Reviews

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.

Jersey Gold: The Newark Overland Company's Trek to California, 1849 follows a cross-country trek undertaken in 1849 when gold fever prompted a physician and president of the New Jersey Railroad to assemble some thirty men to travel to California.   Many gold rush stories focus on experiences within California; but this book's focus on how the group journeyed via rail, stagecoach, and riverboat (and how they faced the wilderness in various manners) uses source material and the travelers' own words, adding maps, photos and drawings one of them produced along the way.   This lends an immediacy and intimacy to an experience that documents information, motives, costly situations and confusion, cultural and social encounters, and mining operations alike.   The story's unexpectedly lively tone and wide range of topics makes for a highly recommended account that pairs well with Gold Rush era stories, highly recommended for California and American history holdings alike.

The 1848 discovery of gold on the American River by New Jerseyan James W. Marshall set off an international migration. Jersey Gold—The Newark Overland Company’s Trek to California, 1849 (University of Oklahoma Press, $34.95) by Margaret Casterline Bowen and Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles concerns a group of 30 New Jerseyans who embarked upon, what promised to be, the adventure of their lives. In California, the Newarkers learned that gold mining was not easy, but other opportunities abounded. Some made fortunes providing goods and services to miners. Newarkers stayed, disappeared, emigrated to further adventures or returned to the East. The book uses little-known sources and provides rich details about politics, mores and historical contexts. Jersey Gold will be a welcome addition to many libraries.

Terry A. Del Bene is a former Bureau of Land Management archaeologist and author of the Donner Party Cookbook: A Guide to Survival on the Hastings Cutoff

Jersey Gold is the best book we have read this year, and 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. See Overland Journal Vol 35, no. 4, page 161 for complete review. 

Ken Johnston is a National Park Historian and author of Legendary Truths: Peter Lassen and His Gold Rush in Fact and Fable.  Both Jo and Ken are retired educators. Jo Johnston continues to work as a freelance editor. 

This narrative history of the Newark Overland Company, New Jersey, is built on the 1964 discovery by Dr. Thomas D. Clark who found the journal of a member, Charles G. Gray. The co-authors independently began working on locating primary sources about the Newark Company and in the pursuit of information uncovered significant amounts of historic documents that shed light on the Newark Company. Their 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. In developing the narrative, the authors blend together family history and travel on the Overland Trail in 1849 to California. The authors introduce the key organizer, Dr. John Stevens Darcy, within the historical context of New Jersey, the setting where the Newark Company developed. They provide a considerable amount of background in preparation for launching the journey in the spring of 1849. Unlike some gold rush narratives and journals, this book is not a day-to-day travel account of the group. Instead, it makes occasional reference to locations on the trail: Independence, Ft. Kearny, Fort Laramie, Fort Hall, the Humboldt River Valley locations, the Sierra Nevada, routes through and around the Black Rock Desert, and routes to California gold fields. The authors use several illustrations of the period and a few maps of locations along the trail, adding to readers’ understanding. Readers would benefit from a map of the New Jersey location of the leading participants, maps interspersed through the body of the work that give more information about locations, and a map of the Gold Rush Era of California to better understand the historical context of the territory and subsequent state. Overall, the reader learns a good bit of information about the authors’ families through several generations. It is difficult to blend a Gold Rush narrative with a multi-family history, though Jersey Gold bravely tackles the charge. 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.

The late Jere L. Krakow was a National Park Service Historian and Superintendent of National Trails for the Intermountain Region.

This readable book focuses on the experiences of members of the Newark Overland Company in traveling across the North American continent to the California gold fields. Sponsored by Newark civic leader John S. Darcy, who recruited an assortment of men mainly from New Jersey, this company was the first to arrive in California, lured by the prospect of riches there for the taking. As often occurred, some men left the company, others joined it, and it split into separate units over such disputes as the preference for mules or oxen in pulling wagons. 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 end 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.

Dr. Abraham Hoffman was born in Los Angeles and attended Los Angeles City College and received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Los Angeles State College (now California State University, Los Angeles). He earned his doctorate in History at UCLA. 

He serves on the board of editors for Southern California Quarterly, reviews books, and contributes articles to history publications. His books include “Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929-1939”, “Vision or Villainy: Origins of the Owens Valley-Los Angeles Water Controversy” and “Mono Lake: From Dead Sea to Environmental Treasure”.