Louise Clappe

Clappe, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith. THE SHIRLEY LETTERS FROM CALIFORNIA MINES IN 1851-52: BEING A SERIES OF TWENTY-THREE LETTERS FROM DAME SHIRLEY (MRS. LOUISE AMELIA KNAPP SMITH CLAPPE) TO HER SISTER IN MASSACHUSETTS AND NOW REPRINTED FROM THE PIONEER MAGAZINE OF 1854-55 WITH SYNOPSES OF THE LETTERS, A FORWARD, AND MANY TYPOGRAPHICAL AND OTHER CORRECTIONS AND EMENDATIONS BY THOMAS C. RUSSELL TOGETHER WITH "AN APPRECIATION" BY MRS. M.V.T. LAWRENCE. San Francisco: Printed by Thomas C. Russell, 1922.
Letters written by Mrs. Louise A. K. S. Clappe, the wife of a physician, Dr. Fayette Clappe, in the mines at Rich Bar on the Feather River from 1851 to 1852.  Writing under an assumed name, she provides a history of a mining community during a brief period, first of cheerful prosperity, and then of decay and disorder.  She described the social life of a mining camp from actual experience in the form of letters written to her sister and collected for publication two or three years later.
Sacramento Room
SPE 979.4 C589 1922 CAL