Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Journalist and artist William Minor “Cush” Quesenbury (the nickname reflecting how the last name should be pronounced) married Adaline Parks in Cane Hill (Washington County), where they settled. He joined the gold rush to California in 1850, leaving his wife and first-born son, Stanley, behind. A diary and two sketchbooks survive from this expedition, and his detailed drawings of Western sites provide important documentation of historic places. Quesenbury did not prosper as a miner, but he did find work writing first for New Orleans’s California True Delta and then for the new Sacramento Daily Union, whose editor, John F. Morse, promoted public health and scientific agriculture, causes that Quesenbury later supported.