H.M. Bacon
1849 (ca)
[A miner playing the flute alongside his makeshift cabin in the California gold fields]

Daguerreotype
The Society of California Pioneers
Further details and accession number requested (3 May 2022).
 
(Drew Johnson, 3 May 2022) We borrowed this image for the 1998 exhibition “Silver & Gold: Cased Images of the California Gold Rush” at the Oakland Museum of California. Interestingly, it was published in the late 1850s as a wood engraving in Hutching's California Magazine with the title, “An Evening Scene, Boston Flat, Calaveras County.”
 
Nancy Leek, A Forty-Niner Daguerreotype (Posted: 2 May 2022)
(Accessed: 3 May 2022)
 
He has one foot up on a keg, but what the keg held is anyone's guess. Everything was packed in barrels and kegs. It could have been brandy, it could have been pickles. Next to the keg is a log with an ax, and nearby are his mining tools — what looks like a pan and a shovel.
 
LL/119782