You’re invited

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featuring Author Chris Enss

November 10, 2018 1-2 P.M.

The Book Seller

107 Mill Street

Grass Valley, 95945

Last chance to enter to win a copy of
More Tales Behind the Tombstones:
More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws,
Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen

When Victoria Claflin Woodhull died on June 9, 1927, news of her passing was announced on two continents. The press referred to the controversial writer, stockbroker, and politician as a “most immoral woman.” Not only was Victoria the first woman to be officially nominated for president of the United States, but she was also one of the first individuals to have been jailed on federal obscenity charges. Both events occurred in 1872.

Before her involvement with the women’s rights movement in the mid-1860s, Victoria and her sister, Tennessee, were the owners and publishers of a newspaper called the Woodhull and Claflin Weekly. They printed scandalous articles promoting the idea of “free love.” In a letter Victoria sent to the New York Times in 1871, she claimed that free love was the “only cure for immorality, the deep damnation by which men corrupt and disfigure God’s most holy institution of sexual relations.” She continued, “It is not marriage but sexual intercourse, then, that is God’s most holy institution.” Victoria and Tennessee’s progressive views on sex and the brazen printing of those ideals appalled citizens not only in the United States but also in other countries like Germany and Russia, as well. They “threaten to destroy the morals nations so desperately needed to cling to,” was the opinion voiced in the New York Times on November 23, 1871.

Victoria and Tennessee were not strangers to confrontation with the law. Their father, Reuben Buckman “Buck” Claflin, was a scoundrel who excelled at breaking the rules of conventional society and spent time behind bars for his actions. Buck and his wife, Roxanna Hummel, lived in a rundown house in Homer, Ohio. The couple had ten children. Born on September 23, 1838, Victoria was the Claflins’ sixth child. Although Victoria’s father claimed to be a lawyer with his own profitable practice, he was actually a skilled thief with no law degree at all. He owned and operated a gristmill and also worked as a postmaster. Buck supplemented his income by stealing from merchants and business owners, and he was a counterfeiter and a suspected arsonist.

Victoria’s mother was a religious fanatic who dismissed Buck’s illegal activities in favor of chastising her neighbors for what she claimed was hedonism. Her public prayers were loud, judgmental, and dramatic. She preached to her children and insisted they memorize long passages of the Old Testament. By the time Victoria was eight, she was able to recite the Bible from cover to cover. Reflecting on her life, Victoria wrote in Autobiography of Victoria Claflin that her mother’s spiritual zeal so influenced her childhood that young Victoria believed she could see into the future and predict what was to come of those whom sought her out to preach.

Tennessee was reported to be the true clairvoyant of the family. Born in 1845, she was the last child born to Roxanna and Buck. Roxanna claimed Tennessee had the power to perceive things not present to the senses. She would slip into trances and speak with spirits, answering voices no one else could hear.

Victoria and Tennessee had very little formal education. Although Victoria attended school for only four years, she was bright, precocious, and well read. She was uninhibited and at the age of eleven delivered sermons from a busy location in Homer, Ohio.

In 1849, the Claflins left Homer and moved to Mount Gilead, Ohio. Victoria’s father had abandoned gristmill work and decided to venture into the field of psychic phenomena with his daughters in tow. He introduced Victoria and Tennessee to the public and announced the girls’ talent for “second sight” or “extrasensory perception, the ability to receive information in the form of a vision by channeling spirits.” Buck rented a theater and charged patrons seventy-five cents to watch the four-year-old and eleven-year-old communicate with deceased Claflin family members and predict the future. One such specific prediction was that one day a woman would be president of the United States.

Victoria and Tennessee’s shows, in which they would conduct séances and interpret dreams for audience members, attracted a large following, and in a short time the two young girls became the sole source of income for their family.

To learn about More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen read
More Tales Behind the Tombstones

Enter now to win a copy of
More Tales Behind The Tombstones:
More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws,
Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen

A frigid wind blew hard past the weather-beaten exterior of the Palace Garden Theatre in Dawson City, Alaska. It was the spring of 1900, and gleeful patrons were tucked warmly inside, waiting for the “Flame of the Yukon” to take the stage.

