca/learn/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=ALCATRAZ_Proclamation
This is Queens of the Mines. Today I am going to tell you the story of the Murderous Mail Order Bride of Tuttletown from 1929. The preceding episode may feature foul language and or adult content including violence which may be disturbing some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. On a ranch on blanket creek, near the current Kress Ranch Road, lived Carroll and his parents Stephen Rablen and Corrine Brown. They were a well known family in Sonora who were pioneers there during the gold rush. Corrine was the daughter of the late C.C. Brown, a prominent lawyer of Sonora. Carroll had been married twice, first to Martha Copeland and second to Eva Young. Neither marriage lasted. While serving during WW 1 in France, a German shell exploded in Carroll's dugout, causing him to lose his hearing. The thirty-four year old veteran returned to Tuttletown to live with his widower father. The hearing impairment made Carroll too shy to meet a local girl. Yet he was lonely. So lonely that, in June of 1928, Carroll placed an ad in a San Francisco matrimonial paper in search of a bride. He stated that he was looking for a woman who would enjoy a life with him hiking and enjoying the natural wonders of the Sierra Nevadas. The ad was printed in matrimonial papers across the nation and a thirty-three year old waitress in Texas responded to Rablen's request. They wrote back and forth. She told him she was a heavy boned blond with a twin sister who she called Effie and a son, Albert. About Albert, Eva wrote to Rablan, he has had no father since he was a month old. The father left her. She hasn't seen him and if a man left her she wouldn't want to see them again and she would make sure she didn't.” It was an odd thing to say during courtship. They continued to write back and forth and it was decided that Eva would leave Texas, come to California and the two would be married. Carroll met Eva at the station in San Francisco, and together they traveled to Nevada where they were married in Reno. Her twin sister Effie and son Albert soon followed her out to California. Stephen Rablen was not keen on the idea of his son's previously divorced “mail order bride”. Steven questioned her motives. The town was curious. One year after the wedding, the gossiping had died off. Carroll had found a job as a clerk with Standard City Lumber, which was being acquired and would soon be named Pickering Lumber and the couple was living on a chicken ranch in Standard City. The two of them quarreled often and shared a toxic and unhealthy relationship. When Eva transferred herself as the beneficiary on the $3,500 life insurance policy Carroll had purchased for himself, his father Stephen was alarmed. Stephen Rablen played the fiddle and a local wedding or party seldom went without Stephen and his brother John providing the music. The brothers had been asked to play at a community dance at the Tuttletown school house on the 29th of April in 1929. Carroll and Eva joined them for the party. Well, Eva did. Carroll's insecurities with his hearing impairment kept him from fully enjoying the festivities and as per usual, Carroll waited out the night in the car while his wife danced the night away with the people from town. Halfway through the night, Stephen was playing “Turkey in the Straw” on his fiddle when Eva went to the refreshment table to make up a sandwich and a cup of coffee for Carroll. She would bring him a refreshment to the car. With her hands full, Eva made her way across the dance floor towards the front door. Alice Shea, a local woman who was dancing, jostled her arm, and some of the coffee spilled on Alice's pink dress. Oops. Eva made her way outside with the sandwich and cup of coffee to her husband who was still in the car. “Here dear, here is something to eat.” Carroll thanked his bride, she waved and returned to the dance floor. He had a few bites of his sandwich while he waited for the hot coffee to cool down. He blew into it, and took a sip. He made a strange face. He took another drink and then another. Then, he dropped the cup. This episode was brought to you by our main Sponsor Columbia Mercantile 1855, Columbia Historic Park's Main street grocery store. Teresa, the owner carries a mix of quality international and local products that replicate diverse provisions of when Columbia was California's second largest city after San Francisco. I love the selection of hard kombucha, my favorite. It is common to hear, "Wow! I didn't expect to find that here in Columbia". The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is located in Columbia State Historic Park at 11245 Jackson Street and is a great place to keep our local economy moving. At a time like this, it is so important to shop local, and The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is friendly, welcoming, fairly priced and accepts EBT. Open Daily! Now, back to Tuttletown- A few minutes after midnight, Rancher Frank Shell and a group of his friends were smoking in front of the schoolhouse on the night of the dance. The men stopped mid conversation when they began to hear groans of distress. Frank Shell realized it was coming from a nearby parked car and followed the sound. He found Carroll doubled over and shouted to him. “What's the matter, are you sick?” Carroll mumbled to Shell, “That coffee - bitter - get - my - father.” Frank Shell opened the car door, picked the vet up and carried him into the schoolhouse. Shell was yelling as he burst through the door, “Steve - Steve Rablen- Your boy is sick!” The music in the Tuttletown schoolhouse stopped and everyone heard Carroll cry out in pain. Stephen threw his fiddle down, jumped off the platform and rushed through the crowd towards his son. Eva had rushed out from the kitchen where she had been helping clean up. She stood and watched the action play out around her, seemingly terrified. She finally attempted to hold her husband down as he thrashed around but Frank Shell carried Carrol outside and placed him on the ground. Carroll reached out for his father's hand and told him one last time, “ Papa, that coffee was awfully bitter.” His words faded as he slipped into an unconscious state. Emergency services arrived 45 minutes later with Tuolumne County Sheriff Jack H. Dambacher, who pronounced Carroll B. Rablen dead at the scene. Eva rode along quietly as the ambulance took her husband's body to Coroner Josie Terzich. Dr. Bromley also built a two-story hospital called the Bromley Sanitarium, which we talked about in the Open Mic episode, it later became known as Sonora Hospital. It was situated at the current Yosemite Title parking lot. Dr. Bromley performed an autopsy on Carrol Rablen's body and sent Rablen's stomach contents to the University of California for analysis. Foul play was not obvious, and it was assumed Carroll had died of natural causes but Steven Rablen did not buy it. He stormed Dambacher's headquarters, demanding that the search continued. Sheriff Dambacher returned to the Tuttletown schoolhouse on May 1, 1929, the day of Carroll Rablen's funeral. After an hour of searching which turned up nothing, he placed his hat on his head and turned to leave the scene, he paused. On the ground in a bush, near where the Rablen's car had been parked, was a small medicinal bottle from Bigelow's drugstore. He picked up the bottle and read the label. STRYCHNINE. The poison used to kill rodents. We want to welcome this month's featured sponsor, Sonora Florist. SONORA FLORIST has been providing our community with beautiful flower arrangements for whatever the occasion since the early 1950s. You can visit sonoraflorist.com, or search Sonora Florist on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. There is a special website for wedding florals, visit sincerelysonoraflorist.com to see their wedding work, read reviews, or to book a consultation with one of their designers if you are getting married in the area. Thank you Sonora Florist. And if you have not checked out the mural on the side of the shop, on the corner of Washington and Bradford in downtown Sonora, in honor of the local Chinese history, do so! It was a fight to get it up, and it was worth it! This Episode is brought to you by the Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH. Are you facing criminal charges in California? The most important thing you can do is obtain legal counsel from an aggressive Criminal Defense Lawyer you can trust. The Law Office of Charles B. Smith has effectively handled thousands of cases. The Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH do not just defend cases, they represent people. Charles is intimately familiar with the investigative techniques the police and prosecutors use and is able to look at your case and see defenses that others can, and do, miss. Visit cbsattorney.com for more information. Even during the gold rush, no one liked attorneys, and Chrles, you will love. After finding the empty bottle of strychnine at the scene of the crime, Dambacher headed to Bigelow's Drug Store to question the clerk about the recent purchases of the poison. There had been only one purchase of the substance that week, to a Mrs. Joe Williams, who lived on a chicken ranch near the junction of the Sonora Mono road and the road to Soulsbyville, at about 10 o'clock on the morning of Crroll's death. The purchase was under the pretext of the need for poisoning gophers. When the drugstore clerk described the appearance of Mrs. Joe Williams, it was an exact description of Eva Brandon. Eva had been staying with Mrs. Jasper Shell after the accident, and Dambacher headed to the Shell's Hale Ranch. Eva came outside, and the Sheriff told her they were going on a ride with Constable Hoskins to the drugstore. The employees that were present when she bought the poison for 50 cents were Walter Ronten and Mrs Warren Sahey. They told the officers that Eva was the woman who bought the bottle. Dambacher made the clerks aware that their certainty would end in a murder charge for Eva, they took a second look but were positive. Eva was immediately accused of murder. She vigorously denied the charges, saying her husband was broken-hearted over his health problems and had surely poisoned himself. She demanded the Sheriff bring her home but Jack Dambacher told Eva she