cam_MarkDManlove_B017_F013_003A

By Mark D. Manlove.

AN OVERLAND TRIP TO THE CALIFORNIA GOLD FIELDS.

Personal Experiences of Mark D. Manlove a Forty Niner [Forty-niner].

In the spring of '49, my brothers John, Jonathan and myself decided to go to
the California gold fields.

We got a wagon and provisions and put them on a steamboat at Attica Attica, Indiana
on the Wabash [Wabash River] and went to St. Louis St. Louis, Missouri. There I met an old friend Rufus
Icet, who lived in St. Louis and he said he had made up a company and
wanted us to join him. This we did and bought four mules and harness
in St. Louis. We, with the balance of the company, took steamboat to
St. Jos, Mo. St. Joseph, Missouri

We left St. Joe St. Joseph, Missouri about the tenth of May, going across the plains
up the north side of Platte river [River]. The first settlement we came to was
Rubedeaux [Robidoux] trading post, two hundred miles up the Platte. A Frenchman
had married an Indian squaw and had a lot of little half-breed Indians.
A blacksmith shop constituted the town. Traders would come in and get
horses shod and Indians would get arrows sharpened.

We found the covered wagon was too heavily loaded for the mules,
so we packed the mules and threw away what we could not pack and left
the wagon. There were six in the company now. Jack Pellum had two
ponies; Leet had two good mules. Umalvany had one good pony which he
rode.

John, Jonathan and I had four mules, three packed and one to ride
by turns.

[written in pencil]

Gift of daughter, Flora J. Manlove,
Jacksonville, Florida. Feb 1958