From Sojourners to Immigrants - by Zina Abbott

Either to escape poverty or political conditions in their birth nations, or inspired by promises of land and freedom, individuals and families from many countries in the world poured into North America during the nineteenth century. They came to make their homes in the new world; they came to stay. Many endured discrimination and poverty as they sought to become established, but they mostly refused to be deterred.

One large group of people who traveled to the Americas starting in the 1850s did not come with the intent to stay. They saw themselves as sojourners, not immigrants. At first, lured by tales of gold so plentiful a person could pick it up off the ground or pluck it from streambeds, thousands of impoverished and politically oppressed Chinese yielded to the enticements of Caucasian businessmen looking for cheap labor or San Francisco Chinese merchants who had established themselves in what they called Gum Saan (or, I have also seen it spelled Gum Sahn), which is California, and came to mean the United States in general. Translated, Gum Saan means “Gold Mountain.”

 

Canton

These sojourners came mostly from Canton in the southern region of China (now known as Guangzhau). They came with the intent to stay only a year or so to make their fortunes. Afterwards, they planned to return to China with enough wealth to buy land or pay off the taxes owed on land already held by the family. With their abundance, not only would their families have sufficient to eat, but they could also afford some of the better things in life.

This was a venture taken on mostly by young, healthy males. The families, to provide incentive for their departing young men to return and to not leave them destitute while they were away living the single life in Gum Saan, insisted, wherever possible, that the men married before they left. Hopefully, they also sired a child.

Most of the Chinese men who came to the west coast of the Americas, predominately California, quickly learned their dreams would not be fulfilled as planned. They were met with fees owed to wealthy Chinese societies or merchants who had fronted them their boat ticket money. They found gold to not be as plentiful as the stories told at home indicated. They found themselves dealing with discrimination and hostility by other gold miners, particularly Americans who were determined to keep the wealth of the new state of California, which had recently been acquired after the war with Mexico, for Americans.

In spite of these difficulties, the sojourners realized things were better in Gold Mountain than at home in Canton. They stayed. They worked abandoned gold claims. They started shops, grew food, and found many other ways to earn income to pay off their debts and send money home to their families, including the wives their parents had arranged for them to marry--women who, in many cases, were virtual strangers.

The Pearl River in Canton continued to flood, and the economic and political situation in China continued to flounder. When the Central Pacific Railroad decided to hire Chinese workers due to the shortages in the labor pool in California, the availability of work for railroad companies prompted more Chinese sojourners to sail to Gold Mountain. I wrote a post for another blog about the experience of the Chinese constructing the Central Pacific Railroad through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. You may read it by CLICKING HERE.

 

Mural in the lobby of Ogden Union Station

It has been estimated that between 1840 and 1900, 2.5 million people emigrated from China. They traveled all around the Pacific Basin, but the largest group traveled to the United States. Between 1852 and 1882, many predominantly male Chinese laborers and a few merchants and labor brokers came. Most of them entered through San Francisco. In Dai Fow, meaning "Big City" or "Number One City," the Chinese name for San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Chinese societies found them work and collected a fee for their services. These Chinese men soon discovered, instead of being here a year or two as sojourners before returning home to China, many of them could never afford to leave. They continued to send letters and money home to family in China, but they stayed. They had not come with the intent of being immigrants, but many became immigrants by default. They died far from their homes in Canton. One of the services the Chinese benevolent societies provided was to send the bones of those who died in Gold Mountain home to their families in China so they could be worshiped along with the other family ancestors. A few wives joined their husbands in Gold Mountain, but most chose to stay home in China.

 

Market Street in old San Francisco Chinatown

In case you may be thinking that this large group of Chinese men living in a country where there were relatively few women, let alone Chinese women, happily accepted living a celibate life for the duration, think again.

When it comes to the history of Chinese prostitutes in America, many point to the famous prostitute and madam, Ah Toy, as an example of a woman who managed to gain her freedom, become wealthy, and achieve a certain degree of autonomy and influence. She was an exception. First of all, she came right about the time the California Gold Rush first started, which was before the power structures in California in general, and Chinatown in particular, were fully established. However, as the demand for Chinese women to service the large Chinese male population grew, the Chinese societies, or tongs, began to import women for that purpose. As the criminal elements in the tongs became stronger, or criminal elements from China came to the United States to form new tongs specifically for the purposes of getting rich off of the vice trades—gambling, prostitution, opium dens, and protection rackets—the situation became more difficult for women who were either lured to the United States with false promises of work or marriage, or who were kidnapped outright in Canton or Hong Kong and brought over to be forced into prostitution.

In addition to the intense discrimination the Chinese people faced as a whole as their numbers increased, the Victorian society that existed among those of European descent found the existence of a large number of prostitutes in the Chinese sections of towns especially offensive. They established procedures and passed laws to make it even more difficult for Chinese women to enter the United States. The overall attitude of most white Americans was, they did not want more Chinese brothels, and they certainly did not want a large number of Chinese families to become established in the United States. They wanted all the Chinese to go back to China. 

Countering the increased difficulties of being able to get Chinese women into this country to meet the growing demand by Chinese males, the criminal tongs with their "hatchet men" enforcers soon held the vice trades in Chinatowns throughout the American West in a stranglehold.

Along with the gold mining regions of the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, this is part of the cultural and social climate in which my novel, Escape from Gold Mountain, is set. My story is inspired by true events. My Chinese heroine is loosely based on a real woman named Ling Loi. In September, 1884, she left the gold mining town of Lundy in order to return to Chinatown with her earnings. She did not get far before she found herself caught in a situation that resulted her name being recorded for posterity. (I did not find her name in any newspaper accounts. I found it in a book written by a local Mono County historian.)

Although there are very few details about this woman’s life, including how her life proceeded after she left the region, this incident prompted me to write my story. It is my longest novel to date. Aside from my belief that it is an exciting, action-filled adventure surrounding a tender romance, I did more research for this book than for any other of my books to date. I hope my book accurately depicts the conditions of that time as they relate to the Chinese people living in the United States, particularly many of the women. I hope this story will help my readers develop a greater understanding and appreciation for the difficulties encountered by the nineteenth century Chinese women whose lives became part of the fabric of the American West.

Escape from Gold Mountain is now on preorder at both Amazon and Barnes&Noble. I know this will throw a curve ball to some of my readers who are accustomed to my shorter works being published exclusively on Amazon and available on Kindle Unlimited. I have decided to start publishing my longer books with vendors other than Amazon, at least for a short time, to make them available to a wider reading audience. Before the end of September, I will make Escape from Gold Mountain available on Kindle Unlimited.

 

Sources:

http://sciencenetlinks.com/blog/snl-educator/apahm-2014-building-transcontinental-railroad/

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/05/07/chinese-transcontinental-railroad-ghosts-of-gold-mountain-gordon-chang

https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2715.html

The Freedom of Hypothetical Place

Before I was a historical romance author, I was a family historian. The biggest challenge I had with pursuing my family history and helping others with theirs was getting distracted with the history of where the ancestors lived. Is it any small wonder, then, when I started writing historical novels I chose real places and researched the real people living there at the time my story was set?

Lundy 1890

That is what happened with my Eastern Sierra Brides 1884 series set in Lundy and Bridgeport, California. Most of the minor characters that mostly get cameo appearances in my books are based on real people who lived at that time in that place, even though for most of them I do not have an image, personal description, or any idea of the nature of their personality. Yes, it can be taking a chance that I might get contacted by a descendant complaining they did not appreciate how I portrayed their great-great grandpa. However, it worked.

Last year, I worked with a few of our blog authors on a multi-author series, Sweethearts of Jubilee Springs. It was set in a hypothetical locality. Yes, we based our town, Jubilee Springs, on a real place and researched the topography, climate and working conditions. We even used the real town we chose as the model for our town map. This hypothetical town allowed a great deal of freedom because we were not dealing with REAL people and worrying about their progeny raising objections to how they were portrayed. And, we could place the railroad, or the river, or the lake, or the neighboring town, or the town buildings-whatever we wanted for our stories-where we wanted them in relation to everything else. All we had to do was have guidelines we all followed so there would be some consistency between stories.

Stanislaus River, California

This year I am writing a novella for an anthology. In deciding the place, I once again went with a hypothetical town. Why? Because the business of the main family in the story is not one of the nature that every town has one.

Is it based on a real locality? Yes. In fact, last week, hubby and I made a one day road trip to the locality to take pictures and research the real people and business that will be the inspiration for the location of my story. (Sorry, Mr. T, but your descendants do not want me to portray you the way the character in my story will be portrayed. You will have to wait until future blog posts to receive your accolades.)

