Podcast appearances and mentions of sam brannan

Join us on a captivating episode as we explore the multifaceted life of Samuel Brannan, a charismatic leader who played a pivotal role in both in Mormonism and the California Gold Rush. We trace Brannan’s journey from his membership in Mormonism, to his leading a group of Mormon pioneers on the perilous voyage of the… Read More »Mormon to Millionaire: Sam Brannan & the Brooklyn: Mormonism LIVE: 137

Join us on a captivating episode as we explore the multifaceted life of Samuel Brannan, a charismatic leader who played a pivotal role in both in Mormonism and the California Gold Rush. We trace Brannan's journey from his membership in Mormonism, to his leading a group of Mormon pioneers on the perilous voyage of the… Read More »Mormon to Millionaire: Sam Brannan & the Brooklyn: Mormonism LIVE: 137

Join us on a captivating episode as we explore the multifaceted life of Samuel Brannan, a charismatic leader who played a pivotal role in both in Mormonism and the California Gold Rush. We trace Brannan’s journey from his membership in Mormonism, to his leading a group of Mormon pioneers on the perilous voyage of the… Read More »Mormon to Millionaire: Sam Brannan & the Brooklyn: Mormonism LIVE: 137 The post Mormon to Millionaire: Sam Brannan & the Brooklyn: Mormonism LIVE: 137 appeared first on Mormon Discussions Podcasts - Full Lineup.

In the beginning, Sam Brannan might have been a loyal Mormon leader, but the glitter of gold and the allurements of the world are about to test his mettle. Join Lindsay and Bryan as they talk about the rise and fall of Brigham Young's biggest colonizing competitor, Sam Brannan.

In the beginning, Sam Brannan might have been a loyal Mormon leader, but the glitter of gold and the allurements of the world are about to test his mettle. Join Lindsay and Bryan as they talk about the rise and fall of Brigham Young’s biggest colonizing competitor, Sam Brannan.

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.  

Jim and Tom welcome historian Rebecca Yerger for a sampling of stories on the history and characters of Calistoga. We talk about the wild life and legacy of Sam Brannan as well as George Yount, Calistoga’s connection to the Donner Party, Edward Turner Bale, “Old Hog Killer”, Leland Stanford (Stanford University), Eadweard Muybridge (father of the motion picture), Mount St. Helena and more. Rebecca Yerger writes a biweekly history column for the Napa Valley Register.

In 1848, a worker of John Sutter found gold in California. Sutter had reason for wanting to keep the find quiet, but he didn’t count on Samuel Brannan, who was soon running down the street yelling “Gold! Gold on the American River!” Brannan, a former Mormon, businessman and journalist, wasn’t crazy – and had no desire to look for the valuable mineral – but he knew that a mad rush of fortune hunters was his key to fame and fortune. He would become California’s first millionaire, only to die poor and in relative obscurity. Show notes and links: * Ann Eliza Corwin Brannan (1823 – 1916) (findagrave.com) * Brannan Before the Brooklyn (byu.edu) * The Start of the California Gold Rush (1849) (youtube.com) * Sam Brannon (1979) – YouTube (youtube.com) * Sam Brannan and the Gold Rush: Biography & History – Video & Lesson Transcript (study.com) * Sam Brannan (sierrafoothillmagazine.com) * Latter-day Scoundrel Sam Brannan | HistoryNet (historynet.com) * Samuel Brannan (spartacus-educational.com) * HISTRORIANS REPORT (ecv1841.com) * Fortunes Made Through Global Trade (flexport.com) * Samuel Brannan – Wikipedia (wikipedia.org) * Chapter 2: Samuel Brannan and the Eastern Saints (byu.edu)

We Will Talk About John Sutter, James Marshall, Sam Brannan. and Levi Strauss

Joel and Rebecca talk with Sam Brannan about green chilies, growing a beard, how to know when your meat is properly cooked, and which side of the Bosphorus to sit on while enjoying a refreshing adult beverage. 

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1849: As the fateful year of 1849 begins, a newspaper editor scrutinizes San Francisco's gold rush future. February 1, 1849 The eye of the Gold Rush hurricane The spring of 1849 -- dawn of a year forever branded into the national consciousness as the era of the California Gold Rush. And so it was -- but that was back East, in the "States". In San Francisco, the Gold Rush had actually begun an entire year earlier. I'd better set the scene. The United States were at war with Mexico -- it's President Polk and "Manifest Destiny" time. San Francisco (then Yerba Buena) was conquered without a shot in July of 1847. In the first month of 1848, gold was quietly discovered in the foothills east of Sutter's Fort. Days later, the Mexican war came to an end, and Alta California became sole property of the United States. Sam Brannan kick-starts things in '48 San Francisco was skeptical about the gold strike, but in May of '48, Sam Brannan made his famous appearance on Market Street brandishing a bottle of gold dust. His shouts of "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River" triggered the first wave of the Gold Rush. The village of about 500 souls was emptied almost overnight as its inhabitants hotfooted it for the hills. Among the many businesses left completely in the lurch was Sam Brannan's own newspaper, the California Star. While the entrepreneurial Brannan was busy becoming a millionaire selling shovels to gold miners, by June his entire staff had abandoned the paper and set off to make their own fortunes. Edward Kemble publishes the Alta California >Brannan sold what was left of his newspaper to a more civic-minded businessman, Mr. Edward Cleveland Kemble. Kemble resuscitated the Star (along with San Francisco's other gold rush-crippled paper, the Californian) as a brand spanking new paper he called the Alta California. The first issue appeared at the tail end of 1848. That brings us right up to today's timecapsule. The editorial on the front page of issue #5 of the new paper is a treasure trove of contemporary San Francisco perspectives. As editor Kemble was composing this piece -- a retrospective of the previous year, and a peek into the uncertain future -- it was the dead of winter, and the first wave of the Rush had crested and broken back towards the city. Kemble was first and foremost a businessman, and he was concerned with the civic and financial future of San Francisco. He points out that the city is poorly governed, a little short on law and order, already swelling with gold-seekers from Mexico and Oregon, and -- to sum it up -- is woefully unprepared for the onslaught of humanity, the avalanche of "49ers" already looming on the horizon. But though he's aware that the next wave is going to be a doozy, with 20-20 historical hindsight we know that he doesn't really have a clue. What Kemble doesn't know ... yet. By the end of 1849, the village of San Francisco will have burst at every seam, with a population exploding from 2000 to 25,000. Tens of thousands of gold seekers will flow through the port and even more will stagger in overland from the East, all in all 100,000 strong. The beautiful harbour will be choked with hundreds of deserted, rotting ships, and the local government will prove to be ineffectual and almost totally corrupt. By the end of '49 San Francisco will have become a wild, sprawling, lawless shanty boomtown, and the soul and future of our City by the Bay will be permanently transformed. Kemble's observations give us ground-level insight into the concerns of the village of San Francisco in the winter of 1848 -- a priceless peek into the eye of the gold rush hurricane. read on ...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1861: the notorious countess Lola Montez dies in New York; 1899: a small boy defends himself in a San Francisco courtroom. January 17, 1861 Countess Lola Montez -- in Memorium As was undoubtedly marked on your calendar, San Francisco's patron saint Emperor Norton died last week, January 7, 1880. But his was not the only January passing worthy of note. Ten days later (and nineteen years earlier), we lost perhaps the most notorious personage ever to grace the streets of our fair city. I speak, of course, of Countess Lola Montez . Yes, that's the one -- "whatever Lola wants, Lola gets". You already know Lola's story, of course. You don't? The breathtakingly gorgeous Irish peasant girl with the soul of a grifter and the heart of a despot? How she -- with a few sexy dance steps, a fraudulent back story involving Spanish noble blood and the claim of Lord Byron as her father -- turned Europe upside down and provoked a revolution in Bavaria? Still doesn't ring a bell, hmm? Well, Lola's whole story is a little too large for this space. She'd already lived about three lifetimes' worth of adventure -- and burned through romances with personalities from King Ludwig the First to Sam Brannan -- before conquering Gold Rush-era San Francisco with her scandalous "Spider Dance". If you missed the Sparkletack podcast about this amazing character, you might want to rectify that little omission. After her European escapades, Lola found that freewheeling San Francisco suited her tempestuous eccentricity to a T. Brandishing the title of "Countess" -- a Bavarian souvenir -- she drank and caroused and became the absolute center of the young city's attention. It's said that men would come pouring out of Barbary Coast saloons to gawk at the raven-haired vision sashaying through the mud with a pair of greyhounds at her heels, a white cockatoo perched on one shoulder, and a cigar cocked jauntily from her lips ... and do I even need to mention her pet grizzly bears? read on ...

A weekly handful of weird, wonderful and wacky happenings dredged up from the kaleidoscopic depths of San Francisco history. THIS WEEK: a hanging from 1852, and a Miss Goldie Griffin wants to become a cop in 1912. December 10, 1852: San Francisco's first official execution It certainly wasn't for any lack of local mayhem that it took so long for San Francisco to order its first "official" execution. The sleepy hamlet of Yerba Buena had ballooned from fewer than 500 to over 36,000 people in 1852 -- and the famous camaraderie of the '49ers notwithstanding, not all of them had the best interests of their fellow men at heart. During the first few years of the Gold Rush, San Francisco managed to average almost one murder per day. The murders that made it to court in these semi-lawless days were seen by sympathetic juries mostly as cases of "the guy had it coming". And concerning executions of the un-official variety, Sam Brannan's Committee of Vigilance -- that would be the first one -- had taken matters into their own hands and lynched four miscreants just a year earlier. As the San Francisco Examiner would describe the event 35 years later, "The crime which inaugurated public executions was of a very commonplace character. A Spaniard named José (Forner) struck down an unknown Mexican in (Happy) Valley, stabbing him with a dagger, for as he claimed, attempting to rob him. ... after a very prompt trial, (Forner) was sentenced to be hanged two months later." Was it because he wasn't white? Lack of bribery money? Some secret grudge? José had claimed self defense just like everybody else, and turns out to have been a man of relatively high birth in Spain, oddly enough a confectioner by trade -- and we can only speculate as to the reason he ended up the first victim of San Francisco's official rope. The execution was to take place up on Russian Hill, at the oldest cemetery in the young city -- a cemetery which, due to the fact that a group of Russian sailors had first been buried there back in '42, had actually given the hill its name. If you've heard the Sparkletack "Moving the Dead" episode, you know that this burial ground is long gone now -- and in fact, its remote location up on the hill had already caused it to fall out of use by 1850. I guess that made it seem perfect for an early winter hanging. Let's go back to the Examiner's account: "(The location) did not deter some three thousand people from attending, parents taking children to see the unusual sight, and women on foot and in carriages forcing their way to the front. Between 12 and 1 o’clock the condemned man was taken to the scaffold in a wagon drawn by four black horses, escorted by the California Guard. The Marion Rifles under Captain Schaeffer kept the crowd back from the scaffold. The man died game, after a pathetic little farewell speech, in which he said: “The Americans are good people; they have ever treated me well and kindly; I thank them for it. I have nothing but love and kindly feelings for all. Farewell, people of San Francisco. World, farewell!” A dramatically chilling engraving of the scene can be seen by clicking the thumbnail above. If you'd like to pay your respects in person, the Russian Hill Cemetery was located in the block between Taylor, Jones, Vallejo and Green Streets. December 9, 1912: Miss Goldie Griffin wants to become a cop! Another item culled directly from the pages of our historical newspapers, this one from the period in which California women had just won the right to vote -- something for which the country as a whole would need to wait seven more years. This hardly made San Francisco a bastion of progressive feminist thought. I scarcely need to point it out, but note the amusement and disdain in this articles' treatment of the first female applicant to the San Francisco Police Department, December 9, 1912: read on ...