Women During the Gold Rush The Gold Rush was one of the most influential times in California History. During the four years from 1848-1852, 400,000 new people flooded into the state. People from many countries and social classes moved to California, and many of them settled in San Francisco. All this diversity in one place created a very interesting dynamic. California during the Gold Rush, was a place of colliding ideals. The 49ers came from a very structured kind of life to a place where one was free to make up her own rules. “Freedom was in the very air Californians breathed, for the country offered a unique and seductive drought of liberty. People were free from censure, from Eastern restrictions, from societal expectations.”1 California society, and people as individuals, could not decide whether they relished their newfound freedom or despised it. Some people attempted to recreate the lives they knew at home, while many others threw off the shackles of their old proper lives. Victorian culture emerged in the 1820’s and 1830’s in America. At 1850, the time of the Gold Rush, it was at it’s high point. Anyone who came to California from the states, no matter what their position, would have come from a place influenced by the Victorian way of life. This included strict ideas about the roles of men and women, taboos on drinking and gambling, high value set on hard work, Christian ethics, and ethnic prejudices.2 People who came to California experienced something quite different. “In the years which followed the gold discoveries, society was not stratified. Moral and religious principles were often disregarded, and all kinds of irregular situations could be found.”3 Americans who came to California had... ... middle of paper ... ...egquier from San Francisco,1849-1856. Ed. Robert Glass Cleland. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1949.---Full book of letters written by a woman from Maine about her trip to and life in San Francisco. Morrison, Martha. “Families in Transit I.” Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey. Ed. Lillian Schlissel. New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1992. 35. Royce, Sarah. A Frontier Lady. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1932.---Reminiscence of traveling to and life in early California and San Francisco. Schlissel, Lillian. Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey. New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1992---General history of gold rush women as well as first person diaries. Taniguchi, Nancy. “Weaving a Different World.” Journal of California History. 79 (2001): 141. Ward, Harriet. They Saw the Elephant. Ed. JoAnn Levy. Hamden, CN: Archon Books, 1990. 4.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History. Fourth ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 247-316. Print.
...hile African Americans went through journeys to escape the restrictions of their masters, women went through similar journeys to escape the restrictions of the men around them. Immigrants further strived to fit in with the American lifestyle and receive recognition as an American. All three groups seemed to shape up an American lifestyle. Today, all three of these perceptions of freedom have made an appearance in our lives. As we can see, the transition of freedom from race equality to gender equality shows that freedom has been on a constant change. Everyone acquires their own definition of freedom but the reality of it is still unknown; people can merely have different perceptions of freedom. Nevertheless, in today’s society, African Americans live freely, women are independent, and immigrants are accepted in society. What more freedom can one possibly ask for?
Modern day interpretations of pioneer women are mostly inaccurate and romanticized as easy, and luxurious in a new land however, that is far from the truth. Overall, pioneer women had many jobs that were underappreciated, they weren’t valued as men but without them many people in the West wouldn’t have survived and had to leave so much to go on a trip that took weeks and was no vacation, because women pioneers would have to cook and clean and take care of her children and husband, while on a wagon with having to adapt to the changing weather and climates, they did jobs that were considered as “men’s jobs” and worked as hard as men to survive in the west during the Manifest Destiny. Therefore, women pioneers were overlooked as an insignificant part of the Westward Expansion.
Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to live in this world and country during the transition from a rural; agriculture society to an economic nation rise of an industrialized society? Well that is exactly what the people of the Gilded Age experienced. It was a time of a dramatic business and political practice. In order for the business’s to rise there soon became a great amount of separation towards the people and the country. This caused our society to experience a stressful time and made it very difficult for ideas and concepts to equal out. Throughout this specific document there are four sources that were written by different individuals. Each and every source has an explanation and an overview of the times in the Gilded Age.
Prior to the Civil War, the South was a society based on strict racial and gender hierarchies. Seemingly, elite southern women did not advocate for social and political change because they were content not to disrupt the gender hierarchy of their society. Their subordinacy to elite southern men and their society's view of ladylike characteristics was central to how southern women defined themselves. In order to advocate for change, elite southern women would have had to become unladylike and willing to give up a lifestyle that made them comfortable. Ultimately, since these women were not comfortable changing or giving up their lifestyle, most did nothing to aid social and political change.
