>> things they suffered along the trail made pioneer women as much a. when women were scarce in the cold garage-- gold rush. they were 2% of the entire californian population and as a result of their scarcity they were more valued and because

they were more valued, then listened more, tried to understand what they wanted and needed, plus the fact that some of these women-- a surprise themselves and then to ice supposed by becoming brighter waiters and decision-makers. gold-mining is no sure income and meanwhile the children are hungry, so these women would have a boarding houses or bake pies or took in a laundry and they were successful, much more successful that earning income than their husbands or a gold-mining. i would like them to get a sense of-- sacramento is a rich history and what i have done is try to present it through the women's point of view, what they experienced, with a witness, so

there is that aspect of it and also an appreciation of what these women were like. each of the women in here led different kind of life and came from a different place. they had different goals. of course, they had the same goals also that women today have and they want a safe place for their children to be raised. they wanted schools, hospitals and civilization when they came here. these women have never been written about it all. some of them are really very interesting ladies. the woman who was with james marshall went gold was discovered, for example, her full story has not been told before and i also wrote about the wife of our former governor. her story is not been told before and also a lady, mrs. frank who came by covered wagon, bits and pieces of her

story are out there, but not her full life, so i chose these six women had some have been mentioned in other people's books, but to expand their life and talk about their experiences here in sacramento. perhaps, the most interesting of all is lavinia waterhouse. in the day and age, it wasn't so simply accessible for married women to work, but she became a widow and her husband died after they came here. they came by covered wagon and her husband died a couple years later and she had children to support. so, she was-- what she did for a living was she was a midwife and also a water practitioner, which is what you would call hydrotherapy, very popular in her time period. so, she became very wealthy, but she was very opinionated, very

outspoken woman, not at all what we would think is the average kind of woman from that period. she wrote letters to the editor complaining or expressing views, i should say on a variety of things and she was heavily involved in the suffrage movement. she was at that precedence of the sacramento women association in 1870s. jenny came to tell 40 and 46, two years before the gold discovery and she happened to be hired by john soldered to be camp cook and laundress when the crew went up to the sawmill. so, she was there that day when marshall discovered a gold and asked the laundress she was making a pot of soap, frontier soap was made, boiled with a lie.

when the concoction was ready, she put a piece, couple pieces-- he wasn't sure it was really cold or something else and that was one of the tests. she told him if he came out bright and shiny before sure it was going to be gold ended did. one of the other ladies, was mrs. johnson and she was married to california's fourth the governor and she had very influential politically influential father who was here, a father who in fact was sacramento's first city charter, but the father and her husband died-- guide to a clash of wills, you might call it when the vigilance committee, the san francisco vigilance committee formed again in 1856, so there was a lot of animosity. it was all in the paper, the

argument was in the news paper. i didn't know that until i researched. she must have been pulled apart, emotionally between the father she loved and the husband she loaded. mrs. crocker came to california as a bride. her husband's brothers were already here, so she came by a ship, actually not overland, about what he% of the gold rush came by ship. she landed almost in times to experience the first to greet fire. there was a lot of disasters. major fires, two major fires as well as several small ones. there were disastrous floods, a cholera academic. all of these things, not all these women were here for the

same things at the same time, but mrs. crocker came in time for the first fire. obviously, lived through that and had her children here, built a home here. the crocker's were very involved in in agriculture, starting agriculture in this area and they were also involved in the arts. they were-- with other people. they were instrumental in starting a library and starting the orchestra and supported these endeavors. then, he died when her children were-- let's see, her youngest child was almost in her teens when this happened, but he had become very wealthy because he was the legal counsel to the central pacific railroad, so by

the time he passed away a crocker's were quite wealthy end of they both had been very florida-based and she became one of-- one in her own right after he die. why did i'd choose these the six women? jenny, as we have talked about i have read a few lines about her in other places, so that was one lady i knew i was interested in pursuing carried the others, i had to almost find except the last lady who wrote about, mrs. crocker. the crocker name-- certainly margaret was a beloved and respected woman of her time. people who live in sacramento know about the history of mrs. crocker or know that she gave her families arch collection to the city as a gift, so she was already in my mind, but the others i had to look for it and the problem is

that there were women coming and going in the city all this time and in the newspaper and it really didn't publish very many women's names. that was the journalistic style. so, i had to find ladies who had enough information about them already in order to justify a chapter. there's a lot more interesting women in this period but i couldn't find more information about other than a line or two. so, i wrote a seventh chapter about these ladies. >> while in sacramento, california, we talked about the history of us border control with patrick ettinger, author of imaginary lines, order enforcement and origins of undocumented immigration.

