Return to the El Dorado County Page Return to El Dorado County TalesWritten by Joanne Burkett from research taken from Paolo Sioli's History of El Dorado County California, from El Dorado Co. birth, marriage, death and land records and often from interviews.
John Swan was an English sailor who came to Monterey in 1843. Five years later, in July 1848, he bought two horses - one to ride and one to carry his belongings - and struck out alone for the gold fields. Actually, he rode out at the tail-end of the throng of men who deserted the town for those hills of gold, leaving Monterey inhabited by a population top-heavy with women - three to every man.
Throughout the next half year, he recorded his adventures and those stories, along with material from other journals he kept, can be found in California As I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900. Volume 87, at the Library of Congress.
By his own admission, Swan, a small, but apparently sturdy man, was green when it came to packing a horse. He overloaded his extra horse, weighing him down with 240 pounds of goods that included tools and other provisions, spare blankets and clothing that he hoped to sell when he reached the mines as well as at least a pound of glass beads that he had been told the Indians would buy, paying a like weight in gold for the pretty baubles.
Along the way, he stopped at several ranches where he was able to add to his store of groceries and, through the badgering of one of his hosts, who claimed Swan might be a good sailor but was a lousy packer, allowed the man to repack his horse. The result being the loss of his pick somewhere along the trail.
Some time later, stopping at the ranch of a Mr. Murphy, Swan took up as traveling companions two soldiers from Company F of the U.S. 3rd Artillery. Sergeant Charles Layton and Private Russell Main had been dispatched from Monterey to search for deserters. The lure of the growing gold rush excitement had men deserting left and right. They were not really criminals, just bored soldiers with gold dust in their eyes.
During that first blush of discovery, life among the miners was an extraordinary thing. Many of the men already knew each other and that resulted in a pleasant feeling of camaraderie and an almost total lack of crime in the diggings.
Picks and shovels, lying about unguarded, marked claims and claim-jumping, which would eventually be quite common, was relatively rare. Unmanned tents and unlocked cabins held bags of gold dust, which lay out in the open, unguarded. Successful miners, toting heavy stashes of gold, were left unmolested along lonely trails and horses, which were a very valuable asset, were seldom stolen. Probably the most annoying problem the miners faced was the hungry company of the ever-present mosquito.
However, for Swan, the journey was filled with as many discouraging sights as it was filled with hope. He and his traveling party, which now was made up of a large group from San Jose and minus the two soldiers - who had gone off in another direction - passed one traveler after another. Some proudly showing off gold sacks brimming with gold dust, others leading starved horses, complaining about the poor luck they had experienced.
Soon Swan and party pitched camp for the night near where they would attempt to cross the San Joaquin River. Grazing was good for the horses, wood was conveniently nearby, and Swan thought they would spend a pleasant night eating, smoking and talking. However, the mosquitoes ended their hopes of a peaceful evening. Swan's sense of humor showed itself when he made the greenhorn comment that he thought the "mosquitoes were worse on newcomers than old residents. Perhaps," he said, "like the human race, they liked a change of diet."
The next morning, Swan was saddled and on the trail early. When they reached the crossing, they found it flooded across and two feet deep, for at least a mile. About three weeks before their crossing, the river had been very high and a returning miner trying to pass through the water was drowned.
Today, though, the water was somewhat manageable, but the ground was so soft and the carts and wagons so heavy that they were soon bogged down. Hours of labor ensued and that only resulted in the party being able to reach a knoll in the flooded landscape. With the dark of night coming on, they decided to stay on the knoll for the night so that they might continue slogging their way to dry ground with a new day to do it in.
That night, Swan said he was devoured by mosquitoes and greeted the morning with eyes swollen nearly shut.
Toward evening, they crossed the Mokulmne River with no incidents and pitched camp for the night.
The next day they crossed another river, the Cosumnes, setting up camp near the home of the Sheldon's, where they stayed an extra day, resting and gathering information about the trail ahead and their mining prospects.
On June 14, 1848, San Francisco's California Star newspaper ceased publication. Some sources claim it was because the staff fled for the gold fields while others say it was because the paper's subscribers had dwindled to nothing. It was hardly an unusual occurrence. Men were leaving stable lives and good jobs everywhere to follow the scent of gold.
The following month, John Swan, a sailor from England, left Monterey to be a part of the adventure.
He and a party of fellow travelers from San Jose were soon nearing the El Dorado County foothills, where they spent two days by the Sheldon place, resting and gathering information about the trail ahead and what they could expect once they reached the mining district.
On the third day, the party resumed its journey, but that evening when they set up a new camp along a foothills creek, one of the men, Richardson, rode off to check things out along the North Fork of the American River. While Richardson was gone, Swan mined his first gold when he sold one of his blankets for two-and-one-half ounces of glittering dust. When Richardson returned and said he and the group should rest another day, Swan, growing impatient, set off on his own for Old Dry Diggings, near where Placerville is now.
Several hours later, Swan joined up with two soldiers from Company F of the 3rd Artillery, Quartermaster Sgt. James H. Carson and a private. They were the first military men he had met who were on a gold seeking furlough. The strong lure of gold was causing so many soldiers to desert, that the army had initiated a furlough program.
That evening, Swan found reason to laugh when the sergeant showed him how he had learned to make bread while fighting Indians in Florida. After mixing flour, water and a little salt together, he formed little patties that he threw on the fire's hot coals. Within a few minutes, they were all biting into the biscuits, which proved to be charred on the outside and raw inside.
"I had one taste and that was enough for me, but I thought if that was the way the soldiers made their bread in Florida, I don't wonder so many died there, for it would kill more men than the bullets of the Seminole Indians," he said. "Such bread would kill the devil if that was possible, much less a soldier or sailor either."
Traveling alone again a few days later, Swan ran into an old acquaintance and the problem of the lost pick was somewhat solved, though the pick the man sold him was pretty blunt, he said. But, blunt or not, he paid for it with a Mexican ounce gold coin.
By the time Swan arrived, the camp was a bustling community. Days were spent working their claims and evenings were passed together eating and telling stories around the campfire. A couple of the soldiers had good singing voices and entertained the camp with song. It was a happy time and despite his earlier memory of the killer biscuits, Swan would always remember with fondness the time he spent in El Dorado County.
"I was attracted by the glitter of the gold in the ravines and gulches and the wild, independent life of a gold miner, for at that time in California most of the miners had great hopes, though few of them were destined to be realized." It was only later that Swan admitted that none of them were really experienced enough to realize when they were actually doing well.
Although most of the men were taking their share of gold, Swan was not having much luck. By his own admission, that was probably because he couldn't stay put long enough. "I might have made more if I had run about less," he said. Apparently though, he was not worried much about it. He was having a good time.
He sold another of his blankets for 2 1/2 ounces of gold dust. The pound of beads he had brought along to sell to the Indians brought only seven ounces of gold, less than half the "weight in gold" they had been selling for but a short time before. Still, he was not concerned.
Over the next weeks, Swan settled into a pleasant routine at Old Dry Diggings, in the company of about 25 other men. A half dozen were soldiers from the 3rd Artillery's Company F, four or five from Stevenson's regiment, a party of sailors and marines from the war sloop, the Warren, Peter Brennan and several others from Monterey, one preacher named Dunleavy, Jack Scott and a couple others from Santa Cruz.
Alexander Patterson, an ex-sergeant with Col. Stevenson's regiment of New York Volunteers had been the first, with three friends, to work the area near the spring at the head of Old Dry Diggings. By noon of the first day, the four had found six pounds of gold. In early September of that year, the price of gold dust was set at $16 per ounce.
That didn't mean, though, that life in the "diggings" was always carefree, Swan remembered. Bears were another of his troubling, but humorous memories. One evening, soldiers Thomas Elliot and John Evans were returning from the trading post with a large chunk of beef. You can guess the rest. The next morning, the two returned to camp minus the beef, but happy to still be in one piece. With his typical humor, Swan described what happened after the men dropped the beef. "The bear did not pursue them, preferring good fat beef for his supper to thin soldier."
Guns were pretty much useless at the time as the sale of ammunition was prohibited because of the fear of the native Indians causing trouble. Too bad. A bullet between the bear's eyes would have made life easier, not to mention the fact that the meat-hungry men could have enjoyed several dinners compliments of the furry devil.
