There is a chapter in Oakhurst - just up the road from me. If you get serious I will join you and we can go up and meet their leader and look over the clubhouse they are attempting to rebuild.

I am not much of a joiner - surprised I joined FTE - but would be fun to compare notes as I have written several articles on California history.

 

Downieville was named after Major Downie.

I'm a CA historian, but not a member of the CHS anymore...too many bureaucrats. Never considered becoming a Clamper...I thought it was mainly composed of NorCal ppl.

 

Downieville is historically one of the most important and colorful towns of the Northern Mines. Gold deposits were discovered in 1848-49. The spot where the town later developed was known as Jim Crow Diggins, Washingtonville, Missouri Town, or simply The Forks. In the spring of 1850 the town had 15 hotels and gambling halls, 4 bakeries, 4 butcher shops, and every piece of ground was claimed. In 1851 it had in excess of 5,000 inhabitants. Philo Haven and Francis Anderson were credited with being among the first to discover gold a short distance above the Jersey Bridge.

Joseph Zummwalt, who arrived here in 1850 and mined an area later known as Zummwalt Flat, brought with him the secrets of the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus and founded its first chapter. When Sierra County was established in 1852 Downieville was named County Seat. It also recieved 10 less votes than Sacramento in its bid to be the State Capitol.

Become a Clamper and help preserve history....NORCAL is the base, but there are chapters in every western state....All are helping to preserve history of the mines, and the west! There are also some large chapters in SOCAL.

 

Placerville aka Dry Diggins aka Hangtown had three residents that later founded famous companies.

Armour owned a butcher chop, Levi Strauss made trousers from sail canvas, which was abundant due to the 10,000 empty ships abandoned in San Francisco Bay-the crews deserted and headed for the gold fields.

John Studebaker made wheelbarrows for the miners. He was known as "Wheelbarrow Johnnie." In 1852, he returned to the family home in South Bend, Indiana with $6,000.00, and with his brothers, formed the Studebaker Manufacturing Company, which built wagons till the 1920's.

All the horse drawn vehicles used in the CW by the Union were Studebakers.

Studebaker: 1852-1966 the second oldest manufacturer of wheeled vehicles in the world. It was number one till passed recently by Daimler AG (formerly Daimler-Benz, and before 1910, just Benz), which was founded in Stuttgart, Germany in 1886.

The CA state capital moved several times: Monterey, San Jose and Benicia being three of the venues. The original capital building still stands in Benicia.

CA was never a territory. From the California Republic to a state in the Compromise of 1850 (9/9/1850 in Monterey at 11:30PM to be exact).

 

I love California history. It was one of my favorite subjects while in College.

If you guys are really into California history you might want to see one of the projects I worked on while in college:

California History Center - California History Center Foundation

The California History Center was founded my my former professor.

I worked a little bit of the renovation of Le Petit Trianon.
This is where CHC is housed. It used to be where the Flint Center stands now but was moved in the mid 70's. We did are part in '80-82.

We had many field trips to Monterey, San Francisco, Sierras, etc... to experience history first hand.

There is an amazing amount of history, periodicals, and studies to be found inside of the Le Petit Trianon. I expecially like the documentation they have on the farming and orchards of California.

For you history buffs:

http://www.calhistory.org/index.html

I plan on attending "Pioneer Airports of the Bay Area" & "Historic California Lighthouses" this year.

 

Don't miss Moffet Field in (I think) Sunnyvale. The hangers built there weren't for blimps, but for the US Navy dirigibles: USS Akron, USS Macon, USS Los Angeles, USS Shenandoah. The Macon crash landed into Monterey Bay in the 1930's. NG had an article in their magazine and produced a TV show on the airship...2 of its 4 scout biplanes are still attached after all these years.

The USS Los Angeles was built in Germany after WWI and given to the US as part of the war reparations they owed. It was the only airship that didn't crash, and was scrapped in the mid 1930's. I forget where the Akron crashed, the Shenandoah was wrecked in Ohio during a thunderstorm.

These dirigibles were similar to the Hindenburg, and just about everyone knows what happened to that airship. "Oh the humanity!"

 

I grew up in Sunnyvale and have worked at NASA Ames twice now. I think Hanger 1 is now an offical landmark and they are just trying to get the money to abate the contaminates that are there. I'm not so sure why that is so important as they have a working airfield right there.

The last time I was in Hanger 1 was with my father in law about '94.

That was some great info you shared about Moffett Field and the hangers.

 

See, you learn something on here every day...I never knew all that about the Clampers and it's nice to know, I'm certainly all for preserving California history, being a 3rd generation Native Californian.