For now, I would like to introduce you to my newest release which is a collection of my first three books in the Sweethearts of Jubilee Springs series set in the hypothetical town of Jubilee Springs. Of the five books I wrote for this series, four were novellas and too short to publish in paperback individually. Hence, the collection. It is titled:

INDEPENDENCE DAY 1881 – Zina Abbott’s Sweethearts of Jubilee Springs, Collection 1

Another benefit of this collection is for those Kindle Unlimited readers who have not yet read all m y books in the series. You may download this book in your Kindle Unlimited queue, and read three books at a time.

Here is the book description:

Zina Abbott's first three books in the multi-author series, Sweethearts of Jubilee Springs.

Book 3 - Aaron's Annulment Bride:
Andrea married Aaron so he could get his mining company house, but now she wants an annulment.

Book 6 - Cat's Meow:
Catherine immediately falls in love with tall, hunky miner, Harold. She wants to marry him, but there is one "meowly" little problem.

Book 7 - Bargain Bessie:
Brought to Jubilee Springs after the death of her mother, Bessie, a confirmed spinster meets Zeb, a decisive, impatient rancher who is NOT pushing forty.

To access both the ebook and the print book, please CLICK HERE.

My fourth and fifth books, will shortly be available in both ebook, including Kindle Unlimited, as well as print. As a matter of interest (or not), since my fourth book in this series is a full novel, there is only three pages difference in the size of these two collections even though Collection 2 contains only two books.

Have a great day in your real world!

FORT RILEY, KANSAS THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR

On the cover of my novel, Kizzie’s Kisses, my Kizzie is dressed in a very fancy ballroom gown and sitting in an elegantly-appointed room. Yet, as you read the book, she is described as a young woman who loves working with horses, prefers to wear trousers while riding or working outdoors and is not drawn to typical “women’s work” in the house. 

What is the connection between my cover and my story? Fort Riley. More specifically, several chapters involve a special celebration dance for officers and guests at Fort Riley that took place in April, 1865, weeks after Gen. Lee surrendered to Gen. Grant which, for the most part, marked the end of the Civil War.

 

Fort Riley, 1866

Did this celebration really take place? I don’t know, but I doubt it. However, we do know that such parties took place at other frontier forts, such as the well-documented Christmas party and dance at Fort Laramie in 1866. At such dances, women were at a premium. Officers much preferred to dance with a pretty woman rather than with a fellow officer who had a scarf tied around his upper arm to mark him as dancing the female role. In my story, the wife of the local captain over procurement did some procurement of her own to see Kizzie arrived for the party and got all gussied up, ready to dance her feet off.

Where, why and when was Fort Riley established?

1870 Birdseye Map of Fort Riley, Kansas

The site of Fort Riley was chosen in the fall of 1852. It was first called Camp Center because of its proximity to the geographical center of the United States.  It was on the north bank of the Kansas River about three miles northeast from Junction City. The following spring, three companies of the 6th infantry began the construction of temporary quarters at the camp.

On June 27, 1853, the camp's name was changed to Fort Riley in honor of Major General Bennett C. Riley. He had led the first military escort along the Santa Fe Trail and had died earlier in the month.

The fort's initial purpose was to protect the many pioneers and traders who were moving along the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails. Because of the prevailing “Manifest Destiny” doctrine popular in the United States at that time, emigration to the western territories increased dramatically. This prompted increased American military presence for the protection of American interests in this largely unsettled territory. During the 1850s, a number of military posts were established at strategic points to provide protection along these arteries of emigration and commerce. Fort Riley became one of many such forts.

Many of the buildings at the fort were built with the native limestone of the area, several of which continue to stand today. By 1855, the post was well-established and as more and more people moved westward, additional quarters, stables and administrative buildings were authorized to be built.

Some buildings were constructed under the supervision of Capt. Edmund Ogden. Anticipating greater utilization of the post, Congress authorized appropriations in the spring of 1855 to provide additional quarters and stables for the Dragoons. Ogden again marshaled resources and arrived from Leavenworth in July with 50 6-mule teams loaded with materials, craftsmen and laborers.

 

1867 - Monument to Capt. Edmund Ogden

Work had progressed for several weeks when cholera broke out among the workers. The epidemic lasted only a few days but claimed 70 lives, including Ogden's. A monument to him was erected on a nearby rise and still exists today. Work gradually resumed and buildings were readied for the arrival in October of the 2nd Dragoons.

The first territorial legislature met there in July 1855.

