St. Charles' 49'ers
One hundred and seventy-five years ago, tens of thousands of immigrants from around the world were searching for gold in California. These men, the 49'ers, sometimes accompanied by their families, had left farms, businesses, homes, neighbors, and the lives they had known to come to the recently discovered gold fields to “strike it rich.” Many did find great wealth before they returned home. Between 1848 and 1859 twelve billion dollars' worth of gold in today's money was found. Others were not so lucky; the most unfortunate died of disease, never returning home.
The basic story of the Gold Rush is well known. In early 1848 gold was discovered on the American River in California on John Sutter's land. In March the discovery was reported in a San Fransisco newspaper, and by August in a New York City newspaper. Soon the news was known around the world, and the news was incredible. A father and son, using only a hoe and spade, had found $3,000 worth of gold in four days. Four other men, on a claim “scarcely larger than a picnic blanket,” had dug up $1,000 worth of gold eleven consecutive days. In 1849 alone, seventeen tons of gold was found. It is not hard to comprehend, in a day when many American men toiled on subsistence farms, why they were drawn to the gold fields.
What is difficult to understand today is the intensity of the “gold fever” that gripped so many people at this time. As Edward Dolnick writes in his his history of the Gold Rush, the “world did go mad when the gold news broke.” In 1849, 90,000 men from around the world, but mostly from America, came to the gold fields. Nearly as many more came in 1850, and they continued coming into the early 1850's. Between 1848 and 1851, the population of San Francisco increased from 800 to 30,000. From 1849 to 1852, more than one percent of America's entire population came to California seeking gold. If a similar migration would occur today it would be 3.3 million Americans “giving up their jobs, leaving their families, and rushing off to a barely known destination thousands of miles away. . . . all racing headlong to, say, the most distant, least-known corner of South America.”
Several residents of St. Charles County were among the tens of thousands of those seeking gold. The story of one particular group is briefly told in a letter written by John A. Richey on October 3, 1850, from Sacramento City, to a friend back in St. Charles. The experiences of these individuals, in many ways, were typical of those who participated in the California Gold Rush. (Spelling and grammar have been corrected.)
Sacramento City Oct 3, 1850
Friend Emmons,
We all arrived here September 26, well and much fatigued of traveling. My health has improved since I left St. Charles. James Gallaher had a severe attack of cholera July 1; we lay up with him nine days. Since he recovered from that, he has improved much in health to what it was previous. We were very fortunate we got through this with most of our stock and both wagons, and had sufficient provisions to last us through by allowancing ourselves the last ten days. I presume there were nearly five thousand emigrants died of cholera and diarrhea between St. Joseph, Missouri, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Most of the sickness was between the former place and South Pass. We crossed the Missouri River May 22 at Council Bluffs and took the north side of the Platte as far as Fort Laramie and were not among the sickness until we got there. There has been a great deal of suffering among the emigrants and I fear it is not over with yet, as there is a large portion on the road yet. Some of them are losing there entire outfits, and others are getting out of provisions because they did not start with sufficient supplies, expecting they would find persons with a surplus that they could buy from. We found grass very scarce in many places and none where the emigrants last season found it in abundance I suppose there were, up to the time we passed the junction of the Oregon Road, nearly 1000 persons who changed their course for Oregon who had started for this golden region. They were scared off by sickness and scarcity of grass.
James G,. Dr. G., and Parker fell victim to the epidemic, as the Californians termed it. The trip has been very monotonous to me generally, so I have no curiosity in trying the plains again. I saw snow from July 15 to September 25, nearly every day on points of mountains from one to twenty-five miles distant, and the two days we were crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains, there were snow banks on each side the road from five to twenty feet deep. We saw very little game on the way. The Company only killed three buffalos and five or six antelopes.
They expect the raining season to set in here about the tenth of next month; the weather is very warm here now. It is quite healthy. There has been no cholera this side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There are hundreds of emigrants taking shipping for home as soon as they get here, not finding the country as they had pictured it. As for my part, I intend to give it a fair trial before I take shipping. I have not been to the mines yet, but I contemplate going in a few days and trying my luck. When I write to you again I will be sufficiently informed to give you the particulars about gold digging and the country generally.
