For a few years now, there has been a rash of reality television shows rousing a newfound interest in the search of gold from a couch-surfing audience. Each show intersperses its content with nuggets of historical information about original enterprising men who couldn’t resist the call of California gold. Many flocked there to become miners, or businessmen who provided a variety of services to the miners. The emigration was so great to California in 1849 that these miners became known as Forty-Niners, and this is the tale of one of Montgomery County’s own.
Before he ever dreamed of mining gold, Moses W. Stine migrated to Montgomery County as a young man with his parents John and Mary “Polly” (Wilcox) Stine. They arrived in 1832 from Hamilton in Butler County, Ohio. Moses was the eldest son of 10 children. Some of his siblings were Elizabeth, Mary, Peter, John and Phebe. The Stine family first settled in Wayne Township and in 1840, Moses still lived with his parents along with his two younger brothers, and two younger sisters. Presumably, John Stine was a farmer and Moses was his right-hand man but Moses also picked up blacksmithing and probably used his skills on the farm and possibly in the community.
By 1849, Moses was nearly age 40, still single, and might have been wondering if this was all life had in store for him. As he heard more and more stories of gold in the California hills, maybe a yearning to see more than Indiana and Ohio grew so strong, he could not defy it. At the beginning of February, he learned about a trip being planned by former Waveland resident James Kleiser who lived in Lafayette and William H. Winter, a Crawfordsville man, and Moses joined their party. Ho, he was going westward for gold!
There were 10 men total in their group. Besides James Kleiser, William H. Winter and Moses Stine, the other seven men were John Cogswell, William Parks, James Hopkins, Thomas Clay, Lyman Taylor, Doctor Underhill and Richard Nabb. They voted to make William Winter the captain of their party since he had been west before, and then they all signed an agreement outlining how their trip and mining prospects and operation would be administrated. Each man contributed $300 as their monetary portion for supplies and other expenses for outfitting their trip.
The men started out for California from Lafayette on Feb. 22, 1849. Their party was spread out over three wagons and 15 horses and, according to Kleiser, each man was armed with an Allen pepperbox pistol and a rifle. From Lafayette, they headed to Waveland and then to Montezuma where they forded the Wabash River. They proceeded through Illinois to St. Louis and then westward. Upon reaching California, the group split twice, the first time with John Cogswell, Thomas Clay, Lyman Taylor, and Richard Nabb taking off together, and then second when Doctor Underhill and William Parks decided to go to Stockton. But then the remaining men gained a member, another Montgomery County, Indiana man — Thomas Armstrong — who couldn’t leave with them in February had now caught up to them. He was an uncle to James Kleiser, and their group of five settled in Calaveras County, California. Their extensive camp was called Winter’s Bar and there Moses along with William Winter, James Kleiser, James Hopkins and Thomas Armstrong mined for gold.
The five partners set up a four-man gold operation with the fifth man hunting for food and building a house for shelter through the winter. They took turns with each task and had some success finding gold while also maintaining their basic needs of water, food and housing. The men also battled sickness, which is why one of their party, Thomas Armstrong, returned to Montgomery County in March 1850. After recovering from a bout of sickness he barely survived, his gold partners paid him $1,400 for his share and after his travel expenses home, he had $1,000 left over. James Kleiser bought Moses and the rest of the remaining partners out of their partnership at the end of March. By then, Kleiser had found that providing services for miners was also lucrative and less risky. He took Winter as a partner and provided a stage line to Winter’s Bar and operated a store and a ferry.
Moses too must have decided that mining gold was not as lucrative. He began working as a blacksmith doing miscellaneous repairs according to the 1850 Federal Census taken in October in Calaveras County, California. James Kleiser is listed a few entries away. By the end of October James Kleiser and Winter sold their business and each with close to $10,000 in gold dust boarded a series of steamers to make their way out of California, through Panama, up to New Orleans and up the Mississippi River to Madison, Indiana where they caught trains and stages to Crawfordsville. It is unknown how soon Moses Stine departed California for Montgomery County after Kleiser and Winter. By this time, his parents and brother John had moved to Union Township, and Moses moved back in with them. It is also unclear if he arrived with money in his pockets like Armstrong, Kleiser and Winter. He lived on the family farm until his death in 1882 of dropsy. He is buried in Wesley Cemetery in Wayne Township.
For a more in-depth reading of Moses Stine’s trip as a forty-niner, read The Autobiography of James Kleiser 1818-1906 located in the local history and genealogy collection at the Crawfordsville District Public Library. The library also has many books about gold and the gold rush, but if you want them, well, you have to get up from your couch.
Amie Cox is a local history specialist at the Crawfordsville District Public Library and the district media specialist at the Crawfordsville Community Schools.
