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THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA: SAN FRANCISCO 1960

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A Trip to the Gold Mines

of California in 1848

BY

JOHN A. SWAN

Edited, with Introduction and Notes

By JOHN A. HUSSEY

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Copyright, 1960, by The Book Club of California

Contents

INTRODUCTION by John A. HusseyPAGE ixA TRIP TO THE GOLD MINES OF CALIFORNIA IN 18481I. TO THE DIGGINGS ON HORSEBACK3II. LOG CABIN RAVINE AND DRY CREEK13III. A LONG JOURNEY HOME24IV. BACKWARD GLANCES32NOTES37

TITLE PAGE

illustration reproduced from an engraving in William M. Thayer's "Marvels of Mining," Boston, 1887 .

FRONTISPIECE from the original photograph of John A. Swan which hangs in the entrance of California's First Theatre, Monterey. Courtesy, Division of Beaches and Parks, State of California .

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A TRIP TO THE GOLD MINES OF CALIFORNIA IN 1848

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John A. Swan

Introduction

THE COURSE OF HISTORY MAY BE LIKENED TO THAT OF A RIVER which meanders back and forth over a broad, level valley as it flows relentlessly toward its unseen goal over the horizon. We know that civilizations rise and fall, that nations are born and then die, and that periods of repression follow eras of license; but usually it is difficult for us to see when the changes begin, to know what forces deflect the course of events.

But every so often a happening occurs which is immediately recognized as important by almost everyone. Such events are history's chutes and crevasses, which suddenly channel the flow of human affairs in new directions. One such occurrence was James Marshall's discovery of gold at Sutter's sawmill on the American River on January 24, 1848.

John Sutter was not a brilliant man, but even he could comprehend that things would never again be the same in the great interior valley of California. He tried to keep the news secret until he could get some much-needed lumber from his mill and make other adjustments in his affairs; but, like spilled quicksilver, the word of gold scattered out in all directions.

Strangely enough, a rush to the mines did not develop immediately. On February 10, Sutter, unable to contain 10 x himself, boasted to General M. G. Vallejo of Sonoma that an "extraordinarily rich" gold mine had been found. During that same month he sent Charles Bennett to Monterey to carry to Governor Mason a request for a land claim at Coloma; and Bennett showed samples of gold not only in the territorial capital but in Benicia and San Francisco as well.

Yet it was not until March that Sutter's workmen began to leave him for the diggings. During that month and the next a few gold seekers from the coast, like the former Georgia miner, Isaac Humphrey, made their way into the Sierra foothills; and Sutter's rancher neighbors in the Sacramento Valley began to prospect for placers.

Scepticism concerning the richness of the gold fields was not dissipated in San Francisco until about the middle of May, when Sam Brannan paraded the streets holding aloft a bottle of dust and shouting, "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River." The mining fever broke out immediately, and within four weeks the town was virtually deserted. The contagion reached Monterey later in the same month but did not really take hold until June. It spread to Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and through the rest of Southern California during July and August.

Governor Mason estimated that by July 4,000 persons, including Indians, were working in the mines. This number was a respectable percentage of California's total non-Indian population of about 14,000. By the end of the first mining season, in October or November, it is probable that of this mid-year total, 1,300 Spanish-speaking native Californians and 4,000 Americans and Europeans had visited the placers.

At first, these California residents had the gold fields largely to themselves. Nearly all of them were without experience in mining, and they began by picking the precious metal from crevices and stream beds with knives and spoons. 11 xi Gradually, however, they learned from the few old-time miners, like Humphrey, to use the more efficient pan and rocker.

During the first few weeks of the rush, activity centered around Coloma and the South Fork of the American River; but prospectors quickly moved out both north and south, and discovery followed discovery. One observer commented in August that the miners were running over the country and picking gold out of the earth here and there "just as a thousand hogs let loose in a forest would root up ground nuts." When the digging slackened with the coming of winter, the mining region ranged along the Sierra foothills from the Feather River on the north to the Tuolumne on the south, with a detached outpost in the Shasta region at the head of the Sacramento Valley.

The Californians did not long keep their monopoly of the placers. Word of the gold discovery reached Honolulu in June, and during the next month shiploads of gold seekers began leaving the islands for the new El Dorado. Oregon heard the news by early August, and before the end of the year 1,500 to 2,000 settlers from the Willamette Valley had headed south. Mexico, Peru, and Chile made substantial contributions to California's population during the last months of 1848. At the end of the mining season there were perhaps 10,000 men digging in the foothills.

The great historian, Hubert Howe Bancroft, only echoed the words of many old-time Californians when he said that "the men of '48 were of another class from the men of '49" and that the year 1848 was "different from every other California year before or since." There was a kind of nai¨ve wonderment, a frenzied prodigality and restlessness, and, above all, a camaraderie among the forty-eighters which became watered down under the impact of the tens of thousands of Argonauts who swarmed into the gold fields during 1849.

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Everyone who has written about the days of '48 has noted the relative absence of crime in the diggings during that first year of the rush. Claims were indicated merely by leaving a pick or a shovel in an excavation. Claim-jumping, though not unknown, was rare. Bags of gold dust were left in tents and unlocked cabins; and successful miners with their heavy pokes trudged homeward unmolested on the lonely trails to the coast. Even horses, in much demand for moving from one prospect to another, were seldom stolen.

Another characteristic of the forty-eighters--and perhaps responsible for the lack of crime--was the fact that most of them knew each other, by personal acquaintance or by reputation. Particularly during the first months of the rush, they were largely "neighbors and friends, who would not wrong each other in the mountains more than in the valley."

