*Moses Rodgers was born on this date in 1845. He was a Black miner and mining engineer who pioneered California.
Moses Logan Rodgers was born a slave in Kentucky and came to California in 1849. During the Gold Rush, he became prominent as a successful mining engineer, making a lucrative career excavating gold in mines he owned in Hornitos in Mariposa County. Many sought his intelligence and professional opinion on metals. He quickly became known as an expert in the state, and investors went to him for advice regarding mining claims. He became so expert at it that in post-Civil War, he was appointed superintendent of several mines (Mount Gaines Mine & Washington Mine). The stockholders of these mines were both Blacks and whites.
Rodgers's best-known mine, for which he was a stock-holding superintendent, was the Washington Mine, which he established in 1869. It was a successful operation that employed Chinese workers. This mine took out over half a million dollars in gold for years. The Washington Mine, in the mid-1880s, was one of the area's largest, employing over 30 men. Five main shafts and over 10,000 feet of underground workings brought the gold/silver ore to the surface, where it was hand sorted and then sent by wagon to the mine's concentration mill. A Merced newspaper said of Rodgers, "There is no better mining man in the State."
The house Moses Rodgers built in 1898 at 921 South San Joaquin St., Stockton, California, is registered at The National Register of Historic Places. He built it for his wife Sarah and their five daughters, to whom he gave as good an education as California afforded. One daughter, Vivian Rodgers, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1909, majoring in Science and Letters. Moses Rodgers Virtual Academy, 302 W. Weber Avenue, Stockton, is a home-based public charter school program offered by Stockton Unified School District to students in grades K–12 throughout California's San Joaquin County. Moses Rodgers died on October 22, 1900.