 

Kansas First Territorial Capital building

From Fort Riley, troops were dispatched to escort mail trains and protect travel routes across the plains. Fort Riley's troops took on the additional task of "policing" an increasingly troubled territory during the tensions between northern abolitionists and southern supporters of slavery,  leading to “Bleeding Kansas” and the Civil War. Through it all they were charged with continuing to patrol the Smokey Hill and Santa Fe Trails as Indian attacks increased.

The Civil War disrupted garrison life. Regular units returned east to participate in the Civil War while militia units from Kansas and other states used Fort Riley as a base from which to launch campaigns to show the flag and offer a degree of protection to trading caravans using the Santa Fe Trail. In the early stages of the war, the fort was used to confine Confederate prisoners.

Also in my novel, Kizzie’s Kisses, during a scene that took  place in September, 1862, Kizzie’s cousin Otto Atwell expresses his intent to join a Kansas militia stationed at Fort Riley. His family having come from Missouri, he did not want to find himself fighting former neighbors. However, after his family in Salina that year had gone through the threat of an Indian massacre the previous spring, and a large party of bushwhackers that descended on the nearby town of Salina that September, he felt it his duty to serve in a state militia unit that could protect Kansas citizens from these dangers while regular soldiers were busy fighting the Civil War.

Rather than me giving you the link to this book today, be sure to watch for tomorrow’s Sweet Americana Sweethearts blog post. Something big is coming.

Zina Abbott is the pen name used by Robyn Echols for her historical novels. You may find her first five novellas in the Eastern Sierra Brides 1884 series along with her other books on her Amazon Author Page which you can visit and follow by clicking HERE.

Blog Tour Tuesday: BRIDGEPORT HOLIDAY BRIDES

This week's Blog Tour Tuesday features 

Bridgeport Holiday Brides 

Eastern Sierra Brides 1884 Series - Book 5

by Zina Abbott

About the Book:

With the arrival of Beth Dodd’s sister, Hazel, in California, Beth and her fiancé, Val Caldwell, are now able to make wedding plans.  Thanksgiving seems to be a good time to tie the knot and bring the Caldwell family together, as well, but when Val’s older half-brother, Edwin, and his family show up for the wedding, things fall apart. Edwin’s advice to Val to wrest control of Beth’s holdings and absorb them into the Caldwell Ranch leads to bad blood and fisticuffs between the brothers. Will Beth call the wedding off to protect what she’s worked so hard to gain?

As Beth’s younger sister, Hazel, realizes she’s falling in love with Val’s younger brother, Luther, she learns the feeling is mutual. Luther has bought a ring and plans to announce their engagement at Thanksgiving, as well. But Beth has a stormy relationship with her future brother-in-law, and believes her sister is too young to marry. Headstrong and determined to control their own destinies, will happiness also be possible for these BRIDGEPORT HOLIDAY BRIDES?

Excerpt:

“How do you like California so far, Hazel? It compare all right to Ohio?”

          “Still ain’t used to them high mountains cuttin’ off the sun afore the day’s over, but other than that, it’s right fine. Bethie’s place has got a wild feel to it, but I like it.”

          “Good. We have some refinement, but it is still not as settled out here as back east. Oh, Luther said to tell you he hopes to get over here a bit later. One of us was needed to check on a problem in the west pasture, and he drew the short straw. But, I know he is looking forward to seeing you again.”

          Val bit his tongue. Only a sense of loyalty to his brother kept him from blurting the truth that Hazel was all Luther had talked about on the trip up and back from Lundy.

          Hazel immediately perked up and her face brightened into a big smile. “I’d be right pleased to see him. How long you reckon afore he gets here?” Then, glancing at the frown on Beth’s face, she looked down and said demurely, “Reckon I’d like to see him again, too.”

          Val burst out laughing. “Oh, he’ll be by, don’t you worry.

To purchase BRIDGEPORT HOLIDAY BRIDES please CLICK HERE. 

Trot on over to my Zina Abbott Books blog where I am featuring Bridgeport Holiday Brides as part of the Turkey Trot Blog Hop. CLICK HERE for an opportunity to enter to win a digital copy of Bridgeport Holiday Brides or an Amazon gift card.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 Zina Abbott is the pen name used by Robyn Echols for her historical novels. Her novel, Family Secrets, was published by Fire Star Press. Her novelette, A Christmas Promise, and the five novellas in the Eastern Sierra Brides 1884 series, Big Meadows Valentine, A Resurrected Heart, Her Independent Spirit, Haunted by Love  and Bridgeport Holiday Brides were published by Prairie Rose Publications.

Please sign up for Zina Abbott’s newsletter by CLICKING HERE.