Sarah May Barnes Plaskett

Sarah May Barnes was born May 1, 1827, of French Acadian stock — the family name was originally Baronette, and her mother was first cousin to Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence. She married William Lucas Plaskett in Van Buren County, Iowa, in 1845, and from that day the family’s story is equally hers.

She crossed Panama in 1852 carried over the Chagres on a porter’s back, her boys out of sight on the jungle trail ahead. At the Cherokee mining camp she became the diggings’ bank — miners who trusted no one trusted Sarah with their sacks of gold — while she cooked and washed for most of them besides. Alone at the homestead she faced down a war party come for her son Reason, hiding him in the attic and disarming their anger with gentleness, baby clothes, sugar, and nerve.

She bore twelve children and raised them across five Californias — camp, meadow, valley, and coast. In 1915 she was honored among the pioneer mothers at the Panama-Pacific Exposition; her 95th birthday fell on Mother’s Day, 1922, which the family found exactly right. She died in 1923, at ninety-six — the iron center of the family for seventy-eight years.