Chris Enss's Blog - Posts Tagged "with-great-hope"
Pioneer Innkeeper
They came to California with great hope for the future-they left a legacy.
Enter to win a copy of With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, in 1848 set off a siren call that many Americans couldn’t resist. Enthusiastic pioneers headed west intent on picking up a fortune in the nearest stream. Though only a few actually used a pickax in the search for a fortune, women played a major role in the California Gold Rush. They discovered wealth working as cooks, writers, photographers, performers, or lobbyists. Some even realized dreams greater than gold in the western land of opportunity and others experienced unspeakable tragedy.
Frontier pioneer Eliza Inman wrote in her journal in 1843, “If Hell laid to the west Americans would cross Heaven to reach it.” Luzena Stanley Wilson, mother of three and wife of aspiring gold miner, Mason Wilson, wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment. In 1849, news of the Gold Rush captivated Mason’s imagination and he moved his family from their home in Missouri to a mining town west of the Rockies.
Shortly after arriving in Nevada City, California, Mason left Luzena alone with the children to make her while he staked out a gold claim. Luzena quickly went to work unpacking, making beds, and firing up her stove. As she worked she contemplated how she was going to help make good on the cost it took to transport her family to the area. “As always occurs to the mind of a woman, I thought of taking in boarders,” she wrote in her journal. “So I bought two boards from a precious pile belonging to a man who was building the second wooden house in town. With my own hands I chopped stakes, drove them into the ground, and set up my table. I bought provisions from a neighboring store, and when my husband came back at night he found, mid the weird light of the pine torches, twenty miners eating at my table. Each man as he rose put a $1 in my hand and said I might count him as a permanent customer.”
Within six weeks of opening her business, Luzena had earned enough to pay back the money Mason had borrowed to move his family to the Gold Country. She also expanded and renovated the make-shift hotel and purchased a new stove. By the end of the summer in 1850, Luzena had an average seventy five to two hundred boarders living at the establishment, each paying $25 a week.
Mason never did find the mother lode, but Luzena became one of the most prosperous women in the territory. Mason struggled with Luzena’s success for a long while before he left her and the children.
To learn more about Luzena Stanley Wilson and her life in the West or about any of the other women who made their mark on the
Gold Rush read: With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
Register to win a copy of With Great Hope here or at www.chrisenss.com
Enter to win a copy of With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, in 1848 set off a siren call that many Americans couldn’t resist. Enthusiastic pioneers headed west intent on picking up a fortune in the nearest stream. Though only a few actually used a pickax in the search for a fortune, women played a major role in the California Gold Rush. They discovered wealth working as cooks, writers, photographers, performers, or lobbyists. Some even realized dreams greater than gold in the western land of opportunity and others experienced unspeakable tragedy.
Frontier pioneer Eliza Inman wrote in her journal in 1843, “If Hell laid to the west Americans would cross Heaven to reach it.” Luzena Stanley Wilson, mother of three and wife of aspiring gold miner, Mason Wilson, wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment. In 1849, news of the Gold Rush captivated Mason’s imagination and he moved his family from their home in Missouri to a mining town west of the Rockies.
Shortly after arriving in Nevada City, California, Mason left Luzena alone with the children to make her while he staked out a gold claim. Luzena quickly went to work unpacking, making beds, and firing up her stove. As she worked she contemplated how she was going to help make good on the cost it took to transport her family to the area. “As always occurs to the mind of a woman, I thought of taking in boarders,” she wrote in her journal. “So I bought two boards from a precious pile belonging to a man who was building the second wooden house in town. With my own hands I chopped stakes, drove them into the ground, and set up my table. I bought provisions from a neighboring store, and when my husband came back at night he found, mid the weird light of the pine torches, twenty miners eating at my table. Each man as he rose put a $1 in my hand and said I might count him as a permanent customer.”
Within six weeks of opening her business, Luzena had earned enough to pay back the money Mason had borrowed to move his family to the Gold Country. She also expanded and renovated the make-shift hotel and purchased a new stove. By the end of the summer in 1850, Luzena had an average seventy five to two hundred boarders living at the establishment, each paying $25 a week.
