Coloma history buff specializes in Gold Rush era's James Marshall

COLOMA ? The American River Canyon and its surrounding hillsides are steeped in history, and few people know more about that history than Coloma?s Bill Demerritt.Demerritt stumbled into playing the character of James Wilson Marshall at Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma. He wanted to learn how to blacksmith but when asked if he?d play Marshall at the museum, he reluctantly agreed. Seizing the opportunity to learn about the historic figure, Demerritt immersed himself in 49er history and now, nine years later, can relate the events of the Gold Rush as if just happened yesterday.?When he first started, he was a little nervous about it,? said Carol Demerritt of her husband?s role in the Gold Rush re-enactment. ?But when he gets started, he really gets into it.?She added that her husband takes his work seriously, so don?t call James Marshall ?John? ? a common mistake that irritates the history aficionado. Demerritt has taken his vast Gold Rush knowledge to the streets, visiting Marshall?s boyhood home and performing his first-person re-enactment for several schools in Australia. He?s breathed life into Coloma?s claim to fame and spread it worldwide. As fascinating as the discovery of gold may be, Demerritt enjoys the story of how it almost wasn?t discovered. The grade-school curriculum doesn?t always include how several coincidences made the Gold Rush happen, without which the defining event of the 1800s may not have occurred. According to Demerritt, James Wilson Marshall was not formally educated. He was a carpenter employed by John Sutter to build a mill. Sutter had many businesses in the Sacramento Valley and needed a mill. Marshall wanted to build the mill on the Feather River, near where he owned land, but Sutter insisted it be on the American River. To sweeten the deal, Sutter offered to make Marshall a partner in the mill.If Marshall had gotten his way and build the mill on the Feather River, gold may never have been discovered on the American River. Marshall, who had a great interest in geology, monitored the mill closely. In its early days, the mill did not run smoothly and Marshall worked on it to make it work better. He used the force of the water to dig a deeper channel, which succeeded in clearing the dirt and gravel out of the channel, leaving only big rocks ? and gold. Marshall found a small shiny nugget on, half the size of a pea, on Jan. 14, 1848, and with his knowledge of geology, knew it was gold. ?Any of the rest of us might not have known what it was,? Demerritt says in awe. He adds that the diaries of two of the mill employees, which can be viewed at the Gold Discovery Museum in Coloma, back up that ?on this day, some sort of metal was found? and it looked to be gold.? A few days later, the claim was made official, and Jan. 24 is celebrated as the start of the Gold Rush. Both Sutter and Marshall tried to keep the finding quiet. But the greed of one man, Demerritt said, foiled that plan. A store owner, Sam Brannan, heard of the gold and quickly bought all the mining supplies from surrounding stores and stocked his own store with them. He then took a small vial of gold to San Francisco and proclaimed to all that would listen that gold had been discovered on the American River. In addition, he printed 2,000 fliers with the news and sent them to friends and family in Missouri, triggering a sudden interest in the newfound wealth of California. A year later, 1849, the Gold Rush was in full swing.In the meantime, Sutter tried to get a pre-emptive claim to all the land within a one-mile radius of the mill. Colonel Richard Barnes Mason denied the claim, leaving Sutter with no stake on the land. Marshall, who had been made a partner in the mill, also had no claim to the land. If he had remained an employee and not been made partner, his fortune may have been different, Demerritt said. Mason, who now knew there was gold in the river and who had been trying to convince the United States that California, not yet a state, was valuable, sent 223 ounces of gold to President James Polk as evidence. Once in Washington D.C., the news was impossible to keep quiet and thousands of hopeful miners with golden dreams rushed to California. Sutter went bankrupt within a year of the discovery. He moved to Pennsylvania and petitioned the federal government for compensation for his land. Continually denied, he died near penniless.Marshall followed suit. He did receive a government pension for a while, but as Demerritt tells it, he had the bad luck to drop a whiskey bottle in the lobby of the nation?s Capitol and Congress decided ?they wouldn?t give any money to a drunken old sod.? When he died in 1885, Marshall had $240 to his name. But he had a dream. According to Demerritt?s account, his dying words were, ?One day, some day, they?ll make a fuss over me.?Demerritt has helped validate those words. By keeping the history alive, students and adults from all over the world hear his account of the discovery of gold and year after year, a fuss is made over James Wilson Marshall.The Demerritts now spend much of their time traveling, hoping to canvass all of the United States. But they can?t quite leave their hometown at home. Their next trip starts March 4, and Bill Demerritt plans to visit Marshall?s resting place in New Jersey and perhaps perform his costumed narrative at the James Marshall Museum there. A new James Marshall will reside in the museum in Coloma. And his legacy ? gold ? will forever be celebrated on the banks of the American River. The Journal?s Bethany Harrison can be reached at bethanyh@goldcountrymedia.com.