Nov 21, 2024 - Sale 2687

Sale 2687 - Lot 65

Price Realized: $ 1,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(CALIFORNIA--INYO COUNTY.) Samuel B. Appleton. Letter from a miner describing Indians, earthquakes, and camping in the rough. Autograph Letter Signed to sister Lucy A. Appleton Peirce (1813-1906), 8 pages (7¼ x 4½ inches) on two folding sheets, plus another Autograph Letter to niece Lucy Peirce (1842-1927), 4 pages, without final sheet or signature; folds, minimal wear. Independence, CA, 4 May 1873
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Samuel Brown Appleton (1815-1888) was raised in Buxton, ME and circa 1865 brought his family west to Chicago. He soon left them there while he sought a fortune in California. In the 1870 census, he was working at a saw mill in Calaveras County. This letter found him operating a mine in Independence, the county seat of Inyo County not far west of Death Valley.

To his niece, he described the local Indians: "The mehalys or squaws are more numerous than any other class. They do any kind of work out door or in. . . . I employ two or three bucks a day & pay them one dollars a day. . . . I think they like to work for me. They have their pay every Satturday night & gamble it off on Sunday & come back Monday without a cent & work hard all the week without a cent." Drinking was a problem generally: "It is not uncommon to hear people speak of being drunk the day or night before with as much compozure as you would of going to church."

Appleton also describes the 1872 Owens Valley or Lone Pine earthquake, one of the most powerful to ever strike California in recorded history. Its effect was muted because of the sparse population, which als makes descriptions scarce. He mocks a recent small earthquake in Maine as "rather a puney effort in comparison to those we have here . . . one year ago last March the 26th when houses tumbled down & the earth cracked & moved one way or the other from 5 to 10 feet in some places. In one village, one half of the houses wer thrown down."

The town's water source is described at length: "Water comes from the Mt. every few miles, occasioned by the melting snow. In the morning it is cold as ice water, but in the course of the day it gets warm." He has avoided a recent outbreak of epizootic disease: "My rideing horse has not had it, neither have I, although I often sleep in the open air. In Maine one would hardly think he could take his blankets & sleep out door all the time. . . . One here can take a saddle horse & a pack horse, his blankets with a ham & flour, fry pan &c & go in to the Mt. . . . He stakes his horses on grass at night, cook his ham & flour & travel very cheap."

By 1880, Appleton had returned eastward to Chicago, and he died in Michigan in 1888.