WHEELBARROW EMIGRANT OF 1850 by Morris W. Werner In the Spring
of 1850 an Ulster Scot from Warren County, Pennsylvania, named
James Gordon Brookmire, became infected with the "yellow fever"
which was sweeping the country, and set out for the California
gold diggings. He was one of perhaps 44,000 individuals
including a few women and children who were on their way to
California during this second year of the gold rush.1 The
previous year young, single men were in the majority, but in
1850 many family men joined the migration. They were also more
likely to be accompanied by wives and children planning to make
a permanent home in the West. Brookmire was forty years of age
with a wife and six children ranging in age from one to fifteen
years, but he left them behind, hoping to make a quick stake and
return home. According to the St. Joseph, Missouri Gazette of
March 24, 1852, Brookmire left his family in "very indigent
circumstances" in Warren County, but perhaps this is overstating
the facts. He owned a 280 acre