Overview

My general areas of San Francisco research revolve around the Gold Rush, Clipper ships and the natural history of California. I also investigated general information mid-19th century life to get a better understand what my heroine might be feeling and experiencing as a modern young woman thrust into a time where women’s roles were more rigidly defined.

There is also the unique nature of California governance during that time period. Statehood had only recently been voted on in the fall of 1849.  But Congress was in a furor over the admission of states as either free or slave states, so approval was slow in coming. Also, California was the first state in the history of the Union where the legal protections around statehood were required. Nobody expected the mad rush and land grabs around the gold rush.

Because of this California was essentially governed by the military for 1849 under the control of military Governor Riley,  which meant that justice was in the hands and at the discretion of the local authorities, such as they were. When the first elected Govener Burnett took over in December 1849, when my book opens, things were fairly well out of control.  Layer on the international frenzy created by the discovery of gold in the sierra foothills and you have a recipe for corruption and lawlessness.  Into this I drop my heroine: a smart young woman who came of age in the 1980′s, a time that was nearly as free swinging as 1850 San Francisco. I mean really, did you ever wonder why San Francisco ended up like it is today? LOL.

San Francisco Bibliography

Gold Rush San Francisco History

I like to experience the time through reminiscences of the people who were there. So much of what I used is from diaries.  A big plug here for the San Francisco Library History Center, they have an amazing collection of primary information and you could not ask for a more helpful bunch. If you want to look at pictures, check the website for hours, they are only open on certain days.

An interesting collection of diary excerpts has been assembled by Malcolm Barker called San Francisco Memoirs, 1835-1851: Eyewitness Accounts of the Birth of a City. Several of these were useful to provide color around what the city looked like and how the people operated day to day.

One of the best accounts of a woman’s life in Gold Rush California was penned by one Louisa Amelia Penn Smith Clappe otherwise known as Dame Shirley.  The Dame Shirley Letters, here collected and annotated by  Thomas C. Russell in 1922, is a lively and well-written account of her life as the wife of Dr. Fayette Clappe in Rich Bar, a now defunct gold mining town in the foothills of the Sierra. Dame Shirley had more of a taste for adventure than did her husband and the letters are written in a open and inquisitive tone.  I used them to help in my descriptions of the brothels in my story and the daily lives of my characters.

Curt Gentry penned a wonderful history of early San Francisco prostitution in The Madams of San Francisco. The book, unfortunately, is currently out of print but I was able to score a copy from a reseller at Amazon. I’ve pulled inspiration and locales from the lives of the early entrepreneurs like Juanita, a Chilean woman who arrived in 1849 and in July of 1851 knifed the man who killer her lover, and the better known Belle Cora who moved in San Francisco society like a grand dame. Just to name two. The Madame of the Setting Dove bordello would fit nicely into these pages. These ladies and many others were amazing women and make wonderful characters to flavor a novel.  I hope my feisty girl of the 1980′s can keep up.

For more local color, and free too. The Annals of San Francisco is available as an eBook from Google. Written by Frank Soule and John Gihon it is a set of eyewitness accounts of the early years of the gold rush and San Francisco in particular.  Excellent for details anecdotes and brief portraits of some of the notable city residents. And hey, you can’t  beat the price.

Since I devoted an entire post to the maligned Sydney Ducks, I should add the reference here. That is Robert M. Senkewicz’s Vigilantes in Gold Rush San Francisco.  I’m only sorry it’s out of print. 8(

Natural History of California

California has a long history of fire, drought, flood and earthquakes. We Californians jokingly refer to this as the four season of California.  The 1991 Firestorm that raged through the Oakland hills however, was no joking matter.  I used parts of that disaster in my story and the FEMA report was invaluable for details.

John Muir is known as one of the first naturalists in the country. His work describing California of the 19th century is wonderful. I used it to help me visualize what the state must have looked like as he climbed the Sierra and crossed the central valley. I used a special Kindle version but this is pretty close to what I have: John Muir : Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth; My First Summer in the Sierra; The Mountains of California; Stickeen; Essays (Library of America).

California Clipper Ships

It was somehow fitting that in the midst of the tumult and excitement engendered from the gold discovery in California that the fastest ships in the world would be made on the opposite side of the continent.  On the eastern seaboard shipbuilders were producing the record-breaking ships that would provide the fast provisioning of men and materials needed to fuel gold fever. The California Clipper slashed the time from New York around the Cape to San Francisco from to less than 90 days. According to Arthur Hamilton Clark in his book The Clipper Ship Era: an epitome of Famous American and British Clipper Ships, Their  Owners, Builders, Commanders and Crew, these ships were the result of the first substantial changes in shipbuilding technology in since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Arthur Clark’s book is an encyclopedia of information about specific ships and crew with dates and data.

I created a fictional ship, The Cetan, with captain and crew modeled closely after several ships in this book. I placed her in the gold rush ‘race’ of 1849-1851 against such greats as The Flying Cloud and The Sea Witch and Captains like Robert Waterman. There is a wealth of information about clipper ships on the web. The McKay Clan has a wonderful site, The Era of the Clipper Ships,  about Donald McKay who built The Flying Cloud. If you are local the San Francisco Maritime Museum has an incredible amount of primary information such as diaries, letters and journals and they are some of the nicest folks around. You need to call for an appointment first though, but that was not a problem they were very easy to work with.