E. Gould (Edward Gould) Buffum

Born in Rhode Island in 1820, Buffum began as a journalist with the New York Herald. During the Mexican–American War, he went to California as an officer in a New York volunteer regiment, a move that placed him at the center of events that would soon reshape the American West.

After his military service, he stayed in California, tried his luck in the gold fields, and worked in newspaper editing there before later returning east. His best-known work, Six Months in the Gold Mines (1850), grew out of his years in Upper and Lower California and is valued as a lively firsthand account of the early Gold Rush.

Some library and reference sources also note that he later served as a Paris correspondent for the New York Herald. He died in 1867, leaving behind a record that blends reporting, travel writing, and personal adventure in one of the most dramatic moments of 19th-century American history.