One of thirty-six letters written by Flavel Belcher, covering his time in San Francisco during the Gold Rush and afterwards in New Orleans, Louisana, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Havana, Cuba.
The Belcher family lived in Tioga County, New York and consisted of the parents, Joseph and Wealthy Whiting Belcher and five children: three sons, Horatio, Flavel, and Galitzen, and two daughters, Lucy and Maryette. Flavel and Galitzen relocated to New Orleans, the home of their sister, Lucy Valentine. When the news of the discovery of gold in California broke, the two brothers were among the first to join the rush and started a mercantile business in San Francisco.
After traveling to California near the start of the Gold Rush, Flavel Belcher and his brother Galitizen ran a mercantile business in San Francisco.which lasted until a fire destroyed their building on May 4, 1851. By the summer of 1851, Flavel was operating as an Indian trader on one of O.M. Wozencraft's Indian reservations at the Forks of the Cosumnes River in El Dorado County. In 1852, Flavel left the river area and attempted several business ventures in Sacramento and San Francisco which fail. He then traveled to Central America and ended up in the civil service of William Walker's government in Nicaragua. In 1857, he joined Walker's second invasion of Nicaragua.
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