When the hardy pioneers, for generations schooled in the barter economy of the frontier, and the sailors and soldiers, used to working for a mere pittance in cash, suddenly found their hands literally full of gold, most of them quickly lost all sense of proportion. The supply of wealth seemed endless, and many felt as did Sergeant James H. Carson of the 3rd U.S. Artillery when all at once, he later recalled, "the Rothschilds, Girard and Astors appeared to me but poor people." Prices of food and equipment in the mines skyrocketed to fantastic figures, quite out of keeping with the state of supply and the costs of transportation. A number squandered their new-found wealth and never regained their fortunes; others drank themselves into early graves. Forty-eight was one long, wild, happy spree for many, a time of steady, solid accumulation of wealth for others. Never again was gold so easy to find, and never again was the finding of it so enjoyable.

The story of the golden days of '48 is known in broad outline, and some phases of it have been chronicled in 13 xiii considerable detail. This state of knowledge is somewhat surprising in view of the fact that most of the miners were too busy scratching in crevices with knife blades and prospecting for new strikes to keep written records of their wanderings. And, as a matter of fact, much information on the opening of new diggings and the development of improved mining techniques was forever lost.

Nevertheless, a number of forty-eighters wrote accounts of their adventures which, sooner or later, appeared in print. One of the first, and certainly one of the most informative, was Colonel Richard B. Mason's official report of his July trip to inspect the diggings. E. Gould Buffum's lively and valuable Six Months in the Gold Mines was published in 1850. During that same year William R. Ryan's Personal Adventures --which tells more about Ryan than the gold fields--was issued in London; and Walter Colton's Three Years in California was printed in New York. Excerpts from the dispatches of the French consul in California, Jacques Antoine Moerenhout, were published in Paris during 1850; but the entire text of his remarkably fine account of a trip to the mines during the summer of 1848 was not made available in print until 1934 and 1935.

James H. Carson's indispensable Recollections of the California Mines came out in 1852. The memoirs of Peter H. Burnett and William T. Sherman reached print during the 1880's. A very brief glimpse of the mines late in 1848 is provided by the journal of Lieutenant John M. Hollingsworth, printed in 1923; and one of the most authentic and informative of all the 1848 accounts, the diary of Chester S. Lyman, was made available in book form in 1924. The recollections of Heinrich Lienhard throw light on several phases of life in the mines not covered by other accounts. His narrative was completed about 1870 and was published in altered form in 1898, but not until 1941 was there a satisfactory edition. A few pages of Agusti´n Janssens's Life 14 xiv and Adventures deal with his 1848 experiences on the Stanislaus. Although dictated during the 1870's, this account found a publisher only in 1953. Additional statements, some of them based on interviews with pioneers of '48, are found in county histories, in scattered newspaper articles, and in a number of general histories and works on mining.*

In this brief resume´ of the printed, eye-witness accounts of the 1848 gold rush, no attempt has been made to be exhaustive. In particular, the diaries and reminiscences of persons connected with the discovery at Coloma, such as John A. Sutter, Azariah Smith, Henry W. Bigler, and James Marshall, have been omitted deliberately, since the purpose of this sketch is to list the available sources concerning the rush as it was after the gold excitement became general throughout California.

Notwithstanding the keen interest in the literature of the gold rush which has existed ever since Marshall's discovery, several first-hand descriptions of life in the mines during 1848 have for decades remained unpublished, known to scholars but out of easy reach for the armchair historian and the general reader. Certainly one of the most important of these manuscript accounts, and perhaps the most entertaining, is "A Trip to the Gold Mines of California in 1848," by John A. Swan.

This narrative was written in 1870, evidently for its author's own amusement and, we can believe, for the record, because Swan possessed a keen sense of history.* As far as is known, he did nothing with his manuscript until 1872, when the net thrown out by Hubert Howe Bancroft to drag in source materials for his magnificently conceived history of western North America caught John Swan in its meshes. Perhaps it was one of the circulars which Bancroft broadcast to the pioneer settlers of California asking them to set down their early experiences, no matter how "trifling," which first aroused Swan's interest in the project of the San Francisco historian. It is known that he received a circular and answered some of its questions. At any rate, Swan entered into a correspondence with Bancroft; and on April 27, 1872, the historian sent him some requested information on the Society of California Pioneers.

When sending the manuscript to Hubert Howe Bancroft in 1872, Swan said that the account was written "some 3 or 4 years ago." Swan to Bancroft, Jolon, June 24, 1872, MS, in the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. However, internal evidence in the narrative itself indicates that it was written in 1870, since at one point Swan refers to the death of John Gilroy "last year." Gilroy died in 1869.

When Swan received this letter he was living at Jolon, in southern Monterey County. He did not reply at once, since, as he later told Bancroft, someone had broken into 15 xv his cabin "and had taken all my writing paper, pens, pocketbook, pencils, gold scales, scizzors, needles, thread, letters, powder Flask, percussion caps, and left me not so much as a scrap of paper or a piece of lead pencil to write with." But during May he visited Monterey, where he had property, and attempted to stir up enthusiasm for Bancroft's project among the "old boys," as the pioneer settlers liked to call themselves.

He did not meet with much success, he told the historian, because the inhabitants of Monterey were largely "easy going people and think more of taking the world easy and looking after their life stock interests and to the things of the present than to take the trouble of putting their pens to paper to chronicle things of the past; so much for the old people, while the young ones are very apt to look at persons who do talk of past transactions in California as . . . sort of half lunatics." But while there he found his gold rush manuscript in the desk in his Monterey home. He brought the account back to Jolon with him and then shipped it off to Bancroft in San Francisco.

