Andrew Jackson Journey, b. abt 1815 in MO, is found in El Dorado County, in 1850. His brother, John Thomas Journey, is also found there. Andrew left a wife and children in MO. His father, Joseph, also included both AJJ and JTJ in the enumeration of his own household in 1850. All very strange, especially as both of these sons had families of their own. Their father obviously expected their return, so I believe it can be questioned whether they were in CA temporarily to look for gold. The "widow" of Andrew J. Journey remarries in 1856, and there is no divorce record found. Moreover, no place of burial has been found in MO. What was the usual disposition of a death and burial in El Dorado County during this time period? Are records available? Thank you.

I can't give you a lot of hope. During this period, people were generally buried where they died. There was no records kept other than the grave marker or someone's journal. The few official records that might have been from this time went up in flames in the County Courthouse fire of 1913. Those who came here to find gold were very transient, so it's hard to know exactly where they may have been from one week to the next. Of the cemeteries known to have existed at this time, half are not locatable, and the half that is, the majority of graves from that period are no longer marked. All that doom and gloom said, I'll keep my eyes open as I journey our cemeteries. Maybe something will pop up.

I suspected as much, but I do thank you for your offer to "journey." And, yes, obviously, my pun is intended! Thanks again.

During that era, the only "records" were what appeared in newspapers. For Northern California, the primary newspapers were in San Francisco, Sacramento and Stockton and they often had articles covering events well outside of what you might think would be their "reader territory". A lot of extracts from these newspapers have been posted at URL:

http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/index.php

The website has a limited search capability which allows you to refine searches. For example, if you go initially select United States/California and enter Journey as the search criteria your not only going to get cases where Journey appears as a surname, but also where journey is appears as a trip. A quick look indicates this generates a long list of candidate editions with basic info about which newspaper the term appeared in and associated date of publication. At the bottom of the displayed page you will find a refine search feature. If you enter Andrew, you will get the cases where Andrew appears in the first list (i.e., it doesn't mean you've gotten hits for the sequence Andrew Journey). This list should be shorter. You can further refine, for example use Dorado (vice El Dorado) as a possible further refinement. Again this doesn't necessarily mean Andrew Journey in El Dorado county.

From this point on, you're pretty much stuck with opening each hit, possibly using the date of publication as the ones to look at first, to see if there's anything in a particular edition that's of interest. Depending on the uniqueness of the inputs, the process can be quite tedious but I've it is often fruitful.

Good luck

Vern D