Butte County
Biographies
GEORGE W. DYER
GEORGE W. DYER.--One of the oldest
survivors among the pioneers who early mined along the Feather River
is George W. Dyer, whose reminiscences of the early mining days are replete
with incidents of unusual interest. His grandfather, James Dyer, was in the
Revolutionary War; and his father, Samuel Dyer, popularly known as Uncle Sam,
was born at Calais, Me.,
and served in the War of 1812. He was a stone mason and expert stone cutter by
trade, and died at the ripe old age of ninety-four. The mother, Margaret Duke
before her marriage, was a native of Nova Scotia.
George
Dyer was born at Calais on July 28, 1828, and in the
public schools of Calais he
received his first schooling. While yet a lad, he commenced farming, and before
he left home he ran his father's farm.
In
1853, Mr. Dyer sailed from New York City in the clipper
ship surprise, and came round the Horn to San Francisco.
He went to San Antonio, and then to the lumber camps among the redwoods, and in 1854 reached the mines of Butte
County. He went to the South Fork
of Feather River, at Morris' Ravine, and mined all winter. Then he came to
Oroville and mined on a bar, and so well did he succeed that he took out from
fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred dollars a week. The great flood of 1862,
however, spoiled the river for mining, and after that he never made a success
in that section.
Mr.Dyer was later in charge of the Cherokee
Mine, directing the labors of about one hundred men, and the responsibility of
his position may be gathered from the fact that at one clean-up the mine
yielded a brick valued at seventy-two thousand eight hundred dollars. It was
the richest mine in California,
and this was the largest brick of gold in the state. He also traveled
considerably, going to Siskiyou, Cottonwood on Klamath river, in Oregon, back
into California, and then again into Oregon, following along Applegate Creek to
Fort Jones, in Siskiyou County. All this time he was prospecting, and as a
prospector he came back to the Cherokee Mine Company. In the great work of
putting a pipe from Yankee Hill to Cherokee, he had charge of the undertaking,
and finally succeeded in forcing water to the top of Cherokee Flat. After
fifteen years of service in that mine, the Cherokee was sold, and soon after
Mr. Dyer went to Dogtown, or Magalia. He obtained a
quarter section above the Pushbaker
Mine, organized a company, sunk shafts, and made a good prospect, and then sold
out. Thereafter he mined on French Creek for one summer and then entered the
employ of Major McLaughlin, on Long's Bar. He built a
foot bridge across the river and flumed the river, after which he located in
Oroville, where he now resides in his residence on Orange
Avenue. Every once in a while, however, he takes
his pick and pan and goes to Feather River, for he is still interested in mining.
He has sunk two shafts across the river from Oroville. One of them, located on
the Retson Ranch, is eighty-two feet deep.
On
May 1, 1878, at Cherokee, Mr. Dyer was married to Miss Jane Jones, a native of Flintshire, Wales,
who came here in early days; and by her he has had one son, George Sterling,
the well-known electrical engineer, who is at Nicholevich,
Siberia, as manager of dredgers for an English company.
In national politics Mr. Dyer is a Republican; and as a citizen, he is much
interested in civic problems. His comfortable residence at Oroville is
surrounded by a small orange orchard. He was made a Mason in the Oroville
Lodge, No. 103, F. & A. M., sixty years ago, and is a Royal Arch Mason and
a Knight Templar. Both Mr. and Mrs. Dyer belong to Amapola
Chapter, No. 119, O. E. S.
Transcribed by Sande Beach.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 451-452, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2007 Sande Beach.
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