feet took him to California again in 1849, along with thousands of other would-be gold seekers. Not finding wealth in the gold fields he returned to his native Indiana where he lived until 1853. In that year he traveled to Texas but finding dry Texas plains not to his liking he went for a third time to California, first to Colusa County, then to Lake County, and finally to Napa, where he lived the rest of his life. He died in 1879, aged sixty and the father of five sons.
Overton Johnson is more of a mystery. We know he was a young man in 1843, probably somewhere in his twenties. His father was James B. Johnson, said to be postmaster at Concord, Indiana, and a land owner at that place. Like many other men of the date, James Johnson had political ambitions which seem not to be realised beyond his appointment as postmaster. Overton Johnson taught school for several years after his return to Indiana, and intended to take part in the 1849 gold rush to California, however this did not come about as he is said to have died February 15, 1849, still in Indiana. As an educated man he is believed to have written most of the travel narrative, but the California portion was probably written to William H. Winter.
A word could be said about the printer of the original edition of the Route Across the Rocky Mountains. The imprint on the title page gives us the date of 1846; the place as Lafayette, Indiana; and the printer as John B. Semans. This man, Semans or Seaman, had been printing a newspaper, the Western Argus, in Wilmington, Ohio, but drifting west in the fashion of the day, he came to Lafayette in 1829. He left this place in the 1830's but returned in 1841 and printed the Tippecanoe Journal and Lafayette Free Press. The 1846 edition of the Winter and Johnson book was printed, rather crudely, on this newspaper equipment. This was forty years before the first linotypes were on the market and rather more than that before these composing machines reached small newspaper offices, so the book was set by hand, one piece of lead type at a time, and presumably with the same worn type used to print the newspaper.
It could be kept in mind that the date of 1843 was three years before the boundary settlement with Great Britain divided the old Oregon Territory on the 49th parallel, and ten years before Washington Territory was seperated from Oregon Territory. In 1843 Upper California was still a Mexican Province and ownership of Old Oregon, particularly that portion north of the Columbia river, was in dispute. The glowing description of
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