Free Library Admission Through March

Start the new year off by exploring your family history at our library in Boston! As a premier destination for genealogical research and scholarship, the Brim-DeForest Library provides access to an extensive collection of books, maps, manuscripts, and digital resources. Access is free through March 31, 2026. Learn More 

Readers Respond

Denise Hill, Santa Rosa, California: In 1849, my third great-grandfather Joseph Martin, a geologist employed by the Tyson Furnace Company in Rutland, Vermont, left his wife, Lovina (Johnson), and four daughters and headed to the Sierra Nevada Mountains in search of gold. His plan was to search for gold in Placerville, California, at a location between Bear Creek and the American River called Dry Diggings. By 1850, Dry Diggings had a population of 5,000 and miners were paid an average of $28 per day. Joseph appears on the passenger list of the California returning to the East Coast in 1850, but there is no further record of him in Vermont. The family story is that he died less than a year after arriving home at age 41. Lovina remarried in 1852.

Carol Bickel, Monkton, Maryland: In 1856, my widowed great-great-grandmother Charlotte Whitby emigrated from England to New South Wales, Australia, with her children. The family undertook farming but endured drought conditions and a challenging economic environment. In 1867, gold was discovered at Gympie, Queensland. Her sons Charles and David went to work at the Gympie goldfields. They held miners’ rights licenses from 1867 through 1874. In 1874, Charles followed another gold discovery to Charters Towers, Australia.

Joan MacKinnon, Gananoque, Ontario: My great-uncle William MacKinnon left his home in Prince Edward Island in 1880 to work as a silver miner in Arizona. In 1891, he set out for a new mining community called Eldorado (now New Denver) in Slocan, British Columbia. With a friend, he co-founded a general store there called Hunter and MacKinnon and later expanded the business to three other towns. In 1898, lured by tales of gold in the Yukon, Bill headed north to the Klondike. He drowned on May 19 in the treacherous Stikine River, between Telegraph Creek and Glenora, British Columbia. He was interred in a small aboriginal burying ground in Glenora.

Kathy Nienhouse, Nipomo, California: When my 2nd great-grandfather John Lenk, a butcher, learned about the Black Hills Gold Rush, he said to his wife, “Louise, somebody has to feed those boys.” The couple left Chicago in 1874 and opened a market and a boardinghouse, the Central Hotel in Central City, South Dakota. In 1880, Louise and John were living in Bend, South Dakota, with three children and five miners. According to family lore, Martha Jane “Calamity Jane” Canary was a boarder and Louise helped deliver one of Jane’s babies.

Pam Pettengell, Williamsburg, Virginia: My grandmother's father, John McLaughlin, emigrated with his parents from County Donegal, Ireland, during the Great Famine. Soon after they arrived in Pennsylvania, John heard about the discovery of gold in California. At the age of about 16, John headed to California with his brother. Eight years later, John returned to his family in Pennsylvania with enough money to buy land, build a farmhouse, and start a family. My grandmother Rose McLaughlin was born and raised in that farmhouse.