Carleton Watkins Daguerreian in the Mother Lode
month stay in Panama between March and May of 1849.[14] The Panama enterprise, as masterminded by Huntington, involved efficiently and securely transporting gold seekers' goods, merchant supplies, and the U. S. Mail from the east (Caribbean) coast to the west (Pacific) coast of Panama. Huntington sold the enterprise and shared the profits with his team. Carleton thus earned the capital that allowed his life-changing year-long detour to Chile.[15]
Carleton's arrival in Sacramento in the fall of 1850[16] was good timing from the perspective of Collis Huntington and company because the firm was shorthanded due to several factors, including the growth of the enterprise and the premature return to New York of Egbert Sabin, the other young man about Carleton's age who was part of Huntington's 1849 emigrant company. Sabin was the son of one of the Otsego County's most prominent landowners, but he was an unreliable worker and was thus sent back to Oneonta by Huntington.[17]
Carleton had proven himself to be an efficient and reliable delivery person as a teenager when he performed such duties for his father's hotel and provisions business in Oneonta in the mid-1840s. He was poised to fill the breech in Sacramento and became a trustworthy and effective porter of goods between Sacramento and the gold fields. The timing of Carleton's arrival in Sacramento in the fall of 1850 coincided with Huntington's absence for several months from mid-December, 1850, to reunite with his wife, Elizabeth, and to settle business matters with his brother, Solon in Oneonta.
Collis Huntington returned to California from Otsego County in early May, 1851, arriving with his wife Elizabeth. She had remained in Oneonta separated from her husband during his absence in California starting the winter of 1849. Despite being married for almost six years, Collis and Elizabeth were childless. However, Elizabeth took a special familial interest in Carleton and reported his comings and goings to friends and family in Otsego County. For example, little more than a month after arriving in Sacramento, Elizabeth Huntington wrote to her sister-in-law saying: "Often
[14]See Chapters 4 and 5.
[15] See Chapters 7, 8, 9.
[16] Prior scholarship has incorrectly given the date of Carleton's arrival as May, 1851, which has been disproven. Nanette Sexton, Carleton E. Watkins, pioneer California photographer, 1829-1916 : a Study in the Evolution of Photographic Style During the First Decade of Wet Plate Photography, Dissertation, Harvard University, 1982, pp. 44-45, confuses Carleton Watkins with his namesake, Carleton Emmons, and thus incorrectly places Carleton as a traveling companion of Collis and Elizabeth Huntington on their journey from New York to California in May, 1851 . This error was discovered in 2009. Sexton's date was used by Palmquist and all other scholars after 1982.
[17]Lavender, pp. 31-32.