They came to California with great hope for the future-they left a legacy.
Enter to win a copy of
With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, in 1848 set off a siren call that many Americans couldn’t resist. Enthusiastic pioneers headed west intent on picking up a fortune in the nearest stream. Though only a few actually used a pickax in the search for a fortune, women played a major role in the California Gold Rush. They discovered wealth working as cooks, writers, photographers, performers, or lobbyists. Some even realized dreams greater than gold in the western land of opportunity and others experienced unspeakable tragedy.
Nancy Kelsey stood on the porch of her rustic home in Jackson County, Missouri, watching her husband load their belongings onto a covered wagon. Soon, the young couple and their one-year-old daughter would be on the way to California. She hated leaving her family behind and she knew the trip west would be difficult, but she believed she could “better endure the hardships of the journey than the anxieties for an absent husband.”
Nancy was born in Barren County, Kentucky, in 1823. She married Benjamin L. Kelsey when she was fifteen. She had fallen in love with his restless, adventurous spirit, and from the day the two exchanged vows she could not imagine her life without him. At the age of seventeen, Nancy agreed to follow Benjamin to a strange new land rumored to be a place where a “poor man could prosper.”
Nancy, Benjamin, and their daughter, Ann, arrived in Spalding Grove, Kansas just in time to join the first organized group of American settlers traveling to California by land. The train was organized and led by John Bidwell, a New York schoolteacher, and John Bartleson, a land speculator and wagon master.
Nancy’s recollections of some of the other members of the Bidwell-Bartleson party and the apprehension she felt about the trip were recorded in the San Francisco Examiner in 1893. She described what it was like when the wagon train first set out on its way on May 12, 1841: “A man by the name of Fitzpatrick was our pilot, and we had a priest with us who was bound for the northwest coast to teach the Flathead Indians. We numbered thirty-three all told and I was the only woman. I had a baby to take care of, too.”
To learn more about Nancy Kelsey and her journey west or about any of the other women who made their mark on the Gold Rush read:
With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