I have seen John S. Shaw and he is here and well. Mouse makes it his home here; I have not seen him because he is out of the city at this time. Patterson, McCausland, Glendy, and Ben Wardlaw are at the mines. Alex and Aug. C. Chauvin have a ranch twenty-five miles from here. Yosti is trading in the mines. Ben Orrick is at San Francisco. Fulkerson is keeping store here. Moses Mallerson is here, and of the New Californians Garriott, White, Call, and Bond are at the mines. Cal. Cunningham's company (part of them) are at the mines and part here. Redmon and Reddo got here the [illegible] and are encamped here with us. Hilbert's company is here. Geiger's company is here. Keithleys are here. Dr. Diffenderffer is here. W. Saveck is here. Andrews is at the mines. Richard Overall is here. In fact, I believe all the St. Charldians have got in. Sam Machette is at Salt Lake and contemplates returning back home.
I presume you will hear before this reaches you of the death of Lee Overall. He died at Weavertown the day he got in of inflammation of the lungs; he was sick some two or three weeks. For fear you do not I will mention the deaths. Mrs. Diffenderffer died on the Humboldt River near the [illegible]. Tom Williams, formerly of the Point, died on the Humboldt Desert. Ham Orrick died at Fort Kearney about the time we passed.
Sacramento City numbers about as many buildings as St. Charles and as much scattered. They are principally frame. There are two or three brick houses only nearly finished, and the place is ten or fifteen times more densely populated. There are four churches, one Catholic, one Presbyterian, and 2 Methodist (North & South). I attended the dedication of the Methodist Church South last Sunday; there were about one hundred males and ten or fifteen females there. This number, I understand, is a large church assembly here. Sunday is as busy a day as any during the week but few of the business houses suspend on account of Sunday and the streets are crowded with teams and stocks. The gambling houses are in full blast and persons betting hundreds on a single card. These houses nearly all have a band of music besides a piano setting near there principle table, and are the finest finished houses in the city, and you will see Spanish and American women dealing Monta Faro &c in all of them at all hours. I suppose you have an idea how matters are conducted here in this line so I will forbear entering into particulars.
I expected when I arrived here to get a letter from you but was disappointed. I am very anxious to hear from you and our old friends, and hope to receive one soon. Present my compliments to Miss Chauvins, Miss Charlotte, and Miss Machette and also to Miss Bell Parks, and tell her that we feasted on the fruit cake the 4th of July on the Platte River 1400 miles from St. Charles, and it was very delicious. We saved one half-gallon of 40-proof brandy for the occasion. Tell Miss Caroline Chauvin that I dreamt that she and Wm. Jenstell was married, and I awoke with a throbbing heart on September 26 on the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the only night we camped upon the summit. If you see E. C. Cunningham read this letter to him all except this page and tell him I will write in a few days Remember me to all enquiring friends and and see that my interests are well represented.
Yours Respectfully
Jno. A. Richey
PS In looking over I see that Redman and Beddo are only mentioned. I will say Redman is well; he had two attacks of cholera on the road and likes the country pretty well. Beddo looks like he was undergoing the change from a human being to a smoked or dried herring and is well. They both contemplate going to the mines. Tell Caroline and Leas not to be uneasy about John and Leonard, if you think proper.
J A Richey
It is impossible to determine with certainty how many of the individuals mentioned in Richey's letter travelled with him to California and which people went to California in 1849 or were members of a different group in 1850. Richey refers to “both wagons” surviving the trip. Two wagons would suggest a small group. It is almost certain that the following emigrants came with Richey: the Diffenderffer family (the doctor, his wife, and their five children), James Gallaher, Dr. Frederick Gallaher, John K. Parker, Wilson Lee Overall, Richard Overall, Charles Hamilton Orrick (“Ham”), Ben Orrick, Sam Machette, Ben Wardlow, and Tom Williams. If “the new Californians” refers to Richey's group, then George W. Garriott, Jas. White, Alexander Callison (“Call”), and Bond (?) would also have journeyed with Richey. Leonard Beddo and John W. Redman may also have come in that group. The Keithleys came in a group that left a month after Richey's group; it included father Absalom with his sons Abram, Hiram, John, and Wiltshire. Others must have come in another group of travellers. For example, Emilian Yosti and Isaac Fulkerson were operating stores when Richey wrote the letter just a week after arriving, too little time to get a store up and running. It is likely these men arrived in 1849. The Chauvin brothers, who were running a ranch, had come to California in 1849. The Geiger Company, which included brothers Shapley, Montgomery, and John, also arrived in 1849, as did David McCausland.
