Book Description

Thaddeus S. Kenderdine made his way from Philadelphia to Michigan in 1858, staying only a month before he determined to head to California. He remained for only a year, returning to New York in 1859. A California tramp (1888) describes Kenderdine's adventures in 1858-1859: his trip west as a driver on a California wagon train, visits to San Francisco and life as tramp and ranch hand in Sonoma County. His memoir closes with his return via Panama in 1859. The last quarter of the book is a miscellany of Kenderdine's prose and poetry. Kenderdine's association with California was renewed almost forty years later when he made a second trip west; see his California revisited (1898).