Early days in California

Lee Summers Whipple-Haslam was the daughter of Franklin Summers, who came to California from Missouri in 1850 and mined enough gold at Shaw's Flat (near Sonora) to return east and bring his family west in 1852. Early days in California (1925?) chronicles her life in Shaw's Flat, Sonora, and other Tuolumne County communities, 1852-53; and the family's new home on Turnback Creek in Tuolumne's "East Belt" of minefields, 1854-60. There her mother kept a boardinghouse while her husband prospected, and their guests included Mark Twain. The author reminisces of neighbors at the camp, Native Americans and miners alike. A contemporary reviewer in 1923 commented that the reminiscences were "colored by time and approaching fiction."