Butte County
Biographies
CHARLES ALFRED RICHARDS
A prospector who
came to California at the call of gold, who passed through all the
nerve-racking experiences of the miner, even to that of refusing a large sum
for what ultimately proved to be of little value, is Charles Alfred Richards,
the well-known pioneer of Butte County.
He was born in Oxford County, Maine,
November 8, 1835, and came to California
in 1854, when he was only nineteen years of age. He traveled, as so many then preferred to do,
by the shorter Nicaragua
route, and arrived at Bidwell’s Bar on September 14. For four hundred dollars Mr. Richards bought
two fifths of a mining claim on Feather River, and for a
time mined with success. The claim
finally gave out, however, and had to be abandoned, yet not before he and his
partners had been thoroughly deceived as to the probable prospects of their
claim. He himself was offered fifty
thousand dollars for his share, but concluding that if the area staked out was
worth that to the stranger it ought to be worth as
much or more to him, he turned down the offer and continued to search for gold.
He next rented
land on the Beef Ranch, and for a couple of years or more conducted a dairy
there. But he did something besides in
which he displayed the true spirit of American enterprise. In the early days of the Civil War, and
particularly from 1860 to 1862, when people were eager for news from the front,
Mr. Richards established a paper route from Marysville, through Yuba, Sutter, Butte
and Colusa Counties,
via old Hamilton, Dayton, Butte
City and Princeton, and
riding a-horse he made the trip with relays of four horses. He called his service the Pony Express, and
made the round trip once a week; and knowing every settler between Marysville
and Dayton, he built up a large and
profitable patronage.
In 1863, Mr.
Richards spent five months in Virginia City, Nev.,
at teaming, hauling wood from Long Valley
to Virginia City and hay from Sierra Valley,
receiving twenty-five dollars a ton for transportation alone. He bought wood for six dollars per cord, and
sold the same for fifteen dollars; and as he was able to haul four cords a day
he soon made considerable money.
In 1864, Mr.
Richards bought three hundred sixty acres of land belonging to the Larkin
Grant, east of Gridley, paying for the same a dollar and a half an acre,
probably all that the land was then worth, for there was not a house between
his place and the Sacramento River. Later, he bought a hundred twenty acres more
from the same grant, and he kept adding to his holdings until he owned eight
hundred acres. For a portion of his land he later paid forty-five dollars an
acre, and for some of it he paid as high as eighty-one dollars an acre. This acreage was covered with live and white
oak timber, and from four hundred eighty acres of it he in time sold over six
thousand cords of wood. From 1869 to
1890 he continued to farm the land.
Finally selling the ranch at the rate of sixty-seven dollars and fifty
cents an acre, Mr. Richards rented and farmed the same ranch for ten years
more, retiring in 1900. Then he bought
his present home place of six and a half acres, and there, comfortably housed
and well-provided for, he entered a life of much satisfaction to himself and
his friends. He was fond of looking back
to the days of ’68 when he drove a band of two hundred horses across the plains
to Columbus, Nebr.,
and returned to California
the next year by way of Panama. He liked to talk of the strenuous years of
1861 and 1862 when he herded cattle in Colusa County
and saw the waters of the Sacramento and Feather
Rivers meet and flood the land for
many miles around. It was then that he
also saw hundreds of cattle die from cold and starvation.
Mr. Richards was
twice married. His first marriage was in
Roxbury, Maine, in 1869, to Miss Oleva Hopkins, a native of Rumford,
Maine.
She died in 1880, and by her he had five children: Louisa, who died at the age of twenty-seven; Irvil, who also passed away at the same age; Daisy, who
died when eighteen years old; Winnie, who died when twelve; and Charles, who
died in February, 1915, at the age of thirty-nine, leaving four children. Mr. Richards’ second marriage was at Gridley,
uniting him with Miss Josephine Hopkins, a cousin of his first wife and a
native of Lewiston, Maine,
and she died in 1910. Of this marriage
four children were born: Guy, who died
when twenty-one years old; George, who died when eighteen months of age;
Arthur, who resides at Martinez;
and Viola, the wife of B.F. Davis of Gridley.
Transcribed
by Roseann Kerby.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1025-1026, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Roseann Kerby.
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