"I send it with this letter for you to look over and see if there is anything of any service in it for your work," he wrote to the historian on June 24, 1872. "If so, you can take a copy or what extracts you wish and send me the original back, for although it is but a rough piece of writing it is facts not fiction, and though it may have no attraction for a stranger it has for me, as it brings to my mind people whom I was acquainted with years ago but who are now dead."

Bancroft recognized the merit of the work and had his assistants--the manuscript is in two handwritings--make a copy, which is to this day preserved in the Bancroft Library at the University of California. It is presumed that the historian returned the original document to its author; and it is hoped that he sent along with it a copy of a book 16 xvi entitled Nights in the Guard House , a work which Swan had read at sea during his youth and which, he told the historian when forwarding his manuscript, he "would like to look over again."*

Swan to Bancroft, Jolon, June 24, 1872, MS, in Bancroft Library.

Much of the value--and a good deal of the charm--of Swan's narrative is due to his down-to-earth attitude toward the scenes and events he described. He was no detached observer, standing aloof from the rough work of the diggings. His viewpoint was decidedly that of a pick-and-shovel miner. As a former common seaman he was, to use his own words, "at home" with the runaway sailors and soldiers with whom he lived near the present Placerville and on Dry Creek, and thus he knew from intimate association as well as from his own experience the wondrous excitement which gripped the first miners.

Swan did not expand his account with generalizations about the extent of the placers and the number of miners in the diggings. Rather, he confined his story quite rigidly to his own experiences and observations. And the subjects he described were those which interested the average gold seeker--the cost of tools, the care of horses, the price of gold dust, the difficulties of travel, songs by the campfire, and the availability--or the unavailability--of liquor. The reader of his narrative feels instinctively, "This is how it was."

Bancroft relied quite heavily on "A Trip to the Gold Mines" when preparing his history of the first year in the California diggings. A good deal of information from Swan's account is found digested in Bancroft's footnotes.* Swan himself later included incidents from the narrative in articles he wrote for Monterey County and San Jose newspapers. But, as far as the present editor could determine from a somewhat limited search, the complete manuscript has never before appeared in print.

See Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California (7 vols, San Francisco, 1884-1890), VI, chapters 4-6.

The author of "A Trip to the Gold Mines" was in many 17 xvii ways a remarkable man. His true niche in history, perhaps, is as a typical representative of that unsung class of California pioneers which was made up of the lowly on the economic scale--the carpenters, the sawyers, the soapmakers, the trappers, and the other laborers and craftsmen who gave the territory most of what little it had in the way of industry during the days before the American conquest. We hear a good deal of the more prominent foreign merchants and landowners, such as Thomas O. Larkin, Abel Stearns, and William E. P. Hartnell, but who ever heard of Jack Swan, baker of pies and boardinghouse keeper; or William McGlone, who failed in his attempt to make beer but who forever after was called "Billy the Brewer"; or John Milligan, the wild Irishman who taught weaving to the Indians of San Juan Bautista?

Yet, the men of this class contributed much to the building of California, and they were quite as proud of being pioneers as were their fellow early settlers who became more prosperous. In later life Swan became a sort of self-appointed champion of the poor and the forgotten among the "old boys," and he wrote sketches of a number of them for the newspapers because he believed they "deserved remembrance."* He seldom failed to reproach--in public print if possible--any of the well-to-do among the fraternity of old pioneers who slighted or showed evidence of having forgotten their poorer friends. In March, 1878, he met one of his earliest California acquaintances, Josiah Belden, a pioneer of 1841, at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Belden, by that time wealthy from real estate investments, did not recognize the aging Swan. He "told me he was losing his memory," Swan wrote a few weeks later to the editor of the San Jose Pioneer , "and I thought he was. Living in palaces don't generally improve people's memories, and I suppose the Palace Hotel in San Francisco is no exception to the rule."*

"How It Was Named," in The Pioneer (San Jose), May 12, 1877. "Milton Little, Pioneer of 1843," in The Pioneer (San Jose), May 3, 1879. 18 xviii

Swan's concern for the common man extended to the Spanish-speaking native Californians, whom he regarded with an affection and respect which never descended to maudlin sentimentality. He once took the Reverend Walter Colton to task for not editing his journal more carefully before publishing it. "He should have expunged the word banditti from it, as applied to the native population," Swan wrote in one of his newspaper sketches.*

"Letter from Pioneer Swan," in The Pioneer (San Jose), April 27, 1878.

From the standpoint of posterity, Swan's most noteworthy characteristic was his feeling for the importance of history. It was his firm conviction that his contemporaries did not have much interest in the events of pioneer times on the Pacific Coast. "I believe the average Californian of the present day takes more interest in the genealogies of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and goats than they do in that nobler animal man," he wrote to the editor of the San Jose Pioneer in 1878; but he foresaw the time when every scrap of information concerning early times would be treasured.* For this reason he had a passion for historical accuracy, even in very minor matters. "In speaking or writing of early days in California, people cannot be too particular about dates," he admonished one luckless editor whose paper had carried an article containing a slight error in reference to the day upon which California's first newspaper had been issued.*

The Pioneer (San Jose), June 22, 1878; and [Swan] to "Mr. Editor," Monterey, December 8, 1869, MS, in Bancroft Library. The Pioneer (San Jose), December 8, 1877.

In his own writing, he took care to verify facts whenever possible. During the 1870's, after William T. Sherman had risen to the distinguished position of commander-in-chief of the United States Army, Swan did not hesitate to write to him to obtain the date of a trifling incident which occurred while Sherman was a young lieutenant at Monterey in 1847.*

The Pioneer (San Jose), November 10, 1877.

