Butte County
Biographies
SAMUEL PLYMIRE
SAMUEL PLYMIRE.--The uncle of Lewis
Wilson, Samuel Plymire, was born in Pennsylvania and crossed the plains to
California in 1849 and mined awhile in the Oroville district, on Feather River.
Later he went to Australia and continued mining near Melbourne and Sydney. He
returned to California and made a visit back to Ohio, going via Panama and
riding a mule across the Isthmus. When California once more lured him, Mr.
Plymire returned and homesteaded a quarter section of land one and one half
miles south of what is now the site of Gridley. He later added to this until he
had three hundred seventy-five acres, and it is this ranch that Mr. Wilson now
owns. Mr. Plymire was the first man to take up government land in this section;
and having had to fight the Indians in the early days in Butte County, and to
make some sacrifices, and to clear the acreage from timber and brush, he always
felt a justifiable pride in his ranch, where he lived until his death, in
February, 1891. He had married Catherine Thomas, born in Ohio and now deceased,
and for a while he kept a hotel at Bunker Hill, on the Oroville and Marysville
road. He was a man of fine attainments, a well read and much traveled man, and
it was interesting to hear him relate his experiences and incidents of pioneer
days. He was a truly Christian gentleman and a highly esteemed pioneer.
Transcribed by Vicky
Walker, 2/22/08.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Page 767, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Vicky
Walker.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies