The Project Gutenberg eBook, Journal of a Trip to California, by Charles
W. Smith, Edited by R. W. G. Vail

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Title: Journal of a Trip to California
Across the Continent from Weston, Mo., to Weber Creek, Cal., in the Summer of 1850

Author: Charles W. Smith

Editor: R. W. G. Vail

Release Date: August 16, 2010 [eBook #33450]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOURNAL OF A TRIP TO CALIFORNIA***

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JOURNAL OF A TRIP TO CALIFORNIA

Across the Continent From Weston, Mo., to Weber Creek, Cal.,
in the Summer of 1850

by

C. W. SMITH

Edited with an Introduction and Notes, by R. W. G. Vail

Librarian of The Minnesota Historical Society

The Cadmus Book Shop
New York

Press
Standard Book Company
Manchester, N. H.

INTRODUCTION.

Several years ago I had the good fortune to find, in the lumber and
rubbish of a storeroom, this little journal. A small leather-backed
notebook, it had lain unnoticed and forgotten for more than half a
century in the author's old homestead.

The original manuscript is written in a 4 by 6-inch notebook, bound in
boards. It contains 180 pages of text, with pressed western flowers and
plants pasted on the five fly-leaves at the end.

Mr. William Smith, our author's father, came from Gloucestershire,
England, in 1831 and settled on a farm (now owned by his grandson,
George Smith) just west of the village of Victor, N. Y. For several
years Mr. Smith's sons, James and Charles W., both helped him on the
farm, but eventually the latter decided to become a printer and so
obtained a position in the neighboring village of Canandaigua.

At the time of the discovery of gold in California, Mr. C. W. Smith[1]
had been fo