A fiery, red-headed beauty glided out before the crowd, her violet eyes smiling. The men went wild with applause. The music began, and the entertainer swayed with the beat, placing a gloved hand to her breast and a fingertip to her lips and then, stretching her arm out, beckoning her admirers. The elaborate red-sequin dress she was wearing was form-fitting, and the long black cape that draped over her shoulders clung to her alabaster skin.

The piano player accelerated his playing, and Kate gyrated gracefully in and out of the shadow of the colored lights that flickered across the stage. After a moment, with a slight movement of her hand, she dropped the cape off her shoulders and it fell to the floor. The glittering diamonds and rhinestones around her neck sparkled and shined. Ever so seductively, she picked up a nearby cane adorned with more than 200 yards of red chiffon and began leaping, while twirling the fabric-covered walking stick. Around and around she fluttered, the chiffon trailing wildly about her like flames from a fire, the material finally settling over her outstretched body. The audience erupted in a thunderous ovation. She was showered with nuggets and pouches filled with gold dust. This dance would make her famous.

Kathleen Eloisa Rockwell came to the Klondike in April 1900. She attracted a following wherever she performed across Alaska. Kate was born in Junction City, Kansas, on October 4, 1876, to parents of Scottish-Irish descent. Her love for music and dancing began when she was a toddler. The piano and scratchy gramophone had an intoxicating effect on her. Her wealthy stepfather provided the gifted child with the education she needed to hone her natural talents. She was trained in French, voice and instrumental music at the Osage Mission in Kansas.
Kate’s parents eventually moved to Spokane, Washington, leaving their daughter behind to complete her studies. She visited her family during the summer months, when Spokane was abuzz with entertainment opportunities. Inspired by performances by traveling troupes of vaudevillians who sang and danced their way across the Northwest, she dreamed about joining the troubadours and of someday being a New York stage actress.

Kate moved to New York with her parents in the late 1800s and found work as a chorus girl in one of the city’s many theatres. She enjoyed her time on the stage and quickly became addicted to the nightlife of the big city. In time, Kate took her act on the road. She traveled across the Great Plains states, working her way back and forth across the country. She stood out among the other singers and dancers by always holding her head up high and smiling proudly for the appreciative audiences.

To learn about More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen read
More Tales Behind the Tombstones

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More Tales Behind The Tombstones:
More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws,
Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen

On December 27, 1902, the woman many historians referred to as the “Guardian of Yosemite National Park” passed away. Jessie Anne Benton Fremont was born on May 31, 1824, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Her father, Thomas Hart Benton, was an ambitious man who went from farming into politics and eventually became a United States senator from Missouri (and great-uncle of twentieth-century muralist Thomas Hart Benton). Jessie visited Washington, D.C., often as a child and met with such luminaries as President Andrew Jackson and Congressman Davy Crockett.

Jesse and her sister, Elizabeth, attended the capital’s leading girl’s boarding school, alongside the daughters of other political leaders and wealthy business owners. It was for that very reason Jessie disliked school. “There was no end to the conceit, the assumption, the class distinction there,” she wrote in her memoirs. In addition to the lines drawn between the children of various social standings, Jessie felt the studies were not challenging to her. “I was miserable in the narrow, elitist atmosphere. I learned nothing there,” she recalled in her journal. The best thing about attending school was the opportunity it afforded her to meet John Fremont, the man who would become her husband.

Born on January 21, 1813, John was an intelligent, attractive man with gray-blue eyes who excelled in mathematics and craved adventure. While awaiting an assignment from the United States Corp of Topographical Engineers (a war department agency engaged in exploring and mapping unknown regions of the United States), John was introduced to Thomas Benton. Benton was a key proponent in Washington for western expeditions. He and John discussed the great need for the land west of the Missouri River to be explored. Benton invited the young surveyor and map maker to continue the conversation at his home over a meal with his family. It was there that Jessie and John first met, and they were instantly smitten with each other. Within a year, they were wed.
Jessie Benton was sixteen years old and John Fremont was twenty-seven when they married on October 19, 1841. The newlyweds lived at the Gatsby Hotel on Capitol Hill until John was assigned to lead a four-month expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Jessie helped him prepare for the journey by reviewing information about the plant life, Indian encampments, and rock formations he would come in contact with during his trip. John headed west on May 2, 1842. Jessie, who was pregnant with their first child, moved into a small apartment near her parents’ home.
John returned to Washington, D. C., in November 1842, just two weeks before their daughter was born. He watched over baby Elizabeth Benton “Lily” Fremont while Jessie reviewed the slim notes John had taken during the expedition and fashioned a report for the government using his data and detailed recollections of life on the trail. Politicians such as Missouri Senator Lewis Linn praised the report for being not only practical and informative but entertaining as well. The material would be used by emigrants as a guidebook.

