F I R S TP R E V919NEXTLAST

Relaxing with a Sandwich after a Morning of Photography
I always joke with my friends that they'll know I'm out of FogBay ideas when, like a kid with his first camera, I start taking photos of my feet. Don't worry, this post is about waiting for your ship to come in.

Gold Rush San Francisco was filled with thousands of men but practically no women at all. When word of this situation reached the East Coast one woman vowed to change things. Eliza Farnham, a New York feminist and former Sing Sing matron decided to fill a ship with moral women to bring 'feminine civility' to the rowdy bachelor town.

Farnham chartered the sailing ship Angelique and advertised in the papers for respectable young women willing to move to San Francisco. Hundreds of single women expressed interest in the move but only three met Farnham's high moral standards. Things got worse for Eliza Farnham when, during the trip, the Angelique's captain decided he'd had enough of her annoying interference and left her behind in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso.

The few women who did make it to San Francisco would find that there were some advantages here afterall. California was first state to allow a married woman to maintain ownership of her own property, whether acquired before marriage or during. This right was guaranteed in the state's 1849 constitution and was unheard of in the rest of the country. Years later California would also give women the right to vote a decade before the rest of the nation.
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