I spent many years of my childhood in a small Shasta county town called French Gulch, which was a gold mining town and a stop on the Old Oregon trail. In my early 20s I was involved with helping to restore the old church there (which was burnt to the ground by some teenage vandals a few years ago )

My mom was VP of the Shasta Historical Society during this time.

The town I live in now happens to be the place where my great-great grandfather and his family settled after coming out here from Michigan in the 1860s, stopping briefly in Sierra City in the gold country to seek their fortunes. (I don't think they found them) I live about a mile from the cemetary where my great-great grandfather is buried. One of his younger sons, Edward, made his way north to Siskiyou county where my grandfather was born. My great grandfather built the first house in Etna with indoor plumbing which he paid for with one nugget taken from his mine.

 

One of my favorite classes in high school was California History, next to pottery class.

I learned a lot at the time, but being that the class was in '69, I've forgotten
most of it.

Thank the internet so that I can access it.

 

California has many issues, but none can say it lacks a very colorful history.

 

Placermike,
I have heard stories of the history of the making of E Clamus Vitus. As I recall, it was started during intensive mining, kind of a union of miners, as something of an insurance policy for the families of miners. My understanding is that the surviving miners would pull together and take care of the surviving family members of miners killed in the mines.
If this is correct, could you please expand on the history of ECV. I find it facinating.
When I lived in Bridgeport Ca, I spoke with a few members in the bars, but I must have had a few too many beers 'cause the stories are a little foggy now.

 

In a nutshell, ECV was started as a poor persons answer to the Masons back in the coal mines of Kentucky...The organization pretty much died until until the Gold Rush Days.

The primary mission back then was to help bring some order to the mining camps, and take care of the 'Widows and orphans' of miners that died in the mines.

Today, we try and help preserve that history...Widows and children are always taken care of....

For more info, PM me...I will gladly provide it.

 

I did a considerable amount of research in the gold country, and produced a couple of articles on the gold fields. It is also the background for a book I am working on.

The property of a dead miner - whatever the cause - was a real problem in the early mining camps. They were desperate for supplies - his shovel, gold pan and the like were worth real money. If he had a claim it could be worth thousands of dollars.

Yet most camps had a rule that you could only have one claim at a time, and you had to work it. Mostly, any claim left unworked for 10 days was considered abandoned, and anyone could claim it for themselves.

Generally, if the man was known to have a family "back east", his goods and claim were auctioned off, and the money sent back to the family. How much of the money that actually reached the family depended on the character of whoever took the money east. If there was an active ECV I could see a miner's court giving them the money to deliver.

I have a short sidebar to one of my articles explaining the miner's court. The article was on Joaquin Murrieta, one of the few bad guys of that age. I have it in pdf format should anyone be interested.

+++++++++++++++++
Miner's Court: The Tyranny of the Majority

With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ending the Mexican-American war in 1848, California became a United States' territory. The Gold Rush started that same year, completely over powering the feeble territorial government established by a few Army officers. There was a lapse of several months before the machinery of government was in place. Not until May of 1850 were the larger towns incorporated and the counties and townships supplied with officials.

There was an even longer wait for a working system of law to be provided. It fell upon the miners to police themselves. Mostly, they responded well to the challenge. The miners would hold a camp meeting and adopt a list of rules.

Punishment for breaking these rules was fast and severe, for they had no prisons or jails. Lawbreakers could be horsewhipped, banished, or hung. Guilt was decided either from a jury elected by the miners at the time of the "trial" or by a consensus of all miners present.

Such trials were not legal as they did not have constitutional authority, and the actions of the miners often little more then lynch mobs. The danger of such courts is that the crowd might be sweep away by a surge of prejudice, or momentary anger and hang an innocent man.

"Lynch law is not the best law that might be, but is better than none, and so far as benefit is derived from law, we have no other." explained the Alta California Newspaper, March 8, 1851.

The laws of the mining camps were designed to protect the majority, with little or no regard to the rights of the minority, or an individual. Sonorans could expect little justice from such a court.

Most Sonorans, forbidden to mine for gold, either left the gold fields, or turned to other occupations to earn a living.

A few turned bandits and started robbing miners for the gold they were not allowed to dig. Claiming that they sought revenge from the high-handed treatment they received from the Americans, the bandits most often robbed the Chinese.

++++++++++++++++
Note: Sonorans were the name given to spanish speaking people from Mexico and South America. "True" Americans basically refused to let foreigners mine for gold.

 

California was never a US territory.

After the Mexican War ended, the California "Bear Flag" Republic became official. William B. Ide was the president.
In the Compromise of 1850, CA entered the Union as a Free State on September 9th, 1850.

 

NumberDummy is aka HistoryDummy now....