Jersey Gold: The Newark Overland Company's Trek to California, 1849

Author:   Margaret Casterline Bowen ,  Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles
Publisher:   University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN:  

9780806196404


Pages:   384
Publication Date:   11 November 2025
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

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Jersey Gold: The Newark Overland Company's Trek to California, 1849


Overview

When gold fever struck in 1849, John S. Darcy - prominent physician, general, and president of the New Jersey Railroad - assembled a company to travel overland to California. In Jersey Gold, Margaret Casterline Bowen and Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles tell the story of that colorful company of some thirty stalwarts and adventurers. Jersey Gold chronicles the experiences of the New Jersey argonauts from their lives before the gold rush to the widely varying fortunes each ultimately found. Animated by the trekkers' own words and observations and illustrated with maps, photographs, and drawings by one of the company's own men, Jersey Gold follows the Newark Overland Company's journey by rail, stage, and riverboat to the Missouri frontier town of Independence, the group's jumping-off point for the Oregon-California trail. There, the company splintered. Their divergent paths afford views of the westward journey from multiple perspectives as the companies faced the perils of the wilderness and the treachery of human nature. Once in gold country, many booked immediate passage home, but some remained with Darcy to work a successful mining operation before returning east with comfortable fortunes. A few, enchanted by the opportunities of the Golden Coast, took up permanent residence there - and in their stories we witness the emergence of California amid unprecedented lawlessness, the controversy of slavery, and diverse nationalities. The story of the Newark Overland Company - in many ways a panorama of the nineteenth century - ranges from the wildness of the frontier through the chaos of the Civil War to the throes of early industrialization, and features such notables as John Sutter, Brigham Young, and Henry Clay. In chronicling this journey, Jersey Gold vividly re-creates a defining chapter in American history.

Full Product Details

Author:   Margaret Casterline Bowen ,  Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles
Publisher:   University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint:   University of Oklahoma Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.90cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.635kg
ISBN:  

9780806196404


ISBN 10:   0806196408
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   11 November 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Good historians are good detectives. Trail buffs have long relied on excellent diarists - Charles Glass Gray, Alexander Cartwright, Robert Bond, Cyrus Currier - and a scholar, Thomas D. Clark, to understand the 1849 adventures of the Newark Overland Company. Ace detectives Margaret Casterline Bowen and Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles have utilized new voices of men and women to tell firsthand how they found their lives transformed on the trails. Jersey Gold is a new trail classic."" - Will Bagley, author of South Pass: Gateway to a Continent


Author Information

Margaret Casterline Bowen, a former IT manager and consultant for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, resides in Jefferson, Maryland.

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