was not going home for a long time. At the sheriff headquarters, Carrol's father Stephen insisted that he suspected his daughter-in-law had killed his son over a $3,500 insurance policy. For reference, $3500 would be the equivalent of $56k in 2021. Stephen Rablen told the deputies he believed that Eva found her victims through mail-order bride advertisements. He suggested she surely killed her last husband, a mail-order groom named Hubert Brandon. Eva was formally charged with premeditated murder the following day in a complaint signed by Stephen Rablan. Her twin sister Effie had been working night and day to prove someone else bought the poison. Effie insisted that the two were deeply in love and that Eva was miles away when the poison was bought. Sonora's Dr. Bromley conducted the autopsy and sent Carroll's stomach to western laboratories in Oakland to be tested for poison by the famed scientist Edward O. Heinrich. Local Coroner Jesie Terzzich attended the testing. Heinrich was a famous American criminologist in the 20's known as the Wizard of Berkeley, America's Sherlock Holmes and the Edison of Crime Detection. He was an extraordinarily skilled criminologist who, almost single-handedly, helped to instill a systematic and scientific level of criminal investigation in the 20s and 30s. Heinrich is still held in the highest esteem by those who are familiar with his methodologies. The Mother Lode was seething with controversy, everyone had their own opinion on whether it was murder, suicide or natural causes. Eva sat calmly in jail for a week proclaiming “why would I kill my husband? I never poisoned him!” The San Joaquin attorney Charles H. Vance, offered to defend Eva, telling her that “No hick sheriff or county prosecutor would ever be able to convict her”. The entire case was heavily covered in extreme detail in the papers as front page news. The trial for the murder of Crroll Rablan was so largely attended on June 10 1929, the hearing was held outside in an open-air dance pavilion, where there was no shortage of space. Eva arrived on the arm of her attorney and quickly pleaded not guilty. Her defense focused on the mental state of the husband and wife. Carroll, they claimed, was suicidal. His first wife was there to testify that she had heard him make suicidal remarks in the past. The defense stated that Eva was manic depressive with developmental disabilities leaving her with an IQ equal to her eleven year old son. Then, the opposition took the stage. An insurance agent from Oakdale was called on as a witness, testifying that he had called on Carroll the day before he died to let him know his insurance would soon expire, and he had refused to renew the policy under Eva's name. Next, a handwriting expert proved the signature on a drugstore's registry with Eva's handwriting and they were a perfect match. It wasn't looking good for Eva. Now, forensic science was still new, and forensic science using DNA would not be used to solve a crime until 1984, but it was forensics and chemical analysis that cracked this case in 1929. Edward O. Heinrich was called to the stand. Heinrich proved to the judge, and the curious audience, that there was strychnine in Carroll's stomach, on the coffee cup, and on the coffee stain that was left on Alice Shea's dress. Eva and her team's mood changed when they realized the strong case against her and the crowd was shocked when suddenly, Eva took the stand and changed her plea to guilty. She told the judge the war had left horrific effects on her husband. He constantly victimised himself and complained about his ailments. “Quarrels, quarrels, I was sick and tired of them. We talked things over. It was decided we should both commit suicide. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was exhausted by my husband's suicidal tendencies, he constantly talked about self-harm and asked me to kill him. Finally I decided to poison him. It was the best way out, I thought. Now they want to hang me? I could only put him out of the way because I felt it was the only way to get my freedom.” Her confession eliminated the need for the trial and Eva Brandon-Rablen was sentenced to life in prison at San Quentin for Murder, without the possibility of parole. By pleading guilty, Eva evaded the death penalty. Sheriff Jack Dambacher and his wife escorted Eva to the ferry that would take her to the penitentiary. Eva was all smiles as she told the couple “I feel fine, not a bit tired. I'm not at all downhearted or discouraged.” Effie was there with Eva's son, eleven year old Albert Lee so he could say farewell to his mother. She held her son in a cold embrace. “I will be alright,” she told him. “I'm going to study Spanish. I've always been crazy to learn Spanish. Then if I get along well with that I can take on other subjects.” Reporters on hand at the ferry dock asked her why she killed Carroll. “I can't tell you why. I can't tell you why I confessed to putting strychnine in my husband's coffee. I told the court all and I want to tell.” Eva boarded the ferry that would transport her to San Quentin and looked to the distance as the ferry left the shore. She disappeared behind the prison walls to spend the rest of her life; she would never again be free. Well, never say never. Nine years later, on Jan 27th 1938, against the recommendations of the Tuolumne County Superior Court and officials at prison, she applied for parole. You see, Eva was one of the original prisoners transferred from San Quentin to the California Institute for Women at Tehachapi. Eva had served longer than most of the other criminals incarcerated there. Parole was granted. The forgotten woman left the prison walls and was whisked away in a car that was waiting for her outside. I guess we will never know what Eva's true motive was. Was she insane, as her lawyers would have argued? Did Carroll poison himself and she took the blame? Did he ask her to do it? Was it for $3,500, as her father-in-law believed? Or is there a story, still untold? What do you think? John Henry “Jack” Dambacher, whose tenure as sheriff from 1922 to 1946 is the longest in county history. Dambacher was known by his nickname “The Black Hat”, apparently after his iconic headwear. The new county jail was named the JH Dambacher detention center. He was originally buried in Sonora's Mountain View Catholic Cemetery but he was dis-interred and moved to the Casa Bonita Mausoleum in Stockton. Carroll Burdette Rablen, his mother and his father Stephen are buried in the Sonora City Cemetery. Heinnrich was buried at Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium and Mausoleum at hot - topic on QOTM Mountain View Oakland. Alright, love you all, be safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask, stay positive and act kind. Thank you for taking the time to listen today, subscribe to the show so we can meet again weekly, on Queens of the Mines. Queens of the Mines is a product of the “Youreka! Podcast Network” and was written, produced and narrated by Andrea Anderson. Go to queensofthemines.com for the book and more. Primary sources: Oakland Tribune Tue May 14, 1929 The Ogden Standard Examiner Sun Jul 14, 1929 www.murderpedia.org/female.R/images/rablen_eva/eva-rablen.pdf https://oldspirituals.com/2019/06/16/from-the-end-eva-rablen-mail-order-bride/ THE MAIL ORDER BRIDE MURDER- C.A. Asbrey Object: Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the … By Chris Enss
“This is Queens of the Mines, where we discuss untold stories from the twisted roots of California. Today, we'll be talking about Indian Boarding Schools in the US and California. We are in a time where historians and the public are no longer dismissing the “conflict history” that has been minimized or blotted out. We now have the opportunity to incorporate the racial and patriarchal experience in the presentation of American reality. The preceding episode may feature foul language and or adult content including violence which may be disturbing some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised. Over 1,300 bodies of First Nations students were found at former Canada's residential schools this year. In response, Canada has declared September 30 2021, as the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Since 2013, this day has been commemorated as Orange Shirt Day. Like most of our topics on the podcast, the truth about our Indian boarding school has been written out of the US history books. The system has long been condemned by Native Americans as a form of cultural genocide. By 1926, nearly 83% of Indian school-age children were attending boarding schools. There once were over 350 government-funded Indian Boarding schools across the US where native children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their native languages. Nothing short of the previous Mission System, truly. This Episode is also brought to you by the Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH. Are you facing criminal charges in California? The most important thing you can do is obtain legal counsel from an aggressive Criminal Defense Lawyer lawyer you can trust. The Law Office of Charles B. Smith has the knowledge and experience to assess your situation and help you build a strong defense against your charges. The Law Offices of CHARLES B SMITH do not just defend cases, they represent people. So visit their website cbsattorney.com, we know even in the gold rush no one liked attorneys, but Charles you will love. Between 1869 and the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were voluntarily or forcibly removed from their homes, families, communities and placed in boarding schools. where they were punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture. The United States government tied Native Americans' naturalization to the eradication of Native American cultural identity and complete assimilation into the “white culture.” Congress passed an act in 1887 that established “every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up… his residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians…[and] adopted the habits of civilized life…” may secure a United States citizenship. Often these residential schools were run by different faith groups including Methodists, Latter-day Saints (LDS) and Catholics. Like the Missions, often crowded conditions,students weakened by overwork and