Monday, October 15, 2012

Sutters Land





John Sutter is associated with the great California Gold Rush.  However, despite his discovery of the rare metal, John Sutter died almost a poor man.  Johann August Suter was Born in Germany on February the 15th 1803.  He later joined the Swiss Army and at age 23 married a rich young widow.  before long, however, Suter accumulated large debts so in 1834 he left his family and voyaged to America.  He had many travels and adventures before he finally settled in California in 1839, where his wife and children rejoined him.  He became a Mexican citizen and was given 48,827 acres and built a settlement that he called New Helvetia, the Latin word for Switzerland. He Built a fort and a town to support and protect his tenants.  in 1848 one of Sutters trusted employees found gold on the property, and before long they were over run with thousands of thieving miners.  Despite his attempts to mine the gold himself, all his workers were keeping the gold for themselves, he eventually tried to sell his land.  However, the agents that he hired to do so cheated him and he ended up deeding the land to his son who proceeded to be very successful and build modern day Sacramento.  Sutter moved to D.C for political purposes and eventually died in a hotel room in 1880.  He lost the majority of his wealth, and is now almost forgotten.  He does, however, have a few schools and geographical areas and landmarks named after him.  He was mentioned in grapes of wrath because of how he originally got his land.  He simply claimed it, and held it until it was officially his.

5 comments:

  1. I think this is proof that if you are looking for something of value, it's best if you just did so yourself. People are greedy, so it's no shock that his workers ended up robbing him.

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  2. This just goes to show how greedy a lot of people where, great job writing this, I didn't know any of that

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  3. Maybe he was paying his workers like crap, so they robbed him in return... but Hollyanne is right. We cannot send someone else to find something of value, and upon the discovery claim it as our own. That's like when Lil' Wayne attempted to have someone go to college for him... Get real!

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  4. Shows how you have to choose who you trust and how greedy his workers were. I had never heard of John Sutter until this, nice job.

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  5. I learned a lot here of things I did not know. To trust someone is something we all have to do wit caution...so many greedy still exsit today.. So sad that our people had to live like this.. This Can And Could Happen Again!

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