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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
Juanita - The only woman lynched in the Gold Rush days (PH 20-9)(1967) (36 pages)
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Page: of 36
George Duffield, anearly California pioneer, noted
in his diary that he saw a woman hanged in the gold
fields in October of 1850. To date, this information
has not been verified. From a typed manuscript in
the California State Library, Sacramento.
The most thorough contemporary newspaper coverage of the Downieville tragedy is to be found in
the Steamer Edition of the Pacific Star for July
15,1851. This andother contemporary newspapers
refer to the woman as “Josefa” and not “Juanita.”
Franklin Buck, an eye-witness to the lynching, also
refers to her as “Josefa” in his personal letters
( A Yankee Trader in the Gold Rush, Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1930 ). It would seem that Josefa
was the woman’s real name and down through the
years the name has been corrupted to the more
familiar, and similar, Spanish name of Juanita.
George Barton, an eye-witness to the trial and
lynching, claimed to have known Josefa well. In a
manuscript published in the Grizzly Bear for November, 1923, Barton recalled that *...the Mexican
woman was a plain person, about 23 or 25 years of
age, neat and tidy in dress and person, quiet in
demeanor, and like all her race had raven-black
hair and a dark complexion, and lived with her
husband, or protector, on Main Street, Downieville, near where Spauldings store now stands. I
knew the Mexican and the women well as I had to
pass their residence several times a day to go and
come from our claimonJersey Flat.” J.J. McClosky, also anearly resident of Downieville, wrote in
the San Jose Pioneer for November 12, 1881, as
follows: She “was about 26 years old, slight in
form, witha large, dark, lustrous eye, that flashed
at times...like a devils....She was a Sonorian, and
ail agreed that her character was good, that is,
she was above the average of camp women, of
those days.”
29