By Kathryn Dore Perkins
Bee Staff Writer
Published Jan. 18, 1998

By her own account, life began at 40 for JoAnn Levy.

Curiosity initially propelled JoAnn Levy to become an authority on women in the California Gold Rush. As such, the Sutter Creek researcher and author is featured in PBS' "The Gold Rush," which airs tonight. Bee photo: Jose Luis Villegas

"You can take everything that went before that and draw a big X through it; everything that went before is of no interest to me," said Levy, author of two acclaimed and groundbreaking books on women of the California Gold Rush.

It was 1981, the year of Levy's 40th birthday, when she picked up a book written by noted historian J.S. Holliday called "The World Rushed In."

"I remember this vividly," Levy said, seated on a sofa in the comfortable living room of her home, high on a hill overlooking the town of Sutter Creek. "The book had a big splashy review in the New York Times and was touted as 'the all encompassing record of the Gold Rush as a national experience.'"

A passage in the book piqued Levy's curiosity and sent her looking in the index for "women." "It wasn't there," she said. "And I thought, 'How encompassing a record could this be?'"

Intrigued, Levy searched the card file at the huge Los Angeles library. She found references to books about the Gold Rush experiences of Australians, Chileans, African Americans, Irish and French, but no volume on women, aside from individual women's letters, diaries and reminiscences.

Thus began a quest that has possessed the past 16 years of Levy's life, transforming her from a retiring writer and editor into a meticulous researcher, published author, public speaker and pre-eminent authority featured in three documentaries, including PBS' "Secrets of the Gold Rush," scheduled for airing Sunday night. "She is an outstanding researcher, a very good writer, a very credible historian and real expert on her subject," said Gary Kurutz, head of special collections for the California State Library.

"She is the first to do a real narrative, interpretive history of women in the Gold Rush. She did an admirable job telling a story that needed to be told," Kurutz said.

Levy's first book, culminating eight years of research, was "They Saw The Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush," a non-fiction account of remarkable women who crossed the plains, mountains and oceans to live the 49er experience.

The other, published this month, is "Daughter of Joy," fiction based on the life of Au Toy, a young, independent and courageous Chinese prostitute who took to court and saw indicted the chief of the Chinese tong in the rough, tough world of San Francisco.

Initially, Levy's research was aimed at satisfying her curiosity. But very soon the project took on a life of its own.

"It was like I had been waiting to do this," she said. "I don't know how to explain it, but it was not just something to fill my time. It became an obsession. And it remains so today.

"I will not live long enough to write all the stories I would like to write about women of the Gold Rush. This is what I do. That is why I say my life did begin at 40," she said.

	"She did an admirable job telling a story that needed to be told" -- Gary Kurutz, California State Library

The first part of Levy's life -- the part with the X through it -- began in Los Angeles in 1941. Her father worked in a rubber factory. Her mother worked at home, caring for Levy and her sister and brother.

Levy put herself through junior college, working as a dental and medical assistant. And then in the early 1960s, she entered into "an unwise marriage" that took her and her husband to live in the town of Folsom. It was there that her interest in the Gold Rush era was sparked. Levy was fascinated by the history embedded in the mounds of mine tailings throughout the Mother Lode country.

Another defining experience was reading Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique."

"I was furious at the sense of conspiracy, a tacit societal agreement that women's place was such and such, a presumption they only went to college to find husbands and would spend their lives making cookies for the PTA," Levy said.

"I remember feeling cheated that there was a damper on aspirations, that you really don't have a future, so don't try. That is what the glass ceiling is: You can't get to the boardroom, so don't try. I was so angry I threw the book against the wall -- and I'm not a physically demonstrative person."

Levy, who had moved with her husband to Cupertino, reacted by enrolling in San Jose State University, first earning a bachelor's degree in psychology and then a master's degree in English, just as her marriage ended.

With a strong recommendation from a former English professor, Levy got a job as an editor for a small Los Angeles publishing firm where she was responsible for publication of a series of books on the histories of cities around the country.

"I hired the writers and learned to respect people who could write history and to respect how it should be done," she said. "You could always tell when someone had done the work well -- there were no generalizations, there were citations. You knew they had gone to the primary sources."

In 1975, Levy married "Mr. Right" -- Dan Levy, a special-education teacher -- and she turned to free-lance writing for various magazines and corporations until that fateful day in 1981, the day she believes she discovered her calling.

"I didn't choose the women of the Gold Rush; they chose me," Levy said. "I feel strongly they were talking to me and that I was elected. I know that sounds (weird), but I don't know how to account for having such a passion for something and to have arrived at it so late."

Whether a calling or a talent fueled by passion for her subject, Levy's extensive research coupled with her engaging writing style has made a major contribution to California history, said Rosanne McHenry, chief ranger at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma.

"Her books are like time machines putting the reader in the heart of the action," McHenry said. "She was the first to take women's diaries and journals and put them together in a comprehensive work that grips the reader."

Personally, Levy is self-effacing, McHenry said. "She is shy and has told me she is happiest at home in front of her word processor, but I started inviting her to Coloma to do speaking engagements, and she has become less and less apprehensive about it."

In fact, Levy now feels compelled to tell her stories whenever possible to to dispel the myth that the Gold Rush was an exclusively male experience.

"I expect during the next two or three years, during the sesquicentennial, to be telling people about the thousands of women in the Gold Rush. That is my responsibility," Levy said.

And, laughing, she added, "It's my window of opportunity to get people's attention. While they get a Gold Rush awareness, I'll give them a Gold Rush genderawareness."