Part 1: Jed Goes to California

EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT!! The news was plastered across the front pages of newspapers everywhere. “GOLD! Nuggets the size of your fist just laying on the ground in California.”

“Wow,” thought Jed as he walked home from the cobbler shop in downtown Boston, hearing the buzz all around town about the discovery of gold. “Sure would like to go. Maybe there’s a better life there in California.”

Jed had been working as an apprentice in his uncle’s cobbler shop for the last year, and now there was nothing more to learn. He could make a good pair of shoes or boots, but was that going to be enough? He had big dreams for himself and his new bride Adeline. He liked working with leather, but this idea of gold was eating at him. He felt compelled to go to California and pick some up for himself.

Jed Walker was a strong man, six feet tall of 20 years. Some say good looking too. Certainly Adeline thought so. She fell in love with him at first sight.

Adeline was a lovely young girl of seventeen. She had no intentions of marrying right away. Instead, there were books to read and an education to attend to. She loved reading and writing and was fortunate to be born to a family with the means to allow her these luxuries.

Her first sight of Jed at the cobblers shop changed everything. She stopped by the shop to pick up her father’s new boots. Jed was there talking to his uncle. Their eyes met. It was an instant attraction for both. Jed, then 19, was working for his uncle to become a cobbler himself, a very respectable trade for a poor young man who was willing to work hard for a better life.

Jed and Adeline began courting and were soon inseparable. At the end of each day, Jed raced off from work to be at Adeline’s side-- just to talk to her, see her, breath in her space. Late afternoon before Jed arrived, Adeline would set down her books and comb her hair, don her loveliest dress, then wait for Jed’s arrival. It was a whirlwind courtship resulting in a walk down the aisle just three month after their first meeting.

Imagine the difficulty when Adeline received the news that her beloved wanted to travel across the country to California, a dangerous and mysterious place thousands of miles away. She knew Jed had big dreams and wanted a better life for both of them. She didn’t want to discourage the dreams. So finally, after hours and hours of talking and planning and dreaming together, she agreed. “But please, dearest one,” she said. “You must take care of yourself and not do crazy things or take dangerous chances. I love you so and could not bear the loss of you to wild animals or the many strange people that will be around you.”

Jed’s uncle was less understanding. “You’re crazy, Jed,” he went on. “You’re just getting good at this job, a first class cobbler I’d say. And you want to throw it all away for some romantic notion of easy pickings. Well I need to tell you, young man, nothin’ is easy in this world. And this California dream of yours, becoming a miner, scratching the dirt with a pick and shovel, isn’t going to be what you think. It’s gonna be a tough life and no kind of place for Adeline.”

In the end, Jed’s uncle gave his blessing because he saw there was no turning Jed around. He had “gold fever” and no amount of good sense was going to stop him. Jed left three weeks later, departing Boston on a small cargo ship sailing around Cape Horn at the headland of Tierra del Fuego in Chile bound for the small port city of San Francisco in California, the land of gold just for the picking up of it. Adeline with her parents and Jed’s uncle stood on the dock waving farewell. With a tear in her eye, she spoke the words: “Take care, my handsome and wonderful husband. I love you so. Call for me soon.”

The trip was longer than Jed knew, many weeks at sea with poor weather, bad food and illness. Jed kept his spirits up by writing a diary addressed to Adeline. It was filled with his dreams of success and plans for the day he would send for Adeline to come and share in the riches he would soon have from California Gold.

Jed arrived in San Francisco on November 5th of 1849. It was cold and damp, but that didn’t dampen Jed’s spirits. He was a man on a mission. So was everyone else. Everywhere people were buying and packing up supplies to head out to the Gold Country. The newspapers had pictures of gold nuggets weighting five ounces and stories of people becoming wealthy beyond belief. It was Gold Fever!

Jed’s destination was Coloma, the small town on the American River where James Marshall discovered the gold near a sawmill he was building for John Sutter, a Sacramento business man who lived nearby. The time dragged on as the stagecoach bound for Coloma lurched forward toward the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains where gold was just laying on the ground. Nobody in the coach said a word. All were lost in their own thoughts of riches and how their lives were going to be better. Eyes half shut protecting from the dust streaming through the stagecoach floorboards, Jed drifted back and forth between thoughts of Adeline and all the gold he would pick up and carry off.

The stage finally arrived in Coloma. Everyone all jumped off in a hurry as though each needed to be the first to bend over and start picking up nuggets. But Jed was stopped cold in his tracks. He didn’t know where the river was or what to do next. All he saw was people, everyone, every color, a jumble of voices shouting and hollering and making a commotion. There were all kinds of people, every age and ethnicity. Young white guys. Portuguese and Spanish speakers with brown skin. Short Chinese people with long pigtails flowing down their backs. And everyone wore a hat of some kind—different colors and styles, generally in a style of their own home or country from whence they came. And everyone Jed soon came to realize was there for the same reason, all excited and clamoring for a chance to get at that gold.

Jed grabbed his bag and headed for the river bed which an old grizzled miner pointed out to him. “But the pickins ain’t so great no more on the river,” hollered the old man as Jed hustled off. You’ll probably have to head upcountry some. Spanish Flats might be a place to start.”