What strikes me most reading them is the matter-of-fact way these women wrote about experiences most of us today would find traumatic. For instance, watching loved ones die on the way to California, or almost die.

"Mother was so ill from seasickness and exposure that she had to be carried off the steamer. After leaving Gorgona she was strapped on the back of a mule, but the mule refused to move. After some coaxing, he trotted off, passed all others on the way, reaching Panama far in advance." - Kathleen Cole, originally of Ireland

Rosa Reynolds Boyd came by steamer in 1853. The ship she was on got lost in heavy fog, and hit rocks off the coast of Marin County.

"My mother was the first to be lowered to thedesperate need of talent, charm and business acumen. Women were saloon keepers, chefs, seamstresses, journalists and even entrepreneurs who made fortunes, when there were fortunes to be made.

They came from China, Mexico, Chile, France, Italy and Ireland, as well as the Eastern Seaboard and the Midwest. My imagination yearns for the stories set down in languages other than English, or never set down at all.

We have today a wealth of newspapers, books, TV shows and movies to tell us the stories of the men who came to California, but those seeking enlightenment about women must sift through fragmentary evidence like untitled daguerreotypes and divorce records.

Artists like Bay Area composer John Adams have only just begun to mine the legacy, to reimagine our past from a perspective more sympathetic