Customer Reviews

Apron Full of Gold: The Letters of Mary Jane Megquier from San Francisco 1849-1856

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This book contains letters from Mary Jane Megquier during her Gold Rush years in California. They were written to various members of her family (mostly her children) during the three separate journeys that she made west via Central America. She and her husband Dr. Thomas L. Megquire had made their way to California so that they could take advantage of the Gold Rush money and return to their children with her "apron full of gold." What they found there was predictably not so easy, but they did make a life for themselves and were eventually able to return and purchase a large farm in Winthrop, Maine.

The letters themselves range from exotic details about what she and her husband encountered in Panama to mundane struggles with tenants, money and shopping. My frustration with the book is that we catch such a narrow glimpse of Megquire through these letters. She seemed like a formidable woman-- resourceful, independent and devoted to her family. Once I knew her a little through these letters, I could not but help wish that I knew her more.

If you can find it, be careful to buy the second edition edited by Polly Welts Kaufman rather than the edition by Robert Glass Cleland. Kaufman provides more personal background in the introduction and has restored the personal passages to the letters that Cleland had omitted. She has also included some letters from Thomas Megquire which had not previously been published. There are a number of useful illustrations in this edition, although they were occasionally irritatingly placed quite a ways away from the letter that they were intended to illuminate.

This collection should appeal to readers interested in the Gold Rush years, the journey west in the US, or in women's experience of history. I am not sure how much these letters would appeal to the general reader-- although fascinating, the body of work is too slim to really provide a narrative experience.