Prospecting for Christmas in 1849

This is a different sort of story than you’ll usually find on this website, a story from a another life many years ago.  In those days I was a freelance writer, writing under three different names (more about that in the blog “My Three Names”), and one of my specializations was California history.  I really enjoyed doing the historical research for those articles. Here’s one of them, about a prospector’s Christmas in 1849.

Prospecting for Christmas in 1849

During the California gold rush, sometimes Christmas wishes did come true, even when everything seemed lost.

Young Joseph J. McCloskey had come all the way out to California from New York.  A few nights before Christmas, he and two fellow prospectors were asleep in the middle of the wilderness when suddenly a nearby dam burst. Though they survived, the rushing waters took almost everything they owned.

They bravely set out through the wilderness, hoping to find other prospectors. They walked for days, and used up all of the small amount of water-logged food they salvaged. McCloskey no longer had any idea what day it was.

The three of them woke at sunup. With nothing to eat and no tools, they tried to figure out what to do next. Then one of McCloskey’s companions exclaimed, “Good Lord, boys, do you know that this is Christmas?” Suddenly McCloskey felt as though he couldn’t go on any longer. He went and hid behind some bushes where the others couldn’t see him, and broke down crying.

But after a while McCloskey pulled himself together. He went back to his dejected companions, reached into his pocket, and brought out two gold nuggets he had been saving to send back home to New York.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, and handed a nugget to each of them. “It was a poor gift,” he wrote later. “They’d have appreciated a hot biscuit a lot more.”

With that, the others dug into their pockets too.  McCloskey received a broken-bladed pocketknife and a small pencil.

They determined to try to be merry despite everything, and pretended to be youngsters who had merely refused to eat because they were looking forward to a big Christmas dinner. And they set out again, marching mile after mile through the wilderness. They were tired and hungry, and didn’t know how long it might be before they found some form of civilization. By late afternoon it was hard to even pretend they were having a merry Christmas.

Suddenly they heard singing—“Adeste Fideles”! They ran toward the sounds. There, behind some trees, were four prospectors from Boston singing Christmas carols and celebrating. McCloskey and his friends were overjoyed.

The “boys from Boston,” as McCloskey put it, had plenty of provisions and were happy to share.  So McCloskey and his friends got their Christmas dinner after all, complete with johnny cake. They sat by the campfire late into the night, singing Christmas songs and telling stories.

For McCloskey, Christmas 1849 turned out to be a joyful one, one he almost never had.