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Volume 058-4 - October 2004 (6 pages)
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Page: of 6
em™not seeking the gold that most
ca
Mining God’s Gold
By Maria E. Brower
Golden Opportunity
They came by the thousands to the place that from the
beginning was almost mystical—a place whose name had
been linked with gold for over 300 years. Garci Ordéfiez de
Montalvo’s widely read sixteenth-century novel “Las Sergas de Esplandidn,” published in Seville in 1510, told of an
island that abounded with gold and precious stones. The
name of the place was California.
No Place Like It on Earth
OLD FEVER SPREAD LIKE A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE
and the great migration began. They came from every
corner of the world and made this soon-to-be state the
most ethnically diverse place on Earth; never before in history had there been a place whose population multiplied by
a thousandfold overnight.
Not all who came to the Golden Shore that year came
seeking gold. Two such men came to California in 1849.
Benjamin B. Brierly and Osgood C. Wheeler would become
part of the early pioneer history of the state. Both were
commanding speakers, eloquent writers and men who came
(— a )
Nevada County Historical Society
Bulletin
VOLUME 58 NUMBER 4
he
Bible Society. He probably gave up his pastorate temporarily because of on-going health problems.
Brierly was not one of those who were born of privilege
and a life of comfort and security. He had known hardships
early in life. Born in York County, England, on November
24, 1811, he was the oldest of five children. When he was
ten years old his father left England for America for unknown reasons. It may not have been by his own volition
that he left his wife and family—perhaps unexpectedly.
Poverty abounded in England in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. Circumstances could easily have
found him facing the gallows or transportation to Australia
for such minor crimes as petty theft or stealing a loaf of
OCTOBER 2004
sought, but “God’s Gold.” Both
would play a small, but important,
role in Nevada County history, and
would have a profound effect on
those who came after them.
It was providence, not gold, that
brought Benjamin Brierly to California in 1849. Brierly set sail from
Boston on February 9, 1949, and arrived in San Francisco on August 22,
1849, in hopes that a long ocean
voyage would improve his health.
What Brierly found when he stepped
off the ship may not have been what
he had been expecting, but probably
did not shock him. All was chaos as
ships lay rotting in the harbor; sailors
and soldiers abandoned ships and
posts and joined the throngs of
humanity that flocked to the rivers, streams and waterways
of California.
Brierly was familiar with man’s human condition and, in
fact, man’s moral and spiritual condition was his specialty.
For thirteen years Brierly had served as an ordained pastor
of the Baptist faith, and until 1848 he had served churches
in Great Falls, Springfield, and Middlebury, Vermont,
Manchester, New Hampshire, and Salem, Massachusetts,
and recently had been active in the American and Foreign
Benjamin B. Brierly
bread to feed his family.
From that time on Brierly had to
stop his education and take the burden of common labor on his tooyoung shoulders to support his
family. His life was hard, as was
typical for children living in poverty
during that century in England. At
age thirteen tragedy struck the Brierly family when his mother died; and
not long after her death he and his
brothers and sisters sailed for America. It is not known if they ever saw
their father again, or if they had other
relations to whom they were sent
when they reached New England.
It was during the time known as
the “great religious awakening” in
America (especially in New England), that Brierly felt called to the
church. It became apparent that the foundation had been
laid many years before in England, because he had been
known to say of the period of his conversion, that he should
have to go back to the time when he was a little boy and
learned Bible lessons sitting on his grandmother’s knee. In
1831, at age twenty, he was baptized and united with the
Baptist church in Cummington, Massachusetts.
After his baptism he made the decision to study for the
ministry, entering preparatory school in Newton, MassaI