Butte County
Biographies
CHARLES HASTINGS DEUEL
CHARLES HASTINGS DEUEL.--One of the most prominent citizens of Butte County, and a well-known newspaper man. Charles Hastings Deuel, of Chico, was born a native son of Forbestown, Cal., on February 8, 1868. His parents, Joseph F. and Nancy (Barber) Deuel, were pioneer residents of Butte County. The father was born in New York State in 1825. Upon the news of the discovery of gold in California, he was filled with the spirit of the pioneers who flocked westward during that period in the hope of wresting a fortune out of an almost unknown land. Sailing from the port of New York early in 1849, he crossed the Isthmus of Panama and landed, after many vicissitudes, at San Francisco, in June. He first went to Sacramento, and in 1850 to the mines in Plumas County, and thence to the rich placer diggings at Forbestown in 1852. Here he mined for a number of years with more or less success, finally engaging in merchandising and the manufacture of hydraulic mining pipe, for which, in the early sixties, there was a great demand. In 1861 he returned East, and in the State of New York was married to Nancy H. Barber, returning with her to Forbestown, Cal., then a very prosperous mining camp, that same year. It was here that their three children were born; and here the family resided until 1882, when, upon the decline of mining, they removed to Oroville, where the mother died the next year. She was survived by her husband, who passed away at Chico in 1907.
Charles H. Deuel received his education in the common schools of Butte County, and at the age of eighteen started in to learn the printer’s trade in the office of the Oroville Register. He finished his apprenticeship of three years, but was not content to work at the mechanical end of a newspaper, and shortly afterwards became a reporter on the Oroville Mercury, and later its editor. In 1895 he was offered the editorship of the Gridley Herald and removed to that town, where he filled the post for two years. In 1897, in partnership with V. C. Richards, he purchased the Chico Record; and ever since that time he has been one of its owners and publishers. The partnership formed in 1897 still exists. Under it, the Record has grown to be one of California’s most prosperous interior dailies. The partners own the two-story building in Chico, and are engaged also in almond-growing in the vicinity.
Mr. Deuel was united in marriage, in 1899, with Miss Bertha Norman, a member of a widely known Gridley family; and to them have been born three children, a son and two daughters.
Always interested in the activities of the community in which he lived, Mr. Deuel served many years as a trustee of the Chico Public Library, resigning in 1918, to accept the position of commissioner of the Bidwell Park and Playgrounds, which was formed in that year by the City of Chico to control the parks and playgrounds donated to the city of the late Annie E. K. Bidwell. In September, 1917, he was appointed by President Wilson as a member of the Butte County Exemption Board, and was chosen secretary of that body; and in this capacity he has given months of his time without compensation to the arduous duties of the administration of the Selective Service Act in Butte County.
Fraternally, Mr. Deuel is a member of the Native Sons of the Golden West and the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, of which latter organization he is a trustee, as well as a director of the Elks Hall Association.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 689-699, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Joyce Rugeroni.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies