This simple portrait of a 19th century farmhouse has hung in family homes for at least four generations and now hangs in mine. The family simply referred to the painting as "Sierraville" and was said to have been a Chapman family homestead. The artist and most other details were lost to history. One summer afternoon about ten years ago, I was sitting at our dining room table, with this painting hanging behind me. I was thumbing through a reproduced copy of the Farriss and Smith Ilustrated History of Plumas, Lassen and Sierra Counties (1882), trying to understand how this branch of my family got to California. To my complete surprise, on page 445 was a nearly exact copy of the painting that hung behind me, and an account of my third great-grandfather, Albert P. Chapman. The article offered a few clues: A.P. Chapman came west from Connecticut in 1849 in search of gold; he and some colleagues were among the first Europeans to settle what became known as Sierra Valley; and at some point Chapman may have been involved in quartz mining in the area. I poked around a bit more and learned that A.P. Chapman was among the champions of a never-developed emigrant road that would have linked Sierra Valley and points east to the important commercial center of Marysville to the west. Most compelling to me was the twelve-year separation between A.P. in California and his wife, Carrie, and their boys in Connecticut. I thought there might a story here. 

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Oh, and that farmhouse in the painting?  Long gone. But the site is just above the treeline that runs below the painting in this background photograph.