Christmas 1849 Letter to California Hotelkeeper Lloyd Minturn, Describing Their Infant Son and Questioning the Gold Rush “Mania.”
Ferrisburgh, Vermont: December 25-28, 1849. Autograph letter signed “Anne R. M.” to her husband, Lloyd Minturn, in San Francisco, “Upper California.” 8 pp.; approximately 1,700 words. With stampless cover bearing a black “NEW-YORK / 40” datestamp of January 17 and manuscript routing “per Cherokee.”. Significant edge wear and central vertical crease; text generally clear and complete. Item #BK0018 An intimate Christmas letter from Anna Robinson Minturn of Ferrisburgh, Vermont, to her husband Lloyd, then engaged in the hotel and real estate business at Pueblo San José during the California Gold Rush. Writing on the anniversary of his departure, Anna describes the four-month-old son Lloyd had never seen, questions whether California’s speculative “mania” could last, and repeatedly urges him to return home. Lloyd Minturn had traveled to California in January 1849 with David Lion Gardiner and other eastern emigrants. By November, Gardiner reported that Minturn was “at Pueblo San Jose keeping a hotel and speculating in real estate.”[1] Anna’s references to Lloyd’s hotel and stables, their rental, and the uncertain recovery of his investment relate directly to his California business. He later appears in San Francisco as a member of the Committee of Vigilance of 1851, with his place of business on California Street and his residence at the Mansion House.[2] Anna begins writing late on Christmas day, imagining a future holiday spent with Lloyd “by thy quiet fire-side in Vermont—with thy wife and darling child with thee.” Returning to the letter three days later, she reflects on the year since his departure: “Oh how much I think about thee as the anniversary of thy departure comes round […]. When I think of thee my dearest, ask then what a weary dreary time it seems […]. Our little darling improves so rapidly, is so very lovely, that I can hardly bear to have thee away.” News that another California emigrant, Dr. Stone, had returned safely made Lloyd’s absence still more painful. Although she understood that “the object of thy pilgrimage” at last appeared attainable, Anna wondered why the management of his property could not be entrusted to an agent, asking why “Mr. Ruckle” cannot “receive the rents & pay the former owner, and send thee thy portion of the profits.” However, she immediately checks her own advice with an observation on marriage and gender: “You men know so much more how these things work than we, so that it is rather labor wasted to advise much, and I do hate to see a woman trying to rule her husband—don’t thee?” Anna feared that Lloyd might remain away, sacrificing his domestic life, only to lose the anticipated reward. Her skepticism extends to the Gold Rush itself: “I do hope though that the man who has taken your property will be able to pay you—that would be so bad to stay away so long—sacrificing so much & lose thy reward entirely—don’t thee suppose this mania in California will end much as the land speculation did here, seems to me it must. I hope thee won’t get drawn in.” Much of the letter is devoted to their infant son, whose birth Lloyd may initially have learned of from another returning emigrant because of the “shamefully neglected” Pacific mails. At four months the boy weighed eighteen and one-quarter pounds and had “cheeks as hard as little apples.” Anna encloses a lock of his hair, explaining that she had kissed it before sending it. The contrast between California and the Vermont household runs throughout the letter. Anna describes the snow, distant mountains, sleighing, baked apples, and buckwheat cakes, while Lloyd remains in a place known to her mainly through contradictory reports and unreliable correspondence. She cites Bayard Taylor’s account of portions of California as suitable wheat country, while noting that other observers claimed wheat could not be grown there at all, remarking on the “contradictory accounts about California” that make it hard to “tell what to believe.” Her anxiety was heightened by reports of cholera progressing toward California. She closes by asking Lloyd to protect his health and praying that he might be restored to her “in sound health, both body & soul.” Anna was a daughter of Rowland Thomas and Rachel Robinson of Rokeby, the prominent Ferrisburgh Quaker family whose home later became known for its role in the Underground Railroad. Other letters from Anna to Lloyd during his California absence survive at the Bancroft Library and the Smithsonian.[3] Overall a substantial and affecting account of the Gold Rush from the perspective of a wife left behind. [1] David Lion Gardner, Letter to Juliana McLachlan Gardiner, November 30, 1849, David Gardiner Letters, BANC MSS 2006/127, box 1.,The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. [2] Anna Robinson Minturn, Letters to Lloyd Minturn, 1849–1851, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subject Categories: Steamboats, box 1, folder 6, J–L, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. [3] Anna R. Minturn, “Anna R. Minturn to Mr. Lloyd Minturn, Ferrisburgh, December 2, 1849,” California Gold Rush Letters, BANC MSS C-B 547, box 5, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Price: $1,000.00