Brian Grant Duff holds up a unique ‘broadsheet’ from 1858 advertising a ship travelling from Australia to the ‘new gold region’ on ‘Vancouver’s Island.’ FRANCIS GEORGIAN / PNG

“1858 There’s gold in this collection of early B.C. ephemera! Gerald Wellburn, legendary collector, put together 45 pages of letters, posters, maps and illustrations of B.C.’s gold rush period in the 1850s and 1860s.” 

 John Mackie has written a detailed article in the Vancouver Sun read here

“Gerald Wellburn died in 1992, and most of his collection was auctioned off for $1 million. But his family held onto his Fraser gold rush collection, including the Cooke letter. Finally the gold rush collection is being sold as well.

Wellburn put the collection into a 45-page booklet, which Brian Grant Duff of All Nations Stamp and Coin is selling one page at a time through his weekly online auction.”

“It’s almost like he was making it to exhibit, so you could show it somewhere, show the history” said Grant Duff.

Flipping through the booklet is like taking a crash course in early B.C. history. Wellburn annotated the collection with historical notes that puts them in context. On the Cooke letter page, for example, he writes “gold was first discovered at Fort Colville on the Columbia River in 1855.”

“The Fort Colville discovery didn’t set off a gold rush. But when gold was discovered on the banks of the Fraser and Thompson rivers in 1858, an estimated 25,000-30,000 miners came to B.C. to try their luck. Alarmed at the prospect of so many Americans flooding into New Caledonia, the mainland region controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, the HBC’s James Douglas created the Crown colony of B.C. on Aug. 2, 1858. (Vancouver Island was a separate colony until they were joined in 1866; Douglas was governor of both.)” ~John Mackie, Vancouver Sun article

Closeup of an 1862 letter to James Cooke in Fort Shepherd, an old Hudson’s Bay Company outpost. PNG “Fort Shepherd, near the mouth of the Pend Orielle River, in Vicinity of Colville Mines on Columbia River, British Columbia, North America.”

Page from Gerald Wellburn’s Fraser Gold Rush collection featuring a letter about the death of a prospector from a bear attack, dated Oct. 23, 1859. PNG

Letter about the death of a prospector from a bear attack, dated Oct. 22, 1859 PNG

The bear attack letter reads: “1859 Portage Oct 22nd. Half way house twenty four mile. To the resident magistrate at Port Douglas; Sir, Mr G. M Montanys of the Lillooet Meadows arrived at & stopped at this place on his return from Anderson Lake on the evening of the twentieth & left for home on the morning of the twenty-first. About one hour after an Indian arrived & informed us that a man had been killed on the trail below. We hastened to the place about one mile from this & found the above person dead beside the trail. We examined the body & found it badly bitten in the right thigh, one wound having cut the artery which had caused his death. His hands were also scratched as well as two wounds lower on the right leg. On examination we found the tracks of three bares (sic), also where they had twice attacked him, the tracks of one of them were covered with blood after leaving the man. We found upon the body one five dollar coin, one twenty franc coin & a one dollar & twenty five cents silver coin & one pocket memorandum book, pencil case, also a pocket knife. About two hundred yards from the body we found a rubber coat. The above articles have been delivered to his partner Mr Jones who arrived this evening from the Meadows. We buried the body near where it was found as well as the circumstances would permit. There was a party of fourteen Chinamen on the ground at the time of our arrival on their way to Port Douglas whose testimony could be procured should it be required. Yours respectfully CA Yurby John Priety Robert Blair William Herdson.”

Page from Gerald Wellburn’s Fraser Gold Rush collection featuring James Murray Yale, whose name inspired Yaletown. PNG

B.C. Gov. James Douglas’s signature on an 1861 real estate document. PNG

1859 British Columbia Proclamation revoking Hudson Bay Company’s trading rights, one of the highlights of the Gerald Wellburn Fraser River Gold Rush collection >

“A modest postal service was introduced which allowed express companies to carry mail to the mining camps” >