Pioneer Women
- Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe (1819–1906)
- Sierra Nevada Mountains
- UNITED STATES
- 21
Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe (1819–1906), writing under the pseudonym Dame Shirley, provides a woman’s view on life in Gold Rush camps.
Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe lived with her husband for over a year in mining camps along the Feather River in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. During that time, from September 1851 to November 1852, she wrote 23 letters about her experiences to her sister Molly in Massachusetts. Her letters, which she wrote under the pen name Dame Shirley, were later published in the San Francisco-based magazine Pioneer.
Dame Shirley’s letters provide a rich first-person account of how women experienced the diverse yet male-dominated Gold Rush era. Dame Shirley writes about the language she hears around her, describes various styles of dress, and tells the reader about conditions in log cabins.
In the two excerpts below, she highlights the manual tasks performed by women. In writing about one woman, whom she calls the “Indiana girl,” Clappe states:
“This gentle creature wears the thickest kind of miners’ boots, and has the dainty habit of wiping her dishes on her apron! Last spring she walked to this place, and packed fifty pounds of flour on her back down that awful hill – the snow being five feet deep at the time.” (The Shirley Letters, p. 21)
She then goes on to describe another female neighbor, Mrs. B_:
“Mrs. B_, who is as small as ‘Indiana girl’ is big (indeed, I have been confidently informed that she weighs but sixty-eight pounds), keeps with her husband the ‘Miner’s Home’ — Mem — the lady tends bar. Voilá, my dear, the female population of my new home — splendid materials for social parties this winter — are they not?” (The Shirley Letters, p. 21).
The diversity of the Gold Rush days is reflected in the various languages she overhears, as in the following excerpt:
“You will hear in the same day, almost at the same time, the lofty melody of the Spanish language, the piquant polish of the French…, the silver, changing clearness of the Italian, the harsh gangle of the German, the hissing precision of the English, the liquid sweetness of the Kanaka, and the sleep-inspiring languor of the East-Indian.” (The Shirley Letters, p. 99)