The First Find – We Know Where, but Who, What, and When.

In January of 1848, gold was discovered on the American River. It was found by Peter Wimmer and James Marshall. This “first find” entered into the collection at the Smithsonian in 1861 – but was it the “first find?” You can read about it here: https://www.si.edu/object/gold-nugget%3Anmah_741894

In the collection of the Bancroft Library is a nugget of gold that had hung around the neck of Peter’s wife Elizabeth Jane (Jennie) for almost 40 years. Peter and Jennie Wimmer are rarely talked about in the history of finding gold on the American River. Indeed, our current Gold Fever! exhibition does not mention them.

From the California Gold Book,
by W. W. Allen and R. B. Avery, 1893. 

The Wimmer Nugget, also labeled the “first find,” was donated to the library in 1956 by the estate of Charles Gunther, a Chicago collector. In the 1893 book California Gold Book by W[illiam] W[allace] Allen and R. B. Avery, the story is told of the Marshall-Wimmer discovery. One of the authors, W. W. Allen, was given the nugget by Jennie in 1887 after promising to write the true discovery story. Allen subsequently took the nugget to Chicago to be displayed in the World’s Fair in 1893.

The story goes that after finding the nugget in the raceway, the channel built to carry water to/from a water wheel of the sawmill, Peter Wimmer suggested that it be shown to his wife Jennie, as she was the only person there who had ever seen a gold nugget, having spent some of her youth panning for gold in Georgia. Jennie who was making soap at the time, knew it was gold. She had noticed the flakes before and expressed that she thought it was gold. “Her positiveness did not impress any of the men present … What could a woman know about such matters? Even her husband believed with the others that it was ‘fool’s’ gold or possibly copper.”

In an 1874, interview published in the San Francisco Bulletin she stated: “I said, ‘this is gold, and I will throw it into my lye kettle,… and if it is gold, it will be gold when it comes out.’”

Jennie placed the nugget in the kettle of lye and left it until the next morning. If it truly was gold, it would still be there. Which it was. Other gold flakes were collected. Four days later Marshall had business at Fort Sutter and there had the nugget tested. When he returned to the mill Marshall handed Jennie the nugget stating “here Jennie; this will make you a nice ring, and it shall be yours.”

And what about the date on which it was discovered. On the following page is John Marshall’s autograph which states the discovery was on January 19. But Marshall never kept a diary and when asked about the date he could not be absolutely sure. In 1885, John S. Hittell, historian, discovered that one of the people with Marshall at Sutter’s Fort, Henry Bigler, was living in Utah. Bigler did keep a diary and had noted the day that Marshall arrived at the fort – January 28. Another man Azariah Smith who worked at the mill also kept a diary, but only made entries on a Sunday. His entry about the gold discovery was made on January 30. If it had been found on January 19, it would have made his January 23 entry.

And so, in 1919, at the 42nd session, the California Legislature resolved to change the date on the monument “erected to the memory of James W. Marshall at Colma, El Dorado County” to read January 24, 1848.