story
Mother Saves Reason from the Indians
Warpaint at the door, her son hidden in the attic — and Sarah met a war party with gentleness, baby clothes, sugar, and nerve.
Stories
True stories of the Plasketts and their neighbors — bears and gold, shipwrecks and weddings — drawn from letters, newspapers, and family memory.
story
Jesse James Spends the Night
A quiet stranger was fed at Sarah's table and slept under the Plaskett roof. Only later did the family learn the name he traveled under.
story
Boat Day - The Holiday That Surpassed Christmas
Not Christmas but Boat Day was the great holiday — the day the ship came in with everything the coast couldn't make.
story
The Panama Crossing
Crocodiles in the Chagres, fever in the air, two boys lost from sight all day on the jungle trail — the family's 1852 shortcut to California.
story
The Caribbean Plantation - When the Slaves Were Freed
Major Joseph Plaskett's St. Croix sugar fortune met its reckoning the day the slaves were freed.
story
The Buckboard Proposal — A Fifteen-Year-Old Bride
'Well Mabel, isn't it about time we got married?' She said her father would never allow it. She was wrong — and the family got its chronicler.
story
Sale to Hearst — The End of an Era
Ten dollars on paper for 1,523 acres: the 1922 deed to Hearst's agent that scattered the families and ended 53 Plaskett years in Pacific Valley.
story
Two Branches, One Name - The Congresswoman and the Pioneer
Two centuries after a Plaskett ran a Caribbean plantation, a Plaskett represents those islands in Congress.
gold mines
The Los Burros Mining District and the Lost Town of Manchester
Organized 1876, transformed by Willey Cruikshank's Last Chance strike in 1887 — and gone by 1897, burned and grown over. The rise and fall of the coast's gold district, and the lost town of Manchester.
gold mines
Ed and Lawson Plaskett - Gold Mining Dreams
Ed and Lawson Plaskett chased the rumor every coast man heard — that gold waited in the home hills.
gold mines
Willey Cruikshank Discovered the Last Chance Mine
The boy who watched Chinese miners pan Salmon Creek grew up to strike the Last Chance mine.
gold mines
The Buclimo Mine - Named for Seven Partners
Burman, Ulrich, Clinton, Linderman, Isenman, Morey and Olsen — seven partners, one mine name: Buclimo.