lack of public sanitation put students at risk for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, measles and trachoma. None of these diseases were yet treatable by antibiotics or controlled by vaccines, and epidemics swept schools as they did cities. Often students were prevented from communicating with their families, and parents were not notified when their children fell ill; the schools also failed sometimes to notify them when a child died. "Many of the Indian deaths during the great influenza pandemic of 1918–19, which hit the Native American population hard, took place in boarding schools. "The 1928 Meriam Report noted that death rates for Native American students were six and a half times higher than for other ethnic groups. They suffered physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse and neglect, and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture for speaking their Native languages. Many children never returned home and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the U.S. government. Though we don't know how many children were taken in total, by 1900 there were 20,000 children in Indian boarding schools, and by 1925 that number had more than tripled. Because of Bureau of Indian Affairs policies, students did not return home for several years. Those who died were often buried in the school cemetery. Many survivors of these residential schools say they suffered physical, psychological and sexual abuse that sometimes resulted in the death of other children, and others died while trying to escape these schools. This episode was brought to you by our main Sponsor Columbia Mercantile 1855, It looks like a living museum, but it is a real grocery store with gold standard products for your modern life from quality international and local products that replicate diverse provisions of when Columbia was California's second largest city after San Francisco. I recently bought rice shampoo and conditioner bars there that have nearly changed how I feel about my hair, and I love the selection of hard kombucha, my favorite. The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is located in Columbia State Historic Park at 11245 Jackson Street and is a great place to keep our local economy moving. At a time like this, it is so important to shop local, and The Columbia Mercantile 1855 is friendly, welcoming, fairly priced and accepts EBT. Open Daily! Also sponsoring this episode is Sonora Florist, who has been providing our community with beautiful flower arrangements since the early 1950s. The designers at Sonora Florists are skilled at creating unique floral designs and you can visit sonoraflorist.com, or search Sonora Florist on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram to see what I am talking about. There is a special website for wedding florals at sincerelysonoraflorist.com Thank you Sonora Florist. And if you have not checked out the mural on the side of the shop, on the corner of Washington and Bradford in downtown Sonora, in honor of the local Chinese history, do so! It was a fight to get it up, and it was worth it! Let's talk about the United States Army general Richard H. Pratt. In 1875, Pratt pulled seventy-two American Indian prisoners from the Red River War to form the first Indian boarding school in Florida. The students were taught English, European culture, vocational skills, and required to dress in European clothing. Students were not allowed to speak their native language once their English was sufficient. Many students lost the ability to speak in their native language or were unable to communicate effectively with their relatives and other tribal members due to the students' vocabulary deficiency. This served to distance the children from their culture and traditions and further undermined the authority figures at home and also reinforced the American Indian belief that the boarding schools were aimed at destroying their families and by extension their tribes. Another important part of this education system was the shedding of the Native American religions to be replaced by conversion to Christianity. Sounds familiar right? Pratt said, "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." In 1879 Pratt opened the first Indian boarding school called the Carlisle Industrial Training School located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. From 1879 to 1918, it housed Native students from tribes across America, with the express purpose of assimilating them into American culture. "It was born out of his experience Puritan beliefs and as the jailer of a group of Kiowa, Comanche, and Arapaho prisoners of war who were arrested by the United States and sentenced to a three-year imprisonment, and while working with these 12 prisoners, Pratt developed his philosophy in Indian education." He was able to get those 12 prisoners to help him recruit children from multiple tribes for the Carlisle Indian School, which became the first class at Carlisle. Pratt designed the program to have a regimented structure. When the students arrived at Carlisle, their hair was cut, they were put in uniforms and they were organized into regiments and units and battalions. He implemented a ranking system in which the more senior students would mete out punishment to their subordinates if they disobeyed orders. They followed strict military schedules with marching drills and whistle or bell signals and emphasizing the importance of work were critical to the boarding schools success of turning the Native American children from their heritage to the “white way. The students received a vocational education with the goal of obtaining a lower income job, depending on the child's gender. For the males, carpentering, wagon making, harness-making, tailoring, shoemaking, tinning, painting, printing, baking, and farming. The female Indian students, however, learned “sewing, laundry and housework. Over four decades, roughly 8,000 students attended the school, and nearly 200 were buried here. At times, parents of students at Carlisle would receive notice of their child's passing only after they had been buried. The cause was often attributed to disease, although abuse was often rampant at these schools. Now, the number of graves at Carlisle is incrementally dropping, since efforts began several years ago to return the remains of students to their tribes and families. In June, 10 bodies of kids who attended the Pennsylvania school were returned home to their families. From 1897, the Indian Industrial Training School was in operation in Perris, California until it was closed in 1904 due to problems with the school's water source. The school was relocated to Riverside, California under the name Sherman Institute and is still in operation today as an off-reservation boarding high school for Native Americans. When the school was accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges in 1971, it became known as Sherman Indian High School. Like a slap in the face, Mission Revival Style architecture was used when the school was built. To meet earthquake standards, most of the original school buildings were demolished during the 1970s, and new structures were built in their place. The California Native Tribes were required to pay for the demolition and for the new buildings. Children from the Klamath, Miwok, Maidu and Concow tribes attended the Fort Bidwell School in Fort Bidwell, California from 1898 to 1930. The Greenville Indian Industrial School was opened near the town of Greenville in Plumas County, California The boarding school enrolled Indian students aged five to sixteen. The school had a history of runaway female students according to multiple newspaper articles. There was also the St. Boniface Indian School in Banning, California built for the purpose of educating the children of the 3000 Mission children. The construction of the buildings was done by the native students. Approximately 21 children died while attending St. Boniface, most of them due to tuberculosis. There have been reports from students who used to attend the school, that the cemetery was at one time bigger than it is now and more children are buried here than we are aware. One researcher, Preston McBride, believes the number of graves discovered could be as many as 40,000 here in the US. In order to understand the development of the present-day Native American tribes and their sovereignty relationship to the United States' federal government; people need to hear a comprehensive history through the use of surviving documents and oral histories from those involved in Indian boarding schools. You can find books on the topic of Indian boarding schools at most bookstores. The topics covered include, but are not limited to: personal accounts of students, resistance amongst the student body, boarding schools' policies, and the treatment and care provided to the boarding school students. Individual case studies are one topic of interest that may be pursued. Also, one could look into the outing system of the Indian boarding schools within the United States and those in Canada. Alright, love you all, be safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask, stay positive and act kind. Thank you for taking the time to listen today, subscribe to the show so we can meet again weekly, on Queens of the Mines. Show notes: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making Part of the Indigenous Studies Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Ward, Erica Maien (2011) https://www.cbc.ca/books/48-books-by-indigenous-writers-to-read-to-understand-residential-schools-1.6056204 https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/ https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2100&context=etd https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2021/08/28/1031398120/native-boarding-schools-repatriation-remains-carlisle https://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2021/09/02/how-utah-and-indian-residential-schools-connected-panguitch/5591605001/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Indian_High_School
