Results tagged “California” from Universal York

Wood's Creek, Jamestown, California.

I just got back from a couple of weeks touring California and want to share one of the highlights of the trip. Of course, it had a York County connection.

Was it visiting Alcatraz? No, the closest tie between York and Alcatraz is some recent suggestions to house the prisoners from Guantanamo at one or the other. Touring Napa Valley vineyards? No, but both California and Pennsylvania are in the top ten lists of wine producing states. Yosemite? We have trees and waterfalls too, but I haven't seen any of either quite as large in Pennsylvania.

San Simeon? Nice house William Randolph Hearst built there, but the closest I can get to his roots is Virginia. Roy Rogers (Leonard Slye) and his footprints in the courtyard at Grauman's Chinese Theater? His ancestry can also be traced to Virginia. Maybe he and Hearst were related? Trigger's hoof prints are there too, and internet sources say Trigger, Jr. was purchased by Rogers from Paul K. Fisher in Souderton, Pa.--at least there is a Pennsylvania connection, however weak. Michael Jackson's nearby star on Hollywood Blvd. was getting a lot of attention last week. I don't know of any local ties there, but who knows?

No, one of my favorite California spots was on Wood's Creek in the small town of Jamestown, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.

Cased photo of Henry L. Smyser, taken by the J. T. Williams Gallery in York, probably not too long after Smyser returned from California.

Not long ago I posted my York Sunday News column on the very organized California Company, which was composed of 16 young men from the York County area who set out to find their fortune in gold. They sailed on the ship Andalusia from Baltimore on April 19, 1849 and arrived at San Francisco on September 21. Click here for that post on their onerous sea voyage.

Did they find their fortune? Afraid not, but they certainly tried. Some of the accounts written back home by several of the company were published in the York newspapers and went into much detail about their quest.

Dr. Henry L. Smyser was perhaps even more candid and detailed, as his letters, now in the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives, were only meant for family. He wrote to his parents only a week after they arrived, while they were still unloading the Andalusia, that he might stay for a while, but not necessarily continuing to look for gold, "if the practice of medicine would be more profitable and less laborious."

Smyser had enough labor already by the time they arrived at Woods Diggings on November 25. He and the others wrote that getting there was the hardest work they had ever done, with mud up to their knees, sometimes having to pull the wagons and mules through themselves. It didn't take him long to relate: "We had a full view of the Elephant."

See below for my follow-up Sunday News column with more details on the California Company, their pursuit of gold and their return home.

Lewis Miller Drawing of the California Company

Gold was discovered in California in early 1848. By the beginning of 1849, more adventurers from York County than you might think were headed for the gold fields, never mind the grueling voyage by sea around the tip of South America. The January 23, 1849 Democratic Press reports:

"Our young townsman, Mr. Joseph McAleer, son of Thomas McAleer, Esq., left this place yesterday for the "Gold Diggings" in California. He intends joining a party which is to set sail in a vessel from New York during the present week, consisting of one hundred persons. Each member has advanced $160.00, and they go supplied with necessities to last them for two years. They are accompanied by a physician, and well provided with rifles, fowling pieces, &c. We understand the route they intend taking is by way of Cape Horn, which is a distance of nineteen thousand miles to San Francisco. They will be gone six or seven months on their way"

The article goes on to say that McAleer has promised to write back to the paper about his voyage and sojourn in California. George Laumaster of Burlington, N.J., son of Jacob Laumaster is said to also be a member of the party.

By April 1849, sixteen other York County professionals and craftsmen had organized themselves into "The California Company" and were equipped and ready to sail on the ship Andalusia from Baltimore. For more on their voyage, see my recent York Sunday News column below: