Mary Ballou (1809–1894) was an American memoirist notable for her collection of letters ''I Hear the Hogs in My Kitchen.'' Written in 1852, they were published in 1962.
Ballou's writing gave personal insight into the life of an
American pioneer
American pioneers were European American and African American settlers who migrated westward from the Thirteen Colonies and later United States to settle in and develop areas of North America that had previously been inhabited or used by Nati ...
. With her husband, Ballou left her New Hampshire home for California, not in search of gold to be mined, but money to be made off those doing the mining. The Ballous ran a lucrative
boarding house in Negro Bar, California. Her letters describe the antics of the miners she housed, as well as the unique experience of being a woman during the
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...
. In addition to running a boarding house, she provided many services such as childcare, including nursing, making soap and sewing.
See also
*
Women in the California Gold Rush
Women in the California Gold Rush, which began in Northern California in 1848, initially included Spanish descendants, or Californios, who already lived in California, Native American women, and rapidly arriving immigrant women from all over the ...
References
Further reading
''Let Them Speak for Themselves: Women in the American West'' 1849-1900 ed. Christiane Fischer (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1977)
External links
Excerpt of Ballou's work*Short radio audio and scrip
from
California Legacy Project.
1809 births
1894 deaths
19th-century American memoirists
American women memoirists
19th-century American women writers
Memoirists from California
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