In today's episode, we drop in on a conversation I had this week at the Open Mic at Jack Douglass Saloon in historic Columbia about Dona Josefa Balmasada. Open Mic happens there every Monday at 7pm. This is an ad free episode. Queens of the Mines is a product of the “Youreka! Podcast Network” and was written, produced and narrated by Andrea Anderson. Go to queensofthemines.com for the book and more. The location of the Bromley Sanitarium was at the southwest corner of Washington and Bradford streets. Based on the size of the lot, the sanitarium was not as large as photographs make it appear. The building was torn down in 1959 for Davis Motors. Also, I forgot I took the Tuttletown episode down, but here is Flo's story. https://queensofthemines.podbean.com/e/flo-the-queen-of-sorrow-the-story-before-the-hauntings/ Sources: The Ogden Standard Examiner Sun Jul 14, 1929 ww.murderpedia.org/female.R/images/rablen_eva/eva-rablen.pdf https://oldspirituals.com/2019/06/16/from-the-end-eva-rablen-mail-order-bride/ THE MAIL ORDER BRIDE MURDER C.A. Asbrey Object: Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking… By Chris Enss Annals of Tuolumne County – Tuolumne County Historical Society https://tchistory.org
We are in a time where historians and the public are no longer dismissing the “conflict history” that has been minimized or blotted out. We now have the opportunity to incorporate the racial and patriarchal experience in the presentation of American reality. That is why today we are going to talk about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The preceding episode may feature foul language and or adult content including violence which may be disturbing some listeners, or secondhand listeners, discretion is advised. I SAID DOG, BUT I MEANT DOJ. I apologize. Sometimes my words do not come out like I intend. Darn Dysarthria. Sources used: National Indigenous Women's Resource Center VICE news K2 Radio WRR Network United Resource. Coonnection Fighting Tooth and Nail Jade Wagon Obituary Today, we are not talking about California History. This is an ad free episode. We are back to our regularly scheduled episodes next week. Have you heard of #MMIWG? The meaning behind the hashtag is Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. 95 percent of these cases were never covered by national or international media. It's a hidden epidemic. I bring this up in light of the case of Gabby P, and the national coverage the case is getting in comparison to media coverage on the missing Indigenous women in the nation. 18% of Indigenous female homicide victims had newspaper media coverage, as compared to 51% of White homicide victims and the newspaper articles for Indigenous homicide victims were more likely to contain violent language, portray the victim in a negative light, and provide less information as compared to articles about White homicide victims. This is not different for other communities of color. Education lawyer Johnathan S. Perkins tweeted, “Name one Black woman who went missing and garnered national media attention. I'll wait.” Indigenous people account for less than 3% of the population in Wyoming. The largest number of Indigenous people were Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho and living on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Fremont County. There were 34 Indigenous female homicide victims between 2000 and 2020. In the latter of the 10 years, the homicide rate was 6.4 times higher than the homicide rate for White females. Despite their small percentage of the population, Indigenous people experience violence, homicide, sexual assault, and are reported missing at disproportionate rates relative to any other race/ethnicity in Wyoming. I would like to take the time to acknowledge one of this year's most recently vanished Indigenous Women, and she also went missing in Wyoming, just like Gabby. It's not that there shouldn't be concern and outrage surrounding Petito's disappearance, but despite the fact that 40 percent of Americans reported missing are people of color, this national outcry is rarely replicated for anyone other than a white person. Jade Keilee Wagon born Feb 3, 1996 was a Northern Arapaho tribal woman, Her Northern Arapaho Indian name was Cedar Tree Stands Alone. She stood 5'4'' tall and weighed roughly 140 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. She had a one of a kind sense of humor and you could spot her cute silly laugh in the largest crowd. Jade was a dedicated mother of two children, MaeLeah and Raphael, and was close with her family. Wagon graduated from St. Stephens Indian School in 2014 and was preparing to attend the Wind River Job Corps to learn a trade and someday have a career in the medical field. From the time she was 19 she had the privilege of being a stay at home mother. Before she was 23, she visited the following states; Utah, Montana, Colorado, South Dakota, New Mexico as well as Florida. She loved to spend time in the mountains. Being outdoors and enjoying nature gave her the feeling of empowerment of being free. Jade was devoted to her Native Ways attending sweats, fasting, and looking for guidance. She had a strong faith that no one could take from her. She was baptized into the Catholic faith and was a devoted member of both St. Stephen's Catholic Church and St. Margaret's Catholic Church. She worked at the Wind River Casino for a short time. 30 minutes away from the Wind River Casino was the Shoshone Rose Casino. On January 2nd 2020, Jade went to the Shoshone Rose Casino, the newest hotel in central Wyoming. We feature over 60 rooms, an indoor heated pool, hot tub, two restaurants, gift shop, meeting space, over 400 slot machines. It was not immediately clear whether she was alone or accompanied at the time. That was the last time that 23 year old Jade Wagon was seen. Nicole Wagon, Jade's mother suspected something was wrong when Jade did not show up for her older sister's annual memorial. Nicole said, "I knew there's no way that she would have missed that. So I knew something was wrong." Nicole reported Jade missing right away. Two weeks later, the FBI became involved in assisting the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the ongoing search efforts on the Wind River Indian Reservation and in surrounding communities. That is right, I said Jademissed her older sister's memorial after one year of her death. Jocelyn Watt was Jade's oldest sister. On Jan. 5 of 2019, Jocelyn and her partner Rudy Perez were shot and killed in a double homicide in her Riverton home. Both were 30 years old. Her mother Nicole Wagon knew something was wrong days before she would get the news. "I didn't feel good. I didn't feel good for those couple days. And what can I explain to you is leading up to that day I received the call. It just felt like a sense, a feeling. And I couldn't shake it," she said. She knew Jocelyn was planning a road trip and thought about going over to visit her but decided against it. Their visits sometimes went on a long time with all the talking and laughing. And then the next day Nicole got a call. "And I received a call that day from my aunt and I could hear it in her voice and it was full of panic," Nicole said. And I already knew, I already had a not-good feeling. And just connecting everything. As soon as I got to my daughters residence to see all that law enforcement, I knew it wasn't good. It was a few days after New Years, 2019. Police officers were dispatched that afternoon as holiday snow clung to Christmas lights."And it was a total shock. It's devastating and it's indescribable," Nicole said. No arrests were ever made. Jocelyn and Rudy's killer remains at large. This remains an open case. Jade became very active in the MMIW epidemic after the murders. On January 21, 2020, the remains of an unknown female were located by Bureau of Indian Affairs police officers on the Wind River Reservation in a field near Ethete. Around 30 miles away from the casino she was last seen at. FBI Lander, Wyoming DCI, and Fremont County Coroner's Office responded to the scene. An examination of the scene did not reveal apparent evidence of a violent or traumatic incident. On January 24, 2020, the unknown female was positively identified, it was Jade Wagon. The FBI and Fremont County Coroner's Office stated that Jade Wagon died from hypothermia “due to environmental exposure and acute methamphetamine intoxication.” “The methamphetamine levels in Ms. Wagon's body are known to produce confusion and irrational behavior,” the news release stated. “Based on the investigation of multiple agencies and autopsy results, the Coroner's Office ruled the manner of death as accidental.” She could have not got out there on her own. How did she get 30 miles away if there is no car left behind? Unless she wandered there for nearly 3 weeks? Nicole Wagon does not believe Jade's death was accidental. Now, as Nicole Wagon watched the media coverage of YouTuber Gabby Petito's disappearance, she couldn't help but think to herself: “Where in the hell is our FBI? Where's the FBI that's supposed to be helping and assisting all of us on the reservation?” Trying to get information on their cases has been “like pulling teeth,” and getting national media attention has been equally challenging. I made them fully aware that I will not allow them to brush off her death to hypothermia and drug use. She will not be deemed as a statistic and her life with her beautiful voice still counts and matters.” Jade's case is still under investigation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Nicole Wagon is an activist for Not Our Native Daughters, which supports Gov. Gordon's task-force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. In their lifetime, three out of five Native women are assaulted, one in three are raped. Of those who have experienced violence, 97% of women had the violence perpetrated by a person who was not Indigenous. Of the suspects in Indigenous female homicide cases, 94% were current or former intimate partners of the female victim. There are 5,712 known cases of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls but only 116 were ever logged in the DOJ database. This lack of data means violent crime statistics are grossly underestimated. Tribes and states are taking action. A few members of Congress have proposed bills. It's time for the rest of Congress to pay attention. It is time for Americans to pay attention. Queens of the Mines is a product of the “Youreka! Podcast Network” and was written, produced and narrated by Andrea Anderson. Go to queensofthemines.com for the book and more.
