Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed legislation requiring public schools to teach students about the contributions of “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.”  When I was young, we were taught about men and, yes, women in California, not because of their “sexual orientation” but because they were figures of substance and significance.  One of my favorites was Nancy Kelsey, the Betsy Ross of California, who is unknown to schoolchildren today.

Born Nancy Roberts in Kentucky in 1823, she was only three when her family picked up and moved to Missouri.  At 15 she married a wild, redheaded lad from a neighboring farm family, Ben Kelsey, whose family had likewise migrated to Missouri from Kentucky.  In 1841 they joined what would become known as the Bidwell Party at Sapling Grove in eastern Kansas, intending to trek overland to a place called California.  Nancy was all of 18 years old, had an 18-month-old daughter, and had lost an infant son only three months earlier.  When asked why she was willing to undertake a continental journey through a wilderness, she replied, “Where my husband goes, I go.  I can better endure the hardships of the journey than the anxieties for an absent husband.”

“Our ignorance of the route was complete,” said John Bidwell.  “We knew that California lay west, and that was the extent of our knowledge.”  The pioneers had the good fortune, however, to fall in with a party of Jesuit missionaries led by Belgian-born but American-educated Fr. Pierre Jean DeSmet.  The black robes were not trailblazing themselves but being guided and schooled in frontier survival by one of the greatest of all American mountain men, Irish-born Tom Fitzpatrick, who smoothed the way for the missionaries, and for the Bidwell Party, all the way to Soda Springs in southeastern Idaho.  From there Fitzpatrick and the missionaries headed for the Pacific Northwest.  Half of the members of the Bidwell Party decided that sticking with Fitzpatrick was more important than reaching California and wound up settling in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

The other half, 32 strong, included only one woman, Nancy Kelsey.  She and the others turned their horses and wagons south, following the Bear River into Utah and then skirting the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake.  In the blazing desert west of the lake they were forced to abandon their wagons and pack everything on horses and mules.  Carrying her daughter in front of her, Nancy rode bareback.

The party stumbled upon the headwaters of the Humboldt River and followed its path southwestward across Nevada.  Occasionally, Paiutes blocked their path.  “At one place the Indians surrounded us, armed with bows and arrows,” said Nancy, “but my husband leveled his gun at the chief and made him order his Indians out of arrow range.”  Low on food and nearly exhausted, the pioneers began the climb into the Sierra Nevada, which Bidwell described as “naked mountains whose summits still retained the snows of perhaps a thousand years.”

They crossed the Sierra crest on the last day of October.  “We had a difficult time to find a way down the mountain,” said Nancy.

At one time I was left alone for nearly a day, and as I was afraid of the Indians, I sat all the while with my baby in my lap on the back of my horse. . . . It seemed to me while I was there alone the moaning of the wind through the pines was the loneliest sound I ever heard.

The descent was so rocky and steep that riding was impossible.  “One old man gave out,” Nancy recalled,

and we had to threaten to shoot him before he would attempt to descend the mountains.  At one place four pack animals fell over a bluff. . . . We were then out of provisions, having killed and eaten all our cattle.  I walked barefooted [her shoes had long since disintegrated] until my feet blistered.  We lived on roasted acorns for two days.  My husband came very near dying with cramps, and it was suggested to leave him, but I said I never would do that. . . . At one place I was so weak I could hardly stand.

After six months on the trail, the Bidwell Party reached the San Joaquin Valley, making Nancy Kelsey the first woman to cross overland to California.  By the time she arrived she was five months pregnant.  She had been an inspiration to the men.  Said Bidwell Party member Joseph Chiles,

Her cheerful nature and kind heart brought many a ray of sunshine through the clouds that gathered round a company of so many weary travelers.  She bore the fatigue of the journey with so much heroism, patience and kindness, that there still exists a warmth in every heart for the mother and her child.

Once in California, Ben Kelsey went to work as a hunter for John Sutter, whose fort at the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers would become a mecca for Americans traveling overland.  Kelsey earned enough money to buy 100 head of cattle and, with Nancy at his side, drove them to the American settlements in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.  It was an arduous trek, and more than once they had to beat back attacks by Indians, who much preferred eating steaks to acorns.  Nancy was a crack shot and not in the least averse to using her rifle.

With the profits from the cattle drive, the Kelseys built log cabins and established a hunting lodge in the Napa Valley, the heart of California’s wine country today but a wilderness then.  The well-known mountain man James Clyman, after trapping the Rockies during the 1820’s and 30’s, settled in California and made use of the Kelseys’ cabins on several hunting trips.  He described Nancy as “a fine looking woman.”  All this time Nancy continued to have children—Sarah Jane, who died within a week of her birth in 1842, then Margaret in 1843 and Andrew in 1846.  She would give birth to ten children altogether.

When the Bear Flag Revolt erupted in June 1846, the Kelseys were original participants, and Ben was among the buckskin-clad party of Americans who captured Sonoma early on the morning of the 14th.  Nancy joined them a few hours later, holding her two-month-old infant, Andrew, in her arms.  William Todd, Mary Todd Lincoln’s nephew, designed a flag, featuring a lone star, reminiscent of Texas, and a grizzly, because, said the rebels, “A bear stands his ground always, and as long as the stars shine we stand for the cause.”  At noon the rebels raised the flag over Sonoma.

Nancy Kelsey had a special reason to be proud of the banner: She had made it using cloth from her own petticoats and those of another woman rebel.