>> the more i looked into the story of border crossings, the more i realize the story was not about the 20s and 30s and 40s, but about the 1880s. it was about the 1890s and the story became a different one to read it took me not only thinking i was going to start talking about the mexican border i quickly discovered i had to talk about the canadian border because the canadian border went back to the 1880s itself had been a fight of all kinds of what we would call undocumented immigration. immigrants coming for opportunity. sometimes family reunion, but mostly economic opportunity and if you are looking, let's say around the turn of the last century about 1890, with they discovered what they learn about the united states in italy, poland, china, japan or mexico, they are also learning of recent years the country had put in place restrictions that might affect them. they are realizing now that it's not like in the past where whoever sailed in basically got

in, but now that you could expect when you arrived by boat and most people did by ship, that someone was going to ask questions about your physical health, about your status, your eligibility. now, during these times those people were able to get in. they weren't chinese or japanese exclusively, but there was a chance navy because of a healthy reason or maybe and i infection or maybe you had-- you are very poor and may be worried about not having enough money, they were beginning to hear that, well, you can sail on the way to the united states and possibly get rejected and have to sailed back and i was a bit of a risk that sunset i would rather not take that risk, so you began to have reports years after they passed immigration restriction other people in seattle, saying a lot of chinese are starting to land here and go across the land

of border. upstate new york, there were reports of irish poppers committed to buffalo, new york and working their way in. peoples whose job it was to enforce immigration and the politicians who created them began to say, wow, if we are going to restrict immigration, meaning people wanted to get around we will find ways to do so and they did. beginning in 1880s, you began to see through seattle and upstate new york all of this pressure of people saying if you sail into san francisco or if you sail into new york, you'll get inspected and may be rejected. if you land into canada, there is no one on the border in la people on the border at that time were customs officials tracking commerce and they had no interest in immigration control. so, the 1880s, you began to see all of this undocumented immigration coming through canada and at the same time or

about a decade later you began to see come to mexico. working hand-in-hand at the same time as you had a steam ships, so imagine the steam ships sailing out of the mediterranean france, or out of the north atlantic. they are selling tickets to the united states and the also have steamship lines going to canada and going to mexico. many of their agents began to approach immigrants saying you can buy your tickets to new york , and that might work out, but there is a chance that you or your elderly grandmother who is traveling with you might get rejected. but if you fail to mexico and buy a ticket from me it's a safer routes, so many people began-- greek, lebanese began to take those routes. in some cases to be frank, they do not need to and they probably would have been admissible at ellis island, but they had been led to believe that they might

not, so this network developed that people realize there were other people that other ways to get into the united states. if you're: it's just to go and get into the united states and you want it to be a sure thing. some groups knew there was no point in sailing to the main port of entry, chinese, laborers were banned and they could not disguise the fact that, so they were absolutely going to go to either baja, or seattle and that was a no-brainer. others, europeans were sometimes making a i guess you could say kind of ill informed choice that maybe they should take the way around rather than direct route of what it meant for officials who job it was to say man a bridge or manny station in upstate new york was that they were encountering not just canadians and mexicans, they were encountering people from all over the globe.

