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Overland To California: The 1849 Manuscript Diary of Ichabod Davis Hamilton; Leather bound octavo, 160 pages. Includes newspaper clippings regarding Hamilton family home. Ohio native Icabod Davis Hamilton (March 16, 1822–January 7, 1894) while visiting friends in Louisville, Kentucky, heard the dramatic news of the California gold discovery. Immediately touched with a potent case of gold fever, he quickly boarded a ship in late April 1849, reached St. Louis, and with several fellow fortune-seekers began the long and arduous overland trek to the Golden Land. Realizing what a momentous adventure and opportunity this quest for riches presented, it inspired him to maintain a superb daily handwritten journal starting with his opening line “Rising Sun April 25th 1849.” That year, Hamilton joined over 30,000 Forty-niners who madly rushed to California taking the Oregon and California Trail via the Platte River Route that took them over the dusty plains of the Mid-West passing such well-known sites as Fort Laramie, natural landmarks like Chimney Rock, Nebraska, before leading to the mountainous and challenging terrain of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and the High Sierra. Following what may have been the Sacramento River, he reached Sacramento City and promptly scurried off to the mines. Amazingly, original hand-written Forty-niner diaries continue to surface as evidenced by this newly discovered captivating account which serves to continue and expand our understanding of the most famous and best documented event in California history, the gold discovery of January 24, 1848. Carrying a leather-bound, gold-gilded journal measuring 7⅜x 5 ¼ inches (octavo) filled with 160 pages of lined paper and decorated marble endpapers, gave Hamilton an easy-to-handle volume that the pioneer could faithfully make dated pencil-written entries following a long and exhausting day's journey of ten to fifteen miles. His entries are clearly and succinctly written giving a true picture of daily life on the gold trail describing such prosaic subjects as finding sufficient water and grass to feed their mule and ox teams, wash clothes, and gather buffalo chips to cook dinner. One can also feel his exhaustion and the tedium of coping with volatile weather conditions. While enduring the harshness of the trek, Hamilton and his fellow gold-seekers fortunately did not encounter serious tragedies other than one of their members accidentally killing himself while unpacking his rifle. Their sturdy pack animals and wagons held up while crunching over rough terrain. Occasionally this band of Forty-niners did encounter Native Americans, but this did not result in any hostility or clashes. Providing hope, he heard reassuring reports from returned travelers of the golden prospects of California, which, in turn, spurred them on to beat the competition. On May 24. Hamilton proudly wrote into his journal that they had “passed about 150 teams” of Forty-niners on the trail. Hamilton’s journal ends with his arrival in California, reaching what he called the “Rag City” of Sacramento and Tragedy Spring, Amador County on Thursday, September 11, 1849. His trek of about 2,000 miles took approximately 144 days. Eventually, this Forty-niner went into mining and farming in the Mariposa area. Being a loyal family man and newly married, he returned home via the Isthmus of Panama, made a second overland trek, and brought his family with him to California. Ever ambitious, he ran two inns in the Mariposa area before settling in Stockton and embarking on a moderately successful steamboat business towing barges on the San Joaquin River from 1873 to 1878 before retiring. In addition to his 1849 diary, the back of the volume includes several pages of handwritten notes concerning business transactions from January 20, 1859, to March 18, 1862. Another series of pages includes Hamilton's undated notes of a trip, flanked on each page by two columns of numbers. However, the purpose of the journey or the numbers is not indicated by this pioneer. Considering the harshness of the 1849 trek to California, Hamilton's leather-bound journal is in remarkably good condition. Although written in pencil, the pages are generally legible with no staining. Inserted into his journal is a newspaper clipping showing the stately "Hamilton Home and Block" at 825 North Madison Street that Hamilton built in 1858 in Stockton. Sadly, another undated clipping in the volume reported that the "Stately Pioneer Home Comes Down to Make Way tor Apartments. All-in-all, the Hamilton volume is a valuable record of a commonplace man who saw in California a golden opportunity. Dimensions: 7-3/8"h x 5-1/4"w. Processing and shipping within the continental U.S. $60 plus a 1.5% replacement cost insurance fee. Discounts given on combined lot shipping.