Cheryl Anne Stapp
The First Wagon Party
They are known as the Bartleson-Bidwell Party, or alternatively the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, the first organized group of emigrants to...
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California's Olden Golden Days
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jan 18
- 3 min
The First Californians
Many centuries before European explorers found California—for at least 10,000 and possibly as many as 20,000 years—an indigenous people...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jan 11
- 2 min
Reform Dress for Ladies
The upstart new style in ladies’ fashions was quite unconventional. Yet it was seen everywhere across America throughout the 1850s...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jan 4
- 2 min
Men & Women Behind Bars
When California became a state in 1850, its elected lawmakers had a multitude of issues to resolve, not the least of which was to address...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Dec 28, 2022
- 2 min
Noisy New Year's Eve 1922
There’s something about the coming of a new year that inspires us to symbolically shed the ups and downs of the past twelve months and...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Dec 21, 2022
- 1 min
Old Fashioned Christmas Dinner
Merry Christmas, everyone! May your holiday be a joyous one with family and friends. What are you having for Christmas dinner? A big...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Dec 14, 2022
- 3 min
Elusive Highwayman Black Bart
The masked highwayman who called himself Black Bart was so clever with disguises and occasional props that he successfully robbed 27...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Dec 7, 2022
- 2 min
Her Crowning Glory
In July 1849, as hordes of gold-rushing men were swarming into California, a French hairdresser arrived in San Francisco and immediately...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Nov 30, 2022
- 2 min
Calamity in Jackson
Years after the railroad came to Ione, the stagecoach was still a primary transportation mode in Amador County, and horses used for...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Nov 23, 2022
- 1 min
Tomorrow, A Day of Thanks
President Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving as an official national holiday in 1863. Before then, New England and other regions...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Nov 16, 2022
- 3 min
Faint Hoofbeats from the Past
Its official name was The Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company, but that was too unwieldy, so everyone just called...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Nov 9, 2022
- 3 min
Questionable Circumstances
In the early years of the Gold Rush, the mining camps were terrorized by the bloody exploits of a ferocious bandit named Joaquin...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Nov 2, 2022
- 3 min
Chief Estanislao
His namesakes are Stanislaus County, and the Stanislaus River. He was Chief Estanislao, famous for leading bands of armed Native...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Oct 26, 2022
- 4 min
History Lessons in Cemeteries
All Hallows Eve is next Sunday, when centuries-old pagan beliefs insist that ghosts and goblins haunt old graveyards at the Midnight...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Oct 19, 2022
- 3 min
An Ordinary Pioneer
Does a life filled with adventure and diverse occupations beget a physically vigorous, mentally alert old age? That was certainly true of...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Oct 12, 2022
- 3 min
Antiquated Hicksville Cemetery
In October we start thinking about trick-or-treaters, and making plans to deck our porches with jack-o-lanterns and other Halloween...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Oct 5, 2022
- 2 min
The Feminine Advantage
Women were scarce in Gold Rush-era California, a mere 8% of the state-wide population in 1850, and only 30% ten years later, in 1860....
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Sep 28, 2022
- 3 min
Hucksters and Scalawags
Families who trundled overland in covered wagons during the 1840s, hoping to build a better life in the West, didn’t always know to be...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Sep 21, 2022
- 2 min
Susceptible to Seizure
In centuries past, and as global knowledge expanded in the Age of Sail, any attractive land that was scantily occupied and poorly...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Sep 14, 2022
- 2 min
Overland in Covered Wagons
What made some pioneer wagon trains successful, and others not? Partly luck, of course. But more than that, good fortune turned on the...
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