This interest in history and this sensitivity to the requirements of good historical writing are not what one would expect from a person of Swan's background. Beyond the 19 xix fact that his parents were of Scotch descent, little is known about his family. His father, George Swan, was a native of Edinburgh. His mother was born in Canada but had been sent as a child to live with her grandparents in the Scottish capital. The two were married in Edinburgh, but shortly after the birth of their first child, George, they moved to London. There, on November 23, 1817, John Alfred Swan, their second child, was born. Other children followed in rapid succession until there were eleven in all, eight boys and three girls.

In later years John Swan told nothing about his father's business or about the family's economic circumstances, but the latter may be judged from the fact that in 1826, when he was only nine years old, the youth and two cousins were sent to Truro, in Cornwall, to live with an uncle. The new guardian was a merchant, and young John became acquainted with shipping and the ways of the sea.

Unfortunately for the boy, his uncle's business failed in 1828, and during the next year John went back to London. By that time his father had died, and John lived with his mother, his sisters, and a younger brother. The other boys, evidently, were already out earning their own livings or were in the care of relatives. John, too, must have gone to work, because he later said that he never attended school after leaving Cornwall.

In May, 1832, he was apprenticed for five years on the schooner Barkley of Newport, Monmouthshire. The vessel was engaged chiefly in the Mediterranean trade, and young Swan visited such out-of-the-way ports as Trieste, Messina, and the Ionian Islands. On one voyage the Barkley carried lemons and oranges to St. Petersburgh in Russia, and on another it brought a cargo of shot and shell to Alexandria for Mohammed Aali Pasha. "At Constantinople I ate my first grapes," John recalled in later years. But this life was not all romance, and when a chance offered itself in London 20 xx he jumped ship "on account of ill usage."

He quickly found employment on a ship sailing for India, and from there he went to China. Reaching Lintin in April, 1837, he went aboard the bark Agnes , commanded by his brother, Captain Robert Swan. Evidently he did not find his brother a congenial master, because he soon left the Agnes and joined a schooner engaged in the opium trade. Swan was not one to stay long on one ship, and in October, 1839, he signed on a vessel named the Harlequin and sailed for San Blas and Mazatlan on the west coast of Mexico. Reaching the latter port in April, 1840, he left the ship and settled down for a few months of shore life.

During his years at sea Swan acquired the habit of reading. Many a time, he later recalled, he received "a rope's ending" for having his nose in a book when he should have been attending to his duty. Some of the works he read undoubtedly were the "penny shockers" of the period, but not all. His letters and writings after he reached California show more than a passing acquaintance with the works of Edward Gibbon and Edmund Burke.

This passion for books remained with him all his life. In 1873 when he was living near the San Antonio Mission in southern Monterey County, the wife of a Mexican storekeeper asked Swan how he could remain in a canyon all by himself. She said she would go crazy under similar circumstances. "But then," Swan told Hubert Howe Bancroft, "she could not read, and was alone when she had no company." He, on the other hand, had the books he had read and the memory of the persons he had known and thus never felt lonely.*

Swan to Bancroft, Monterey, March 19, 1875, MS, in Bancroft Library.

Swan's fondness for reading may have been partly the result of certain physical traits and psychological characteristics which are revealed by his writings. For most of his life he was plagued by poor eyesight. "I did not know I was so nearsighted until I went to sea, and then I soon found 21 xxi it out," he said during his old age. He was short in stature and rather ashamed of his appearance. "I was not considered very good looking in my younger days," he once wrote to explain why he had not until then had a photograph taken. The fact that he never married perhaps reflects the depth of his inner wounds. During his declining years, still another defeat weighed heavily on his mind. In his letters and articles the good-hearted old sailor frequently unveiled an unacknowledged need to defend himself for having failed to make his "pile" as had so many of his California companions of the days before the American conquest.

Ashore at Mazatlan, Swan boarded at the home of a Belgian resident and took life easy for a while. Then his restlessness seized him once more, and on July 6, 1840, he took off on muleback for a trip across Mexico. Passing through Durango, Saltillo, Monterrey, and Matamoros, he ended his journey at Brazos Santiago, where he joined a schooner bound for New Orleans. After a few days at the Crescent City he moved on to Mobile. He remained there several months and then worked for about six weeks on a schooner operating between that port and New Orleans.

In May, 1841, he resumed his travels. He went up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers on the steamboat Orinoco to Cincinnati and then progressed by other boats to Wellsville, Ohio. From there he walked to Cleveland, and for the remainder of the year he was employed on schooners plying the Great Lakes. In December, 1841, he went by stage and railroad from Ogdensburg, New York, to Albany and then continued by river boat to New York City. After a few days he sailed for New Orleans, where he joined the British bark, Dumfriesshire , bound for Liverpool with a cargo of cotton.

At Liverpool he remained three weeks with one of his brothers, and then he went on to London to spend some 22 xxii time with his mother and his two oldest sisters. This was the last occasion on which he saw any of his relatives. His mother died a year or two later. "And a kind mother she was to me, as well as to the rest of her children," Swan attested.

On November 3, 1842, he left England in the bark Robert Matthews for Valparaiso. From there he made his way by steamer to Callao. Characteristically, he walked from the latter port to Lima "to take a look at it." His curiosity satisfied, he returned to the sea and after some voyaging along the west coast of Mexico found himself again at Mazatlan on May 14, 1843.

