Sacramento County
Biographies
JOSEPH
TOMLINSON
JOSEPH TOMLINSON, a rancher of Natoma Township, about four miles from Folsom, was born April 8, 1814, in what is now West Virginia, of same parentage and descent as his brother Lewis, whose sketch is subjoined. The subject of this sketch received a limited education in his youth, opportunities in that direction being scant. He is, however, a well educated man, mainly as a result of his labors in self-education. He picked up the trade of ship carpenter, and some light-draft boats of his design and construction, in which his father and brothers were also engaged with him, have plied on the Ohio over thirty years ago. He also carried on, for fifteen years, the saw-mill built by his grandfather on Grave Creek in Marshall County, West Virginia, and successively conducted by three generations of Tomlinsons. Steamboating on the Ohio was the last business followed in the East by Mr. Tomlinson. He came to California in 1850, and engaged in mining more or less steadily for a dozen years. Among his ventures in other lines was the building of the sloop Far West, in Sacramento, and running her for about a year between San Francisco and Benicia, and some other points in that section. Of late years he has been occupied with mechanical inventions, one recently patented by him being known as Tomlinson’s Chock Wrench, a very ingenious device in its line. In 1872 he bought the 160 acres where he lived on the Placerville road, twenty-three miles from Sacramento. Mrs. Elizabeth (Tomlinson) Biggs, sister of the preceding, and residing with him since 1876, was born on the family homestead in Marshall County, West Virginia, November 18, 1812. She was married in 1842 to Joseph Biggs, a native of Ohio, his parents being Benjamin and Rebecca (McKnight) Biggs. His grandfather, Joseph Biggs, had moved from Virginia to Ohio, and the Biggs family is said to have contributed seven sons to the army of the Revolution, the youngest of whom was this Ohio pioneer. Mrs. Elizabeth (Tomlinson) Biggs lost her husband some thirty years ago, and of their six children three are still living in 1889, and residing in this county; Theodore, May and Lewis. Theodore is married to Annalene Lorain, and they have six children; Dora, John, Alice, Joseph, Charles, and Elizabeth. May Biggs is the wife of Samuel Pelton. Lewis is married to Nanny Lorain, and they have eight children; Ida, Asa, Annie, Frank, James, Samuel, Florence and a baby not yet named.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of
Sacramento County, California. Page 597. Lewis
Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.