Butte County
Biographies
THOMAS DOOLEY
THOMAS DOOLEY.—A pioneer of the stirring sixties who was present in Sacramento when Stanford turned the first shovel for the beginning of the Central Pacific Railroad, who knew Stanford, Hopkins, Huntington, Fair, O’Brien and other giants of those days, and became himself a part of the historic drama unfolding to the wonder of the world, Thomas Dooley was born in 1843, the son of Michael Dooley, a native of County Galway, Ireland, who married there, came to Canada, and took a trip to Bath, Maine, where Thomas was born. In 1870 his father, who was a railroad man, crossed the continent with three brothers and two sisters, and settled in Oakland, where the parents both died, the father in his forty-eighth year and the mother at eighty-six years of age. After attending the public school in Bath, Thomas learned the shoemaker’s trade; but in 1860 he broke away from the confinement of the shop and made for the Golden West. Shipping as a sailor boy before the mast, on the brig Deacon, out from Bath, he sailed round Cape Horn, and in one hundred eighty-four days reached San Francisco. There he left the vessel, and hurried on to San Jose, in which city he worked for a few months as clerk in a hotel, and then went to Sacramento, where he accepted a job in a restaurant. He was in the Sacramento Valley at the time of the great flood in 1862, and continued in business there until 1870. Then he located in Chico, at that time a very small place, and ran a restaurant on Main Street.
In 1889, Mr. Dooley left California and went north to Puget Sound, and in Port Townsend, Wash., embarked in the hotel business, continuing the same for a couple of years, until he sold out. Then he made his way south to California again, and in Vacaville conducted a hotel for a year, after which he returned to Chico. There, for four years, he was proprietor of the Union Hotel, and at the same time also ran the Auditorium Hotel, having bought out Mr. Alder. Later, he sold the Union Hotel, and continued in the management of the Auditorium; but finally he disposed of that also, to Jeff Hall, on September 1, 1917.
Years ago Mr. Dooley made three different trips East to visit relatives and friends, and about 1907 he made an extensive tour of Europe. On this trip he took with him his wife and daughter, and was gone six months. In that time, he visited England, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Austria, and also spent delightful hours on the Island of St. Michael, and in Rome, where he had an audience with Pope Pius and visited the Catacombs.
Thomas Dooley and Miss Katie Barrett were married at the bride’s birthplace, Nimshew, Butte County. She was the daughter of John Barrett, a native of Vermont, who came to California in 1849, by way of Panama, and engaged in mining. He spent his last days in Elmira, Solano County. Two children born to Mr. and Mrs. Dooley are still living: Captain J. C. Dooley, lately county treasurer and now serving on the staff of General Strong with the American forces in France; and Nellie, now Mrs. Moroney, of Burlingame. Mr. Dooley, besides managing a successful hotel, is interested in farming and fruit-raising near Oroville. He is a prominent Democrat; and fraternally, he is a member of Chico Lodge, No. 423, B. P. O. Elks, and of the Knights of Columbus.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1165-1166, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies