Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Bridget's Gambit: A Saga of Family Enterprise in Gold Rush California Volume 4

Bridget's Gambit: A Saga of Family Enterprise in Gold Rush California Volume 4

Harwood, Craig S.

Hardcover

Series: Women and the American West, Book 4

Biographies General19th Century United States HistoryRegional: West

ISBN10: 0806196556
ISBN13: 9780806196558
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: Feb 10 2026
Pages: 212
Weight: 1.00
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
In 1828 Bridget Miranda Evoy escaped famine-stricken Ireland with her children for a better life in America. But the relief she desperately sought was elusive. Within two years, she was a widow and was left raising her five children after the untimely death of her husband. Finding herself in dire straits in The Gateway to the West, Bridget's Gambit tells the story of how this remarkable young widow managed to make her way to California and became an entrepreneur during the Gold Rush. In this engrossing family saga, Craig S. Harwood recounts the adventures and accomplishments of this singularly determined woman and her daughters, from a harrowing overland crossing in the winter of 1849 to innovative efforts to build an empire in defiance of the social and gender constraints of the Victorian Era.

When Bridget and her family arrived in the California Territory, they saw opportunities where others did not, charting a path rooted in a prescient view of the rapidly evolving western economy. By pursuing commercial ventures that served emerging communities in Northern California, the family was able to ascend the social ladder and exert influence, doing business with many early shapers of California statehood. Bridget's Gambit captures the stark reality of the patriarchal world of business in the Old West--and the extraordinary lengths to which Bridget and her daughters went in creating a diverse web of financial enterprises that brought some of the most prominent American businessmen into her orbit.

Harwood's spirited biography of an audacious, persistent woman brings to the forefront the largely unheralded contributions of women in the forming of California statehood--and restores a lost chapter to the history of the American West.

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