Mason never did find the mother lode, but Luzena became one of the most prosperous women in the territory. Mason struggled with Luzena’s success for a long while before he left her and the children.
To learn more about Luzena Stanley Wilson and her life in the West or about any of the other women who made their mark on the
Gold Rush read: With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
Register to win a copy of With Great Hope here or at www.chrisenss.com
A Photographer in the Old West
They came to California with great hope for the future-they left a legacy.
Enter to win a copy of With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, in 1848 set off a siren call that many Americans couldn’t resist. Enthusiastic pioneers headed west intent on picking up a fortune in the nearest stream. Though only a few actually used a pickax in the search for a fortune, women played a major role in the California Gold Rush. They discovered wealth working as cooks, writers, photographers, performers, or lobbyists. Some even realized dreams greater than gold in the western land of opportunity and others experienced unspeakable tragedy.
There before her was a panoramic view of the snow-capped Sierra peaks-jagged an folded, thrusting upward from steep, forested hills-taller than what they called mountains in the East. The California sky was a blue vault overhead. The sun, she noted, was at the perfect angle to highlight the features of the rugged landscape for her camera.
Eliza Withinton pulled away the skirt-tent wrapped around her bulky camera and tripod, reversed the lenses she’s turned into the camera box, reset the screws, and anchored the contraption in the rocky soil of the Amador County foothills. Propping her black linen parasol against the tripod, she carefully unwrapped a sensitized glass plate from the damp towel in which it had been carried to the distant foothills, slipped it into place and exposed the plate.
The camera, covered with one of her heavy, black dress skirts, then became her darkroom. Eliza slipped beneath the negative, then washed and replaced the glass in the plateholder for a more convenient time to fix and varnish the picture.
Packing her precious equipment, she scrambled back down the steep, rocky trail to the dusty road, using her cane-headed parasol for a walking stick. There she waiting for a fruit wagon to return and carry her back to Ione City and the appointments for portraits at her studio.
Eliza Withington described how she photographed the Sierras in an article for the Philadelphia Photographer in 1876. “How a Woman Makes Landscape Photographs” detailed her methods of working in the field. The article provided a complete description of her equipment, how she packed it to survive torturous overland skirts, shawls, and parasol to process her five-by-eight-inch glass plates in the field.
To learn more about Eliza Withington and her life and career in the West or about any of the other women who made their mark on the
Gold Rush read: With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
Register to win a copy of With Great Hope on this site or when you visit www.chrisenss.com.
Enter to win a copy of With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, in 1848 set off a siren call that many Americans couldn’t resist. Enthusiastic pioneers headed west intent on picking up a fortune in the nearest stream. Though only a few actually used a pickax in the search for a fortune, women played a major role in the California Gold Rush. They discovered wealth working as cooks, writers, photographers, performers, or lobbyists. Some even realized dreams greater than gold in the western land of opportunity and others experienced unspeakable tragedy.
There before her was a panoramic view of the snow-capped Sierra peaks-jagged an folded, thrusting upward from steep, forested hills-taller than what they called mountains in the East. The California sky was a blue vault overhead. The sun, she noted, was at the perfect angle to highlight the features of the rugged landscape for her camera.
Eliza Withinton pulled away the skirt-tent wrapped around her bulky camera and tripod, reversed the lenses she’s turned into the camera box, reset the screws, and anchored the contraption in the rocky soil of the Amador County foothills. Propping her black linen parasol against the tripod, she carefully unwrapped a sensitized glass plate from the damp towel in which it had been carried to the distant foothills, slipped it into place and exposed the plate.
The camera, covered with one of her heavy, black dress skirts, then became her darkroom. Eliza slipped beneath the negative, then washed and replaced the glass in the plateholder for a more convenient time to fix and varnish the picture.
Packing her precious equipment, she scrambled back down the steep, rocky trail to the dusty road, using her cane-headed parasol for a walking stick. There she waiting for a fruit wagon to return and carry her back to Ione City and the appointments for portraits at her studio.
Eliza Withington described how she photographed the Sierras in an article for the Philadelphia Photographer in 1876. “How a Woman Makes Landscape Photographs” detailed her methods of working in the field. The article provided a complete description of her equipment, how she packed it to survive torturous overland skirts, shawls, and parasol to process her five-by-eight-inch glass plates in the field.