Mazatlan appears to have had a fascination for Swan, for he went ashore there and remained several months, not stirring from the town except for one walk inland to San Ignacio. But soon he was ready to be on the move again, and he shipped on board the hermaphrodite brig Soledad , bound for San Blas and then for Monterey, in Alta California. The vessel was a miserable one, Mexican owned and only 105 tons in burden. Swan found her to "leak like a sieve." Tradition says that his position on board was that of cook, but his own writings apparently give no basis for affirming or denying this conclusion.

The Soledad sailed from San Blas on August 28, 1843. Land was made near Point Sur on September 30. At first glimpse, Swan was disappointed in California. He had read Dana's Two Years Before the Mast and had received the impression that the coast was bounded by plains. Instead, he saw mountains. "It put me in mind of the coast of Old Spain," he later recollected.

The vessel anchored off Monterey on October 2. Swan liked the town, although he was quick to note that it had a somewhat barren appearance since "the Montereyans, like the rest of the native population, were never famous for their gardening propensities." He found the people 23 xxiii friendly and received the impression that "they did not then value a man for the clothes he wore, or gauge his brains by the depth of his purse." Having a "bad hand," he decided to leave the Soledad and went ashore on October 7.

Once on land, however, his old restlessness overtook him. He boarded at the home of George Kinlock, a Scotch carpenter and trader, for three weeks and made one excursion to see the Carmel Mission, but he found the town too quiet for his tastes and time growing heavy on his hands. California, he thought, "was out of the world at that time."

At last he could stand the tedium no longer and asked a fellow countryman, Captain John Rogers Cooper, who had been born on the English island of Alderney, if he could work his passage to Mazatlan. In addition to being a prominent trader and landowner, Cooper at that time was master of the Mexican schooner California which was engaged in the coastal trade between Mexico and California.

Cooper at first refused but later told Swan that if he would scrape a boat which the captain had ashore he would be given a chance to join the crew. So John Swan dutifully chipped paint, and when the California sailed for Mazatlan on December 10, 1843, he was aboard.

Again, says tradition, Swan was cook, but again Swan's own words fail to provide confirmation. But this time he was something more than a common seaman. While at Monterey Cooper had offered him a chance to go to the Rancho El Sur, near Point Sur, to take charge of the livestock there, but Swan "preferred books to horses or cattle" and declined. Evidently, however, Cooper took a liking to the little sailor, for he permitted him to bring 70 arrobas of dried beef along as a speculation.

When Mazatlan was reached on January 4, 1844, Swan made a few dollars profit on the sale of his beef. One of the passengers on the California was not so fortunate. Thomas O. Larkin, the leading American merchant at Monterey, 24 xxiv had shipped a large load of potatoes on the vessel, but on arrival at Mazatlan he found that the little schooner Susannah , built on Napa Creek in 1841, had preceded him into port and had satisfied the demand for potatoes. Not only did Larkin receive a poor price for his shipment, but heavy transit duties were assessed on some specie he landed. It was on this trip, however, that Larkin learned of his appointment as United States consul for California, and this news, said Swan, "may have reconciled him to the tax."

The return trip to Monterey was begun on January 27. On the second day out one of the Hawaiians in the crew came down with smallpox, and the disease spread to several other seamen. When San Pedro was reached, Larkin and another passenger disembarked to ride by land to Monterey. Upon his arrival home, Larkin gave the clothes he had worn during the voyage to a servant to wash, and soon smallpox was raging among the Indians of Monterey. When the California finally appeared off the port on March 10, 1844, the customhouse officers met her with an order to go to sea again because of the smallpox aboard; but the same officers brought Captain Cooper the news that his wife had just given birth to a daughter, so the captain swore he would see the governor damned before he would sail again and refused to go.

Despite the disaster the voyage brought to many others, it was a fortunate one for Swan. He had brought back a small selection of trade goods, and he was able to dispose of them for a profit of about $50. To raise money for further ventures, he sold his treasured frock coat which he had had made in London in 1842, and he exchanged a large writing desk he had purchased in Singapore for a smaller one and $20 to boot. Partly with the capital thus raised and partly on credit, he bought another 70 arrobas of dried beef and a quantity of butter and cheese, and he and his goods were aboard the California when it sailed for Mazatlan again on April 27.

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This time, however, forutne deserted John Swan, and he lost money on his speculations in the markets of Mazatlan. But when the California returned to Monterey on June 17, he had another shipment of trade goods aboard. Before Swan had time to dispose of them, Captain Cooper received orders to sail for Mazatlan with dispatches for the Mexican government. Unable to leave Monterey with his goods unsold, Swan went ashore from the schooner on June 24, 1844. Seemingly it was with a heavy heart that he saw the vessel sail the next day. The pain would have been greater could he have known that he had made his last voyage before the mast. He never again had anything to do with ships except as a passenger.

There is a tradition in Monterey that John Swan landed in the town "penniless as usual" and turned to the baking of pies to make a living. These pies, it is said, sold as fast as he could turn them out, and he thus was soon able to accumulate sufficient funds to buy a lot and build a saloon and boarding house for sailors. Perhaps he did bake pies--there is no record to the contrary--but in accounting for his activities after coming ashore, Swan himself said only that he opened a store at Monterey in 1844. Contemporary records show that this store was operating as early as January, 1845; and all during that year he also boarded seamen. Several of the latter were sick or destitute American sailors whose bills were paid by Consul Larkin.*

Thomas O. Larkin, Accounts, MS, C-B 105/105, in Bancroft Library.

Exactly when Jack bought the lot on the Calle Estrada which he owned all, or nearly all, the rest of his life has not yet been determined. The location, on the southwest corner of the present Pacific and Scott streets, was a good one, convenient to the Custom House landing; and the size, 42 varas by 100 varas, was generous. It must have represented a considerable investment for a man who had earned only a sailor's pittance during his working years.

