Edmund Booth by Harry G. Lang

Author:Harry G. Lang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
Published: 2016-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

THE new year arrived with Edmund still in California. He wrote from Columbia on January 8, 1853, to let his family know that he was all right despite the scarcity and high price of provisions in the mines. “I am in no danger of starving … [if only that] provisions are to be had at some price,” he explained. “I have enough for a week to come and my claim pays well when the sky will let us work.” The past week he and three partners had taken out $76. His board cost him $8–10 a week. He could not get bread or any meat at any price.32

On January 10, he warned her not to “suppose, as your letter indicated, that I am growing rich. Very few do that here. Perhaps one in a thousand. Still I am doing very well, or rather I should be doing well if the rain would but cease and let us work more than one or two days in the week.” He was pleased that she and the children were with Emily. He encouraged them to stay if they were enjoying the visit and suggested that Thomas might be able to attend a better school in Dubuque than the one in Anamosa.33

Mary Ann’s March letter mentioned an uneducated deaf man named John Healey from Dubuque who had emigrated to California with his family. Healey had returned and met with Lewis Perkins in Anamosa and explained that he planned to take his family back to California to both farm and dig for gold. Mary Ann doubted that this was wise, since Healey had neither yet staked a claim, nor bought a farm and the gold rush had already attracted too many people. Mary Ann tried once again to pressure Edmund to return. She told him she was worried about her own health. “Sometimes my heart is painful. If you do not come back sooner I expect that I shall sometimes die suddenly. I do not know what will our children do. … I wish that you would go and see a clairvoyant … and tell him to go and examine my heart and ears which always itch and often become very sore.”34

Edmund responded by sending home money. He told Mary Ann to “pay all debts and get the land near the house at Anamosa broken, so that it will be ready to cultivate next spring—I shall be at home next winter to prepare the fence.” Pleading for her patience, he wrote, “my expectations of last winter failed but I am doing well now—You are happier than I am, as you have the children with you and I am alone. Keep your head or hands or both busy—Work or read as you please, and time will not appear so long.”35

Despite his optimism, Edmund was discouraged. Back home, William Haddock had begun publishing the Anamosa News and Journal, a weekly newspaper. New businesses were opening and Anamosa was growing. But in California, Edmund could hardly find enough to eat.

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