Women and the "Colored" Mosaic of Gold Rush San Francisco

San Francisco during the early gold rush was an energized port community with a blend of ethnic and cultural diversity. Prominent local barkeepers T.A. Barry and B.A. Patten observed that poverty created strange bedfellows, “neither gold dust, not yet silver dollars, would always avail in getting a room to one’s self. A little of the experience of those early days took the fastidiousness out most men.” Frank Soulé described San Francisco’s racial hierarchy in his Annals of San Francisco (1854): American whites topped Soulé’s schema, then Europeans (English, Scots, and Germans remained highly esteemed, but Irish via Australia, French, and Italians were less welcome), and easily identifiable African Americans, Chinese, and Latin Americans were systematically marginalized by laws. While first California Constitution banned slavery, blacks in the state could not vote, homestead, nor hold public office. Blacks could not serve on a jury nor give testimony in court against whites. Outcasts banded together, and women brought distinct abolitionist sensibilities to the frontier. Black entrepreneurs fared well during the Gold Rush. Anyone willing to provide supplies and services to miners including tools, rooms, baths, laundry service, and entertainment could make unbelievable profits. City directories chronicled a compelling view of how African Americans moved through San Francisco society. This paper will present models of how white women (predominantly from the Northeastern United States) related to freeborn blacks, former, and escaped slaves in the antebellum West between the years of 1848 and 1855 as well as the unique economic dynamic developed by the “sole trader” in Gold Rush San Francisco, which brought European and Latin American married women in direct contact with an energized Black counterculture community.