Hello Susie and Kathy, Glad to find there are some of you out there. I'm going to post a quote from a book that has our family, just to keep things going, and for general interest. It will have to be in sections, since it's a bit long. Judy ============================================================================================================== from: The Big Oak Road to Yosemite, by Margaret Schlichtmann and Irene Paden, first published in 1955. This begins at the end of page 75 (in Chapter IV: Chinese Camp) ...Blacksmith and wheelwright shops were vital to the life of the times. Louis Egling, a strapping young fellow of twenty-two just over from Germany began to shoe horses for the miners early in [page 76] the history of the camp and is said to have founded his famous wheelwright shop in 1852. He specialized in the building of wagons, stages and freighters. The shop remained in active service until about 1920 and, after a century, occasional wagons made by Egling still may be found standing in the blackened and weather-beaten barns of the nearby towns and ranches. Louis married Emilie Krautter who had likewise come from Germany with the laudable intention of keeping house for her father in Big Oak Flat. Such good intentions seldom lasted in the early mountain towns where women were at a premium, but Emilie had plenty to do, as, after the hospitable custom of the times, out-of-town customers with blacksmith work to occupy a day or so moved into town with their families and stayed in the blacksmith's home. Egling kept several helpers busy. Six forges held heaps of red hot coals, blown to fury by bellows when extra heat was needed. Every object used in the shop was made by hand -- horseshoes, nails, hammers, many of the implements in common use by the miners and farmers, wheelbarrows, picks, shovels, and the scythes which were used for harvesting to the exclusion of any other method. Even the truss rods of the Knight's Ferry Bridge were turned out by this shop. [to be continued]