CHAPTER VIII
WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE PIONEERS
The chief source of demoralization among the Pioneers was the absence of women and children, and therefore of any real home. “Ours is a bachelor community,” remarked the “Alta California,” “but nevertheless possessing strong domestic propensities.” Most significant and pathetic, indeed, is the strain of homesickness which underlies the wild symphony of Pioneer life. “I well remember,” writes a Forty-Niner, “the loneliness and dreariness amid all the excitement of the time.” The unsuccessful miner often lost his strength by hard work, exposure, and bad food; and then fell a prey to that disease which has slain so many a wanderer—homesickness. At the San Francisco hospital it was a rule not to give letters from the East to patients, unless they were safely convalescent. More than once the nurses had seen a sick man, after reading a letter from home, turn on his side and die.
In the big gambling saloons of San Francisco, when the band played “Home, Sweet Home,” hundreds of homeless wanderers stood still, and listened as if entranced. The newspapers of ’49 and ’50 are full of lamentations, in prose and in verse, over the absence of women and children. In 1851 the “Alta California” exclaimed, “Who will devise a plan to bring out a few cargoes of respectable women to California?”
On those rare occasions when children appeared in the streets, they were followed by admiring crowds of bearded men, eager to kiss them, to shake their hands, to hear their voices, and humbly begging permission to make them presents of gold nuggets and miners’ curiosities. In the autumn of 1849 a beautiful flaxen-haired little girl, about three years old, was frequently seen playing upon the veranda of a house near the business centre of San Francisco, and at such times there was always on the opposite side of the street a group of miners gazing reverently at the child, and often with tears running down their bronzed cheeks. The cry of a baby at the theatre brought down a tumultuous encore from the whole house. The chief attraction of every theatrical troupe was a child, usually called the “California Pet,” whose appearance on the stage was always greeted with a shower of coins. Next to the Pet, the most popular part of the entertainment was the singing of ballads and songs relating to domestic subjects.
In ’49 a woman in the streets of San Francisco created more excitement than would have been caused by the appearance of an elephant or a giraffe. Once at a crowded sale in an auction room some one cried out, “Two ladies going along the sidewalk!” and forthwith everybody rushed pell-mell into the street, as if there had been a fire or an earthquake. A young miner, in a remote mountain camp, borrowed a mule and rode forty miles in order to make a call upon a married woman who had recently arrived. He had a few minutes’ conversation with her, and returned the next day well satisfied with his trip. At another diggings, when the first woman resident appeared, she and the mule upon which she rode, were raised from the ground by a group of strong-armed, enthusiastic miners, and carried triumphantly to the house which her husband had prepared for her.
When the town where Stephen J. Field purchased his corner lots was organized, the first necessity was of course a name. Various titles, suggested by the situation, or by the imagination of hopeful miners, were proposed, such as Yubaville and Circumdoro; but finally a substantial, middle-aged man arose and remarked that there was an American lady in the place, the wife of one of the proprietors, that her name was Mary, and that in his opinion, the town should be called Marysville, as a compliment to her. No sooner had he made this suggestion than the meeting broke out in loud huzzahs; every hat made a circle around its owner’s head, and the new town was christened Marysville without a dissenting voice. The lady, Mrs. Coullard, was one of the survivors of the Donner party, and the honor was therefore especially fitting.
Doubts have been cast upon the story of the bar surmounted by a woman’s sunbonnet, to which every customer respectfully lifted his glass before tossing off its contents; but the fact is substantiated by the eminent engraver, Mr. A. V. S. Anthony, who, as a young man, drank a glass of whiskey at that very bar, in the early Fifties, and joined in the homage to the sunbonnet. There is really nothing unnatural in this incident, or in that other story of some youthful miners coming by chance upon a woman’s cast-off skirt or hat, spontaneously forming a ring and dancing around it. In both cases, the motive, no doubt, was partly humorous, partly amorous, and partly a vague but intense longing for the gentle and refining influence of women’s society.