Either Moses Mallerson or Ben Orrick may have led the Richey group to California. Mallerson had previous experience: he had been train wagon master for a large wagon train that left St. Joseph in May of 1849. That train consisted of twenty carriages, eighteen wagons, and 125 people. One memoirist of another group of St. Charles citizens who went to California in 1853 noted that Ben Orrick had been one of the two men who led their wagon train: “As these men had made the trip another time, they were able to plan a good trip.” Perhaps Orrick's previous experience was leading the Richey group.
In many ways, the demographics of the emigrants mentioned in the Richey letter were typical of the groups traveling to California during the gold rush. First of all, most large groups included a doctor, as did many smaller groups. The Richey group included two physicians. Frederick R. Gallaher, who had practiced medicine in the St. Louis Cholera Hospital in 1849, decided to accompany the group in order to care for his brother James; Frederick thought “an airing across the plains” might improve James's health. A second doctor in the Richey group was Michael N. Diffenderffer. Another typical demographic of the miners was slave ownership. Many slave owners actually took their slaves with them to California to work the mines. The miners in the Richey letter probably did not bring slaves, but several of the men were slave owners or from slave-owning families. These included John Richey, Emilian Yosti, Thomas Glendy, the Chauvin brothers, the Keithly kin, John Hilbert, John Redman, the Overall brothers, and Tom Williams.
Many veterans of the Mexican War came to California to seek gold, and the men of the Richey letter also exemplify this demographic, even though none of these men participated in the battles that were fought. Many of the soldiers who enlisted in the war with Mexico served elsewhere in the West, including the men in the Richey letter, who were sent to Nebraska to protect pioneers heading west on the Oregon Trail. These men would have had a familiarity with the first half of the California-OregonTrail which must have been an encouragement to them as they considered going to California just a couple of years after the war ended, besides encouraging anyone traveling with these individuals. Most of these men would serve in the company formed by David McCausland. They included Sam Machette, the Geiger brothers, Alexander Chauvin, Alexander Callison, and Hiram Keithly. Another Mexican War veteran in the Richey letter was Moses Mallerson.
It was also common for members of the same family to travel together to California to seek wealth. The Richey group included the Overall brothers and the Gallaher brothers, besides the first cousins, Ben Orrick and Charles Hamilton Orrick. Other sets of brothers mentioned in the Richey letter were the Geigers and the Chauvins. At least one entire family, the Diffenderffers, were also part of the Richey group. Michael N. Diffenderffer and his wife Mary brought their five childen: Mary Williams age eighteen, Barrach age fourteen, Catherine Rogers age twelve, Amelia age ten, and Michael Nicholas age eight. Families like this along the Oregon Trail were not an uncommon sight.
The factors that motivated the members of the Richey group to venture to California can only be guessed at, yet it seems their motivations were probably representative of the majority of emigrants. Generally the emigrants were divided into two groups: those who were motivated by the desire for wealth (“economic determinists”) and those who were motivated by the desire for adventure (“adventure theorists”). The Overall brothers, Richard and Wilson Lee, were the sons of Wilson Overall, Sr., one of St. Charles County's wealthiest men. In 1850 Overall, Sr., owned thirty-six slaves and had property valued at $30,000. In the census, his vocation is given as “gentleman.” When Wilson Lee, age twenty-five, and Richard, age eighteen, embarked on their journey with the Richey group, they may have been motivated by the desire for adventure, since the family was apparently well-off.
However, it can be stated with a much greater certainty that the desire for financial gain motivated at least one member of the Richey group. Virginia-born George W. Garriott arrived in St. Charles no later than 1847 when he would have been twenty-five years old. Soon after his arrival he began purchasing property, including a mill, and began a tobacco manufacturing business. For a time, he operated a packet boat between St. Charles and St. Louis. It did not take long for Garriott to have financial problems. He first appeared in St. Charles County court in 1847 because of an unpaid debt. In 1848 he appeared in court again because of another unpaid debt. After that, the list of Garriott's court appearances for unpaid debts in St. Charles County grew dramatically: four times in 1849 and nine times in 1850. In another case in 1851, Garriott's former business partner John Orrick stated that Garriott had “left for California without fulfilling the conditions and stipulations” of Garriott's debts, and that Garriott was “notoriously insolvent.” In October of 1850, Garriott was mining for gold in California's Eldorado County, along with Jas. White, another person mentioned in Richey's letter.
