Reading through the thread has prompted a few thoughts, which may be thread drift but may lead to other biographies.

1 Australian miners on the Californian goldfields in the early 1850s were responsible for the introduction of the secret ballot, known at the time as the Australian Ballot. It's unlikely that any biographies in the US will necessarily draw any links or references to shanties but, you never know.

2 Many Americans became miners on the Australian goldfields and, during the battle of Bakery Hill, celebrated as the Eureka Stockade uprising on the Ballarat goldfields, there was even an "American Brigade". The members of this Brigade were, like the rest of the surviving miners, charged with treason but ultimately no convictions were reached. Many of the "Australians" (some were Italian, for example) apparently thought that The Americans had 'got off' because of legal shenanigans but that's a different story. The reason I mention it is that there may be biographies written by some of those in the American Brigade; there are several from "Australians" but they wouldn't have sailed across the Pacific, while the Americans surely would have.

3 Seriously 'thread drift'. Peter Hyde was a merchant seaman working container ships across the Pacific between Sydney and San Francisco in (at least) the 1980s-90s. He would pick up concertinas for repair in one port and repair them on the return trip to that report. There are several entertaining stories about his exploits that have been made, by Arthur Bower, into a song that uses Lachlan Tigers as its tune. Arthur (who plays both English and Anglo leather ferrets) and Peter both hail from Adelaide and Peter now makes very excellent button accordions under the name Stormalong.

Cheers, Rowan