author
Chalkley J. Hambleton
b. 1829
Best known for a firsthand memoir of the Pike’s Peak gold rush and a carefully compiled family history, this 19th-century writer left behind vivid slices of American life. His work blends personal adventure with the patient curiosity of a genealogist.
1 Audiobook
A Gold Hunter's Experience
by Chalkley J. Hambleton
About the author
Born on April 1, 1829, in Oxford, Chester County, Pennsylvania, Chalkley J. Hambleton later made his home in Chicago, where he worked as a lawyer, became a real estate developer, and served on the Chicago Board of Education.
He is remembered today for two very different kinds of writing. In A Gold Hunter's Experience (1898), he looked back on joining the Pike’s Peak gold rush in 1860 and described the excitement and hardship of that journey. In Geneological Record of the Hambleton Family (1887), he turned to family history, gathering and organizing records about the Hambletons of Pennsylvania and related branches in England and America.
That combination of lived experience and careful record-keeping makes his books especially appealing: one offers an on-the-ground adventure narrative, while the other preserves generations of family history. He died in Chicago on November 19, 1900.