As I was continued reading Dame Shirley: A Yankee Lady in the California Mines, what I did find intriguing was when Shirley described the various ways miners within Rich Bar extracted gold. Shirley was descriptive in her accounts as the how some miners would use the panning technique to acquire gold dust or flakes. Shirley herself attempted panning for gold and found this practice to be a difficult and disappointing pursuit (Shirley Document, 177).This reminded me of my first time I went to Knott's Berry Farm as a child and how I used a mining pan to search for fake gold near the frontier area of the amusement park. As a child, I got very excited and actually believed it was real gold, and thought I was rich. Nevertheless, Shirley's descriptions…show more content… Many of these groups of people risked their lives to acquire wealth and prosperity in California. It was interesting to read how a white woman named Mary Harrison Newell had a husband named William Newell had their lives changed when they became part the golden fever arising in society. William Newell left his wife and child in Delaware after his business failed and embarked on a journey to California with the hope of discovering gold. However, he failed many times searching for gold. He would write to his wife letters of his failures and his wife Mary became upset. She wrote to William and told him her solution was to go help him find gold. However, by the time Mary arrived in California, her husband had been sick and died before Mary arrived. (Johnson, 73- 75). It was heartbreaking to read because of William's tragic end. William risked everything he had, abandoned his family, lost his child, and was surrounded with bad luck in California. Life among the Gold Rush community in California was not easy and led to many failures and consequences for
