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Sacramento City
May 8th 1851 

My Dearest Father

Your kind addition to the triple letter commenced by Rens. and mailed March 6th was read with great 
satisfaction. It gave me great pleasure to learn that your health had been so good during the winter, and 
that it was still unimpaired. I hope that the climate of Missouri will suit your constitution better every 
succeeding year for a long time to come, which I think is not at all improbable, now that you have 
become thoroughly acclimated. I do not think you ought to give yourself more care or trouble or 
undergo more fatigue than is absolutely necessary. You have reached the time of life when the 
promotion of your health, the increase of your ease and the continuation of your peace and quietude of 
mind and body should be the great object of your early aims. I would to Heaven that fortune had placed 
it in the power of your children long since to set you free from all care and labor and permitted you to 
enjoy without interruption the calm serenity, the sweet repose that belongs to the afternoon of life, and 
is the legitimate and well-suited reward of a forenoon of active and energetic exertion. But as yet that 
pleasure has not been granted us. An overruling

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Providence has shaped the course of our lives in a way that no sagacity could have foreseen. And we 
must await the issue of events in patience. We have the assurance that all things are ordered for the 
best and I hope that in due time, this may be made manifest. But should we in this be disappointed, --
should the developments of the Future on Earth, be unsatisfying and full of sorrow and bitterness of 
spirits, we yet have the consolation of knowing that "beyond the dark and narrow tomb", "there is a 
land of pure delight", when the poverty and wretchedness of this world is lost and swallowed up in the 
exhaustless riches, -- the indescribable glory of the Kingdom of grace.

Your agencies continue to be [numerous] and profitable. I wish I was where I could attend to them for 
you. I fancy I have learned something more about business than I used to know, so I would not perhaps, 
be quite as likely to do wrong as right. I am glad that you have procured a good riding horse to carry you 
over the prairies that you traverse so often. I imagine that no Indian hunter in the days of the Boons 
could have been much better acquainted with the wild and almost trackless wastes of some portions of 
Missouri that you are.

News from California is pretty much the same thing now that it was last fall. The reports from the mines 
continue to be favorable, and from 

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what I can learn of the subject by conversation with the miners, I should think the mountains contained 
nearly as much gold as they did two years ago; the only difference is that it requires more labor to get it 
out. I have no doubt there will be much more gold collected this hear than there has been during any 
preceding year. But there is so much uncertainty attending the search after it, -- so much risk of health, 
that I do not think I shall yet abandon my profession to look for it.

Business in the city is very good. Litigation comfortably prevalent. Our share of business if very fair, & I 
think gradually on the increase. District Court for May commences tomorrow & will sit through the rest 
of the month. We have quite a number of cases [wax seal] some of them rather important -and hope 
[seal] the end of the term, we shall have realized something. Mr. McConaha was nominated by the 
Democratic party in the city for the office of City Attorney, in opposition to the former incumbent - a 
Whig. The city being Whig in its politics he was rather badly beaten but considering all things, he ran 
very well. He says he is not "whipped" and will run again upon the first opportunity. I have heard 
nothing from Glover since he went to the mountains.

I had forgotten the most important news, -- San Francisco has been again laid in ashes. Several most 
distinctive fires occurred there last year, but she recovered from the effects of them and was

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improving more rapidly than ever. They had several well organized fire companies and felt 
comparatively secure, but at 11 o'clock on Saturday night a fire sprung up and in a short time under the 
influence of a heavy wind, wrapped three fourths of the city in flames. By five o'clock all the business 
part of the city was utterly destroyed. The loss is variously estimated. The medium amount is 7,000,000 
dollars! (seven million dollars) This is a terrible stroke and will affect the whole state. Already it is seen in 
the advance of goods & provisions in this city. Coin has also at once become scarce - immense sums 
having been lost in the flames. The regular "Dust" fresh from the heart of the hills, will now be the 
principal medium of exchange, and scales & ounces will again be in vogue. It looks funny to a stranger to 
see sometimes the roughest, most barbarous looking specimens of human nature imaginable with long 
legged boots, dirty cloths, hairy face, and wooly head, come into the city and after buying a stock of 
goods pull out a greasy-looking, buck skin bag, like a bullet pouch, and empty it perhaps of 200 or 500 
dollars worth of yellow dust. The miner here is the true aristocrat. His bank is the huge rampart - the 
Sierra Nevada, - and it has never yet refused specie payments.

I have but few complaints to make against the State of California. She is a favorite of nature, and would 
be a decided favorite of myself, had she the follow 

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-ing requisites, to wit. 1st A Strong moral sentiment which should in all cases frown upon vice and 
uphold and encourage virtue. 2nd A due proportion of influential, Christian families of intelligence and 
refinement. 3rd That without which virtue cannot be sustained - the presence of educated and virtuous 
females. 4th. My own personal friends connexions and relations, without whose society earth produces 
for me but little gratification. With these additions to her present advantages, California should be my 
home - my tomb. But I draw near the close of this sheet and as I promised mother to finish my letter to 
her on a part of this page, I must bring my epistle to a close. I hope however that you will find it 
acceptable and worth an immediate reply. When you know that while my body is here, my heart is in 
Mo. you certainly will not long delay. I remain as ever

Your most affectionate son
Elisha 

Dear Mother,

I merely wish to notice a single line in your letter which you certainly need not to have been at the 
trouble of writing. You hope I will excuse the concern which you so kindly express respecting my 
situation. If I thought you were in earnest, -- that you actually wished me to excuse your manifesting an 
interest in my welfare, I should be disposed to sit down and weep it out. But I think it was a slip of the 
pen and that you have no idea of apologizing to a son who owes all that he is or ever will be to yourself, 
for taking an interest in him. If I could think that the time would ever arrive when you did not take an 
interest in me, I should certainly be most wretched. I hope before that time arrives the grave may cover 
me, - for life would be of little worth when it had outlived a mother's love.

Please remember me to all - to Rens, Homer & his wife, to Fanny & Joe. I imagine some of them are 
about to forget that I have an existence. I have heard from Elias but once since I came here and now he 
is farther off than ever & I suppose he will never write again. Farewell. 

Your most aff. son 
Elisha. 

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P.S. You suggest that you can have a certificate of my membership in the Mount Pleasant Church 
procured and sent to me. I wrote a letter last fall shortly after I came in, and directed it to you, in which I 
expressed the wish to have a certificate sent to me. I suppose it was lost on the Isthmus with others, and 
am glad that you thought of it.

There is no Presbyterian church here at least strictly speaking. The name of the church is
Congregational, but many Presbyterians frequent it and I suppose they are actual members. I attend it
regularly every Sabbath, and would be glad to have my certificate, if you will be so good as to procure it
& send it to me.

E.C.W.