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February/March 1998 | Volume 49, Issue 1
The Price Of Gold
Text Complexity Grade Level
9
Olney Thayer was born in 1825 in Mendon, Massachusetts. His forebears had helped found the community in the 166Os, and like most Americans of their time, successive generations had never strayed from their home. Then came the news from California, and Olney joined the throngs headed for the goldfields. What he found there is told in a series of letters that he wrote to his family “back in the States.” They are eloquent both of the exhilaration that fueled a nation-making migration and of the cost that that exhilaration could exact. The letters, never before published, come to us through the courtesy of a great-grandnephew of Olney, Richard N. Thayer, of Cleveland.
New Yorker Jan. 23rd, 1852
Respected parents etc,
… I shall have to be on board the steamer tomorrow noon, we sail at 2 o’clocke. … The Steam ship company have raised again on the Steerage fare and those who buy now must pay $200, guess they will raise to $300, have not taken pains to ascertain but am told that they are all sold up to March 9th could take fifty dollars premium on my ticket tomorrow without any doubt but guess I shall see the elephant myself.
Think New England has taken an emetic and N Y is the slop pail, by the looks of the people here from that way there seems to be a perfect fever for California old gray headed men who were never before out of the limits of their native town may be seen thron[g]ing the ticket office and striding the streets with rapid steps, eager to catch the slightest intelligence from California, the yellow dust almost glowing on their wrinkled brow and El Dorado in letters of gold is written on every thing they behold. … What this immense emmigration will do I cannot tell, give my hest wishes to all inquiring friends.
Yours with esteem
Olney Thayer G.G.
Panama NC Feb. 10, 1852
Respected Parents
Brothers and Sisters
It is ahout three weeks since I was rubbing my fingers amid the snows of New England. Now the sweat is pouring out of me for good but I experience no inconvenience from it. I left N.Y on the 24th ult and had a pleasant passage to Havana in Cuba where we arrived on the following Friday, with the exception of 3 days on which I was seasick then I felt most disagreeable I assure you but have got entirely over it and can eat a raw dog now never felt so well all ways before in my life. … On Sunday we left for Chagres had beautiful weather all the way and arrived there Friday noon. … The scenery up the Chagres river is the most beautiful thing I ever saw. … I expect to leave here tomorrow at 4 o’clock I do not know how