To learn more about Eliza Withington and her life and career in the West or about any of the other women who made their mark on the
Gold Rush read: With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
Register to win a copy of With Great Hope on this site or when you visit www.chrisenss.com.
The Illustrator & Novelist
They came to California with great hope for the future-they left a legacy.
Enter to win a copy of With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, in 1848 set off a siren call that many Americans couldn’t resist. Enthusiastic pioneers headed west intent on picking up a fortune in the nearest stream. Though only a few actually used a pickax in the search for a fortune, women played a major role in the California Gold Rush. They discovered wealth working as cooks, writers, photographers, performers, or lobbyists. Some even realized dreams greater than gold in the western land of opportunity and others experienced unspeakable tragedy.
Rain dripped steadily from the bare trees outside the dark parlor. The bride stood at the top of the stairs, a red rose sent from her best friend pinned inside her dress. Unveiled, she started down the steps to the man who waited to marry her.
She had resisted his courtship and insisted that marriage did not fit her plans. The young engineer standing at the foot of the staircase had made his own plans. He arrived out of the wild West with a “now or never” declaration. He had taken off his large hooded overcoat, placed his pipe and pistol on the bureau in the room that had belonged to the bride’s grandmother, and the quiet force of his intent carried the day.
The bride well knew that the Quaker marriage ceremony puts the responsibility for making the vows directly on those who must keep them. She descended the stairs, catching sight of her parents, a handful of other family members, her best friend’s husband, and the man she had finally agreed to marry.
Mary Hallock gripped the arm of Arthur De Wint Foote and stepped up in front of the assembly of Friends, as the Quakers called themselves, to speak those irrevocable vows. She was twenty-nine, with an established career as an illustrator for the best magazines of the day. She had carefully considered what she would give up by taking this step. Arthur was a mining engineer, and his work was in the West. She was an artist, and all her contacts were in Boston and New York. She faced forward with a mixture of anxiety and joy.
To learn more about the amazing Mary Hallock Foote and her life and career in the West or about any of the other women who made their mark on the
Gold Rush read: With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
Enter to win a copy of With Great Hope on this site or when you visit www.chrisenss.com
Enter to win a copy of With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, in 1848 set off a siren call that many Americans couldn’t resist. Enthusiastic pioneers headed west intent on picking up a fortune in the nearest stream. Though only a few actually used a pickax in the search for a fortune, women played a major role in the California Gold Rush. They discovered wealth working as cooks, writers, photographers, performers, or lobbyists. Some even realized dreams greater than gold in the western land of opportunity and others experienced unspeakable tragedy.
Rain dripped steadily from the bare trees outside the dark parlor. The bride stood at the top of the stairs, a red rose sent from her best friend pinned inside her dress. Unveiled, she started down the steps to the man who waited to marry her.
She had resisted his courtship and insisted that marriage did not fit her plans. The young engineer standing at the foot of the staircase had made his own plans. He arrived out of the wild West with a “now or never” declaration. He had taken off his large hooded overcoat, placed his pipe and pistol on the bureau in the room that had belonged to the bride’s grandmother, and the quiet force of his intent carried the day.
The bride well knew that the Quaker marriage ceremony puts the responsibility for making the vows directly on those who must keep them. She descended the stairs, catching sight of her parents, a handful of other family members, her best friend’s husband, and the man she had finally agreed to marry.
Mary Hallock gripped the arm of Arthur De Wint Foote and stepped up in front of the assembly of Friends, as the Quakers called themselves, to speak those irrevocable vows. She was twenty-nine, with an established career as an illustrator for the best magazines of the day. She had carefully considered what she would give up by taking this step. Arthur was a mining engineer, and his work was in the West. She was an artist, and all her contacts were in Boston and New York. She faced forward with a mixture of anxiety and joy.
To learn more about the amazing Mary Hallock Foote and her life and career in the West or about any of the other women who made their mark on the
Gold Rush read: With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
Enter to win a copy of With Great Hope on this site or when you visit www.chrisenss.com
