AUTRY WESTERN HERITAGE MUSEUM - CIVIL WAR and the WEST - EMPIRE and LIBERTY

THE AUTRY - OFFICIAL SITE

Just went to see a terrific exhibit - three hours in the hall - where I learned so much more about our American history, how complicated the question of slavery was throughout what would become our nation, back in the day when half of it was still territory, in dispute.

So here's a little story.  Twenty or more years ago it was still not acknowledged, despite the documents that genealogists would find, not even by some college history professors, that some Native Americans had slaves.  I myself found documentation proving this in a western county of North Carolina, but it just wasn't acknowledged.  A research friend of mine actually went to a professor at a college in Florida where he had once attended to discuss his findings and was told to his face that this had "never happened."

But this exhibit admits it.  Even the Cherokee chief John Ross had slaves.

Could it be that people did not see much difference between a slave and chattel labor?  It seems so.
In fact, the very poor who survived through chattel labor were in a class only slightly higher than a slave and individual circumstances being what they were, might not have actually been better off.  They might not have been "owned" the same but their living conditions could be deplorable.

I had not known that coal miners also hired and imported immigrant labor where men were put under contract to work.  I'd known about servants who came into the early colonies and worked years to pay off the price of their ticket, but didn't know this happened in the mid 1800's during the Gold Rush.

Also up for going against stereotype:  Prostitutes in the Wild Wild West, often depicted as willing and having a great time of it, when it's known that sex trafficking went on.   (I've known about the situation in San Francisco with imported Chinese women and children, often put in cages and locked underground, even given the tools to commit suicide once they became infected with VD, but somehow I bought the movie depictions of White Women going west for the opportunity to make money the only way they could among the gold miners.)

A simply amazing array of  historical objects, paintings, proclamations, and other museum-worthy items are on display, along with some diary narratives read by actors at the touch of a button that give various perspectives.

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This brings up the USE OF DIARIES and NARRATIVES in your genealogy an history research.  Some of you may know about the SLAVE NARRATIVES that were collected by the WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION which are on a searchable database.  Additionally, you may find narratives in other places, such as written narratives available through FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUESTS, as well as some military related documents.  WILLS can also be a form of NARRATIVE.

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THERE WAS ONE WOMAN FOR EVERY TEN MEN - GOLD RUSH SAN FRANCISCO

I posted about the Japanese-American Museum  in Los Angeles several weeks ago.   When Chinese and Japanese came to America it was for work more than any other purpose.  Agriculture. For the Chinese immigrants there was working on the railroad, the rail road that would tie the United States together - coast to coast.  Both communities sent for brides from their country of origin.

Imagine the world of Gold Rush California!  There was one woman for every ten men, and according the THE GOLD RUSH, a PBS video that is part of AN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE series, in
a few short years after Gold was found north of San Francisco, the city had grown so that it had twice daily newspapers, nine insurance companies, and consulates of twenty-seven foreign governments. 

The gold rush MADE San Francisco. 

1849 is when people rushed to find their fortunes moving west to the gold fields and streams. The few people who found their fortune early and announced that there was gold had fortunes and walked away. Gentlemanly behavior and fairness were the norm. But when thousands came to work hard all day for about $8 worth of gold (use that calculator I have embedded on the side bar), it became lawless, the wild west.

Soon people found the fortune to be made was not in finding gold but opening businesses that served miners, and so today we still wear BLUE JEANS!

Yes this is a DVD recommendation for those of you who want to know more about West Coast American History, or who have Gold Rush heritage!