Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 058-4 - October 2004 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-12 07:54:40 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:02 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:02

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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NCHS Bulletin October 2004 chusetts. At the time of his conversion he had not attended school for more than thirteen years, but had been a diligent and extensive reader—particularly of history and general literature. After spending some time at Newton he went to New Hampton, New Hampshire, totaling about four years. They were years of struggle for him, mostly due to the interruption of his early education, but he overcame the hard circumstances of his early childhood and persevered. His love for reading proved to be his biggest advantage; his reading being varied and extensive, he became notable with the pen and was a vigorous writer and an enviable “man of letters.” Later, his Gold Rush sermons would become famous, being published across the nation and throughout California. The moral character and spiritual condition that he witnessed upon his arrival in California in 1849 would erode in the next decade. At the time of his arrival there was an acute need for Protestant churches and men who would serve in the mission field. Up to this point everything was controlled by the Catholic Church in California, a territory of vast size and recently a state of the Mexican Republic. Due to the unique circumstance of the place and time, after that first rush of Forty-niners an ever-increasing lawless element arrived that preyed upon others to gain riches. Foreign countries saw an opportunity to get rid of an undesirable element (who were just as anxious to leave), clear their overcrowded prisons, and rid their slums of the poor and destitute they would no longer have to support. Many countries in Europe and Britain were suffering from the effects of war, famine, unemployed workers, and tenants who were starving because of successive years of crop failure. Paying for one-way tickets to send thousands to America at this time was a convenient and less taxing solution to ease the suffering at home. With those things lacking in the early years in the mining camps and towns that make mankind civilized, and with an atmosphere abounding with vices that ran to excess and overflowing—liquor, gambling, lawlessness and prostituThe state capitol at San Jose 1849-1851, where Brierly served as Chaplain of the first California Legislature. First Baptist Church on Fourth Street, Sacramento. For a short time Benjamin Brierly was its pastor in 1851. tion, it wasn’t long before the majority of the honest, hardworking moral people wanted a change. While some towns incorporated and elected officials to bring order, most of the population at any given time was not living in the towns but in the mining camps and gold fields. There was always an element of mobility, following the rich strikes over to the next ravine or down the stream or watercourse. The early months of the Gold Rush were the richest and most productive for the placer miners. In the first year or two, with a pick and shovel, many men could find from ten to fifteen dollars worth of gold dust in a day. But it was the stories of the extraordinary successes that spread through the camps, towns and across the country. Well authenticated accounts described many men averaging from one to two hundred dollars a day for long periods and other cases of cartloads worth thousands of dollars washed in just a short period, while some individuals accumulated five, ten and fifteen thousand dollars in a few weeks time. There will never be an accurate accounting of the great wealth that left the state hidden in pouches, lining clothes or sewn or hidden in other inconspicuous objects. The Annals of San Francisco witnesses that “Within the first eight weeks after the ‘diggings’ has been fairly known, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars had reached San Francisco in gold dust, and within the next eight weeks, six hundred thousands more. These sums were all to purchase, at any price, additional supplies for the mines.” Smart was the man who took his dust and ran back home with it. Within a few years a great number of those who had come to California to get rich became disillusioned and destitute. The reality of California was now much different from the dream. Provisions and money quickly ran out in a place where the price of a place to lay your head and fill your stomach exceeded what you could earn in a week. Inflation ran amuck, while a severe localized depression could just as easily ruin a merchant in a short time. The