Researching the Oregon-California Trail: The California Gold Rush and my GGG-GF Henry Petree

Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots - Post #19

by Tonya Graham McQuade

In my recent posts, I have discussed a few different relatives who traveled west on the Oregon and Mormon Trails in the 1800’s: Lewis Hale, who went with his wife Louisa and children Nancy and Charles to the Petaluma Valley in California in 1858 (Post #13); Jane Kennedy Hale and her son William Simpson Hale, who traveled with the Kennedy Train to Walla Walla, Washington, in 1862 (Posts #14-16); and my great great grandparents Robert Deacon and Mary Elizabeth Graham, who traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah in the early 1880’s (Post #18).

Today’s post goes back even further: to the California Gold Rush of 1849. Many Missourians joined the estimated 32,000 gold seekers who went West on the Oregon-California Trail through present day Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Nevada. As they neared California, they had to cross the Forty Mile Desert, “a hot, dry wasteland between the Humboldt and Carson rivers in present-day Nevada. Some people brought enough water for the crossing. Those who did not sometimes paid for this with their lives. Beyond the Forty Mile Desert, lay California, the land of gold. Some would find their fortunes there. Most would not” (http://www.shoppbs.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kids/goldrush/journey_oregon.html).

While some from the east coast arrived in California by ship, that was a much more expensive undertaking, so most Forty-niners traveled in covered wagons pulled by oxen or mules, through vast stretches of wilderness. As they traveled, “they endured violent thunderstorms, torrential rain, and scorching heat. They traveled mile after mile of bumpy trails that choked their throats with dust in dry weather and turned to mudholes when rain fell. They lost their belongings and even their lives trying to cross rivers such as the Platte, the Green, and the Bear…. 

“Disease was the biggest killer. Forty-niners fell victim to cholera, mountain fever, pneumonia, and diphtheria. Hundreds of gold-seekers died and were buried along the trail. The strain took a toll on the oxen and mules as well. As they traveled, forty-niners lightened the load by throwing out everything they didn't need--from cookstoves and furniture to barrels of flour. Still, thousands of animals died from exhaustion or thirst and were left to rot in the sun” (http://www.shoppbs.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kids/goldrush/journey_oregon.html).

One of the last vestiges of “civilization” they would pass through was Fort Laramie, which I wrote briefly about in previous posts. According to the Fort Laramie National Historic Site website, “The emigrant season at Fort Laramie was short, a maximum of 45 days. The timing of one's visit there hinged on two factors in an equation of survival. One left the Missouri River jumping-off place no sooner than the spring rains could green up the prairies for vital pasture for mules and oxen. This could be any time the last half of April. Near the other end of the journey was the barrier of the Sierra Nevadas; if you got there too late after your exhausting traverse of the arid Great Basin you could die of exposure in October snows. So you aimed to reach Hangtown (later Placerville) in the Mother Lode country no later than midSeptember. 

“Averaging 12 to 15 miles per day, including rest stops, over the total distance of near 2,000 miles, this meant a journey of four to five months, depending on the fortunes or misfortunes of the trail. This also meant that in 35 to 40 days from your starting point you should be at Fort Laramie, where you could rest, gird up, and regroup for the ordeal remaining…. [If you survived various cholera outbreaks], “there was a high casualty rate from trailside accidents, such as drownings, the careless use of firearms, and injuries from ornery mules and oxen. Because of overloads there was wholesale abandonment of excess baggage and equipment at Fort Laramie, and heavy wagons were often reduced to two-wheel carts” (https://www.nps.gov/fola/learn/historyculture/upload/FOLA_history.pdf)

My own great-great-great grandfather, Henry Petree (1804-1873) - father to Bailis Petree, who married MaryAnn Hale - traveled west in 1849 for the California gold rush, taking his two oldest sons, John and Benjamin, with him. Bailis and his two sisters, according to the 1850 Census, were left behind to live with the Schooling family since their mother, Mary Snowden (1811-1844), had died. I’m not sure if the Henry and Icyphene Schooling were relatives or just friends - I have not found them in my family tree - but Jane Kennedy Hale in one of her later letters from Linn County, Oregon, where the Schoolings had moved, describes them as an  “Uncle Henry and Aunt Icy” (letter dated 31 July 1875).

Henry returned one year later, married Sarah Strader (1826-1912), and had four more children; Benjamin returned in 1857. I write about this family “exit” to California in Chapter 3 of Missouri Daughter, where during a visit to St. Joseph, Bailis reflects on how lonely he felt at that time and how happy he was when his brother Benjamin returned:

Bailis felt so thankful for Benjamin. After Bailis’s mother Mary had died back in 1844 when Bailis was just four, a few months after they had moved here to Andrew County from Indiana, his father Henry had struggled to hold the family together. His older sister Sarah had tried her best to cook their meals and keep the house clean, but they had definitely appreciated the neighbors who brought them home-cooked meals in those early days. Then, his father Henry had decided in 1849 to head out to California to try his luck in the gold mines, and he took Bailis’s older brothers John, twenty-two, and Benjamin, then just fifteen, along with him.

 

Bailis had never felt so alone. His sister Sarah had already married by that time and moved to her own house, so he and his sisters Margaret, who was two years older, and Mary, who was two years younger, had gone to live with the Schoolings. Mr. And Mrs. Schooling treated them well, but Bailis missed the life he used to have. When his father had finally come home from California a year later, he’d gotten remarried and started a new family. Bailis and his sisters had tried living with them for a time, but it was clear their stepmother preferred they find somewhere else to go. She saved most of her kind words for her own children.

 

His brother John had decided to stay in California, and though he never found much gold, he had married and settled down in Sacramento. Bailis wondered if he would ever see John again or meet his wife and children. However, to his everlasting thankfulness, Benjamin had come home five years ago, and Bailis, Margaret, and Mary had moved in with him. That’s where he had lived until he married Mollie, and Margaret and Mary were still there. Lucy had taken them under wing and always made them feel welcome.

I’m really not sure why Bailis and his sisters went to live with his brother rather than continuing to live with their father and stepmother, but the 1860 Census records show that to be the reality. They lived with Benjamin and his new wife, Lucy, while their father lived in the same county with his second wife and their four children. Missouri Daughter is the historical fiction version of the story I am writing, so there is some guesswork involved.

Check back next time for an excerpt from Missouri Daughter, Chapter 7, where the Hale family in Andrew County, Missouri, receives another letter from a friend in California: Elias Edwards. Elias chose to stay in California and writes about California's scenery, its social scene, and its "scarcity of young ladies."