Butte County
Biographies
JOHN MATLOCK
JOHN MATLOCK.—A highly respected man who is well and favorably known, John Matlock was born March 20, 1837, on the banks of Lake Erie near Hamilton, Ont. There he was reared and received his education in the public school. When yet in his teens, in 1853, he started out to make his own way in the world, removing to Wisconsin, where he was employed at lumbering on Black River until the fall of 1858, then going to St. Louis, Mo., where he remained over winter. The great excitement over the discovery of gold at Pike’s Peak interested him to such an extent that in the spring of 1859 he joined an ox-team train, coming up the Platte River to Denver. On their arrival there they found so many who did not have one good word to say and gave discouraging reports, particularly some old California forty-niners who spoke of the greatness of California, where you could wash gold from the soil at the grass roots, that he then joined another ox-team train and came on cross the plains, arriving in Stockton in November, 1859. His brother, Manuel Matlock, had come to California in 1851, and was a rancher near Stockton; so John remained in that vicinity, farming until 1871, when he came to Butte County and took a preemption claim of one hundred sixty acres, which he improved and farmed to grain, and also engaged in stock-raising. In 1879 he sold and located at Magalia and has since engaged in mining. He has prospected some, having located and opened the Mountain View Mine near Coutolenc, a gravel mine which he still owns, and which has a splendid showing. In the days he was most active he worked in the Limestone Channel, Red Hill Mine, and the Gravel Range. His mining property comprises one hundred eighty acres, well timbered and good land. The timber is now being sawed by the Hintz and Lynch mill at Luce Spur.
Mr. Matlock has been a very active man and has had much and valuable experience in mining in Butte County, and is well posted on the mineralogy and geology of this section. He has found time to serve as school trustee of Magalia district. In his political preference he is decidedly a Democrat.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Page 1144, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies