American Historical Ephemera & Photography Online

HOUSEL, J. Autograph letter signed ("J. Housel"), to an uncle. Norwegian Gulch [Montana], 4 July 1869. 2 pages, 8 x 14 3/4 in., few tape repairs to folds. Housel begins, "Having got back to my mountain home, surrounded on all sides by the snow capped, craggy peaks, and ranges of mountains raising their summits up into the clouds, I seat myself in my dirt covered log cabbin [sic], and ground flore [sic], on a three legged stool, and write on a table of my own make." He writes, "My mines here of gold and silver are inexhaustible, at least while I live, be that long or short, it of course takes works to get it, but I have good health and strength to do the work..." He describes the "long and tedious trip from St. Louis here of seventy eight days. I don't want any more steam boating on the big muddy in mine. The water was very low, and we were sticking on sand bars nearly every day, sometimes nearly all day...At Yankton we run backward in the bank, broke, and unshiped the rudder, and lost it, stoped two days to make a new one, broke two tillers, and another rudder..." He subsequently had to take a smaller boat to get to Benton and "come the other 230 miles in a wagon, total distance from St. Louis here 3350 miles." 

He notes, "...this is the dullest season I ever saw here, on account of scarcity of water...For a lack of water there can only be about the tenth part of the mining done as usual, and as mining is THE business of this country when they stop every thing is stagnate."

He writes of his business, "My business has improved the rong[sic] way since I left. One of my partners sold out and left. He sold property too that he had no business to do...the man he sold to I do not like much. He is no miner. He had the big head, and is a gambler...I have come to the conclusion that he will steal the company gold when he gets the chance before it is weighed...I was gone nine months in that time they report to have taken out only five hundred dollars, and have run the company in debt seventeen hundred dollars. had I stayed away nine months longer they would have busted us in biz..." A highly detailed account of a miner's experiences at Norwegian Gulch. 

[With:] Letter from "Cousin Elizabeth Jenkins" to "Cousin Otis" Burr, Pasadena, CA, 12 August 1937. She encloses a partial typed account of Otis' father's travels to and experience in California in search of gold. A detailed, 7pp. account describing Mr. Burr's journey to California, dated from Chicago, 21 June 1905.