Luzena Stanley Wilson '49er

Luzena Wilson (b. ca. 1821) came to California from Missouri with her husband and two children in 1849. The family first settled in Sacramento, where they kept a hotel. After the Sacrameto flood of 1849, they moved to a mining camp, where Mrs. Wilson ran another hotel until 1851, when the Wilsons journeyed to their new farm near modern Vacaville. Luzena Stanley Wilson, '49er (1937) contains reminiscences of her overland journey and early years in California dictated to her daughter in 1881. Mrs. Wilson chronicles pioneering in Vaca Valley and her Hispanic neighbors, closing with comments on Vacaville's gradual anglicization and urbanization.