In the early 1860s, thousands of people from small China villages were spilling into Hong Kong due to starvation and poor living conditions. They were told of the “Golden Mountain” in California and promised jobs. Each one had plans of returning home with a minimum of $400. That was enough to have a home and raise a family. One large group from Qujing in the Yunnan Province made the trip in late 1868. They needed $40 each for the ride to America. The men sold their wives and sisters with the promise they would return with riches to buy them back. They had nothing else to sell and otherwise would starve to death. On the way over, three in 10 died on the crowded ships due to starvation and illness. Most of the Qujing crew arrived just as the Central Pacific Railroad announced it would hire Chinese workers to build their end of the transcontinental railway. By summer 1869, the Qujing crew were all working. They first were paid $25 per month and later $35 per month, and each month managed to save $20, as well as what they were given from their dying brethren. They worked 12-hour shifts, six days a week. They used pickaxes, hammers, crow bars, uprooted tree stumps, drove spikes, built tunnels, aqueducts and laid tracks through the Sierra Nevada Mountains along with thousands of other Chinese workers. By 1868, seven out of 10 workers were Chinese and more than a thousand had died on the job. The Qujing crew made it to Promontory Summit Utah May 10, 1869, when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad companies met. They were among the crew chosen to build the final 10 miles of track in under 12 hours. However, all the official pictures of the day showed no Chinese workers. After they were paid their due from the Central Pacific, they sent all the money home with a trusted family member to buy back their family members. They decided to continue working, wanting even more money to take home. They heard of hate crimes on the rise in California and the government was passing laws against them in regards to jobs, voting and citizenship. The Qujing crew decided to head east. The St. Paul area was a hotbed for railroad jobs. The Dutch-owned St. Paul & Pacific offered them jobs as scouts in search of the best route to the West. The Chinese men were the most dependable, most skilled and experienced, lowest cost and most expendable workers any railroad company could hope to find. The only problem with this situation was that the Dutch were not managed well and didn’t pay the men their due. In 1878, while scouting a path West, one of the Qujing crew came down with tuberculosis. They were close to the Old St. Anne’s Church of Kimball Prairie, which was visible from the road. They stopped in at the farmhouse of Johann and Elizabeth Becker. The Beckers were extremely charismatic in their Christian faith and felt these men arrived for a divine reason. They all had their crosses and medals of St. Benedict, which protected them from storms, poisons and pestilence. Thus, they knew no such illness would come to them. Four of the Qujing crew headed back to collect their money from the Dutchmen, but learned they were broke and sold the company to James Hill, and it was now called the St. Paul Minneapolis Manitoba Railway Co. (later known as The Great Northern). The men headed back to the farmhouse of the Beckers to be with their dying brethren. What they learned was that one by one they each had the terrible disease and thus died from it. This disease was so horrible they needed to be buried immediately to help stop the spread. They were not buried deep, and water was poured on their graves in an overkill manner as not enough was known to the Beckers about TB. Although the men told some great stories of their travels and adventures, they had no idea how their family back home was, or if they ever returned to Qujing safely. The Beckers made extreme efforts to get their family contact information from the railroad, but no records were kept. The Dutch railroad owners didn’t even have a nickel to pay for a cemetery stone.
