Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches To Which

Gorham, George C. (George Congdon), 1832-1909Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
668K words
Chapters
67

Tags

English Originals World History Local GazetteerImmigrant LifeWestern DevelopmentPortrait GalleryPioneer PortraitsMemoirEarly California19th CenturyPioneering YearsSocial Observation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To WhichAuthor: Gorham, George C. (George Congdon), 1832-1909,Language: English, Class: KF: Law in general, Comparative and uniform law, Jurisprudence: United States, Release Date: May 2, 2005

Editor's review

This book is George C. Gorham's personal memoir of early life in California, with additional sketches, and stands as a primary source at the intersection of American legal history and the history of westward expansion. As a lawyer and judge, the author writes from firsthand experience and a professional vantage point, offering primary material for the study of nineteenth-century California society, its judiciary, and its political life. Released free of charge by Project Gutenberg, the book is easily accessible and suits both as supplementary reading for historical research and as casual browsing for general readers interested in Western narrative. Note that personal recollection inevitably carries subjective coloring and the limitations of its era; readers should compare it with other historical sources rather than treat it as the sole authoritative account. Overall, it is more a side window than a panoramic history.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and the appended sketches, locate chapters relevant to your research or interests, then read them closely.
  2. Keep a chronology of early California history at hand and mark the timeline of people and events as you read.
  3. Compare the judgments in the memoir with other contemporary sources, and distinguish fact from personal evaluation.
  4. Use the search function of the Gutenberg e-edition to jump between topics by personal and place names.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67

FAQ

Is this book a complete historical work? No. It is one eyewitness's personal memoir plus several sketches—a primary-source document rather than a systematic general history. Read it as one perspective's record of what was seen and heard, and use it alongside other studies to form a fuller picture.
Can I read it without a foundation in American history? You can, but it is advisable first to grasp the basic outline of California around the Gold Rush and its early statehood; otherwise the people, institutions, and events in the book will lack context. With that groundwork, the reading will go much more smoothly.
Why is it recommended to read it alongside other historical sources? Personal recollection is shaped by memory, standpoint, and the ideas of its time and may involve selective narration or bias. Comparing it with contemporary newspapers, archives, or others' memoirs helps distinguish fact from evaluation and prevents taking one account as definitive.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Gorham, George C. (George Congdon), 1832-1909 Author · American · 1832–1909

George C. Gorham (1832–1909) was an American journalist and political figure in California. He spent many years in the press, edited a newspaper, and was active in Republican Party politics, making him a figure in California public life in the second half of the nineteenth century who combined influence over public opinion with partisan involvement. His surviving work, Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches, is memoir-like in character: it recounts people and events of early California from a participant's perspective, together with other sketches, in a plain and detail-oriented style, offering first-hand material for the study of early Californian society and politics. Because public information is limited, the details of his life and career cannot be fully verified, and readers may turn to this book for a sense of his acquaintances and the atmosphere of his time.