there was nothing illicit or wrong about coming across the land border even if they stopped to. they didn't stop you and they knew it. if you read that administrators working in canada and work in mexico in 1890s and 1990s-- they knew what was going on and they understand perfectly when they rejected someone for admission that it was a farce, that the person was a core screen to come in. the chinese would say, he has seen this guy three or four times because all we can do is in the back and they will come through again, so i can choose people moving was also one of the ways in which nations tried to control the flow of people, tried to exercise some sort of control over human migration. what i discovered in the period i was looking at the 1880s to 1930, was that borders are

always very difficult to enforce, always have been and likely always will be. especially a country like the united states with this vast borders and officials in the 19th century were pretty quick to realize that. they had this sort of conundrum, on the one hand and he wanted to put in place these restrictions to shape the face of the nation and on the other hand they realized that if you had restrictions you had to have the force behind them to make sure they were effective and while you could get that effective screening, let's say at ellis island or angel island or wherever else someone landed and un officials to meet them, it was very very easy and people quickly realized that you could just go around the border and so for those politicians and others that wanted to see some sort of restriction, basically they felt like enforcing the border is imperative and it's silly to laws i can get around them, but

people come in this case the chinese or japanese or others that had been excluded for racial reasons or poverty reasons were clever and ingenious and discovered along with smugglers ways to get around the law. it was kind of one of the things where-- and you saw this and people would say why do we even have these laws if you can get around them and the people's whose job it was to enforce the borders and i focused a lot of them on my book, they had a sort of impossible task. they had to go to dc, and say we understand you are worried about people coming from canada, but we only have eight inspectors and 12 officers on horseback and the border is a 5000 miles long. a lot of the people i flush out in the book are actually some of the bureaucrats whose job it is to make the border real. one of them, robert, was sent to

the canadian border around 1900 to investigate the smuggling that was going on there and he went up and down-- or longer, i should say, from maine to michigan and investigated and discovered there were these vast smuggling networks that people were coming in without getting inspected by the customs officers and he wrote this very worrisome monopolar read oh, my goodness there is really no law enforcement border. so, he is asked by the commissioner of immigration to fix it and take charge, so he gets busy. he is a sort of man of age. he put systems in place and that this could be solved. he is going to train the investigator, immigration officers to do their jobs better and he's going to ask congress for more money to make that happen. his vision is that the border can really be controlled.

no one had put an effort in the past and he was now coming up with the blueprint for how to do that and it involved more officers and more patrol. it involved just a bigger presence. he issues this report about 1902, and it's used as a basis for immigration law in 1903 in the immigration law 03, would significantly raise the head tax, what you pay to get in the country. it would significantly raise it to raise revenue to pay for much more elaborate enforcement. when they have this debate in congress, the immigration service that once this bill to pass and will give the money to carry at their mandate, robert is a star witness and he shows up there in his uniform and reports to the congressman about progress has been made and his vision about just with enough money they can do a better job.

it's interesting because congress who are interested in this is a period of time, this bill in 1903 was not only going to fund the border, at all new restrictions, an archivist and polygamists were getting added to the list of people that could not command and that's what most congressmen were focused on was to restrict people. he did get a number of questions from congress saint how many people do you need to really seal the border and they were starting to use that i did of seal the border and robert was pre-smart and i think he knew sealing the border was never going to happen. but, he was also a bureaucrat that wanted to see his psychic bolstered, so he would give this a vague reassurance, 800 more officers i'm pretty sure we will be able to take care of this. congress passed that law in 1903 and a becomes of the focused

funding for border enforcement both on canada and mexican border and you can see that that he understands you can't have bought the border if the laws of farce, so he believes you can build some kind of border. that i'd is extremely to congress even though after they passed this law, immigrants continue to get across the border and across the mexican border and you continue to see this and every time this congressional debate over the border, it is the same story over and over again to have congressmen, most of whom had never been on the mexican border in the southwest or along the canadian border, just tell me how many men do you need to seal the border and officials started saying, well, we need more men and horses would be nice and

later they say things like helicopters would be nice and they always want more people, more technology, but by 1920, about 20 years after, no one will go to congress and promised that they can feel the mexican. they've decided it would be a deterrent, but i think he thought he could get very close to sealing the border. it was really a conundrum because again, if you felt these immigration restrictions were important, you were foolish to not force the borders. as they frequently said, strongest line of defense is your weakest point. the weakest point was always someone on the border. even those long expansive borders, if he found the weakest point, matthaeus paso, fortified , then people will go to arizona, and that's the same dynamic you p right until the present moment where smugglers

and immigrants will always look for that weakest points and if you have this vision that you can build a wall or somehow seal off the country, the steps that would be necessary to do that, which would be thoroughly militarily aphoristic, you would have to almost be like east germany was during the cold war in berlin. have some sort of heavily militarized shoot to kill surfing people will always find a way around. >> book tv recently visited sacramento california, with the help of our local cable partner comcast or who dwell sacramento we spoke with chris hence about the life of elizabeth custer, wife of general george armstrong custer. >> folks, it's quiet here now. its peaceful.

