In a few hours I’m leaving with my daughters for a California History class trip to Sutter’s Fort, in old town Sacramento.
The entire class are dressing in period costumes and acting as docents for the various exhibits all throughout the day on Tuesday. I’ll be playing “Owen Sumner”, who came to Sutter’s Fort in 1843 with his wife, daughter Lizzie, and other children as part of the Hasting’s party. Malakai is portraying Lizzie Sumner, and Saskia is playing a made-up sister of Lizzie’s. Our main revision of the history of this family is removing a few possible years from Lizzie’s age to be more comfortable to Malakai, who also doesn’t want to be too near to Lizzie’s marriage to George Davis.
After we close the fort to the public tomorrow afternoon, the class is staying for an old fashioned overnight in the fort. I’ll be taking a little bit of watch duty and helping keep the fire going all night, just as was done 164 years ago.
[…] (Catching up with this post, since I started it but didn’t complete it when we got back from Sutter’s Fort.) […]
Doing genealogy research and just came across your blog on Sutter’s Fort. I’m a descendant of Owen Sumner and his wife, Lucy, through another daughter, Martha, who married Thomas Shadden. Their daughter, Eliza,my 3rd great grandmother, was born in California at Sutter’s Fort August 30,1843.
My daughter will take on the roll of Lizzie as we go to Sutter’s Fort next month. The info my daughter has states that Lizzie came to Sutter’s Fort in 1843. I am interested in getting any info Arlynn has so that her facts will be correct.
All the information I had I is in the links in the original blog post. One great help was some of the books that Google had scanned in to their library database.
I’ll send Arlynn an email that you are interested in hearing more, and give her your email address. Hope she responds to you. 🙂
Have a great trip.