Person

J. Goldsborough Bruff

Historical illustration of a California goldminer. — J.G. Bruff's self-portrait.
Illustration/J.G. Bruff/Public Domain

After studying something for many years, one might be tempted to experience it firsthand. Take, for instance, the life of J. Goldsborough Bruff. Trained as a draftsman and cartographer, Bruff reproduced many, many maps of the West—until he found a more interesting way to put this knowledge to use.

The eleventh child of Thomas Bruff and his wife, Mary Oliver, J. Goldsborough Bruff was born 2 October 1804 in Washington, D.C. Bruff’s fondness for adventure arrived early in life. After the death of his father, Bruff joined his older brother at West Point; however, he was forced to leave in 1822 after dueling with a fellow student. He spent the next five years traveling as a seaman, visiting ports throughout Europe and South America. Bruff returned in 1827, working at a naval yard for ten years before taking a job with the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. He spent hours reproducing the detailed maps that the engineers included with their final field reports—including the maps and drawings from John C. Frémont’s expedition over the Oregon and California trails (1842–46). Bruff began to sense that his knowledge of the West could come in handy.

News of gold in California spurred Bruff to action. He assembled an overland emigration party, the Washington City and California Mining Association. Members ranged in age from fifteen to fifty, but the majority were under thirty. Aside from the officers of the company, all of whom were older men, the travelers included an artist, an ensign, twelve carpenters, a blacksmith, and a physician.

Problems within the company started before they crossed the Missouri River. In April 1849, when they arrived at St. Joseph, Missouri, the line of wagons waiting to use the single ferry to cross the river numbered in the hundreds. Rather than join the fray, Bruff directed his company toward the old Fort Kearny, along the Missouri River near present-day Nebraska City, Nebraska. After crossing there, the company journeyed up the Platte River to Fort Hall (in present-day southeastern Idaho)—some 800 miles away from their destination, Sacramento.

By the time the party reached the Sierra Nevada’s eastern foothills, they were tired and low on supplies. Bruff had fallen ill and could not forge ahead; he established “Bruff’s Camp” to protect the company’s property until they could send for it. He spent a long winter there, starving and cold, waiting for help that never arrived. Even worse, once the weather warmed and Bruff began exploring California’s gold country, he found no gold worth mentioning. After more than a year of searching, Bruff gave up.

He set sail from California in June 1851. Back in Washington, he reunited with his wife Elizabeth, sons William and Charles, daughters Zuliema and Celestine, three grandchildren, and an African American domestic servant named Annie Bruce. Bruff continued to work as a draftsman up until the last four months of his life. He died at home on the evening of 14 April 1889 after suffering a short illness.

Although Bruff left California in 1851, he continued to visit it vicariously through the numerous works of art he created in the last four decades of his life. Many of those paintings and drawings are held in the Beinicke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and have been reprinted in more than a dozen contemporary works about art and art history, providing a rare visual and textual perspective on what became known as the California Trail.

(Special thanks to UNM PhD candidate Angela Reiniche for compiling this information.)

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