On a Sunday afternoon drive, Alexander and his son drove past each of the churches in the city. When they passed a theatre, his son Lewis asked “Whose church is that, father?”and Alexander told him, “That is the devil's church, my son". Lewis left for California in 1849 from Philadelphia, his wife Elizabeth LeBreton Stickney and four children joined him two years later, in Sonora, California. If you live in, or have been to Sonora, chances are you are familiar with the Gunn House Hotel, built 1850 by Dr. Lewis C. Gunn, who published the Sonora Herald and other abolition papers inside the now present Hotel. The Princeton Theological Seminary was established in 1812, it was the first Seminary founded by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. If you do not know, a seminary is an educational institute that also teaches scripture and theology. Seminary can prepare someone to be a clergy member. This was not the same school as Princeton University. The College of New Jersey, later to become Princeton University, was supportive of this plan. Although the Princeton Theological Seminary did have the support of the school, and recognized that the specialized work required more attention than they could give. In 1835, Lewis was a student at the Princeton Theological Seminary, where the discussion of abolition was prohibited. The 18 year old man learned that the American Anti-Slavery Society agent and abolitionist speaker, Amos Phelps had plans to visit the campus, against the will of the faculty and the local Presbyterian church. Amos Phelps had graduated from Yale's Divinity School after graduating from Yale University. Training for the Christian ministry was a main purpose in the founding of Yale College in 1701. Lewis wrote a letter to the Anti-Slavery agent Amos Phelps that March. He must have known the tremendous risk. In this letter, Lewis told Amos Phelps that he should rent the second floor of a house for a private meeting. Lewis strongly advised against the use of a public gathering place. Lewis also directed Phelps to bring tickets, so that they could control who came in. The tickets would only be available to a small group of sympathetic students. Lastly, Lewis instruced Phelps to arrive without notice. In the letter that Lewis wrote to Phelps, Lewis is quoted saying, “The difficulty in holding a truly public meeting is that there are many very wild students in the college from the South, who would like no better frolic than to mob an antislavery man. For the sake of the cause of abolition here, as well as my peace while I remain in this place, I do not whisper it even though I have had a hand in bringing it about.” September, 1835, the word on the street was that an abolitionist was in the area. The unsympathetic students were on high alert. A group of students, all white were out and about on the fourth of September. The men decided to take a short cut through Princeton's black neighborhood. So the white men were all walking down Witherspoon Street in the black part of town, when someone in the group noticed that there was a white man inside one of the homes. The home of Anthony Simmons, a professional caterer and a prominent member of Princeton's black community. The assumption was made that this was the talk about the abolitionist, who was there to hold a meeting. The news of the rebellion spread fast. Soon, at least sixty undergraduates gathered on Witherspoon Street. The group made up almost a third of the entire student population of the Seminary. The men then mobbed down Witherspoon Street to the home of Anthony Simmons. When they get to his house, Simmons attempted to block his door. The crowd is demanding to know if Simmon's was hiding a white man inside. At first, Simmons was frightened to death and answered no. The men aggressively continued the questioning until Anthony Simmons broke. Leading the crowd was the freshman Thomas Ancrum, and the sophomore Hilliard Judge. The two men barged into the home and grabbed the hiding white man by the throat and drug him out onto Witherspoon Street. While Ancrum and Judge rough the guy up, some of the students ransacked the man's belongings and quickly discovered that the man was an agent and author for many abolitionist publications. Papers like the Emancipator, the Liberator, and the Philanthropist. His books and notes were burned. The seething Seminary students were shouting suggestions for punishment. More local residents started to join in with the mob. “‘Lynch him', ‘kick him out of town', ‘kick him to death', ‘hang him', tar and feather him”. The crowd voted to lynch the abolitionist. The man begged for his life, and the mob “told the man that they would let him go upon condition that he renounce abolition and swore by all that is holy he would have nothing more to do with it.” On hearing that he had a family Judge who had been one of his most violent persecutors became his warmest advocate and said that no one should hurt the man unless he did it through him. They told the old fellow that they would let him go upon condition that he renounced abolition and swore by all that is holy he would have nothing more to do with it. He took the required oath and promised he would leave town directly, but they, to be more certain of his going and to have a little more fun with him, said they would accompany to the end of town. The parade was a warning to the rest of the students. Deterring them from pursuing talk of abolition. They took him beyond the last house of the village, on the road leading to Phil, and letting him go told him to heel it for his life. Those who were there say they never saw a man run so fast before he soon got into a woods close by and they lost him. That you may not be astonished at his running so fast, I will just mention again the different kinds of punishment they threatened to inflict upon him if they caught him again; "tar and feather him,” "tar and feather him and set him on fire,” “put him in a hollow log stop up both end and heave him in the canal," “Lynch him," (which you know signifies thirty nine with the cowhide, tard and feathered, put in a canoe in the middle of the river without oars or paddle, and sent adrift) "hang him. The press announced the victim's name was Silas Tripp. This was the name found on the unpublished abolition papers he was writing, which were found and burned. No such name is listed in any of the leading abolitionist publications of the era. Silas Tripp is believed to be the author's pseudonym. Tripp told his attackers that he was married and lived in Philadelphia, and that it was for their support that he had undertaken this agency.. On the day following the attack, however, unspecified sources informed the students that he was single and from New York. Who really was the victim? Two options. Was it the agent Amos Phelps, who would assume the editorship of the New York City-based Emancipator the following year? At the time of the attack, Phelps was married and had a child. Or was it Lewis, the organizer of the secret meeting in Princeton, who was born in New York and graduated from Columbia? The newspapers in the south applauded the mob. The Princeton Administration did nothing. The discussion of abolition at the school was prohibited. The faculty was committed to the act of colonization. The school was in deep opposition to abolition. That was well known. The administration's silence gave insinuated approval of the mob's actions. Often, silence leads to violence. The ringleader Thomas Ancrum left Princeton to run his family's plantation in South Carolina, where he came to own over 200 slaves. He later assaulted Princeton Seminary alumnus and black abolitionist Theodore Wright at a Princeton graduation ceremony. Again, he faced no repercussions. Whether Phelps made the journey to Princeton in 1835 is unclear. If Lewis' plan was successful, their meeting occurred in secret, with only a select few in town or on campus aware of it. If the meeting did occur, it may have contributed to the birth of a new anti-slavery society in Princeton. Mob violence of this sort was not unusual in antebellum America. Historian David Grimsted counts thirty-five anti-abolition riots in the summer of 1835 alone. Violence occasionally erupted on college campuses encouraged by hostile or indifferent administrators and faculty members. Abolitionist newspapers attracted special attention, and their presses were attacked and destroyed at least thirteen times during this period. Lewis withdrew from Princeton and worked as a teacher until he moved to Philadelphia, where he started a printing company. Perhaps inspired by events at Princeton, Lewis abandoned secrecy altogether and specialized in abolitionist literature. There he met Elizabeth Le Breton Stickney, who was also devoted to the antislavery cause and also spent much time visiting among the poor and black people of Philadelphia, trying to teach them to read and to become thrifty. They would marry two years later, and continue to live in Philadelphia. Lewis also helped to organize a boycott of slave-produced goods. Responding to criticism that the boycott was impractical, he argued that it would keep the issue of slavery at the forefront of the public consciousness. “Free discussion,” he wrote, “is the vital air of abolitionism.” In November 1837, Lewis' seminary classmate, Elijah Lovejoy, was shot to death while defending his printing press from an anti-abolition mob in Illinois. Several months later, Lewis spoke on the right of free discussion, standing in front of a large crowd at the newly built Pennsylvania Hall, his voice booming. “There are two and a half millions of slaves who are never allowed to speak on their own behalf, or tell the world freely the story of their wrongs. There are also half a million of so-called free people of color, who are permitted to speak with but little more liberty than the slaves. Nor is this all. Even those who stand up in behalf of the down-trodden colored man, however white their skins may be, are slandered, persecuted, mobbed, hunted from city to city, imprisoned, and put to death! Without freedom of speech, we ourselves are slaves.” Two days later, that newly built Pennsylvania Hall was burned to the ground by an anti-abolition mob then pushed by local officials and politicians, leaving black families throughout the city under attack. In 1838, Lewis wrote his address to Abolitionists and it was published by Merrihew & Gunn Printers in Philadelphia. We are not about to tell you of the existence of slavery in our "land of the free," or to inform you that nearly three million of your countrymen are the victims of systematic and legalized robbery and oppression. This you know full well, and the knowledge has awakened your strong sympathy with the sufferers, and your soul-deep abhorrence of the system which crushes them. We mean not to prove that this system is condemned by every principle of justice, every precept of the Divine law, and every attribute of the Divine character, — or that no man can innocently sustain to his fellow man the relation it has established. You already believe this proposition, and build upon it as a fundamental doctrine, the whole superstructure of your anti-slavery creed and plan of operations. It is not our purpose to convince you that the slave, as your brother man, has a right to your compassion and assistance. You