Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
“ When the cry of gold rang over the world, and California answered Eureka! I have found it, the people everywhere made ready to rush to the gold fields in the far away West, but the problem was how to get there for no railroads or steamboats … and the great Panama Canal offered no transportation in those days. We had either to cross the plains and rugged interweaving mountains, have the dangers of the Isthmus of Panama, or go around the continent of South America on a sailing vessel.
With the family of my brother, Reverend William Taylor, afterward Bishop Taylor the first Methodist missionary sent to California, I left Baltimore in April 1849, in the ship Andalusia and sailed on the long voyage to California. We had a voyage religious service held every Sunday. A weekly paper was published with Father Neptune as editor … whose diversity of life was playing around the ship – shoals of whales, flying fish. We celebrated Fourth of July off Cape Horn. The Declaration of Independence was read. Coming up the coast of the Pacific we stopped at Valparaiso, the first land we had seen since we had left Baltimore. We enjoyed its fruits and flowers and the music of its happy people.
Never shall I forget with what eagerness and thankfulness we watched that beautiful day as our ship glided into that wonderful harbor of safety, The Bay of San Francisco, which today invites the commerce of all nations and the fleets of the world to come and rest on its placid waters. We anchored far out in the bay as the water came up to Montgomery Street and, in small boats, landed near Pacific and Montgomery. We arrived Sept. 25 1849, five months after leaving Baltimore. ”
Harriet Virginia Peyton
arrived in 1849 from Alabama