John Borrowman Walks Away from $60 a Day in Gold at Brigham Young’s Call (1848)

After his honorable discharge from the Mormon Battalion in July 1847, John Borrowman sold his horse and took a ship to San Francisco. He found work as a laborer at $2 per day, then began the journey east toward Salt Lake City. Near Sacramento he learned that other Battalion veterans were working at a place called Sutter's Mill, where gold had been discovered on January 24, 1848.

Borrowman became a prospector.

His journal records what he found: he was washing $25 to $60 of gold each day. In 1848, the average American worker earned perhaps $1 a day. Borrowman and his partners were earning fifty to sixty times that.

Then the call came from Brigham Young: Battalion members were to leave the gold fields and proceed directly to Salt Lake City.

Borrowman and his partners immediately abandoned their prospecting operation.

No debate is recorded in his journal. No agonizing. He wrote the facts: the call came, and they left. They made the arduous trek through the Sierra Nevada to the Salt Lake Valley, where Borrowman was given a piece of land and began farming.

Years later, in 1853, he was called on a colonization mission to Nephi, Utah, leaving his prosperous Salt Lake farm. In 1869 he accepted a second mission call to Canada, leaving his home and family for two years. Over his lifetime, church records indicate he assisted in more than 1,100 convert baptisms.

The gold remained in the hills. Borrowman brought something else home.