acknowledge his claim, and profess to be his fast and faithful friend. But we would propose to you a question of weight and serious import. Having settled your principles, do you practically carry them out in your daily life and conduct? To one point we would direct your attention. Do you faithfully abstain from using the products of the slave's extorted and unpaid labor? If not, having read thus far, do not immediately throw aside this address with an exclamation of contempt or indifference, but read it through with candor. Before entering upon a discussion of the question, whether our use of the products of slave-labor does not involve us in the guilt of slaveholding, we ask your attention to the two following propositions. The love of money is the root of the evil of slavery — and the products of slave-labor are stolen goods. The love of money is the root of the evil of slavery. We say that the whole system, with all its incidents, is to be traced to a mean and heartless avarice. Not that we suppose every individual slaveholder is actuated by a thirst for gold; but that slaveholders so generally hold slaves in order to make money by their labor, that, if this motive were withdrawn, the system would be abolished. If nothing were gained, it would not be long before the commercial staples would cease to be produced by slave-labor, and this would break the back-bone of the system. A comparison of the history of the cotton trade with that of slavery would show that every improvement in the cultivation and manufacture of cotton has infused new vigor into the system of slavery; that the inventions of Cartwright, Whitney and others, have diminished the proportional number of emancipations in the United States, enhanced the value of slaves, and given a degree of stability to the robbery system which it did not before possess. Indeed, every fluctuation in the price of cotton is accompanied by a corresponding change in the value of slaves. It is the love of money, then, that leads to the buying and working of slaves. And all the laws forbidding education, sanctioning cruelty, binding the conscience, in a word, all the details of the system, flow from the buying of men and holding them as property, to which the love of money leads. Are we not, so far, correct? Articles produced by slave-labor are stolen goods. Because every man has an inalienable right to the fruits of his own toil. It is unnecessary to prove this to abolitionists. Even slaveholders admit it. John C. Calhoun says: " He who earns the money — who digs it out of the earth with the sweat of his brow, has a just title to it against the universe. No one has a right to touch it without his consent, except his government, and it only to the extent of its legitimate wants; to take more, is robbery." This is what slaveholders do. By their own confession, then, they are robbers. In the language of Charles Stuart, "their bodies are stolen, their liberty, their right to their wives and children, their right to cultivate their minds, and to worship God as they please, their reputation, hope, all virtuous motives are taken away by a legalized system of most merciless and consummate iniquity. Such is the expense at which articles produced by slave-labor are obtained. They are always heavy with the groans, and often wet with the blood of the guiltless and suffering poor." But, say some, "we admit that the slaves are stolen property; and yet the cotton raised by their labor is not, strictly speaking, stolen, any more than the corn raised by means of a stolen horse." In reply, we say that it is stolen. In every particle of the fruit of a man's labor he holds property until paid for that labor, the slave is under no such contract. He, therefore, who sells the produce of his toil before paying him, sells stolen property. If the case of the corn raised by means of a stolen horse is parallel, it only proves the duty of abstaining from that also. If it be not parallel, it proves nothing. If, then, the products of slave-labor are stolen goods, and not the slaveholder's property, he has no right to sell them. We are now prepared to examine the relation between the consumer of slave produce and the slaveholder, and to prove that it is guilty, all guilty. Lewis and Elizabeth LeBreton Stickney made their home in Philadelphia after their marriage in 1839. Lewis left for California in 1849 from Philadelphia, his wife Elizabeth LeBreton Stickney and four children joined him two years later, in Sonora, California. If you live in, or have been to Sonora, chances are you are familiar with the Gunn House Hotel, Built 1850, by Dr. Lewis C. Gunn, who published the Sonora Herald and other abolition papers inside the now present Hotel. Enos Lewis Christman in July, 1850, printed the first number of the Sonora Herald, at Stockton, and carried it to Sonora on horseback, where it was circulated at 50 cents per copy. A printing office was soon established in a tent in Sonora, the first newspaper in southern mines and a little later he entered into partnership with Dr. Lewis C. Gunn, formerly of Philadelphia, running from 1850-1852, As well as the County Recorder's Office, where The Gunn House stands today. The home of Dr. Gunn's family until 1861, the building is one of only a few original adobe structures in Sonora and the First Two-Story House in Sonora. According to the old tghhospital.com, the first Tuolumne General Hospital was built in 1861 on the northwest corner of Stewart and Lyon Streets in the notorious Tigre district of Chinatown. Right where Sonora has it's farmers market. In 1873, the Lewis C. Gunn residence, now known as the Gunn House, was purchased, remodeled, and enlarged as Tuolumne General Hospital that remained until 1897. Water was added to the facility in the mid 1870's. Then made into a hotel called the Italia Hotel. In 1960, the hotel was remodeled and renamed the Gunn House, which many say is haunted. https://www.ptsem.edu/about/history [1]Lewis C. Gunn to Amos A. Phelps, 16 March 1835, MS A.21 v.5, p.20, Amos A. Phelps Correspondence, Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, Boston Public Library (Boston, MA); James H. Moorhead, “Slavery, Race, and Gender at Princeton Seminary: The Pre-Civil War Era,” Theology Today 69 (October 2012): 274-288. ⤴ [2]Amos A. Phelps, Lectures on Slavery and its Remedy (Boston: New-England Anti-Slavery Society, 1834); Edward A. Phelps, “Rev. Amos A. Phelps – Life and Extracts from Diary,” MS 1037, Amos A. Phelps Correspondence, Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, Boston Public Library (Boston, MA). ⤴ [3]William H. Hilliard, David Jones, and Paul Blount to William Lloyd Garrison, 30 July 1835, in the Liberator, 8 August 1835; John Frelinghuysen Hageman, History of Princeton and Its Institutions, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1879), 217-227. ⤴ [4]My reconstruction of this event is based on three manuscript letters: Thomas M. Clark to John M. Clapp, 8 September 1835, Spared & Shared 4, accessed 1 September 2017, http://sparedshared4.wordpress.com/letters/1834-thomas-march-clark-to-john-milton-clapp/; Gilbert R. McCoy to Gilbert R. Fox, [10] September 1835, in the Princeton University Library Chronicle 25 (Spring 1964): 231-235; John W. Woods to Marianne Woods, 14 September 1835, folder 10, box 7, John Witherspoon Woods Letters, Student Correspondence and Writings Collection (AC334), Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ). ⤴ [5]McCoy to Fox, [10] September 1835, Princeton University Library Collection; The Anti-Slavery Record, vol. 1 (New York: R. G. Williams, 1835), 84; “List of Letters,” Liberator, 12 July 1834; “Letter from Mr. Johnson,” Colored American, 30 January 1841; Rina Azumi, “John Anthony Simmons,” Princeton & Slavery Project, accessed 1 July 2017, slavery.princeton.edu/john-anthony-simmons. ⤴ [6]McCoy to Fox, [10] September 1835, Princeton University Library Collection; Princeton Whig, 8 September 1835. ⤴ [7]McCoy to Fox, [10] September 1835, Princeton University Library Collection; Woods to Woods, 14 September 1835, Student Correspondence and Writings Collection. ⤴ [8]David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4, 35; “The Reign of Prejudice,” Abolitionist 1 (November 1833): 175; Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013), 271-272. ⤴ [9]Princeton Whig, 8 September 1835; Trenton Emporium & True American, 12 September, 1835; Charleston Courier, 17 September 1835. ⤴ [10]“Subscription $1000,” folder 5, box 23, Office of the President Records (AC #117), Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ). ⤴ [11]William Edward Schenck, Biography of the Class of 1838 of the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, N.J. (Philadelphia: Jas. B. Rodgers Printing Co., 1889), 163; Faculty Meetings and Minutes, 29 March, 27 June 1836, vol. 4, Office of Dean of the Faculty Records (AC118), Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ); “Shameful Outrage at Princeton, N.J.,” Emancipator, 27 October 1836; 1850 Federal Census (Slave Schedule), FamilySearch, accessed 30 June 2017, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MVZB-P3B; C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut's Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 70. ⤴ [12]Faculty Meetings and Minutes, 21 July, 10 August 1835, vol. 3, Office of Dean of the Faculty Records (AC118), Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ); Faculty Meetings and Minutes, 4 April 1837, vol. 4, ibid.; Hilliard M. Judge to John C. Calhoun, 29 April 1849, in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. 26, ed. Clyde N. Wilson and Shirley Bright Cook (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 385; 1850 Federal Census (Slave Schedule), FamilySearch, accessed 30 June 2017, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MV8H-CNG. ⤴ [13]Anna Lee Marston, ed., Records of a California Family: Journals and Letters of Lewis C. Gunn and Elizabeth Le Breton Gunn (San Diego: n.p., 1928), 4-5; Lewis C. Gunn, Address to Abolitionists (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838), 12. ⤴ [14]History of Pennsylvania Hall, which was Destroyed by a Mob, on the 17th of May, 1838 (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838), 62-64. ⤴ https://www.accessible-archives.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/gunn-address-to-abolitionists-1838.pdf https://www.accessible-archives.com/2013/11/lewis-c-gunn-address-to-abolitionists-1838/ https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/letter-from-lewis-c-gunn https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/princeton-new-jersey-young-mens-anti-slavery-society https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/letter-from-gilbert-r-mccoy https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/letter-from-john-witherspoon-woods https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/report-on-anti-abolition-mob https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/hilliard-m-judge-dismissed https://www.jstor.org/stable/3637548?seq=1 https://www.loc.gov/item/2011661680/ https://www.loc.gov/item/24022330/ https://www.hauntedplaces.org/item/gunn-house-hotel/?fbclid=IwAR20LwM48d3TigPthdelTYTE9ezK_n618cUoNwo8eCsSkk4DUIAxeELZ0hI https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/attempted-lynching https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:6w925v431 https://www.worldcat.org/title/address-to-abolitionists/oclc/505799665?referer=di&ht=edition https://www.worldcat.org/title/age-to-come-the-present-organization-of-matter-called-earth-to-be-destroyed-by-fire-at-the-end-of-this-age-or-dispensation-also-before-the-event-christians-may-know-about-the-time-when-it-shall-occur/oclc/15192749 https://www.worldcat.org/title/time-revealed-and-to-be-understood/oclc/821694 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Gunn