...gration in population, help the California economy by building many businesses and caused violent conflicts between diverse groups of people. The Gold Rush in 1851 changed California.
The United States, possibly more than any other country, was not very welcoming during the early 1900s. Foreigners, who were uneducated about America’s customs, were unable to find jobs or prevent swindlers from causing their already insufficient wealth to subside. Because of this, Jurgis and his family’s economic and social lives changed drastically. For insta...
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may
Sylva, Seville A. A Thesis-Foreigners in the California Gold Rush. California: University of Southern California. 1932.
Many women came to California to work as prostitutes or entertainers during the 1850s. They did this because there were so few women to satisfy all of the men mining in the gold fields. During this time women who chose to be prostitutes were not looked down upon because they were so desirable. Many women also came to take advantage of the possibility of marrying a rich miner and getting out of the prostitution business. Not all women however came to California to prostitute and eventually find themselves a husband. Some came along with their husbands and would earn a living by running boarding homes while their husbands would pan for gold (Wikipedia). There were many influential women that came to California during this time period. They were able to make a name for themselves, and some left an everlasting impression on San Francisco.
In early America, socio-economic class, agriculture, religion and gender played four very important roles in regional distinctions of this newly developing country. Even though agriculture, religion, and gender were extremely important, the biggest factor was socio-economic life. A person’s socio economic class was what determined their life style from a wealth, treatment, and dress style and home, which are major aspects of human life. In Everyday Life in Early America, David Freeman Hawke explains how each of these four factors determined the life style of each early resident of America as well as the overall development of the country in its beginning years to emerge into a growing and improving nation (continue)
When Spaniards colonized California, they invaded the native Indians with foreign worldviews, weapons, and diseases. The distinct regional culture that resulted from this union in turn found itself invaded by Anglo-Americans with their peculiar social, legal, and economic ideals. Claiming that differences among these cultures could not be reconciled, Douglas Monroy traces the historical interaction among them in Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Beginning with the missions and ending in the late 1800s, he employs relations of production and labor demands as a framework to explain the domination of some groups and the decay of others and concludes with the notion that ?California would have been, and would be today, a different place indeed if people had done more of their own work.?(276) While this supposition may be true, its economic determinism undermines other important factors on which he eloquently elaborates, such as religion and law. Ironically, in his description of native Californian culture, Monroy becomes victim of the same creation of the ?other? for which he chastises Spanish and Anglo cultures. His unconvincing arguments about Indian life and his reductive adherence to labor analysis ultimately detract from his work; however, he successfully provokes the reader to explore the complexities and contradictions of a particular historical era.
In 1849, the California Gold Rush attracted the massive people immigrated to gold finding from all over the world. The gold-seekers travelled by the ship boarding in San Francisco port or by feet to leave their hometown and families from west because they believed that they could gain more money and had a better life than their original place. In the early days of California was an unknown place however after the gold-seekers arrived to California growth rapidly with crowded population. Later, the Rocky Mountains establish to be a state which called California. The gold-seekers came over to California because they wanted to achieve their goals for a better life, as they experienced by their hard working and created lots of the potential development in this gold place.
towards African Americans are presented in number of works of scholars from all types of divers
The California Gold Rush in 1849 was the catalyst event for the state that earned them a spot in the U.S. union in 1850. This was not the first gold rush in North America; however, it was one of the most important gold rush events. The story of how the gold was discovered and the stories of the 49ers are well known. Men leaving their families in the East and heading West in hopes of striking it rich are the stories that most of us heard about when we learn about the California Gold Rush. Professors and scholars over the last two decades from various fields of study have taken a deeper look into the Gold Rush phenomena. When California joined the Union in 1850 it helped the U.S. expand westward just as most Americans had intended to do. The event of the Gold Rush can be viewed as important because it led to a national railroad. It also provided the correct circumstances for successful entrepreneurship, capitalism, and the development modern industrialization. The event also had a major influence on agriculture, economics, and politics.