The Enterprising Women of the Gold Rush Days

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Thirty five years old. Not hard on the eyes. I kin cook a stew thick enough to fill the innards of the hongriest man what ever rocked an' panned fer gold. I kin sew the holes in yer socks an' buttons on yer shirt, an' I kin keep yer warm in bed. I kin read an' write...an' I kin play piano if'n ya gots one. In return, I want nothin' more'n my due. Half the gold ya pan outa the river, an' what ya give me is mine and what ya keeps is yourn. An' you don't never touch my gold, no matter what you do with yourn. An' fer this in return, I'm yer wife fer as long as you keep to your end a the bargain.

Easily an ad that could have appeared in the personal columns of the daily newspapers of the gold rush days. What? You thought personals were only a sign of our times. Heh heh. Nay nay my good friends. Them ads..they were a boomin' in Cal-i-for-ny-a as far back as the mid 1800's. Gold drew the men, and gold drew the women, much as it does today. Sure, there were plenty of prostitutes around then. But a hooker was temporary, and a wife, well, she was around quite a bit longer. And she was yours. Forever. If you could afford her. Ah, the good old days...not far removed from the good modern ones, were they?

For the women, it was a sellers market. She'd place an ad in the local papers, list the chores she was willing to do, mention the age range of the husband she was looking for, and list how much gold she expected to be given before she married. It was the pre-nup agreement of the placer mines of North America. And if a husband died earlier than expected, aw heck, there were a slew of men behind him ready to take his place. It was not uncommon for some women to marry the chief mourner at her dead husband's funeral the very next day. Time, then as now, waited for no one.

And then there were the entrepreneurial ones. Ladies like Luzena Stanley Wilson. For her and those like her, the wild climate of the gold mines of the west created an atmosphere too heady for words. The year was 1849. Luzena had been traveling for a month with her husband and children before finally arriving in Nevada City, California, in the dead of summer. She brushed off her clothes, wiped the children's faces, and looked around. There was plenty of money to be made here, other than panning for gold. Her husband quickly built a crude shelter for them while she hammered stakes for the legs of a table into the ground. The very next day she had 20 men paying one dollar each for dinner. Ahhh...the pastoral scenes of an outdoor cafe. Only thing was, before you knew it, she had walls built around that ol' table, and put a roof above it, and another level even, with rooms and beds, and called the whole thing the hotel El Dorado. She was now serving 75 to 200 boarders a week. She stashed the money she made under the floorboards of her bedroom. For while, the money was just laying there, doing nothing. We're talking $200,000 my friends. And we're talking back in them thar days. And it t'weren't hay, lemme tell you that too. So Luzena began to lend the money out to the miners. Ten percent interest per month. She was on the way to becoming one of the wealthiest women...nay...make that families, in America. Unfortunately, she didn't have fire insurance. And a fire burned Nevada City down, leaving her, and 8000 other miners, penniless. I know I know. It's a sad ending to a wondrous tale. However, on the plus side, you now all know it didn't start with Gloria Steinem...or the suffragettes...it started with Gold! Looove that metal....