Editors Note: Submitted by Correspondent Bob Schaller to Open Road International Magazine, posted by the Editor.
In the spring of 1849, William Swain rode away from his family’s farm in Youngstown, New York and joined in one of the seminal adventures of American history. He caught a lake steamer to Chicago, another boat to St Louis, and a third to Independence, Missouri, where he bought into a “joint-stock company”[1] of Michigan men who then set off on foot, horseback and wagon, to the California goldfields. Narrowly avoiding disaster, he barely made it before winter snows froze the California mountains.
Waiting out the winter of ’49-‘50, then laboring for little gain along some California rivers through the summer and fall, his family finally convinced him to give up his golden dream and return home. He left California, traveling by packet ship to Central America, and there trekked through the isthmus jungles from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. He boarded a steamer to New York City via Havana, arriving ill, but his ever-steadfast brother George found him there and brought him home to Youngstown.
William was “everyman,” participating in a national adventure that changed America, and that shapes our lives and thoughts about ourselves even today. It is difficult to overstate the impact the California Gold Rush had on the history and development of the United States. Swain wrote a literate, coherent account – a diary – of his journey to California. He also communicated by letter from along the California Trail.[2] He continued writing letters while he waited and worked in the California gold “diggings.” These documents were treasured by his children and grandchildren and finally were offered to J. S. Holliday who used them to complete a book, which is the most engrossing account of that massive 1849 migration available today.[3]
What I find most fascinating about William Swain was that he didn’t disappear into history as many of his gold rush contemporaries did. Even the ones who wrote about their experiences tended to be a part of that one geographical, national moment – and nothing else. Where did they go? How did that experience shape their subsequent lives? With Swain, like few others, you can easily find the answers to those questions.
History is a composite of all the little stories that made up our ancestor’s lives – and here is one of them, laid out in detail for us to enjoy. Forget how the study of history “helps us not to repeat the mistakes of the past,” and “if you want to see where we are going, you have to look at where we’ve been!” With Swain’s diary and letters, presented in Holliday’s book in concert with the larger history of the 1849 Gold Rush as a background, we can see how one extraordinary citizen, and his friends and family, participated in one of the greatest mass migrations in any nation’s history. This is exciting stuff!
The study of history is fascinating because it is our story – you can find yourself in it, if you look hard enough. I remember reading, in a college literature class, about a road trip from Boston to New York City in the mid-1600s and realizing that I was very likely related to a family that ran a road-house along that coach road (mentioned in the story). When you can place yourself, or others like you, into a story, it brings it alive.
I have stood on the ground where Washington accepted the British surrender at Yorktown, and touched the seam of his tent (on display there). I walked the path of the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk. I know at ground level the place where Crazy Horse was murdered at Fort Robinson, NE, and where Custer surveyed the Little Bighorn Valley in Montana from a mountaintop[4], and exactly where Geronimo stood to have his photograph taken at Fort Bowie, AZ one September day in 1886. I can pick out and match the foundation stones in now-ruined homes that I have seen in historical photographs from years past. I have read the inscribed signatures of 49ers and others on the Register Cliffs,[5] along the dry-desert route of the California-Oregon Trail. I have stood where William Swain stood, both on the trail, and at home in Youngstown!
After re-reading Swain’s diary in The World Rushed In for about the third time, I thought that if I was ever able to visit Youngstown, NY, I would see if I could find William and his family. He lived in a “cobblestone farmhouse” on the “River Road.” On his return to Youngstown, he became a prosperous farmer, a peach-grower, one of the largest in western New York in his day. His brother and best friend George, also in Youngstown, was a public servant for most of his lifetime. Would there not still be some traces of them around their life-long home?
Looking at maps of the Youngstown area, I found Swain Road. Given the description of the farm in the book, I could almost guess where the Swain farmhouse was built (in 1836). I made plans to go there, look for the farmhouse, and see if I could find the graves of William, George and their families.
I got to the corner of Swain Road and Main Street in Youngstown in October 2008, and drove from there to the place where I thought the cobblestone house would be. There was nothing there but a very small pump-house. Disappointed that my satellite photo and map-sleuthing were errant (how can one mistake a pump house for a farmhouse!), I headed back out toward the highway – but stopped when I saw a resident and asked him if he knew anything about the Swains. He did!
He directed me to the nearby home of Ms Betty Van Zandt – and said I should speak with her about her home – which I found had been built by William for his daughter Lila (or Eliza). I was in the right neighborhood after all. Ms Van Zandt referred me to Margery Stratton, who, she said, could help me with further information about the local area, having sold most of the houses in the area, some more than once.
It turned out the “cobblestone farmhouse” so often mentioned by William in his diary and letters was right next door. I took photos, walked around, and looked for any peach trees that might have descended from those that William and his brother had planted. I didn’t find any — but peach trees aren’t known for their longevity anyway.
I read the monument near the house about the battle that took place in pre-Revolutionary War times on that very spot. I took photos of the foundation stones in the bridge that crosses the drainage in front of the house – figuring they were most likely original to the time the farm was built. I wondered which window Sabrina Swain might have sat behind as she wrote letters to her absent and sorely-missed husband, and where in the yard William’s garden and grape vines might have been. Then I went in search of Margery Stratton.
I spent an hour or so with Ms Stratton at the local historical society’s library, reading some of the letters and information written about the Swain’s, who were, after all, prominent local citizens. Armed with information provided by the friendly members of the society, I set off to the Oakland Rural Cemetery to find the Swains. It took some time, but I found all the last resting places of the family – except for William and George’s father Isaac, and his 2nd wife, Patience. Perhaps they are in a different part of the cemetery – or even in an older cemetery somewhere close by. William and Sabrina’s youngest son is also not with the rest of the family.
After reading so much about this family, I feel almost as if they are friends. Seeing their home in Youngstown and the places that were familiar to them, when I read the passages they wrote I can imagine more vividly what their lives were like; what they saw, almost what they felt at certain times.
As William returned home in 1850, he and George in their wagon topped the hill south of Youngstown, above Lewiston, probably about where Ridge Road is today. They stopped, and William stood up to survey the valley he had not seen for almost two years. He pronounced it the most beautiful of all the scenes he had witnessed. Don’t we all feel that way about our homes? You can see that same view today – just as William did when he returned from his long journey. I saw it last month[6], cloaked in the beautiful autumn colors of northern New York State. And based on the description in J.S. Holliday’s book, I knew exactly what I was looking at; William had seen that same view in 1851.
I will soon be off on other adventures, connecting land, scenes and buildings with our nation’s story and its people. Among the quests I have planned is a re-tracing of the Oregon/California Trail west from Independence, MO. I also have it in my mind that I just might be able to find the exact spot where William and his partners built their cabin and dug for gold, on the beautiful Feather River above Sacramento, California. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
I’d like to thank Betty Van Zandt, Margery Stratton, Janet Jachlewski and a couple of others whose names I neglected to note (forgive me), for their assistance during my short visit. Their kindness and willingness to help was a very pleasant surprise!
Bob Schaller
November, 2008
Footnotes
[1] Swain and his companions joined the “Wolverine Rangers.” Joint-stock companies allowed individual overland travelers to share expenses, supplies and security for the duration of the several months it took to cross the plains, mountains and deserts to Oregon or California.
[2] The California and Oregon trails were one and the same, until they split paths in Idaho.
[3] Holliday, J.S., The World Rushed In, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1983
[4] Weir Peak stands between the Reno/Benteen position and Last Stand Hill. Custer viewed the soon-to-be battleground from its top, before riding to his death below.
[5] The Register Cliffs are near present-day Guernsey, Wyoming.
[6] October 2008
