Life

The Gridley Gold Fields Diary – Cooking, Washing, Mending and “Whiskey Everywhere”

On Dry Creek were Fiddletown and Drytown, or neighboring Amador City. Among its 200 houses, Drytown had 26 bars.
Up at Fiddletown they might listen to one of the Missouri musicians for whom the town was named,
or sample a meal cooked by one of its Chinese population, the largest in any California town except San Francisco.

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Life

The Gridley Gold Fields Diary – “A MINER’S LIFE”

By 1851, miners were also learning more about the gold country’s geology, and began to look up from their placers to the gold studded quartz veins of the Mother Lode itself. On a trip to Placerville, George found “tunneling all the rage”. He went into a mineshaft to watch the hard rock miners working with pick and drill by candle light, found it “quite a curiosity”. He bought two shares of stock in the company, and went back to the dry diggings.

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Life

The Gridleys’ Gold Fields Diary – the 40-Mile Desert, a Barrier Without Water

“The horse they had bought at Council Bluffs died. Another had been sick on the Platte and was still lame. What if the others should fail? Finally. they reached the 40-mile Desert, a barrier without water or grass, barring the way to the cool waters of the Truckee River and California.”

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Life

The Gridley Gold Fields Diary – Gone to See the Elephant!

“In 1849 and 1850, the gold fields of California were the talk of the whole country and half the world. In the streets and on the wharves of New York and New England, on the farms of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, in Europe, South America. and China, men exchanged stories about El Dorado, “a land so rich in gold that they had but to stoop to pick up a fortune, where gold was so plenty that it was impossible to miss it” At Long Grove, our great-great uncle John Gridley just turned 19, heard the news and thought of joining the argonauts. Rush.”

George Gridley, aged 29 and brother John T. Gridley, age 21, had heard of the excitement and easy pickings in the gold fields of California, and like many young men of their day, decided to travel West with a small band of friends from their home in Half Day Illinois, to seek their fortune. Their letters home depict their rough and tumble adventures, and also give clues to the lives of those fearless souls who journeyed west to “see the elephant.” Great appreciation goes to Daniel Ray, who wrote the first six chapters of narrative and transcribed these letters in 1981.

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