The California-Oregon Trail route taken by the Richey group from St. Charles to Sacramento was a common one. Richey wrote that they used oxen teams. The standard pace for an oxen team was about two miles per hour, which meant that fifteen miles of progress along the trail was considered a good day. The Richey group left St. Charles on April 20 and crossed the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, Iowa, on May 22. They then followed the Platte River on its northern bank west past Fort Kearney (in modern-day Nebraska) on June 16 and eventually to Fort Laramie (in modern-day Wyoming). By this time they had travelled 1,400 miles, according to Richey (the wagon trains used simple odometers which counted wheel rotations to measure distance). Richey wrote that James Gallaher was so ill with cholera that the group stayed nine days at Fort Laramie waiting for Gallaher to recover. (Dr. Frederick Gallaher, John Redman, and John K. Parker would also survive bouts of cholera during the trip). It was here where they celebrated the Fourth of July by eating a fruitcake and emptying a half-gallon of 40 proof brandy they had saved for the occasion. After reaching South Pass (in southeastern Wyoming), they left the main trail and took the Pacific Wagon Road (later called the Lander Cutoff), cutting about sixty miles from their journey.
The Richey group first encountered snow on July 25, and then saw snow “nearly every day” until the end of their journey. By August 8 they had nearly reached the Humboldt Sink in present-day Nevada. The forty-mile wide Humboldt Desert was their next obstacle. Emigrants tried to cross the desert as quickly as possible, sometimes even travelling without rest. On September 16, ten days before reaching the end of their journey, the Richey group began to run out of food and started rationing. Their next challenge were the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which they crossed in two days, with “snow banks on each side of the road from five to twenty feet deep.” They finally arrived at Sacramento City on September 26. Richey wrote that he was “much fatigued of travelling” and that the journey had been “very monotonous to [him] generally” and that he had “no curiosity in trying the Plains again.” Most of their stock and both wagons survived the trip. Even though they found very little grass for their oxen; had seen very little game; had seen hundreds of graves along the trail, reminding them of the very real possibility of their own deaths; and had seen hundreds of emigrants change course for Oregon, the Richey group had made it to California.
Travellers along the Oregon-California Trail faced death on a regular basis; it is estimated that ten percent of the emigrants did not survive the trip. The Richey group was no exception. The 1850 outbreak of cholera on the trail was “devastating” and “the strenuous life of the trail, the daily travel demanded of sick and well alike, . . . must . . . have lessened the resistance” of the people. One diarist along the Platte River in Nebraska wrote, “Tis awful when you see an acquaintance at noon well and in the enjoyment of health and learn in the evening that he is a corpse.” Charles Hamilton Orrick died on June 16th as the Richey group reached Fort Kearney, probably of cholera. More than likely there was no coffin. Members of a wagon train would pile rocks on . . . grave[s] in a futile attempt to keep wolves and coyotes from digging up the remains, but it “was not an uncommon thing to see a leg or arm dragged from [a] grave.”
The next two deaths in the Richey group occurred in the last seven weeks of the trip in an area notorious for its deadliness: the Humboldt Sink and Humboldt Desert in southwest Nevada. From its headwaters in northeastern Nevada, the Humboldt River wound its way to the southwest alongside the California Trail. It would seem that this constant supply of water would have been of great benefit to any traveller, but the water was putrid and undrinkable. One individual wrote of finding “great numbers of the carcasses of dead horses and cattle [in the river]. It requires some little practice to relish a beverage in which putrescent flesh has been for months steeping. But we have no choice.” It was along this river, near present-day Lovelock, that Mary Barney Williams Diffenderffer, mother of five children travelling with her, died on August 8.