tranquility here. but, 137 years ago on the back of that ridge it was far from quiets. in fact, it was apocalyptic chaos, gun fire, smoke, yelling, screaming, cursing, more ammo, more ammo, eagle born whistles shrieking across the battlefield in the dust and a smoke. warriors getting closer and closer closer desperately trying to destroy the soldier command. apocalypse at little big horn, custer's final battle. >> elizabeth had a premonition that something was not going to be writes and i believe that because elizabeth was a soldier's wife and had been on the plains with george for number of years, she would have an idea of what was impending

doom and what was not. this particular day when the day before he left, george left to go to little big horn, that was something insider felt that this would not go well. now, certainly george had been involved in other skirmishes and word had gotten back to her through different soldiers that he had been killed to read he had expressed to elizabeth a number of times, until you get official word that i'm gone and it be a definitive word, don't believe it. i think that is why it's so poignant that when that-- the seventh is wiped out and the other men and scouts come back to let elizabeth know what has happened, they say to her none wounded, none missing, all dead, so there can be no question that there isn't anyone alive, no one

you can ask as to what happened. george is gone. i wrote this book because i was fascinated with elizabeth custer's devotion to george and i wanted to find out why she was so devoted to him. many history books make it seem as though george had nothing likable about him. that he was too arrogant for anyone to be in love with him. elizabeth, her relationship with him fascinated me and i wanted to know more. she was in her latter teens and he was in his early 20s. i say that because no one is ever really 100% sure when this actually happened. i know they married in 64, and they were both very young having never been in a romance before. this is their first for both of them. george and elizabeth were so much in love that elizabeth could not bear to be away from george for any length of time. she would say that it is much more easy to be with you and have to endure all that you have

two on the planes and wherever we are going to be, whatever post we will be at the two bear life without you. so, she braved all the frontier to be close to him and they traveled quite extensively in washington, virginia, all of the southeast, texas, they were away from each other he was unopposed in nebraska, and she was left behind in kansas. but, for the most part they were always together and she necessarily enjoy being out in the middle of the weather in kansas, let's say, but she enjoyed being with her husband. they were just like any other couple who had their ups and downs. it certainly wasn't a happy life for them. they traveled around the country and she lived in tents because

she wanted to stay with george all of the time and he was quite jealous of the men who were attentive to her as she was of the women who work attentive to him. i thought that was very interesting and the fact that they also would flirt with other people to provoke a response in their spouse. i thought that that was very interesting and george is quite flamboyant and quite the ladies man, but just didn't know or at least i wasn't aware of how fetching elizabeth was and how many men that are appealing. there were a couple of times that george was so upset that other men found her attractive that he would post letters in newspapers same as it, you're out of here. she is no longer a part of my life.

he would be that serious with her actions, which was pretty much nothing except the elizabeth through whatever george would go on one of his tirades about what he thought elizabeth might be doing with someone else or the fact that other people found her just as charming as he did, there was a part of her that felt, this is a little flattering. she liked to provoke that kind of response in her husband. she was already feeling that way many times over because of george after the civil war, everyone that george was wonderful. he would write into different posts and he had this incredible hair a lot of the times it was long and often times what he would going to battle he would cut it short, but he had long hair and he would write into different posts and take pieces of his hair out and handed to women. that was just the kind of

flamboyance that george employed. whenever he saw elizabeth, possibly involved in something like that, he didn't like it, but she kind of like the spark that he give their relationship. custer was very close at this time with a gentleman by the name of captain thomas weir and thomas weir was a very close with elizabeth as well. also, george's best friend, probably his brother who served alongside him, so really it was a handful of the officers that spend a lot of time with george and thomas and captain weir and they were eight tight group of higher ranking officers that man did together, but certainly i would say his best friends were we are in his own brother, thomas. i believe that captain weir had feelings for elizabeth. elizabeth was so talented