It was Labor Day last Monday, and I wanted to take this week to honor a labor union organizer who was a woman named Sue. I found most of my information from the US National Park Service but you can find a more extensive list of references in the show notes for this episode. Make sure to follow the Queens of the Mines instagram and facebook pages this week for images from the story! If you enjoy the podcast, please make sure to rate, subscribe and check out what Queensofthemines.com has to offer, including the new book Queens of the Mines,in paperback and on Kindle. Sue Ko Lee Ok, so let's talk about Sue Ko Lee, just you and me. Next week, I will have a guest but today it is just us. Sue Ko Lee was born in Honolulu, Hawaii March 9, 1920. She grew up in Watsonville, California, for our out of state listeners, that is in Santa Cruz County, just south of the Santa Cruz that you may know. Sue was the oldest of ten children. - already in a leadership role. She met Lee Jew Hing, who was an immigrant from China. He was a bookkeeper for National Dollar Stores. Most Chinese workers in San Francisco worked for Chinese employers like Joe Shoong, the owner of National Dollar Stores. They married when Sue was 18. She soon took a job at the same factory, along with several of her family members as Chinese American garment workers. Chinese American garment workers were working in poor conditions and making low wages. They had limited options because most white-owned businesses refused to hire them. Also, the Chinese immigrant community was so close-knit, many workers were connected to their bosses through family and friendship ties. Such personal relationships sometimes made workers reluctant to speak out against poor treatment. Many unions had supported the Page Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Page Act of 1875 was the first restrictive federal immigration law in the United States, which effectively prohibited the entry of Chinese women, marking the end of open borders. Seven years later, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act banned immigration by Chinese men as well. So Chinese workers like Lee and her family had a complicated relationship with the labor movement. Until the 1900s, Chinese and Chinese American workers were locked out of unionized factories by racist hiring practices. They reasonably feared that if all the factories were unionized, their jobs would be taken by white workers. Unions like the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union were working hard to organize Black, Latino, and Asian American workers in the 1930's. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was one of the largest labor unions in the United States in the 1900s, representing hundreds of thousands of mostly female clothing industry workers. In the 1930s, the garment industry was the largest employer in San Francisco's Chinatown. Chinese-owned factories undercut white-owned union shops by charging lower prices for work, paying lower wages and assigning their workers longer hours. Here the workers continued to toil under sweatshop conditions, earning wages ranging from $4 to $16 a week. Sue Ko Lee, a button hole machine operator, worked in the National Dollar Store factory for 25¢ an hour. These practices allowed them to stay in business in the face of the hardship of the Great Depression—but came at a high cost to their workers. This concerned the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union organizers struggled to make any headway among Chinese workers until Jennie Matyas, an immigrant from Hungary arrived as the new organizer. Matyas built personal relationships with the workers and their Chinese community and earned their trust. Sue Ko Lee and her coworkers voted to join the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, using ballots written in both English and Chinese. They became the Chinese Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, Local 341. In 1938, she participated in a strike against the National Dollar Stores garment factory. After several bilingual collective bargaining sessions, the union and National Dollar Stores signed a preliminary agreement. The factory then arranged a “sale” to a group of its managers, which the workers saw as an attempt to get out of the contract. In response, more than 150 of them walked out. Both American-born Chinese workers and Chinese immigrants, many of them older women, joined the strike. Sue Ko Lee made speeches, helped strike leaders organize picket lines, and was on the front lines of the strike, even bringing donuts and coffee to the strikers. After more than 15 weeks on the picket lines, the strikers won a new contract with a 5 percent raise; enforcement of health, fire, and sanitary conditions, a forty-hour workweek and a guarantee that Golden Gate Manufacturing would provide work for a minimum of 11 months of the year to its workers. It was then, the longest strike in the history of San Francisco's Chinatown. The ease with which garment factories could close shop and relocate, sometimes leaving a substantial debt in unpaid wages, made it a common practice in the 1930s and the factory closed the following year. But due to the strike, Chinese workers were taking leadership roles in the union and because of the growing numbers in the Chinese union members and leadership, Chinese workers were now able to work in what were previously white only shops outside of Chinatown. While the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union's progress in organizing Chinese workers remained slow, Jennie Matyas was able to help some of the union members, including Lee, get jobs in white-owned factories where they could make more money. Lee eventually procured a position as a staff member in Local 101 International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and became a business agent at another garment factory. She moved up to the secretary of the union local and the San Francisco Joint Board. She then went on to become a leader in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Go Sue! Sue Ko Lee died May 15, 1996 in El Cerrito, CA at the age of 86. She is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. Sue Ko Lee had two children who preserved her items and documents about the strike in her scrapbook, providing historians much of what we know about the events of the strike. Later in her life, Lee reflected on the importance of the strike in her own story: “In my opinion, the strike was the best thing that ever happened. It changed our lives. We overcame bigotry, didn't we? … I know it was a turning point in my life.”
What would it have been like for women in California in the 1850's? What hardships did they face and what victories were they able to realize? Who were the first women to come to California and who was already here? The new book, Queens of the Mines, features stories of ten brilliant people who made their own way, in a time where women were not so welcome to do so. They are rarely heard of, and I want you to know their names. Queens of The Mines the Paperback Book is Now Available on Amazon and in ebook form on the Kindle Store. Find it all at queensofthemines.com. With the lessons you learn, you may as well strike gold.
Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. Today, we learn the story of Emma Nevada, The Comstock Nightingale. QOTM is looking for sponsors, and advertisers. New and old episodes are being downloaded everyday. If you are interested in supporting the continuation of QOTM, reach out to us via the link on queensofthemines.com Thank You to our Sponsors -Sonora Florist -Columbia Mercantile 1855 -The Law Office of Charles B Smith -River Ranch Music Festival #21
“We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.”― Liam Callanan, The Cloud AtlasThis bonus episode is based on the true story and occurrences from The National Hotel, that began with a love story, and ended in murder, over 120 years ago. This Story was Created From the Links Below. http://weekinweird.com/2016/12/12/meet-flo-resident-ghost-californias-historic-national-hotel/https://www.national-hotel.comhttps://sacramentopress.com/2009/03/26/a-haunting-night-to-remember-the-historic-national-hotel-jamestown/https://tchistory.org/TCHISTORY/Jamestown.htmhttps://www.railtown1897.orghttp://www.parks.ca.gov/railtown/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_No._3#Movie_appearances
Wherever you are in this hemisphere, you are on Native land. Never forget, that before the Spanish arrived in California, for thousands of years, from sea to shining sea, this was indian country, with more than 300,000 Natives living here, representing more than 100 tribes, each with its individual traditions and cultures, most completely lost by the arrival of settlers. Write that down, and burn it into your brain. “The history of genocide casts a shadow over California. It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.” This was said by my hero, Benjamin Madley, he is an associate professor of history at UCLA and has been on a more than decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide. The Youreka Podcast Network is literally days away from launch. You will be able to download a free app, and have all of the Network podcasts at your fingertips! Including my new shows, Here Lies, an audio tour of historic cemeteries, Rustic Rituals, affirmations and meditations for country folk, Queens of the Mines Two and MORE! Find us on Libsyn and instagram now to keep up @yourekapodcasts. That is YOUREKA, because this network is yours. https://sarahannegraham.com
Sarah's Soapox from The Youreka Podcast Network. This week's topic is about Feminism. Patricia Hill CollinsKimberle Crenshaw
Wherever you are in this hemisphere, you are on Native land. Never forget, that before the Spanish arrived in California, for thousands of years, from sea to shining sea, this was indian country, with more than 300,000 Natives living here, representing more than 100 tribes, each with its individual traditions and cultures, most completely lost by the arrival of settlers. Write that down, and burn it into your brain. “The history of genocide casts a shadow over California. It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.” This was said by my hero, Benjamin Madley, he is an associate professor of history at UCLA and has been on a more than decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide. The Youreka Podcast Network is literally days away from launch. You will be able to download a free app, and have all of the Network podcasts at your fingertips! Including my new shows, Here Lies, an audio tour of historic cemeteries, Rustic Rituals, affirmations and meditations for country folk, Queens of the Mines Two and MORE! Find us on Libsyn and instagram now to keep up @yourekapodcasts. That is YOUREKA, because this network is yours.