Death continued to haunt the Richey group. The Humboldt River disappeared as it pooled at the Humboldt Sink. For the next forty miles there would be no water at all. The people crossed the deadly Humboldt Desert, the “road lined with . . . skeletons . . . wagons, rifles, tents, clothes, everything but food,” as the travellers desperately tried to lighten their loads to shorten their trek through the desert. In this “graveyard all the way,” Tom Williams died a few days after Mary Diffenderffer. About one month later, as they neared the finish of their five-month trip, one more person died. “[I]nflammation of the lungs” was the cause of death for the fourth member of the Richey group to die on the trail. Richey wrote that Wilson Lee Overall died “the day he got in” only a few miles from Sacramento, near Weaverville, after an illness of three weeks.
Even after arriving in Sacramento, another member of the Richey group died. Dr. Michael Diffenderffer, who had watched his wife suffer and die in Nevada, died within six weeks of his arrival in California “after a long and arduous wagon train trip.” According to one historian, twenty percent of emigrants would be dead within six months of reaching California, either because of disease or gun violence. The five Diffenderffer orphans were cared for by Sacramento Free Masons (young Michael Nicholas died the next year).
The last similarity between individuals mentioned in the Richey letter and gold rushers in general was the outcome of their journey to California: some “struck it rich” but many did not, and some returned to their homes but some did not. For example, Dr. Frederick Gallaher returned to St. Charles in 1853, enrolled in a St. Louis seminary, and ministered in Michigan for several years. His brother James Gallaher returned to St. Charles, but then again went west to seek gold in Montana, eventually moving to Washington state. Another pair of brothers in the Richey letter were the Chauvins. One of these brothers stayed in California, but the other returned. Augustus ran a store for twenty years in Placerville, but then moved to Los Angeles for business and real estate investment. Alexander returned to St. Charles, where he held some civic offices. He enlisted in the Confederate army in 1862 at the age of thirty-nine. Alexander Chauvin was murdered by a fellow Confederate George Feland on January 18, 1863, in Louisianna, where his regiment was at the time.
Many emigrants to California discovered there was better money to be made in merchandising than in mining. Several of the individuals named in the letter operated stores in the gold rush towns. Emilian and Thomas Yosti were merchants in El Dorado County. Emilian Yosti eventually returned to St. Charles to operate a boot/shoe business. Augustus and Alexander Chauvin had a store in Placerville. David McCausland, who came to California in 1849, operated a store in Eldorado County into the 1860's. Isaac Fulkerson was a merchant in Sacramento in 1850 and later returned to St.Charles and worked as a riverboat pilot.
Sam Machette never made it to California; he left the Richey group at Salt Lake City and returned to Missouri. These emigrants were called “gobacks.” However, the next year Machette returned to Fort Laramie and opened a trading post. He returned to Missouri in 1855 to start a business in Kansas City.
George W. Garriott, the man who left several unpaid debts in St. Charles, never returned to Missouri. He must have had success as a miner in California, since by 1852, he had purchased land in Butte County and started the “Virginia Steam Saw Mill.” In November, 1854, Garriot formed the”Pine Knot Mining Company” along with another emigrant in the Richey letter, Jas. White. Garriott became an important citizen in the new town that would eventually be named Oroville. He served as a trustee on the town's first board, helped organize a fundraiser for a fire engine, helped organize another fundraiser for a steamboat to serve local businesses, and helped organize a telegraph system. Garriot also undertook to supply water to the growing community by building a water system, including a reservoir and canals. During all this time, Garriott's steam saw mill was doing good business, cutting 10,000 feet of lumber daily in 1855. One local newspaper wrote of Garriott, “[H]e has got the vim, the snap, the go ahead!”
During these years, however, Garriott was having the same problem that had caused him to leave St. Charles: debt. In 1852 Garriott lost his mill because of debt, making Garriott the former owner of two failed steam mills. Garriott, though, was undeterred, as he continued mining for gold and quartz. Two years later he bought back his mill with a business partner. Debt, however, would soon follow again; Garriott was in Butte County court several times from 1856 through 1858 as defendant in debt cases. Then in May, 1859, Garriott lost a mill for the third time in ten years because of debt.
By this time gold had been discovered in western Kansas, and Garriott made the trek there in an attempt to restore his finances. In the 1860 census, he is listed as a miner at Spring Gulch in Arapahoe County. Garriott returned to Butte County after his sojourn in Kansas, apparently wealthy enough to start farming there, but no longer involved in business ventures. Garriott died in Butte County on June 2, 1868, leaving a wife and young children. The appraised value of his estate was $281.65.