In early 1843, John moved his family to St. Louis, Missouri, where his next expedition would be originating. Jessie took on the role as John’s secretary, reviewing mail from suppliers and frontiersmen such as Kit Carson. She wrote the necessary correspondence to members of the Topographical Bureau, apprising them of the date the expedition would begin, how long it would take, and what the party planned to accomplish. Shortly before John departed to explore a route to the Pacific Coast, a letter came to the Fremont’s home instructing him to postpone the expedition until questions over a request to purchase weapons had been settled. Fearing the entire mission would be jeopardized if the journey was delayed, Jessie did not give the letter to her husband. John set out on the expedition on May 13, 1843. He returned home the following August, having successfully begun opening up the great territory between the Mississippi Valley and California.

To learn about More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen read
More Tales Behind the Tombstones

Enter now to win a copy of
More Tales Behind The Tombstones:
More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws,
Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen

The memory of Ellen Clark Sargent’s arrival in Nevada City, California, stayed with her all her life. Long after she had left the Gold Country, she recalled: “It was on the evening of October 23, 1852 that I arrived in Nevada [City], accompanied by my husband. We had traveled by stage since the morning from Sacramento. Our road for the last eight or ten miles was through a forest of trees, mostly pines. The glory of the full moon was shining upon the beautiful hills and trees and everything seemed so quiet and restful that it made a deep impression on me, sentimental if not poetical, never to be forgotten.”

In the newly formed state of California, shaped by men and women who had endured unbelievable hardships to cross the plains, Ellen saw an opportunity to gain something she passionately wanted: the right to vote. Despite defeat after defeat, she never gave up.

Ellen Clark fell in love with Aaron Augustus Sargent, a journalist and aspiring politician, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, when they were in their teens. Both taught Sunday school in the Methodist Church. Upon their engagement, Aaron promised to devote his life to being a good husband and making their life a happy one. But several years passed before he had a chance to make good on that promise.

In 1847, Aaron left Ellen in Newburyport to go to Philadelphia, where he worked as a printer. His interest in politics intensified with the new friends he made. Aaron, an ardent opponent of slavery, closely followed arguments of free-soilers and antislavery forces.

He worked as a print compositor and as a newspaper writer. However, the trade paid poorly. With word of the gold strike in California, Aaron borrowed $125 from his uncle and sailed from Baltimore on February 3, 1849, leaving Ellen with a promise to return and make her his wife.

Aaron arrived in the gold camp called Nevada in the spring of 1849 and was moderately successful in his search for gold. He then became a partner with several others in the Nevada Journal newspaper. But with a promise to keep, Aaron obtained the help of a friend and built a small frame house near the corner of Broad and Bennett Streets, right in the center of town. In January 1852, he returned to Newburyport to claim his bride. Aaron and Ellen were married on March 15 and returned to Nevada City in October of that year.

Ellen Sargent had no notion of the home she would find, but she was agreeably surprised. She later wrote an account of her arrival in Nevada City: “My good husband had before my arrival provided for me a one-story house of four rooms including a good-sized pantry where he had already stored a bag of flour, a couple of pumpkins and various other edibles ready for use, so that I was reminded by them a part of the prayer of the minister who had married us, seven months before, in faraway Massachusetts. He prayed that we might be blessed in basket and in store. It looked like we should be.”

Ellen set up housekeeping in a town where the cost of everything was astonishing. Eggs sold for three dollars a dozen, chickens for five dollars apiece.

To learn about More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen read
More Tales Behind the Tombstones