In 1852, my grandfather’s grandfather Henry Cohn at the age of 21 left the shtetl of Dobrzyn (Poland), to set sail for America. He wrote a slim journal of his adventures - stories of escaping the military draft by crossing a river on his brother’s back, becoming a peddler, stories about his friend getting murdered, his crossing the Isthmus of Panama on foot while on his way to California, witnessing the lynching of judges in San Francisco, and eventually making it to the gold country in St. Louis and Poker Flat in Sierra County, north of Lake Tahoe.

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