Marcia Ehinger is a retired physician who writes in many genres, poetry and prose. A member of the Sacramento Branch of the California Writers Club, she has had poems and short stories published in several CWC anthologies and the regional medical society journal.
Embedded Files
Ina Coolbrith at her Berkeley home, by Ansel Adams.
Early European Settlers in California Part 2 continued from Part 1
Trailblazers Ina Coolbrith and Jim Beckwourth
Early European Settlers in California Part 2 continued from Part 1
Trailblazers Ina Coolbrith and Jim Beckwourth
On a fourth-grade field trip to the Lake Oroville State Park Museum, I was startled to see two very different names displayed side by side: Ina Coolbrith, California’s first poet laureate, and Jim Beckwourth, the Black mountain man who discovered a pass through the Sierras. At first glance, they seemed an unlikely pairing. Yet their lives briefly crossed on a wagon train west, and both would become trailblazers remembered more for their legacies than their wealth.
Coolbrith was born Josephine Donna Smith in 1841 in Illinois. Her father died of malaria just months after her birth, leaving her mother, Agnes, a widow with two young daughters. Josephine was also the niece of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, whose fledgling church was already under attack. One night, a mob set fire to the family’s home. Agnes escaped barefoot through a freezing river with her children in her arms.
After remarrying, Agnes and her new husband, printer William Pickett, joined the westward migration. In 1851 they set out for California in a wagon train guided by Jim Beckwourth, a renowned frontiersman, scout, and trader. When the party reached the summit of the pass he had discovered, Beckwourth lifted young Josephine and her sister onto his horse so they could look out on their new home.
The Picketts settled first in Marysville, then Los Angeles, where Josephine became “Josefina,” or “Ina” for short. There she attended school for the first time and began to publish poetry. At 17, she married Robert Carsley, an ironworker and actor. Their infant son died, and the marriage unraveled amid violence. In a confrontation, Ina’s stepfather shot Carsley, and she obtained a divorce at the age of 20—a scandal at the time.
Reinventing herself, Josephine Donna Smith Carsley became Ina Donna Coolbrith, adopting her mother’s maiden name. The family moved to San Francisco’s Russian Hill, where Ina found work as a schoolteacher and began writing again. She opened her home to writers and artists, mingling with Mark Twain and Bret Harte, with whom she co-edited the *Overland Monthly.* For a decade she contributed poetry to its pages, earning recognition from East Coast luminaries such as John Greenleaf Whittier.
Coolbrith also played a quiet but pivotal role in shaping California’s literary identity. She encouraged the flamboyant poet Cincinnatus Hiner Miller to adopt the more rugged persona “Joaquin Miller,” after the California outlaw Joaquin Murietta. She later took in Miller’s young daughter, Calla Shasta, raising and educating her.
In 1874, Coolbrith became the first woman admitted as an honorary member of San Francisco’s exclusive Bohemian Club. But the honor came with only a token stipend, and she still struggled to make ends meet. She accepted a librarian position in Oakland, where she mentored a young Jack London and introduced him to books that inspired his future career. She also encouraged a young dancer, Isadora Duncan.
Tragedy struck again in 1874 when her sister Agnes died, leaving two children in Ina’s care. She published her first poetry collection in 1881 but remained financially insecure. In 1892, she was abruptly dismissed from the library when her nephew maneuvered into her position. She declined John Muir’s suggestion to apply for a San Francisco post, noting simply: “I am disqualified due to my sex.”
In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed her Russian Hill home, manuscripts, and nearly completed memoir. She escaped with little more than her cat. Friends raised money to build her a new house, and in 1911 a terraced park overlooking the Bay was dedicated in her honor.
Despite hardship, Coolbrith remained at the heart of California’s cultural life. In 1913, she helped found the California Writers Club, which adopted Joaquin Miller’s words “Sail On” as its motto. Two years later, she was named California’s first poet laureate—without a salary. She continued publishing into her 80s, and in 1926 was photographed with her cat by Ansel Adams. She died two years later at age 86.
Jim Beckwourth, meanwhile, had carved out his own legend as an explorer, trapper, and storyteller of the American West. Though often marginalized in the history books of his day because of his race, his name endures in the Sierra pass he discovered and in the oral histories of those who traveled west.
Today, Mount Ina Coolbrith rises near Beckwourth Pass, a fitting tribute to two pioneers—one Black, one White, both self-made—whose paths briefly converged and whose courage and creativity helped shape California’s story.
(to be continued in Part 3)
~ Marcia Ehinger
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