Undoubtedly Swan made his purchase only after 26 xxvi considerable hesitation. During his trips on the California in 1844, influential passengers had offered to help him obtain a rancho in the Sacramento Valley, but he had refused. He had had his "teeth loosened" by the fever and ague while on Lake Erie in 1841, and he had no desire to have them completely shaken out of his head on the banks of the Sacramento or Feather rivers, both of which bore evil reputations as breeding grounds of fever. Also, during his first year ashore he had little intention of remaining permanently in California. So strong was this feeling, in fact, that he never mastered more than a few words of the Spanish language. "Not expecting to stop in the country, I did not try to learn," he explained many years later.

Yet the fact remains that he bought the lot, and what is more, he had a house upon it. Known today as "California's First Theater," this long, one-story adobe is one of Monterey's principal landmarks. It is frequently stated that Swan had the structure erected in 1846 and 1847. One enthusiastic witness went so far as to assert in later years that during 1847 he was "connected with its construction and dedication in the good old adobe days of Monterey."* But Swan does not give much support to such statements. In fact, his testimony is to the contrary.

"Pioneer Theatrical Exhibitions," in The Pioneer (San Jose), May 4, 1878.

Writing to a newspaper editor in 1869, Swan described the character of the Irish sailor, William McGlone, whom he met in 1844 and who, consular records show, boarded at Swan's house in the latter part of 1845. "Billy had a tolerable education, and was a good sort of a fellow when sober, but contrary enough when half drunk," Swan related; "in 1845 he wanted to ride on horseback into my house by the front door, but because I would not let him, he made a blow at me with a Mexican cutlass he had with him, but I dodged the blow and it took out a piece of my door casing, and the mark is there yet, though painted over, for I let it remain so in memory of old times.*

[Swan] to "Mr. Editor," Monterey, December 8, 1869, MS, in Bancroft Library. 27 xxvii

Here in the words of Swan, who was careful about dates, is evidence that the house was standing at least as early as 1845. Perhaps the northern end of the structure, which apparently is the older, was built by Swan when he first bought the lot, or perhaps it was already on the property. The southern section may have been added in 1846 or 1847.

Swan seems to have taken no part in the events of the conquest of California by the United States. He remained quietly at Monterey, making friends with the American soldiers and sailors who occasionally crowded the town. He continued to operate his store, to board seamen, and, it is said, to dispense liquor at a saloon which occupied one section of his building. For the rest of his life he took delight in telling of the little events which came to his notice during the period of military rule--how he had his eyes blackened trying to break up a fight among a group of sailors, how the crew of the Portsmouth's launch stole Billy McGlone's big iron kettle, and how Lieutenant William T. Sherman dumped a perfectly good cask of aguardiente into Monterey Bay to keep the soldiers from drinking it. The only claim he ever made to distinction during this time was for having placed an advertisement for a lost horse in the first issue of California's first newspaper, the Californian .

But the Mexican War came near to counting John Swan among its casualties. During the spring of 1847 the United States ship Columbus arrived in Monterey from a cruise in the Pacific. She carried aboard a "malignant disease" from Manila which spread among the townspeople. Lieutenant Colville J. Minor and nine enlisted men of Company F, 3rd Artillery, died of the malady. "Little Jack Swan," as he was then affectionately known, was among those who contracted the disease. For a while it was "touch and go" with him, but he finally recovered.

By the time the news of the gold discovery reached Monterey early in 1848, Swan seems to have become quite 28 xxviii satisfied with life in the quiet coastal town. For a man of his restlessness and curiosity he was a remarkably long time in catching the gold fever. When he finally left for the mines toward the end of July, he was among the last of the Monterey residents to depart for the new El Dorado.

His labors in the diggings near the present Placerville and on Dry Creek, so vividly descibed in his narrative, "A Trip to the Gold Mines of California in 1848," were not remunerative. Upon his return to Monterey in the latter part of October, he carried with him only a modest three pounds of dust--and an unquenchable thirst for the life of a prospector.

Apparently it was about this time that Swan's name became indelibly attached to the story of the theater in California. During the fall of 1847 soldiers belonging to the Monterey garrison had organized a minstrel show and other amateur theatricals. Tradition says that after several performances at the Cuartel, or barracks, and in the open air, they or their successors among Colonel Stevenson's New York Volunteers, received Swan's permission to set up a theater in the warehouse which adjoined his store and saloon. The first play to be staged in California "for money," it is said, was performed in Swan's theater during the spring of 1848.

Such may have been the case. However, most of these stories connect the use of Swan's house as a theater with the arrival in Monterey of three companies of volunteers who had been sent there to be mustered out of service. Companies A, B, and D of Stevenson's regiment were disbanded at Monterey on October 23 and 24, 1848.

If Jack Swan's storehouse was used as a theater during the fall of 1848, it was not for long. Many of the volunteers left for the mines as soon as they were mustered out, and on April 1, 1849, Swan leased the building to the United States Government as a warehouse for naval stores.*

Thomas O. Larkin, Accounts, U.S. Navy Agent, MS, C-B 105/26, in Bancroft Library. 29 xxix

Swan himself was soon otherwise occupied. Sometime before August, 1849, Father Doroteo Ambris visited Monterey with a small sample of scale gold which had been picked up near San Antonio Mission. He left the flakes at James Watson's store, and there Swan saw them. At once he experienced another attack of the gold fever, and a party was organized during August to explore the new placer. Not a trace of color could be found, however, and the prospectors soon returned to Monterey. Evidently this experience did not reduce the fever, and in September Swan and a company of friends, mostly soldiers from the 3rd Artillery, were back at the mines, this time in the vicinity of Jamestown and at the Mariposa diggings.

