California Gold Rush Letter from the Mormon Trail

“We met a train of Mormons going east a few days ago. They stated the roads to be good but some snow on the mountains. There were some women with them - fine looking ones too.”

Autograph letter signed by Charles E. Bowers (1826-1864) to his wife, Minerva Bowers. Nebraska Territory, 10 June 1859. 2 pages, on blue paper.

A descriptive letter of the westward trail by a hopeful prospector from his journey to California via Salt Lake City. He writes to his wife from Nebraska Territory, approximately 15 miles from Fort Laramie and near the Black Hills. He relates anecdotes of his journey, notably an encounter with a group of Mormons: “We met a train of Mormons going east a few days ago. They stated the roads to be good but some snow on the mountains. There were some women with them - fine looking ones too. One in particular dressed in good style and wore kid gloves but when I saw her, she was cooking over a fire of buffalo chips. But one needs gloves to fuel the fire with such fuel.” He also relates accounts of a tornado devastating a “company of emigrants going to California” and a “young man in a company near us” who was accidentally shot when “one of the company was taking a gun out of the wagon.” The victim was taken to nearby Fort Laramie “to be attended to by the United States surgeon there.”

Bowers would reach California by the winter of 1859 where he began his search for gold in the Genesee Valley in Plumas County. By February 1860, however, he was sanguine about his fortunes, writing to his wife (not included here): “I hope to make enough to pay a little towards the expenses of my journey. I do not expect to make much, and I should not probably have made a great deal if I had stayed in Michigan." He announced his intentions to return to Michigan in June 1860.

During the Civil War, Bowers enlisted on 26 September 1864 as a private and was mustered in the same day into Company B of the 14th Michigan Infantry and saw action in Sherman’s March to the Sea. In History of Branch County (p. 309), it is related that he “became sick and exhausted on the march through Georgia, and, delirious with fever, wandered away from his comrades. He was found by some people in almost a dying condition, and was taken to the house of Mrs. Bryson, the wife of a Confederate soldier. This kind lady procured a doctor and nursed him until his death, which occurred in Nov. 1864.” Because of the nature of his disappearance, however, Minerva had difficulty receiving a widow’s pension.

[Western Expansion, Mormons, Gold Rush, Civil War, Union, Confederate, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young]