1850s

Farewell to California! The Bonniwell party returns (part 4)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

If you’re just joining us, you may want to read the first three parts of this series: (part 1), (part 2), and especially (part 3) before continuing with today’s Part 4.

April, 1851: Alfred T. and (George? or Charles?) Bonniwell to NYC

Based on the documents that I have been able to locate so far, the next members of the Bonniwell expeditions to return from California were Alfred T. Bonniwell and one of his older brothers.

Like Henry Bonniwell and P.M. Johnson at the end of 1850, in the spring of 1851 Alfred and his brother had a choice of routes and providers for the return home from San Francisco.

“Vessels Advertised,” for Panama and New York City, San Francisco Daily Alta California, January 10, 1851, page 1.

Like Henry Bonniwell and P.M. Johnson before them, Alfred and his brother appear to have chosen to travel on the ships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. They probably sailed on the steamer Sarah Sands from San Francisco to Panama (City). then crossed the isthmus of Panama (via some combination of horse, mule and/or canoe) and boarded the U.S.Mail Steamer Cherokee for the trip to New York:

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Farewell to California! The Bonniwell party returns (part 3)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

UPDATED, May 13, 2023, with a few minor text edits and additions for clarity.

If you’re just joining us, you might want to read the first two parts of this series: Farewell to California! The Bonniwell party returns (part 1) and Farewell to California! The Bonniwell party returns (part 2), before continuing with today’s Part 3.

Since its beginnings in 1848, news of the California Gold Rush was highly sought after across the nation. U. S. newspapers published all the latest doings, and raced to print the latest updates before competing papers could do so. Readers were breathlessly informed of the amounts of gold and cash (usually in the form of specie, or money as coins) that regularly arrived at eastern ports. Lists of passengers departing to and arriving from the gold fields occupied inch after inch of column space. Ships arriving from the west fed America’s appetite for the latest developments by carrying eastward the U.S. Mail and the latest California newspapers. Ship captains prided themselves on delivering the news more quickly than their competitors.

December, 1850: Henry Bonniwell and P. M. Johnson

The result of this insatiable need for California news—available to 21st-century readers via digitized and searchable historic newspaper collections—is that I have been able to identify the names of several of our returning Bonniwell expedition members, along with their date of return and means of travel. From what I’ve learned so far, the first two of our Wisconsin adventurers to return were Henry V. Bonniwell and Phineas M. Johnson, who arrived in New York City harbor on the morning of Friday, December 20, 1850, as passengers on the steamer Cherokee.

Today’s Clark House Historian post uses just one of these gold rush articles as its source. The original article occupied the complete first column (and a bit of the second) of page 2 of the Friday evening, December 20, 1850, New York Evening Post. There’s a lot of news packed into the original article; to make that news easier to digest, I have divided the unbroken column of type into several smaller parts. Let’s take a closer look…

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Farewell to California! The Bonniwell party returns (part 2)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

The Bonniwell party’s prospectors had gone to the California gold fields via two very different routes. The 1849 party went west using a combination of land and water transportation to get from Milwaukee to El Dorado via steamship from New Orleans, then across the Isthmus of Panama by foot, mule and canoe, and then another steamer to San Francisco. Compared to the overland route, it was quicker, more reliable, and safer, but more expensive.

The larger Bonniwell party of 1850, led by “Captain” William T. Bonniwell, took the shorter but more strenuous—and risky—overland route. After fitting out their wagon train at Independence, Missouri, they headed west, across the vast plains and the great western desert, and then struggled up and across the Sierra Nevada. This route was much less expensive, and much less secure. They faced constant dangers, including lack of adequate food and water, unpredictable weather, equipment failure, the threat of bandits, and the possibility of Indian attack.

Both Bonniwell parties survived their journeys and made it to the gold region. They appear to have had some success, mixed with much tedium and many futile efforts. Eventually, our Wisconsin prospectors—like many, if not most, California gold seekers—decided to return home. And then the question became: how to get home safely, economically, and reasonably quickly? For most adventurers, especially those with even a modest amount of gold dust or specie in their baggage, it was clear that the overland route was too long, impractical and dangerous. So some kind of (mostly) ocean voyage seemed like the best bet, and the San Francisco newspapers were full of enticing deals for homeward travelers.

San Francisco to Panama, and beyond

San Francisco newspapers regularly featured advertisements for competing steamship lines. Here’s one from the Daily Pacific News of January 21, 1850, for the Empire City line, promoting the trip from San Francisco to Panama [City] on their newest ship, the Sarah Sands.

This 1850 lithograph, like the ad above, suggests the iron ship Sarah Sands was new, modern and cut a sleek line through the sea. Just the thing for a returning miner’s comfortable trip homeward:

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Farewell to California! The Bonniwell party returns (part 1)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

I’ve never been to California’s gold rush country, so I don’t know how accurate this unknown artist’s View of Sutter’s Mill & Culloma Valley. On the South Fork of the American Line, Alta, California might have been.1 It’s drawn in the Romantic style of the time, although it’s clear the unspoiled, natural, “sublime,” view of El Dorado county’s hills and mountains are quickly giving way to the shelters and “diggings” of the immigrant gold miners and the nearby rough-and-tumble mining town of Culoma.

