Cheryl Anne Stapp
Wicked Drinkeries
For almost 70 years in the 19th century, San Francisco contained a unique criminal district which was the scene of much viciousness and...
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California's Olden Golden Days
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Sep 6
- 3 min
The Barbary Coast
San Francisco’s infamous Barbary Coast began as Sydney-Town as early as mid-1849, so named for the glut of escaped or released men from...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Mar 29
- 2 min
Policewoman Alice Stebbins Wells
Since the 1890s, California law enforcement agencies had employed women in caretaker positions—as matrons, supervisors, and other...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Feb 22
- 2 min
A Wicked Woman
They say that there were more women of ill repute than there were decent ladies, in California, during the early years of the Gold Rush....
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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 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
- 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
- Jul 13, 2022
- 5 min
Affair of Honor
Dueling was outlawed in California at its pre-statehood Constitutional Convention in the fall of 1849. However, the penalty imposed for...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- May 11, 2022
- 2 min
Foiled Intrigue
Perhaps it’s only myth or legend (for sure, certain story elements are questionable), but nonetheless it’s a romantic tale, published as...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Feb 16, 2022
- 4 min
Mother Shoots Daughter's Seducer
Gunplay was so common during the chaotic, early days of the California Gold Rush that many incidents, though duly reported, drew little...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jan 5, 2022
- 3 min
A Close Attachment
The proverb “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is from the 17th century play The Mourning Bride, and means that no one is angrier...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Nov 17, 2021
- 3 min
He Robbed the Wrong Woman
The old mining town in Nevada County is gone now, but Red Dog had its heyday in the 1860s, when the place had nearly two thousand...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Oct 6, 2021
- 3 min
The Terror of Merced County
Born to respectable, hard-working parents who had come to California as gold-rushers in 1849, Robert L. McFarlane quit the family farm in...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Aug 11, 2021
- 2 min
The Sloughhouse Graveyard
Jared Sheldon, a carpenter by trade, officially received a Mexican land grant of 22,130 acres along the Cosumnes River in 1844—in payment...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Aug 4, 2021
- 2 min
Invasion at Monterey!
In 1818, California was still an outlying province of Imperial Spain, even as New Spain (later, the Republic of Mexico) and other...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jun 16, 2021
- 2 min
Hideaway in Plain Sight
In the 1850s the Mountaineer House was a well-known tavern and busy stage stop where multiple stagecoach lines rolled in daily to change...
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