OWEN THOMAS DAVIES

Sacramento County

Biographies

OWEN THOMAS DAVIES

OWEN THOMAS DAVIES, farmer, Brighton Township, was born Cefancoidycymar, within two miles of Merthyr Tydvil, Wales, February 7, 1820, a son of Thomas and Mary Davies. In that family were four sons and five daughters, who grew up and were married. Four of the sons came to America; David came in 1840 and died in Illinios, in the coal mines; Owen came in the fall of 1850; and John and James came nearly at the same time, 1855-’60. John settling in Pennsylvania and James in Utah, near Salt Lake City; Jane Williams came to America and died in Illinois, December 20, 1884; the other children died in Wales. When Mr. Davies, the subject of this sketch, was a man grown, he was employed at the Gyfarthfa Iron Works, where he engaged in wheeling puddling iron from the rolls twelve hours a day every other week, at what in United States money would be $2.52 cents per week. His next task was the filling of wheelbarrows with puddling iron and wheeling it to the mill, where it was rolled into rails, etc. For this his wages was $2.88 a week. Sometimes he would wheel as much as fifty tons a day. Next he weighed and sheared merchant iron at the first steam mill, at $2.36 a week. After the Pandy mill was built he was employed there to weigh metal iron, fill it into wheelbarrows from the drains and wheel it to the stall, weigh it into 450-pound charges for the puddling furnaces and pile it up. Of course he had to keep an exact account of all this work; and his wages now had become $5.04 a week. In this he was engaged from 1846 to September 1850. At that time the Pandy was the largest steam mill in Wales. It was on the east side of the Taff River. Six iron rolling mills were run by water power on the west side, besides one by steam. All these eight mills were within one mile of Merthyr Tydvil. In October, 1846, Mr. Davies married Ann William Morgan, daughter of William Morgan and born in the same place. October 15, 1850, they, with two children, sailed from Liverpool and landed in New Orleans November 22. Going to Illinois, Mr. Davies worked in the coal mines there from the spring of 1851 to April, 1854, when he went to Utah, overland, with two yoke of oxen, arriving in Salt Lake September 26. In the spring of 1856 he came on to California, arriving in Brighton, this county, July 4. Until September 19 he lived in the wagon, and then settled where he has since resided. There he bought a squatter’s claim to a quarter-section of land, and afterward purchased the place from the Government. When he first entered it there was only a shanty there, and all the country around was a naked plain. He subsequently bought more land, so that at one time he owned over 500 acres. A portion of this has been deeded to his children and to his wife. She died October 6, 1880, the mother of four children: Anne and Thomas, John and William. Anne is the wife of Edmund Lewis, a resident of San Joaquin Township, near Sheldon; the sons are all in this township, and have families. November 21, 1881, Mr. Davies, in Sacramento, married Louisa Haux, a German lady and a widow at the time, her first husband having died five years previously. She died February 11, 1883, and Mr. Davies, December 1, 1884 married his present wife, Mrs. Friedrika Kern.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. Pages 694-695. Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.