The St. Johns herald., 1891-09-17
GOLD DISCOVERY.
The Disputed Date Established by Docu-
 mentary Evidence.

IhG DISDUEeQ DaC6 ESIaDitSfISu Dy DOCu- mentary Evidence.
 The various societies of California pioneers are accustomed to celebrate the 18th of January as the date of the discovery of gold by J. W. Marshall at Coloma. but that it is an error is shown by Mir John S. Hittel in the Century, as follows Ia fac-simile of the entry ir Bigler's diary being printed in the mag azine as ocular evidence):
 The first record of the discovery, and the only one made on the day of its oc, currence, was in the diary of Henry w. Bigler, one of the Mormon labCrers at the mill He was an American by birth, then young man, and now respected citizen of St. George, U. T. He was in : the habit of keeping a regular record oi his notable observations and experi' ences. selecting topics for remark with creditable judgment. His journal kept during his service in the Mormon bat talion and his subsequent stay ill Cali fornia is one of the valuable historical documents of the State. On the 24th ot January, in the evening, Bigler wrote in his diary: 'This day some kind ot mettle was found in the tail-race that looks like gold.''
 Nothing was said in public about the date of the discovery until 1856, eight years after the event when Marshall published Q letter in which he said that he found gold at Coloma about the 19th' of January, 1648. Neither then, nor at any subsequent time, did he claim that his recollection of the day was aided by written memoranda a. In 1857 he published statement that the discovery was made on the 18th, 10th or 2Oth. His biography, prepared under his direction, and printed in 1870, fixed the 18th as the precise day. As years elapsed he became more exact, perhaps under the influence of public opinion, which from 1856 to 1886 accepted the 18th as the day. On the 9th of September, 1885, at the annual celebration of the ad- mission Of the State into the Union, I delivered an address on the gold dis covery to the Pioneer society of San Francisco, and sent a copy of it in print to Mir. Bigler, of whom had heard as one of the survivors of the Coloma party, and requested him to correct my that according to his diary the gold was found on the 24th. At my solicitation he copied the entries of his book from that day to the middle of May; and then began an investigation which made me familiar with the diaries of Azariah Smith, a survivor of the Mormon battalion and one of the mill builders at Coloma, and with the diary of Sutter. These three diaries agreed substantial ly with one another, and with Mar shalls statement that four days after the discovery he took specimens of the gold to Sutter's Fort. Smith made his entries on Sunday as rule; and on the 30th January he wrote that on the pre- ceding week gold had been found at the mill, and that Marshall had gone to New Helvctia to have it tested. This was probably written in the morning, for Bigler's entry made on the same day mentions that the test was success full, implying that Marshall had re- turned.
 Sutter's diary reports that on the 2Sth January Marshall arrived at the fort ''on important business" without men, tioning the gold. The agreement of the three diaries with Marshall's statement that he went to New Helvetia four days after the discovery, the superior value of documentary evidence as compared with vague recollections, dimmed by years of intervening events, and the un- certainty of Marshall in reference to the date, left no room for doubt that the 24th was the true day, which I gave to the public for the first time in January, 1886.