Cheryl Anne Stapp
Rev. Thomas Starr King
San Francisco’s First Unitarian Church congregation gaped at its new pastor with a mix of curiosity and consternation. Could this small,...
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California's Olden Golden Days
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Feb 16, 20224 min read
Mother Shoots Daughter's Seducer
Gunplay was so common during the chaotic, early days of the California Gold Rush that many incidents, though duly reported, drew little...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Feb 9, 20223 min read
The Kindergarten Movement
By 1884 California was leading the nation in educational innovations with its system of pre-grammar-school schools, based on ideas...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Feb 2, 20223 min read
Striking Gold in Angels Camp
Mark Twain said he based his short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” on what he thought, at the time, was a...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jan 26, 20223 min read
Golden Island
Not long after Marshall’s January 24th gold discovery at Coloma, three men stumbled upon a second gold find downriver—which became one of...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jan 19, 20222 min read
The Luckless Gold Discoverer
On a chilly winter day 174 years ago this month, a construction site foreman named James Marshall picked up a few small flakes of gold...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jan 12, 20222 min read
The Pretty Girl Stage Driver
The stage arrived in Oroville right on time that morning in October 1893; yet at the first sight of it, the townsfolk were astounded....
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jan 5, 20223 min read
A Close Attachment
The proverb “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is from the 17th century play The Mourning Bride, and means that no one is angrier...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Dec 29, 20211 min read
Welcoming a New Year
In bygone days Californians celebrated the coming of a new year much like we do today, with parties, games, spectator sports, and...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Dec 22, 20213 min read
Naughty or Nice? Santa's Legend
The Americans who trekked to California in covered wagons made that arduous journey because they wanted to find a better life for...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Dec 15, 20212 min read
Christmas in the Gold Mines, 1849
Whether they came to California overland or by sea in 1849, hordes of predominately young men were joyfully exuberant, for they were...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Dec 8, 20211 min read
Christmas Ads of Old
Genuine settlers might have been the minority of the California Gold Rush-era population, but in the years before the gold discovery...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Dec 1, 20213 min read
Accident on the Cliff House Road
The press treated the accident as a sensation—and why not? All the elements were there: women of ill-repute, stampeding horses, and a...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Nov 24, 20212 min read
Happy Thanksgiving 2021
Tomorrow we celebrate Thanksgiving Day with friends, family, and a table loaded with the traditional fare: roast turkey with all the...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Nov 17, 20213 min read
He Robbed the Wrong Woman
The old mining town in Nevada County is gone now, but Red Dog had its heyday in the 1860s, when the place had nearly two thousand...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Nov 10, 20213 min read
Land Laws: Land Grants vs. Homesteads
During the centuries it belonged to Spain, and the few decades it was a province of Mexico, California had no homestead laws that gave...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Nov 3, 20213 min read
Early & Ongoing Partition Troubles
California’s north-south cultural split began as early as 1821, the year Mexico won its independence from Spain and acquired the province...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Oct 27, 20212 min read
Rivers in the Skies
Is the “atmospheric river” that deluged California last week a precursor of what is to come? Back in the day, they called such phenomena...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Oct 20, 20212 min read
Quilting: A Frontier Social Event
Quilt making in the nineteenth century was more than just the home-crafted production of usable warm bedding: it was more often than not...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Oct 13, 20212 min read
Cup of Gold
What a wondrous, stunning sight the crew must have seen as the Russian ship Rurik dropped anchor in a sequestered cove of San Francisco...
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