Over the years, Swan contributed many of his recollections to newspapers of the day and it is thought that because of his strong belief in providing an accurate portrayal of events, his writings were accurate portrayals of his fellow miners and their adventures as well as his own experience.
One such miner was a tall, carefree Irishman known only as Frank. Frank was partnered with a fellow Irishman named William McGline, who was better known in California as Bill the Brewer.
Frank was good at finding gold but very careless about keeping it. If he didn't spend it on partying, he lost it during his two-to-three day drinking sprees. Frank was very cocky and had an "easy come, easy go" attitude. According to Swan's writings, "One day while he was at a liquor tent drinking, with his buckskin bag [of] gold dust in his hand and untied at that, a looker-on told him to be more careful or he would lose his gold, at which he seized the bag at the bottom and scattered it all around on the ground outside the tent, saying he could get plenty more. He had three lbs. in the purse at the time, and it was nearly all lost."
Later, Frank went to the Middle Fork of the American River and within a short time had amassed some $7,000 in gold. Within six weeks, Swan said, Frank was "dead broke again."
During this time, Frank and Bill the Brewer bought a quarter of fresh beef, which they hung in a nearby tree. One night Frank went on one of his famous sprees and while he was gone a bear came into camp and made dinner on the prized beef. Bill the Brewer, being weaponless, had no choice but to take his blankets and go down to Log Cabin Ravine to sleep with the other men.
One of the camp's members was another Irishman named Haggerty, who was a soldier. Haggerty was very lucky, panning 12 ounces during one afternoon's labor.
Part of the money he made was spent on a big, black mule that he planned to take with him to the Middle Fork.
Feed was very scarce around the camp and the miners' horses would eat anything they could find including flapjacks and tealeaves, Swan reported.
One dark, moonless night, the men lay about camp talking and telling tales. The talk had turned to bears when suddenly something could be heard, but not seen, coming through the bushes toward the water.
The men scattered, climbing trees, hiding behind bushes, and climbing the walls of the log cabin. Swan, being short, went flying through the cabin's window. Other bigger men got jammed together trying to stuff themselves through the window at the same time. It was a hilarious sight and became more so when the "bear" proved to be nothing more than Haggerty's mule.
Around the end of September, Swan left for Dry Creek, where fresh "color" had been found near Hicks' ranch. Hicks himself found it lucrative enough tending the horses of the miners for a monthly fee.
It was here that Swan let his two horses go loose only to find them several days later mounted by two horse thieving miners who claimed to have purchased them.
"But as one of the party who had my horses was always on the steal when he could get a chance and a notorious liar to boot, I did not believe him," Swan said.
The thieves refused to give the horses up, so Swan, accompanied by several other irate miners who didn't take well to thievery, forced the issue. Outnumbered, the thieves, though argumentative, had no choice but to relinquish the animals. There was no bloodshed.
As October set in, the evenings began to get cool and Swan, ready to call it quits with mining, set off for Monterey. Although he had planned to travel to Sutter's Fort, sell his horses and go to the San Joaquin River and start a ferry business, he instead spent some time getting himself lost before finally finding his way back to his old home, Monterey.
During his lifetime he wrote extensively of his acquaintances and contacts with men who we now recognize as historical figures, such as historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, Sam Brannan, and Lt. William T. Sherman, as well as many of the local pioneers of the day. Much of his writing appeared in California newspapers.
Swan spent his final years as a county charge, having given in to old age and its infirmities. On the evening of Jan. 6, 1896, he suffered a fatal heart attack while walking down a hallway. Old friends in Monterey took up a collection to bring his body "home" and bury it.
"Poor old Jack Swan has ended his long and eventful career and gone the way of all flesh," wrote the editor of the Monterey Cypress. "Every man, woman or child knew him and respected him for kindness of heart. He was guileless like a child, and will undoubtedly secure a reserved seat in heaven, for we honestly believe he is entitled to it."
Permission is granted by the author to use or republish this article, but proper attribution to the author -- Joanne Burkett -- is requested.
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Last Updated on: 16 November 2003