Jasper Shadden
Jasper Shadden was my great great great grandfather. He was the son of Thomas Jefferson Shadden. Little is known about Jasper Shadden, which is why I was over 50 years old and had never heard of him myself when family geneaologist Nathan Haines began shedding light on our family history. From what little we have been able to glean about Jasper, he married a woman named Maria Adams. They were apparently married in Oregon, and sometime in about the 1850s came to California seeking gold, as did everybody else in those days. The family story goes that they were murdered in California by Mexican nationals, but buried somewhere near Milton-Freewater, Oregon, according to Nathan's hypothesis.
We've learned that old cemeteries may be where people are buried, but the records of burial and the tombstones may be so badly disturbed that no genuine trace is left.
At any rate, Nathan sent me an article discussing what happened to many Canadians who came to California in the 1850s looking for gold. I've atached the article in a subtopic below. It of course does not mention Jasper, but perhaps tells what life (and death) would have been like for Jasper.