[California letter with gold-mining content].

North San Juan, California, 17 June 1858. 8vo letter (9.75” x 7.75”). 4 pp. of manuscript.

An evocative letter written by a man to his sister back home describing the scene in frontier California and his prospects of gold-mining on Fraser River.

Seeking to entice his sister to join him out West, Andrew Kinney writes this letter from North San Juan, California—a town founded during the California Gold Rush which prospered during the era of hydraulic mining between 1850–1884. Kinney describes where he currently lives as “the best place in thee world.” Certain he will “never leave,” he notes “they live better here than they do in the states.” What’s more, he notes “you can go out here enny where an[d] pick more kinds of flowers in ten minets than you ever see before.” Kinney devotes much of the letter to describing the activities of his friends and the various forms of labor they have undertaken and what they receive for pay. One friend is cooking on a ranch; one Ann is working in the town of North San Juan; while another friend Pat has gone gold mining on Fraser River—whom Kinney himself may join:

Pat is a going to write to me if it is as good as they tell for and I shal go up a bout the first of September [if?] I bought his claims. I would not take eny thing les than two hundred dollars in gold for them they cant be worked now they is a dam on them they can be worked this winter when water is plenty.

If he doesn’t go to Fraser River to engage in gold mining, Kinney says he will send money to his sister so that she can come out West the following summer. He notes he has recently “got threw eating worming bread and stinking meat”—and has “got on to my regular dineing” and as a result has gained some weight. In view of the coming Fourth of July, he notes that the town of North San Juan has “raised eight hundred dollars to celebrate the Fourth with this. This is the town where Grove Yale of Norfolk blowed up the doctor took him to his house and took care of him and never charged him a cent. The laydes made a ball and raised him about six hundred dollars to come home with. They heard that he did not come home, that he was in the southern mines a begging for more.”

Kinney closes the letter by describing at-length dairy farming in these parts and his experience working as a cow hand. He also covers matters such as the temperature (reaching 120 degrees, he says), and the cost of food, milk and beef. He occasionally addresses his father directly in the letter.

CONDITION: Good, a few separations along old folds, one puncture to p. 3, partial loss to one word.