Are you missing live music? Are you missing the voice of the male narrator for Queens of the Mines? Well you are in luck, you can see Slim Cessna perform this Friday, September 25th, for the Roots in the Jar Online Music Festival, presented by our friends in Belgium. You can also access is live from the Slim Cessna’s Auto Club Facebook page Friday at 3pm Pacific time, which is midnight in Europe. I know we have not heard Slim’s voice lately, and that is not without cause. Slim’s father had a terrible accident while me and Waylon were out visiting them in Colorado. He is still in recovery. Slim has been taking care of his family, day and night during the healing process, and I did not desire adding anything more to his plate. If you have become a fan of Slim’s voice in the show, a fan of his band, a fan of our theme song, or just a fan of him being an awesome supportive partner to me in general, you can tip Slim at the show! He is working on getting a new computer to produce evenb more amazing content for people like us, to drool over. So tune in this Friday, the 25th for the Roots in the Jar Online Music Festival, live from the Slim Cessna’s Auto Club Facebook page Friday at 3pm Pacific time. Tip Via PAYPAY to PayPal.me/SlimCessna or VENMO: @slim-cessnahttps://www.facebook.com/Roots-in-the-Jar-Online-Music-Festival-102816078112678 https://www.facebook.com/slimcessnasautoclub/
Wherever you are in this hemisphere, you are on Native land. Never forget, that before the Spanish arrived in California, for thousands of years, from sea to shining sea, this was indian country, with more than 300,000 Natives living here, representing more than 100 tribes, each with its individual traditions and cultures, most completely lost by the arrival of settlers. Write that down, and burn it into your brain. Never forget that the Russians, European-American colonists, and Spanish missionaries' arrival on the Pacific coastline forever changed the native people’s way of life. The first known interaction with the Natives in California was in the Monterey area in 1602, when Sebastián de Vizcaíno’s Spanish expedition was searching for a safe harbor for their ships. Well over 100 years then passed with little attention paid to Alta California. Then, Gaspar de Portola’s expedition of Spanish missionaries arrived in the Monterey area in 1769 and Spain began colonizing. Erasing the identities of the California indigenous people who entered the mission, in exchange, they were given a wool shirt with long sleeves called a cotón, and a wool blanket. The women were also given a wool petticoat and men received a breechclout to cover their groin area. They were then forcibly baptized into the Catholic faith, and thrown into labor camps that were filthy and disease ridden. The San Rafael Mission was established where Luis Arguello, later the first provisional governor of California and his band of Spanish soldiers led expeditions, removing Pomo people from their lands, bringing them to the new mission. Five years down the road, California became part of the Mexican Republic, and the Mexican government gave out large tracts of Pomo land to its settlers, the foreigner/white colonists brought deadly disease and epidemic. In one instance, a Russian ship brought a case of smallpox, the indigenous people did not have immunity to such diseases, the tribe populations heavily decreased, and the bones of thousands “ left unburied, bleached the hills” of Sonoma and Napa counties. As all this happened, the domestic stock animals brought by the foreigners consumed all of the native foods and damaged the gathering areas while they grazed. Foods the locals depended on for survival. Stream channels were disturbed and often re-routed, land was blasted away and huge amounts of soil entered streams and rivers, destroying the habitat of fish and other aquatic species that once were food for the indigenous people.Ten years later there was a massive malaria outbreak, and the following year the missions were authorized by the crown to “convert” the Natives in a ten-year period. They had until 1844. They were to surrender their control over the mission’s livestock, fields, orchards and buildings to the Indians in 1844. The padres never achieved their goal and the lands and wealth were then stolen from the Natives. The California Mission System was not the romanticized fantasy we were fed in fourth grade. Debunked. Unpack that. Accept it. “The history of genocide casts a shadow over California. It hovers over the land of the endless summer, over Disneyland, over the surfers, the Beach Boys, the palm trees, the Hollywood Sign … and yet, there is also a story of California Indian resistance and survival that is miraculous.” This was said by my hero, Benjamin Madley, he is an associate professor of history at UCLA and has been on a more than decade-long odyssey to document and reveal the existence of this government-sponsored genocide. Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. This is the final Chapter of Season One, and this is Part One of three in the chapter, Today, we will meet the Queen of Preservation. I am Andrea Anderson, This is a true story from America’s Largest Migration, The Gold Rush. This is Queens of the Mines. The preceding program features stories that contain adult content including violence which may be disturbing to some listeners, or secondhand listeners. So, discretion is advised.
Coming in October, you the Youreka Podcast Network. Rustic Rituals will bring weekly mediations and affirmations to the Motherlode. In this sneak peek, we have a meditation, 7 Minutes to Clarity. Enjoy.RIP - RBG
The Youreka Podcast Network launches in October! A single audio feed to amplify the unheard voices of the Motherlode. Today, you will hear a sneak peek from one of the New Shows on the Network. If you want to help with the production of the network, you can donate to the Youreka Podcast Network at queensofthemines.com.“We are gathered here today for, Here Lies, an Audio Tour podcast that guides you through fascinating lives of some of the residents of the historic gold rush cemeteries in California. Known, but rarely heard, and I want you to know their stories.” Today we’re talking about the Sonora Masonic Cemetery in Downtown Sonora CA, I’m Andrea Anderson the hostess of QOTM.” For who could put a price on a memory? This is, Here Lies. The Sonora Masonic Cemetery is located at the cross road of Otis and Cemetery, at 185 Cemetery Lane Sonora, California in Tuolumne County. Disclaimer :This audio tour is off trail, climbing aa dirt hill. RESOURCES USED: Find a grave, Ancestry.com, and History Hunters Youtube Channel which I highly recommend if you are an out of town listener . Donate Here
Queens of the Mines, a historical non fiction collection of stories of the top ten women of Gold Rush California. We address racism, immigration, genocide, human trafficking, depression, losses, success, civil rights, the earliest profession, the dark side of show business through the lens of their stories.
The Youreka Podcast Network will launch on October 2, 2020. Today's episode is a teaser from one of the many new audio shows coming to the Motherlode. "REP Presents". Tune in while the co-host Tom Taylor talks with Jaron Brandon, who is running for Supervisor in District 5 in Tuolumne County. Please share this episode.Learn more about Jaron Brandon and his campaign at https://www.jaronfor5.comDonate to the New Network and the Youreka team at https://www.gofundme.com/f/youreka-podacst-network US48WksaaWn1wpkUy4Ck
The baby fuzz on her lip had now developed into a growth of unusual proportions for a woman. A disgruntled miner who’d lost his temper in Bannack and a bundle at her table gave her the name “Madame Moustache”.
Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. In this Chapter, we will meet Eleanor Dumont, the Queen of Exhilaration from America’s Largest Migration, The Gold Rush.
Queens of the Mines features the authentic stories of gold rush women who blossomed from the camouflaged, twisted roots of California. In this chapter, we are taking a different approach than we have been doing. As we continue learning about the fabulous story of self-determination, freedom of movement, and opportunity for free association with one of California’s most famous Stage Drivers. I am Andrea Anderson, This is a true story from America’s Largest Migration, The Gold Rush. This is Queens of the Mines.In Vermont in 1812, Mary and Ebenezer Parkhurst, a young couple, had three children, Maria, Charlotte, and Charles. After the sudden death of one of the children, the couple abandoned the other two. They were sent to an orphanage in Lebanon, New Hampshire where they were raised under the care of an unkind man named Mr. Millshark. Men had a greater advantage over girls in the battle of life. Charlotte, the youngest of the two, became aware that women had few economic opportunities. She felt her only chance was to be a seamstress, laundress, teacher or sex worker. So, when she was 12 years old, she left Maria, her older sister at the orphanage, stole a few pieces of boys clothing and ran away to Worcester, MA. Charlotte then took on the name of her deceased brother, Charles, or, Charley. Queensofthemines.comVenmon @queensofthemines
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