I wonder, did the Bonniwell party’s miners have the time, or inclination, to savor such exalted vistas? Perhaps. During the Bonniwell’s overland trek in the summer of 1850, George Bonniwell mentioned in his diary a number of “beautiful ” views of rivers, bluffs and other natural wonders. But after a year or two of toil in the harsh conditions of gold-rush era California, I expect the day-to-day existence of our Mequon men had become much less awe-inspiring. The typical experience of gold rush miners—whether successful or not—tended to be much more…mundane:

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The Cooper

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

In the 1800s there were no corrugated cardboard boxes or padded shipping envelopes. If you needed to store or ship any liquid—and most dry goods—the barrel (and its larger and smaller cousins) was almost always your container of choice.

Anderson, Alexander, engraver. Five Men on a Flatboat With Barrels and Sacks; One Man Operates the Keel from Above the Boathouse, the Others Are Resting on the Freight, circa 1830-1860, Library of Congress.

And when you needed a barrel, hogshead, keg, cask or firkin, or just an oaken bucket for your well, you would get it from a cooper.

Unknown photographer. Occupational Portrait of a Cooper, Three-Quarter Length, With Barrel and Tools, circa 1840-1860, Library of Congress.

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1850 census: more neighbors “in Wisconsin”– while prospecting in California

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

Recently, we took a closer look at the 1850 census for old Washington county1 and noticed that six men from the neighboring Bonniwell families—men that we know from other records were actually half a continent away, prospecting for gold in California—were officially enumerated as members of their Wisconsin families in census schedules for Mequon and Grafton. In addition, we now know that those six Bonniwell men were not the only members of their expedition to be enumerated with the families they left behind in old Washington county.

Persons “whose usual place of abode…”

In the months since my original attempt to identify and list all the members of the Bonniwell 1849 and 1850 expeditions in Gold! – The Bonniwells go west…but when? and who?, I have been able to identify—with varying degrees of confidence—several other members of their California expeditions. I have more details to share about the lives of these men later, when time permits. For today, I’d like to briefly introduce each of them and make note of their presence on the 1850 census schedules for old Washington Co., Wisconsin, even though all were still seeking fortunes in California at the time they were enumerated.

Phineas Miller “P.M.” Johnson (1808-1876)

P. M. Johnson was, with William T. Bonniwell, one of the co-organizers of the Bonniwell 1849 and 1850 expeditions to the California gold region. We know that he was still in California in 1849-1850, but he was enumerated on lines 37-42, page 229a of the 1850 census for Grafton, Washington Co., Wisconsin with his wife, Orra Ann (Collins) Johnson and his four eldest children: Ransom W., Samuel C., William H., and George.2

The P.M Johnson family’s 1850 enumeration concludes on the reverse of this schedule, lines 1-4, page 229b, with the information for their youngest four offspring, Anna, Edwin, Julia, and four-month-old Harriet.

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The Bonniwells & Co. and the 1850 census–part 4: “in” Wisconsin!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

In our last post, we discovered that none of our Bonniwell gold rush expedition members could be found on the surviving population schedules for the 1850 federal census in California.1 Does that mean they were not to be found anywhere on the national 1850 enumeration? Well, no. It turns out that while the Bonniwell men and their companions were physically present in California, they managed to be enumerated in…Wisconsin?

Currier & Ives. Home Sweet Home, c. 1874. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. Library of Congress.

There’s no place like home

You might think that once every ten years, when the census enumerator came to call, he or she would simply speak to a responsible adult at each address and write down the information for all of the “inhabitants” of each household. And that is pretty much how it was done.2

Naturally, there could be complications. What if some members of the household were away, perhaps working the fields, or at the mill? Maybe someone had to go to town, or farther away, on business. What about a child that is out of town at school or college? Or… what if the head of household had gone prospecting in the wilds of California’s gold district?

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The Bonniwells & Co. and the 1850 (and ’52) census – part 3

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Our previous post1 left us with two important, unanswered questions: Could the Bonniwells and their companions have been recorded on the 1850 federal population census in California? And if they could be counted, were they? After all, travel through the gold camps in the high mountains could be pretty difficult in the best of times:

Gold miners, El Dorado, California, ca. 1848, before 1853. Library of Congress.

Add the rain and snow of a typical fall and winter in California’s gold region and the enumerator’s task must have been very difficult. But the answer is yes, it was possible that our Mequon prospectors could have been counted in the 1850 census in California. The enumeration of the gold mining counties began well after the official enumeration date of June 1st, 1850, and the process continued in some gold region counties until the last weeks of December, many months after the arrival of the overland contingent of the Bonniwell expedition.

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