How successful this venture was is not recorded. Perhaps Swan made a modest "pile," for by the next year he was the owner of four lots in Monterey; three nearby "wood lots"; a horse, mule, and wagon; his house; and cash and goods to the value of $2,000.*

M. G. Vallejo, Documentos para la historia de California , MS, XXXV, 195, in the Bancroft Library.

At any rate, Swan seems to have returned to Monterey before the end of 1849. And about that time there appears uncontestable evidence that his warehouse was being used for theatrical purposes. Writing about General Alfred Sully in 1879, the old sailor recalled that Sully, as a young infantry lieutenant, "helped to paint some of the scenery for the theatre in my old adobe house in Monterey" during the latter part of 1849 and the beginning of 1850. Letters from Sully to his family written during December, 1849, and February, 1850, confirm Swan's testimony and give lively descriptions of the performances.*

"The Knave," in Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California), October 23, 1955. The Monterey County tax records for 1850 list among Swan's possessions "1 House (Theatre)."

During the early part of 1850 Swan continued to live at Monterey, operating a small grocery store and living at a boarding house "opposite Abrego's" run by Wilson and Wolfe. In May, he visited San Francisco on business and witnessed the fire which levelled three blocks of the city. While on another trip to San Francisco in November, he 30 xxx was nearly burned to death in a hotel fire at San Jose. It probably was with some relief that he occasionally rusticated at a ranch which he and his partner, Harris, operated in Carmel Valley. There, the only danger to be feared was from the grizzly bears.

Despite the rather pleasant life which Jack Swan seems to have created for himself in Monterey during the 1850's, he could not get rid of the mining fever. Late in 1851 and early in 1852, and again in 1856, he visited the gold fields of Mariposa County. About 1855 he returned to the vicinity of San Antonio Mission, where traces of gold provided a will-o'-the-wisp which fascinated him for all the rest of his life. Characteristically, he came back to Monterey from one prospecting trip in March, 1855, riding a young mare, lame in one foot, which he had bought specially on account of that defect, "as it would not be worth while for anyone to steal her." He visited San Antonio again in 1857 with his friends "Billy the Brewer" and "Bob the Fisherman," but there is no record of the results.

The Fraser River excitement of 1859 gave John another virulent attack of the gold fever. He was at Victoria, British Columbia, in May of 1859, and from there he went to the mines on the mainland. Monterey did not see him again until toward the end of 1863; but he went back to Vancouver Island during 1864 and did not return to Monterey until November, 1866. Nothing is known of his experiences in Canada. In 1879 he sent a sketch of his adventures during a winter on Thompson River to a California newspaper; but evidently the editor did not think his readers would be interested in such a subject, and the account was never published.

It was after his return from Fraser River that Swan's thoughts began to turn more and more to the "old days" in California. He started to jot down accounts of incidents he remembered, and then he sent them off to editors of 31 xxxi papers in Monterey and the surrounding area. For more than a decade, beginning in the late 1860's, articles by him appeared with some regularity in such periodicals as the Castroville Argus , the Salinas City Index , the Monterey Bulletin , the Monterey Californian , the Santa Cruz Sentinel , and the San Jose Pioneer .

As might be expected from his lack of formal education, Swan never mastered all the intricacies of English grammar and punctuation; but with his extensive reading to draw upon, he developed a highly effective and entertaining narrative style. He had an ear for a colorful phrase and did not hesitate to use puns when he saw fit, which was rather often. His articles are frequently recognizable by his rather unsophisticated humor.

"I think the Chico papers might have said a little more of an old pioneer on his death," he wrote to an editor upon hearing of the demise of Albert G. Toomes; "they may plead want of paper, as they have no paper mill; want of ink, as they have no ink manufactory; but they cannot plead want of pens, as they have a large Feather [River] near them which would make a great many quill pens, if they are short of steel ones."

Undoubtedly, Swan's principal reason for writing was to preserve for posterity what he knew of the olden times and the colorful pioneers of California. But there was also an economic motive. Short of cash during his later years and hungry for news, he seems to have hoped that editors would respond to his contributions with free copies of their papers.

A very modest person on the whole, Jack could not repress an occasional revelation of pride in authorship. He once told Hubert Howe Bancroft that he thought one of his sketches, though a trifle, was "as good in its way as many of the articles the Harpers take out of their drawer to publish, and then, it is a genuine California production, not an imported article." When, as occasionally happened, 32 xxxii an editor failed to publish one of his submissions, he became discouraged and sometimes stopped writing for a while. At first a staunch supporter of Bancroft, Swan later broke with him because of a fancied, or real, slight to his work and knowledge on the part of the historian and one or two of his assistants.

No one has ever collected all of Jack Swan's writings, and probably no one ever will. Many of them would be difficult to identify, since they sometimes carried no signature at all, or appeared over such pen names as "Pioneer," "An Old Salt," or "Pioneer of 1843." Yet if assembled, they would constitute a valuable body of source materials. "Swan's writings are not only interesting," said Hubert Howe Bancroft, "but remarkably accurate, his memory being rarely at fault, and the tendency to testify on matters beyond his personal knowledge--too prevalent among pioneer writers--being in his case reduced to a minimum."*

Bancroft, History of California , V, 740

From the late 1860's to the 1890's, "Uncle John Swan," as he came to be known, lived a life which bordered on poverty. His Monterey property provided him with a modest income for a number of years. His adobe house was rented out for a variety of uses, apparently serving at different times as a boarding house for whalers, a "tenement house," a drug store, a tea room, and a "shop." When "at home" he lived at Monterey for, as he told a friend in 1878, "I like the place, in spite of its decayed look, on account of the beauty of its surroundings, and the memories associated with them." But much of his time was spent near San Antonio, still searching for the fortune in gold which always eluded him.

