My California Gold Rush Pioneers: The McQuade and Price Families of Sonora, Tuolumne County, California - Softcover

Canavan, Sue Rydberg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1500838608 ISBN 13: 9781500838607

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015

Synopsis

This well documented collection of personal stories of adventure and tragedy begins with my earliest California ancestors who were some of the first of the 49er families to settle in Sonora during California’s Gold Rush. The McQuades left Australia on a long, perilous sea journey with two small children. Bill Price of Kentucky, 18 when he joined a wagon train, barely survived the harrowing trip over the Sierras taking some of the first cattle to Sonora. He would marry Polly McQuade and their stories and those of their eight children, show what drama can occur in ordinary families; an out of wedlock family of the county sheriff, a miner who came home from Nome with enough gold to purchase the largest cattle ranch in the county, and a murder across from City Hall. There was tragedy, also, including three family suicides. The first and most devastating for the family was Polly’s drowning when Genie, her youngest child, was five. Genie was my troubled grandmother and I set out to find her backstory. I was immediately led to the Gold Rush that brought her parents together. I saw how the time and place affected them and the effect they had on town and county. This was never intended to be a book but the stories piled upon stories. Genie’s is the last chapter.

About this title

About the Author

Sue Canavan is a “woman of a certain age”, a 5th generation Californian. She and six siblings grew up in San Francisco, a city that she still thinks of as home even though she has lived elsewhere for over fifty years. She and Bill Canavan, a pilot from Boston, have been married 52 years, a feat accomplished with love, endurance and great humor. Bill has shown an amazing tolerance for her years of near-obsessive family research and the resulting genealogical clutter. Bill and Sue returned to California from New York’s Long Island twenty-two years ago and live in the wine country town of Santa Rosa. They have two grown children and twin grandsons who also live in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is grateful for the hospitality of her  brother-in-law Bob Canavan and his wife Jan who let her set up “research residency” with them in Sonora for days on end. Sue loves stories in books, on TV, in movies, on a theater stage, at the ballet or told in person over coffee. She has enjoyed the detective work and puzzling over bits of data and piecing them together until each individual emerged, ready to be part of this book. That is the way she became acquainted with each member of the McQuade and Price families. She hopes you enjoy meeting them too.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1500838608
• ISBN 13: 9781500838607
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Brown Leslie