Butte County
Biographies
GEORGE C. RILEY
GEORGE C. RILEY.—A native son of California, who is thoroughly in accord with the progressive projects of the times, is George C. Riley of Oroville. He was born in San Joaquin County, December 26, 1873, a son of George W. Riley. The latter was born in Iowa, was reared on a farm, and served for four years as a soldier in the Civil War, in an Iowa regiment. He took part in several battles, and was wounded in four different engagements. After the war was ended, he resumed farming in Iowa, and continued there until the spring of 1873, when he came to California and took up his residence in San Joaquin County. The following year he moved to Butte County, where he purchased a farm near Gridley and engaged in farming and stock-raising until shortly after the death of his wife, Hester (Moore) Riley, in 1878. He then moved into Gridley, and made that his home until 1882, when he located near Oroville on a ranch, which he sold seven years later at a good advance in price. He then bought property near Enterprise, where he engaged in the stock business until 1913. At that time he disposed of his interests and moved to Alberta, Canada, where he is farming with success. He is hale and hearty, and as active as a man of half his age.
The third child in a family of four sons and one daughter, George C. Riley was reared in Butte County, and was educated in the public schools of the neighborhoods where the family lived at different times. At the age of fifteen he began to “paddle his own canoe,” learning the trade of painter and later engaging in contracting and general painting business. In 1903 he returned to Oroville and bought a farm near Enterprise. After engaging in farming and stock-raising for a couple of years, he once more took up the painting business in Oroville, forming a partnership with E. E. Walsh, under the firm name of Walsh and Riley. They do a general painting business as contractors, and are also engaged in auto painting and the making of signs. This partnership continued until August, 1916, when Mr. Riley retired, to give his time to looking after his private affairs, which had grown to such proportions that they required the greater part of his time. He still operates his three-hundred-twenty-acre ranch at Enterprise, but has his residence on Bridge Street, in Oroville. He is interested in mining with others, and owns the Ball Rock Canyon Mines on the Middle Fork of the Feather River. They are now promoting a big dam and power site for the purpose of conserving the water and generating electric power.
Mr. Riley is a member of the Woodmen of the World. He is public-spirited an enterprising to a marked degree, and is a hustler who believes in building up the county in which he lives.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1173, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies