Source Information
Ancestry.com. Dr. William McCollum, Trips to California, 1849-50 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 1999.Original data: Library of Congress. California As I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900. Volume 79. [database on-line] Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1999. M'Collum, William S. California As I Saw It. Los Gatos, CA: Talisman Press, 1960.
About Dr. William McCollum, Trips to California, 1849-50
Dr. William McCollum was born in Pennsylvania, grew up in Niagara County, New York and traveled to California in 1849 and again in 1850. This database is a description of these trips to the West Coast as a physician for the Panama Railroad Company. It contains accounts of his journey to Stockton and Sacramento, prospecting near Jacksonville, and his medical practice in San Francisco. He also includes reflections on Native Americans in the area, the law of the mines, and the life of women in the territory. For researchers of early California history, this can be an illuminating account of one man's experiences while living in the Bay Area.