Like most of the emigrants who came to California seeking gold, the miners in the Richey group did not “strike it rich.” Ben Wardlaw quickly gave up mining and made his money by surveying. He wrote home, encouraging “our friends to remain where they are – be contented.” In the gold fields at “no place did [he] find the miners on an average making more than about $2 per day.” Indeed the average miner earned ten dollars daily in 1850, eight dollars daily in 1851, and six dollars daily in 1852; “most miners would have done as well financially if they had stayed home working at their old trade.” Comparing the tax records of the miners from 1849, before they went west, and 1852, after their return to St. Charles, one doesn't see significant increases in the financial assets of several members of Richey's group. For example, Richey himself doubled his assets in that three-year period, but his $1650 tax valuation in 1852 certainly did not qualify him as wealthy; his assets only totaled $685 in 1849. Thomas Glendy's assets in 1852 more or less equalled his assets from 1852, as did the assets of John S. Shaw. John W. Redmon fared a little better; his 1852 assets totalled $3,155 compared to his 1849 assets of $1,100.
When a person reads about any great historical event, it is always easy to forget that such events are experienced by people who were just as “normal” as the reader of history and, in fact, may have lived in the same area as that reader. This is certainly true for readers of history in the St. Charles area. People who lived just down the road from us, or perhaps in the next township over, were participants in some of history's most memorable events, like the Civil War, the Flu Pandemic of 1918, the D-Day invasion, and many others. The California Gold Rush is one more event on that list. Several residents of St. Charles County, people who would be our neighbors if they were living today, decided to take a great risk and travel to faraway California in a quest for wealth and adventure.
Sources: The 49'ers As Reported by The Missouri Republican, St. Louis, Missouri, Volume 2 (State Historical Society of Missouri); 1852 California Census; 1852 Missouri Census; “Boone-Duden Forty-Niners” by Bob Brail (justawalkdowntheroad.blogspot.com); “Booneslickers in the Gold Rush to California” by Kate L. Gregg Missouri Historical Review, July 1947 (digital.shsmo.gov); Butte County California Genealogy (familysearch.org); “Butte Mining Claims” (yankeehillhistory.com); California, Guest Registers, 1866—1910 (records.myheritagelibraryedition.com); California Digital Newspaper Collection (cdnc.ucr.edu); “California, a 'Free State' Sanctioned Slavery” by Susan Anderson (californiahistoricalsociety.org); California Wagon Trains List by Louis Rasmussen; “Compiled Census and Census Substitutes Index, 1830-1860” (ancestry.com); “Cousins of the Golden West” (minerdescent.com); “Death and Danger on the Emigrant Trails” (nps.gov); “Diseases, Drugs, and Doctors on the Oregon-California Trail in the Gold-Rush Years” by Georgia Willis Read Missouri Historical Review, April 1944 (digital.shsmo.gov); Family Files (Fulkerson, Keithley, Machette, Overall, Richey, Shaw, Williams, Yosti), St. Charles County Historical Society; Federal Population Censuses; Federal Slave Censuses; Findagrave.com; George W. Garriott Papers (C0104) - The State Historical Society of Missouri Research Center-Columbia; “History of Arapahoe County” (countryaah.com); History of St. Charles, Montgomery, and Warren Counties, Missouri (archive.org); In Memorium, Rev. Frederick R. Gallaher (archive.org); “The Lander Road” OCTA Journals (octa-journals.org); “Mexican War” by Sal Manna (calaverashistory.org); “Minute Book of the St. Louis Committee of Public Health” July 23, 1849 (mohistory.org); Missouri Judicial Records (sos.mo.gov); Newspapers, Butte County Historic Society (buttecountyhistory.com); The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck; Probate Files (Diffenderffer, Richey), St. Charles County Historical Society; The Rush by Edward Dolnick; Some Missouri Pioneers: Their Ancestors, Descendants and Kindred From Other States by Mary Iantha Castlio; St. Charles County Circuit Court Records, St. Charles County Historical Society; St. Charles Guards: McCausland's Company of the Oregon Battalion by Robert Sandfort; “Were There Kids on the Oregon Trail” by Jeffrey Rowland (ncesc.com/geographic-faq).