I’d invest in some whaling company.
After the money started pouring in, I would buy up land in NYC and Boston, and invest in lumber and shipping, before buying up land in California and Hawaii.
If not for myself, for future generations.
However, since I am a woman, it might take a bit of persuading to get the men folk to take me seriously.
If it is just for a day, I would explore all I could.
I’ll take some of that action. I’m one hell of a good shot, can already ride, have spent lots of time extreme camping in the mountains, know the basics of building, plus I know a little Spanish. We could set up our own Kingdom of California.
We need some chicks, though.
I might also try to build an airplane, what with all that gold money.
I’d have a long talk with John Wiles Booth and set that boy straight… or cut his fingers off.
Burn her!!!
Can we make it about 1698, and in Manhattan? Then I’d find my great**8 grandfather Adriaan Cornelissen van Schaick, grab him by his ruffled shirtfront and say “listen, dammit! Do. Not. Sell. Your. Manhattan. Real Estate.”
Seriously, in 1847? The edge that I would have would depend completely on my knowledge of the future. So the first thing I’d do is write down everything I could remember of the history since that time, and then win bets.
Also I’d probably want to invest in some railroad stock.
I’d have about twelve years to track down and mess with Darwin. Or, I could thump him, and keep his theory all to myself.
Then you’d all be calling it Tripler’s Theory of Evolution, and would hail me as a scientific genius.
But then I’d get right to work on the 1860’s-style Death Ray.
Tripler
The NEW and IMPROVED 1860’-style Death Ray! Now powered by coal!
Best yet!
Myself, I’d die of allergies in about a month.
Drink myself into oblivion.
Flight. Well, get some rube to fly based on my “research.”
Try to spread some scientific/mathematical concepts that I know, if not really well.
Germ theory of disease. Try to get things started into developing techniques for marking germs and finding antibiotics.
If I can reconstruct the relevant mathematics from memory, I’d get into the insurance industry. (Anybody recall how far along the mathematics of risk had gotten by that point?)
Try to publish some economics papers.
Start an advertising firm.
Patent the firearm cartridge, along w/ the basic ideas for revolvers, semi-auto, and automatic firearms. Maybe a few other things as well, such as the vacuum tube lightbulb w/ a tungsten filament, internal combustion engines, and I don’t know what else.
Radio–only the roughest idea, but I could get someone started on it.
Of course, that is all well and good, but I suppose the real question is how am I going to get stable enough to start working on all that crap? I suppose my best bet would be teaching.
I’d kill John Wilkes Boothe and use the reward from a greatful Lincoln to start my empire.
First, I’d try to find my relatives in the Ball family.
Secondly, once I had found them, I would use their cash to but large tracts of land across the nation, where modern-day development was occured (the San Fernando Valley, Queens, the Philadelphia suburbs, much of Chicago).
However, I would make sure that all purchases were in my name.
As a result, when I go back to 2004, I’m the nation’s richest land-owner.
Cry like a baby.
Cut off the butt length hair… wrap up the chest… throw on a shirt, vest, trousers, boots, grab the bow and arrows and hit the road headed north to join the Injuns…
coz dammit if I have to live without indoor heat, clean water, medical facilities, modern “labor saving devices” then I sure as hell aint living it in the middle of the Utah desert! I’m going to live in a beautiful area with some really cool people… whose cleanliness was head and shoulders above that of the whites of the time!
Pacific Northwest here I come
I would get deja vu as I would probably wake up in my own bed. Even though the house I’m in wasn’t built until 1884, it was an urban development so there were houses here before (you know, tear down the old ones, put up the new ones). I think the tennants wouldn’t be too happy, though.
Then I’d become an opium addict as my medication hasn’t been invented yet. 
I’d try my hardest not to get sold back into slavery dispite my bein’ in the North, usin’ all my fancy booklearnin’ in the process.
Then, I’d wish that I’d study more about mechanics so I could build some things, get the patents, and have a crapload of money. From there, I’m off to California to beat all the other Dopers who had the same idea.
Of course, I’d have to bury some coins from the time for my decendents to dig up and profit from.
I would head to Hawaii and work for a sugar company and buy land with my earnings. I would go for owning West Maui.
Well, I’d either make a fortune in oil, munitions (Civil War’s a coming) or steel, and settle down as a physicist. We could have SlowMind’s Laws instead of Maxwell’s laws, although I’d have to invent the vector first.
Mostly I’d sit around and wonder if it is morally right to marry (remarry can’t be right) or have sex. Legally, I’m in the clear, that’s clear. But, morally marriage is in my past and the world’s future. Frankly, I don’t think I could hold out until the latter half of the 20th century.
I’d be pretty screwed. Saskatoon didn’t exist in 1847. There were no substantial settlements anywhere near here. Fur traders operated out of the occasional forts, and there’d be a few Metis buffalo hunters, and that’s about it cept for the Plains Cree. So unless my cabin is very, very well provisioned, I’m going to be concerned with very basic survival issues till I can find a way to get back to something that passes for civilization, which would probably be Winnipeg, a mere 500 miles away. On foot. :eek:
Be really pissed since I set the alarm for 1812.