His life in southern Monterey County was a lonely one, and sometimes dangerous. His small cabin near Jolon was broken into on at least one occasion. In 1878, while riding alone from Arroyo Seco to Soledad for provisions, his hat blew off. When he dismounted to pick it up, his horse 33 xxxiii bolted and dragged him for a considerable distance. Severely lacerated, the resourceful old sailor "bound his wounded fingers with Australian blue gum leaves, and found that it did them a great deal of good."

Always nearsighted, Swan's eyes grew worse as he became older; and during the 1870's deafness began to come upon him. During July, 1879, he told the editor of the San Jose Pioneer that he supposed he would "have to give up roving in the hills after this year, as I am getting deafer as well as older all the time--a great disadvantage in the mountains." Early November, however, found him still wandering about from place to place and looking forward to his sixty-second birthday on November 23. "I don't know where I shall spend it," he admitted to the editor of the Salinas Index .

The old sailor's principal joy during his last years was visiting with his pioneer cronies and talking over early times with them. One of his regular stopping places was the farm of James Meadows in Carmel Valley, and he had other friends near Monterey on whom he could count for occasional bed and board. Sometimes his visits took him as far afield as San Jose and San Francisco. Occasionally such trips were made by train or other public conveyance, but most often he walked.

As the years went by, he became a familiar figure on the roads of Central California. His hatband, bearing the legend, "Pioneer of '43," served as his credentials. Those who enjoyed reminiscing about the past looked forward to his visits, but there were some among his old acquaintances who experienced mixed feelings when the garrulous, rather shabby old sailor made his appearance. Learning that Swan was planning to call upon one editor in 1878, the publisher of another paper slyly wrote, "We'll bet on Jack outwinding him." Yet when Swan died, a Monterey paper said, "He is the only man we ever knew of whom it may be said that he 34 xxxiv had no enemies."

At last old age and infirmities put an end to Jack Swan's wanderings. He lost his little remaining property, and his final years were spent as a county charge. On the evening of January 6, 1896, while walking down a hall in the Monterey County Hospital in Salinas, the venerable pioneer fell dead from a heart attack.

His remains were brought to Monterey, where the town's early settlers took up a subscription to give their old friend a respectable funeral. "Poor old Jack Swan has ended his long and eventful career and gone the way of all flesh," commented the editor of the Monterey Cypress . Every man, woman or child knew him and respected him for kindness of heart. He was guileless like a child, and will undoubtedly secure a reserved seat in heaven, for we honestly believe he is entitled to it."*

Monterey Cypress , January 11, 1896. This sketch of Swan's life is based largely upon his own words, as found in numerous newspaper articles. The principal sources are: The Pioneer (San Jose), January [27], November 10, December 8, 15, 1877; January 12, February 16, March 30, April 6, 27, May 4, 18, June 8, 22, August 3, 1878; April 12, 19, May 3, 17, August 9, 1879; September 18, 1880; April 2, 1881; Salinas City Index , September 27, November 22, December 20, 27, 1877; July 4, 1878; November 6, 1879.

In addition to the other sources cited in the footnotes above, the following works have been useful: Laura Bride Powers, Old Monterey, California's Adobe Capital (San Francisco, 1934); John A. Swan, Historical Sketches, MS, in Bancroft Library; and George Tays, First Theatre in California (typewritten, California Historical Landmarks Series, Berkeley, 1936).

This edition of John Swan's "A Trip to the Gold Mines of California" has been prepared from the manuscript copy in the Bancroft Library. The whereabouts of the original text is unknown. In editing Swan's work for this, its first printing, no significant material has been omitted except for a short section at the very end entitled "Reminiscences of the Alta Cal." This essay, occupying three pages of the manuscript, has no connection with the account of the trip to the mines. After the main narrative had been completed, Swan saw an article in the San Francisco Alta California of March 6, 1870, on the arrival of the New York Volunteers at San Francisco. Noting several errors in the item, he desired to make a record of his corrections and chose for this purpose the blank pages at the end of his gold rush manuscript. Swan's comments on this occasion are of no particular interest, and it has seemed best not to include them in this publication. The only other material left out consists of several subheadings used by Swan which interfere with the flow of the narrative.

35 xxxv

Every effort has been made to preserve scrupulously the sense of Swan's text, but there seemed to be no point to reproducing his unorthodox punctuation or all of his misspelled words and his frequent abbreviations, particularly since a number of the errors obviously were the fault of Bancroft's clerks who copied from the original manuscript. Certain minor corrections and changes have therefore been made, paragraphing has been supplied, the account has been divided into chapters, and chapter headings have been inserted. But enough grammatical errors and rambling sentences have been left to convey the flavor of "Uncle John Swan's" inimitable style.

The Book Club of California is indebted to Dr. George P. Hammond, Director of the Bancroft Library, University of California, for permission to print Swan's narrative. Thanks are also extended to Mr. James deT. Abajian, Librarian, California Historical Society; Mrs. Maria Daly, Historical Guide, California Division of Beaches and Parks, Monterey; Mrs. Helen S. Giffen, of the staff of the Society of California Pioneers; and Mr. Allan R. Ottley, California Section Librarian, California State Library, for special assistance in the search to discover more about the life and work of John A. Swan.

John A. Hussey

Piedmont, California

September 5, 1960