Jersey Gold - by Margaret Casterline Bowen & Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles (Hardcover)

About the Book

When gold fever struck in 1849, John S. Darcy--prominent physician, general, and president of the New Jersey Railroad--assembled a company to travel overland to California. In Jersey Gold, Margaret Casterline Bowen and Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles tell the story of that colorful company of some thirty stalwarts and adventurers.

Book Synopsis

When gold fever struck in 1849, John S. Darcy--prominent physician, general, and president of the New Jersey Railroad--assembled a company to travel overland to California. In Jersey Gold, Margaret Casterline Bowen and Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles tell the story of that colorful company of some thirty stalwarts and adventurers.

Jersey Gold chronicles the experiences of the New Jersey argonauts from their lives before the gold rush to the widely varying fortunes each ultimately found. Animated by the trekkers' own words and observations and illustrated with maps, photographs, and drawings by one of the company's own men, Jersey Gold follows the Newark Overland Company's journey by rail, stage, and riverboat to the Missouri frontier town of Independence, the group's jumping-off point for the Oregon-California trail. There, the company splintered. Their divergent paths afford views of the westward journey from multiple perspectives as the companies faced the perils of the wilderness and the treachery of human nature. Once in gold country, many booked immediate passage home, but some remained with Darcy to work a successful mining operation before returning east with comfortable fortunes. A few, enchanted by the opportunities of the Golden Coast, took up permanent residence there--and in their stories we witness the emergence of California amid unprecedented lawlessness, the controversy of slavery, and diverse nationalities.

The story of the Newark Overland Company--in many ways a panorama of the nineteenth century--ranges from the wildness of the frontier through the chaos of the Civil War to the throes of early industrialization, and features such notables as John Sutter, Brigham Young, and Henry Clay. In chronicling this journey, Jersey Gold vividly re-creates a defining chapter in American history.

Review Quotes

"Jersey Gold is the best book we have read this year, and it is without a doubt the most interesting, informative, and comprehensive account of a wagon train going to the Gold Rush we have read to date."--Overland Journal


"[The authors'] diligence in following every lead turned up large amounts of primary sources, many of them letters, that formed the basis of news from the Jersey Company that was printed in newspapers in the East....Readers will be rewarded with a broad view and insights in the organizing of one company, their success and failures, and the tragedies that occurred to them and many others along the Gold Rush routes of 1849."--Western Historical Quarterly


"The authors do more than tell a story of wagon trains crossing the plains. They utilize diaries, journals and letters to create a narrative that closely follows the lives of the men and women who were involved in the rush for gold. The result is a compelling story of gold seekers, success and failure, hardship and illness, and how the gold rush affected the people following the overland trails." --Southern California Quarterly


"This story is much more than a detailed description of a "trek" by a group crossing the continent in 1849 in search of gold. In clear and easily followed lines, the authors describe the political and social development of a young America through the middle years of the nineteenth century as they follow the lives of approximately forty adventurous trekkers rushing to find riches in California."--Great Plains Quarterly


"Wide-ranging research, exceptional writing, and effective organization all combine to make this a valuable volume in the delineation of the Gold Rush and the opening up of the American West. This is the way history should be written, as a story of human endeavor and "high adventure."--Terrae Incognitae: The Journal of the Society of the History of Discoveries


"Good historians are good detectives. Trail buffs have long relied on excellent diarists--Charles Glass Gray, Alexander Cartwright, Robert Bond, Cyrus Currier--and a scholar, Thomas D. Clark, to understand the 1849 adventures of the Newark Overland Company. Ace detectives Margaret Casterline Bowen and Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles have utilized new voices of men and women to tell firsthand how they found their lives transformed on the trails. Jersey Gold is a new trail classic."Will Bagley, author of South Pass: Gateway to a Continent