JOURNEY TO CALIFORNIA, 1854 LETTER DESCRIBING THE CROSSING OF THE SIERRA NEVADA

Autograph letter signed by Enoch (1808-1855) and Sarah Ingersoll Floyd (1816-1889) to a friend, detailing their overland wagon journey from the Great Salt Lake to Sacramento, California with their five children. N.p., 27 June 1854. 4 pages, 8vo. 

“…Crosing the Sierra mountains is enough to kill anybody or thing that ever stood on feet…”

The Floyd family of Newbury, Massachusetts, joined the great westward migration to California in the mid-nineteenth century, undertaking the arduous journey across the continent with several other New England emigrants. The party included Leonard and Sarah Floyd and their children: Enoch Harvey (1834–1860), Lyman (1837–1863), Leonard (1837–1916), Sarah Elizabeth (1841–1866), and Julia Ann (1852–1860). Two other daughters, Martha and Lucy, had died within days of each other in 1853, likely the victims of a communicable childhood disease. Traveling with the Floyds were William Paterson of Haverhill and Silas Barnes of Boston with his family, bringing the total size of the emigrant party to twenty-two individuals.

Written after the family’s arrival in California, the letter reflects on their demanding passage through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Their son Leonard begins by describing the trek from Salt Lake City, where the company departed in April with a train of eight wagons. Among the greatest obstacles they encountered was a “mud slew” nearly a quarter of a mile long, along with the deteriorating health of their cattle:

“We had 7 cows when we started from there one of them got poisand and we sold her for 25 dollars… one more had a calf and laid down the wolves bit her tail off snug up and tore hur bag all to peaces we sold hur for 20 dollars and she dide the next day.”

Although healthy cows reportedly commanded prices as high as $100, the family appears to have been fortunate to recover even these reduced sums given the animals’ dire condition.

Leonard later resumes writing, concluding that the party traveled nearly 800 miles from Salt Lake City. The ordeal of crossing the Sierra Nevada left a lasting impression on him:

“Crosing the Sierra mountains is enough to kill anybody or thing that ever stood on feet… it is like going up and down the roof of a house with the exception of the sharp edge and rocks in the road as high as the wagon bodys.”

Sarah Floyd then takes up the pen, writing on July 1 that the family had settled within five miles of Sacramento. Her remarks provide a revealing glimpse into the dangers faced by emigrants along the trail. She describes widespread cattle rustling in Carson Valley, noting that in Hangtown—today’s Placerville—“they have bets… as high as fifteen hundred dollars to see who will go down to Carson valley and steal the most cattle from emigrants.” She adds pointedly that “the whites are a great deal worse than the Indians,” observing that Native Americans seldom troubled wagon companies unless they were small and vulnerable.

Historical evidence supports Sarah’s observations. Numerous contemporary accounts document livestock theft along the California emigrant trails carried out not by Native Americans but by opportunistic white settlers and miners. The prevalence of such crimes was so great that in the mid-1860s Luther Pass in the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe acquired the ominous nickname “Horse Thief Canyon.”

Letters such as this provide valuable firsthand testimony of the overland migration that followed the California Gold Rush. The Floyd family’s experiences reflect the broader story of thousands of New Englanders and Midwesterners who abandoned established communities in pursuit of opportunity in the American West.

Tragically, the Floyd family’s hardships did not end with their arrival. Just over a year after reaching California, patriarch Enoch died, apparently while back in Massachusetts, where he is buried in Union Cemetery in Georgetown. Sarah remained in the West, later marrying fellow Massachusetts pioneer Jonathan Harriman Holmes (1806–1880) on 29 November 1862 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Holmes had settled in Utah and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sarah ultimately outlived both husbands and all but one of her children, dying in 1889 in St. Charles, Idaho.