The gold seekers of '49

A Personal Narrative of the Overland Trail and Adventures in California and Oregon from 1849 to 1854.
BY KIMBALL WEBSTER A New England Forty-Niner
With an Introduction and Biographical Sketch By George Waldo Browne
Illustrated By Frank Holland and Others
Manchester, N. H. STANDARD BOOK COMPANY 1917 Copyrighted 1917 George W. Browne
To My Five Daughters, Mrs. Lizzie Jane Martin, Mrs. Eliza Ball Leslie, Mrs. Julia Anna Robinson, Mrs. Mary Newton Abbott, all of Hudson, N. H., and Mrs. Ella Frances Walch, of Nashua; and to the sweet memory of that loved Deceased Daughter, Latina Ray Webster, who quietly passed to the other side of the “Great Divide,” November 12, 1887, this narrative is most respectfully dedicated by the
Author KIMBALL WEBSTER

It is with keen regret and sorrow that we are called upon to record the going out of the life of the author of the following pages, who has died since work was begun upon the book. Mr. Webster was born in Pelham, N. H., November 2, 1828, the seventh child and third son of John and Hannah (Cummings) Webster. His education was acquired in the schools of his native town and Hudson, N. H. He grew up inured to the hard work upon a New England farm, besides working in granite quarries in his 19th and 20th years. In April, 1849, a little over six months before he was twenty-one, with others scattered all over the country, he caught the gold fever. Characteristic of his methodical ways, he kept a journal of his journey across the country and of his experiences as a miner in California and land surveyor in Oregon. His experiences in the Land of Gold are told in his own vivid language in the following pages, and form one of the most interesting narratives of the days of the gold-seekers of the Pacific Slope.
In 1855, after leaving Oregon, he was employed as a surveyor and land examiner by the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad Company in the western part of Missouri. In 1858 he lived in Vinal Haven, Me., working in a granite quarry, but the following year took up his permanent residence in Hudson, N. H., where he lived the remainder of his long and useful life. Following his leading occupation as surveyor and engineer, always active and capable in his duties as a citizen, Mr. Webster became a valuable and respected leader in public affairs, at one time or another holding all of the offices in the gift of his townsmen, while there were few important committees in which he did not figure prominently. Possessing an observing mind, a good memory and a logical discernment and summing up of local and general matters, he early began to compile a history of his town, and after fifty years of painstaking work he had collected the data for one of the most comprehensive town histories ever written. He was then past eighty, and it was the pleasure of the undersigned to be associated with him in the preparation of the manuscript for the printer and its publication. During work upon that, his “journal” of the days of ’49 were examined, and finally he consented to have it published.