Today, I'm sharing an excerpt from chapter 7 of my draft of Missouri Daughter, my historical fiction novel that incorporates the Civil War letters written by my GGG Grandfather James Calaway Hale, to wrap up my earlier posts (#13-19) about family members who headed West along the Oregon Trail and Mormon Trail - some to California during and after the Gold Rush; some to Walla Walla Washington; and some to Salk Lake City, Utah.
This chapter includes a letter from a friend from Andrew County, Elias Edwards, who made the decision to stay in California. I love his descriptions of the California scenery and social customs and troubles of the time, and I'm very impressed by his vocabulary and writing style. While the actual letter is dated September 15, 1860, I change the date in the book to March 1863 for the sake of the storyline.
The excerpt I'm sharing opens with Bailis (my great great grandfather) and Mc (McDonald, Mollie's brother) heading to the post office after a fishing trip.
Missouri Daughter, Chapter 7:
... Two letters were waiting for them at the post office in Savannah: one from Papa and one from their old friend Elias Edwards, who had been living in California for quite a few years now. They had not heard from him since he had left, so both Bailis and Mc were excited to read the news.
“We’d better wait to open the letter until we get back to the house,” Bailis suggested. “We don’t want the others getting upset at us for spoiling the fun.”
They stopped to pick up Mollie and Jimmy before heading down the road to take Mc home. There was plenty of excitement when they all walked in with the giant catfish, crappy and trout, two letters, and 75 cents from their catfish sale that Mc presented to Mama with a grandiose display. Mama beamed at him, and it made his heart glad. Then she eagerly urged them all to sit down and asked Mollie to read the two letters.
Mollie decided to start with the letter from Elias since it had been many years since they had heard anything from him:
March 1863 – Iowa Hill, Placer County, California
Dear Mollie and Family,
I received a letter from a friend of mine a few days since in the vicinity of Savannah, Missouri, who informs me that it is your request I should write to you a letter and that if I do, you will answer the same. Many years have elapsed and many changes taken place since I last saw you all, and although it has been my lot to form many new acquaintances and fond ties of friendship, I still remember you all fondly.
I hear, Mollie, that you and Bailis have now married. Let me offer my best wishes for your happiness. As for myself, sad to say, I find myself having to answer to that accursed title of Bachelor. You request me through my friend to write a good and long letter. Sadly, a good letter is something I am not capable of doing, and to write a long one gives birth to a question in my mind as to what subject would be the most interesting to you. However, I have selected the longest sheet of paper that I could find, and should I find interesting matter enough to fill it, I suppose you will give me credit for the effort.
I suppose you often read glancing accounts of this country and that you often converse with those that have been here and shared the inconveniences of a California life (from which you have no doubt become as conversant as with the geography and general customs and habits of the country as I am myself), a repetition of which would only serve to wear your patience. Notwithstanding, I consider it due to myself and to the state in which I live to say that nature has done its part for the Pacific Coast. The climate is of the best, the sail of the quickest, the water of the purest, the Bachelors of the plentiest, and the hauls of the fastest.
If you have an eye for scenery, you ought to come to this country. Travel when you will on the Pacific Coast, and you will daily see something new to excite your admiration. The valleys of California are decidedly the most beautiful part of the globe I ever laid my eyes on. The mountains of California are also blessed with some very interesting scenery, and the climate is equally as pleasant as that of the valley, although the fact of its being so very rough and hilly makes the mountains not so desirable a place to live as the valleys. But yet in consequence of their mineral wealth, the mountains are thickly populated; in fact, the improvements that have been for the last few years continually going on go to prove that people are continually becoming more permanently located, and I think the time is not far distant when the mountains of California will be second to no mountainous country in the United States.
The time has been here that good society could not exist, but the emigration of the finer sex has wrought a material change in the last few years, and I am proud to say that at the present time society is tolerable good and still improving. There are some churches and Sunday schools established throughout the state. There may be found in almost every little town and village in the state a Masonic Lodge and an Order of Odd Fellows. We have good schools – also singing and dancing schools. We have social parties. We have good and well-conducted balls. In short, we have everything in this country that there is anywhere, but the great difficulty is we have too much vice and too little morality.
Also, we have too many old bachelors and young men and not enough old maids and young girls. There appears to be a great many ladies in this country at the present day, but yet in comparison to the opposite sex there is but few. I have never heard of an old maid in this country yet; in fact, few girls live single here to see their eighteenth birthday. A great many gain in the enviable pleasures of matrimony at the age of fourteen and fifteen years, while others become impatient and place themselves under the protection of some fatherly old bachelor at the age of thirteen, in the majority of instances marrying men of about twice their own age. The fact of the girls marrying so young here makes them a scarce article in the market. To give you a more correct idea of the matter, I will just state that within the last year there has been some eight weddings in the vicinity, the girls ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen years and the men they married from twenty-five to forty-five.
It is impossible to get up a ball or party in this country without the attendance of married ladies, a great many of whom expect the young men to go and take them the same as though they had no husband nor no half a dozen brats to leave at home. To illustrate the matter more plainly, I will just say that a few nights since I attended a ball – what we call a very good ball – the participants of which consisted of eighteen females of the following description: eight married ladies, six juveniles, and four young ladies; thirty-four males as follows - three married men and thirty-one young men and bachelors from the age of twenty-one to fifty. The above is about an average for this country.
The scarcity of young ladies is a great drawback to this country. So now, dare I say to widows, old maids, and young ladies – you want to marry and be of service to your country and add to the rising generation, come immediately to this country and redeem some of the despairing bachelors from a life lonely, miserable, inconvenient, and contrary to the plans of God.
One year ago I paid the valleys a visit – was gone from here some four months. In my travels over the valleys, I saw and made the acquaintance of your Uncle Jahue Brown but have not seen him since I left there. I shall expect an answer from this letter immediately. Please give me all the news. This is not very fashionable paper that I have written on, but if you will only send me long, full-filled sheets of the same lines, I will be satisfied.
From Your Faithful Friend,
Elias Edwards
Elizabeth’s ears perked up at the mention of her brother Jahue, from whom she had not heard any news in several years. He had never been good at writing letters or keeping up with the family, and he tended to move around a lot so it was hard to know where to write to him. She was glad to know he was alive and well. Just two years before, her mother had written to her from Tennessee, desperate to get in touch with Jahue because he had some debts that had come due, and his land was going to be sold to pay the debt if he did not take care of it. Elizabeth wondered now what had ever come of that. She did not like to recall how anxious her mother had sounded in the letter.
Jahue was quite similar, she thought, to James’s nephew Enoch, the prodigal son of James’s oldest brother Lewis. When Enoch had first journeyed to California, Lewis went more than a year without knowing whether he was alive or dead – then finally, a letter came one day. Soon after that, Enoch had traveled all the way to the Sandwich Islands, two thousand miles west of California in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! No one in the family could fathom such a journey, but Enoch eventually returned home with heart-stopping tales of tropical forests, dancing natives, giant banyans, swaying palms, delicious pineapples, sweet-fleshed coconuts, colorful fish, breaching whales, and spewing volcanoes.
Now, Enoch was back in California, married and living in Butte County. Last she had heard, he was serving there in the Union army. Elizabeth wondered what that must be like for Lewis – having sons fighting on both sides in this dreadful war. At least with Enoch living thousands of miles away on the west coast, it wasn’t likely he would ever encounter one of his brothers on the battlefield.
Suddenly remembering where she was, Elizabeth returned to the moment at hand. “When you write back, Mollie, please be sure to ask Elias if he has a postal address for Jahue,” she requested. “I know my poor mother would be glad to hear from him. In her last letter, she said she wasn’t sure if he was alive any longer.”
“I will,” Mollie reassured her. “I wonder how the two of them ever met!”
“It sounds like Elias would rather not be a bachelor,” Bailis said, with a tinge of jealousy in his voice. Elias clearly had fond memories of Mollie – perhaps too fond, Bailis thought. “I think he’s hoping we will encourage more of the young ladies here to set out for California!”
“Well, if this war keeps going on, there might be an abundance of ladies both old and young here in need of husbands,” Mollie said, with a sense of sorrow in her voice. “So many of our brave Southern men are leaving their homes, never to return.”
“So true,” Mama said with anxious concern. “Perhaps it’s time you read Papa’s letter. I want to know if his medicines have been working.”
Mollie opened the letter, then looked up with worry and fear in her eyes. Papa was no longer in Arkansas – his letter, dated a week ago, was coming from the General Hospital in St. Louis.
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