1. Nancy Kelsey was the first white woman to travel overland from Missouri, seeing Utah and Nevada before crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains into California on November 25,1841.
18 Facts About Nancy Kelsey
1. 2.
Nancy Kelsey was 17 years old in 1841 when Ben decided to travel west after reading doctor John Marsh's letter extolling the California climate and crop-growing advantages.
3.
Nancy Kelsey felt that the best way to go about this was to encourage emigration by Americans to California, and in this way the history of Texas would be repeated.
4.
Nancy Kelsey invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.
5.
Many years later, an interview with Nancy Kelsey was published in the San Francisco Examiner where she recollected the trip across the continent; she said the group had no guide and no compass.
6.
Nancy Kelsey was the first white woman to see the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
7.
Nancy Kelsey is credited with being the first white woman to see Utah, Nevada, the first to cross the Sierra Nevada and the first to travel overland from Missouri to California.
8.
Nancy Kelsey became pregnant almost immediately and delivered daughter Margaret September 14,1843, in Oregon.
9.
David Nancy Kelsey arrived separately, but died in 1845 of smallpox.
10.
Nancy Kelsey rolled her daughter into a blanket; both survived.
11.
Nancy Kelsey has been referred to as the "Betsy Ross of California" for her contributions to the flag, after which the Bear Flag Rebellion was named.
12.
In 1848, Nancy delivered Mary Ellen Kelsey on June 26 at Sutter's Fort.
13.
Shortly thereafter, Stone and Andrew Nancy Kelsey were killed, but the details are highly variable among sources.
14.
The Nancy Kelsey men burned two Wiyot villages and killed several Native Americans.
15.
Nancy delivered Nancy Rose on February 14,1851, in Sonoma at about the same time as Ben Kelsey became sick with tuberculosis.
16.
The family lived in Oakland for one year, moved to Gilroy for fourteen months, and moved again to the Kern River mines where Nancy Kelsey mined and operated a toll bridge for 18 months.
17.
Ben worked in the Cerro Gordo Mines, and finally the family moved to Los Angeles where Ben Nancy Kelsey died on February 19,1889, aged 76.
18.
Nancy Kelsey outlived her husband and spent her final years on farms in Santa Barbara County, California, where she was a midwife and an herbalist.