Los Angeles County, CA, Biographies

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives 
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


JOHN C. GOLDSWORTHY, 
 
surveyor, was born in Wisconsin in 1840, his parents being John and Ursula 
(Edwards) Goldsworthy. His father was a mining engineer of high reputation and 
skill. Mr. Goldsworthy came to California in 1857, and spent four years in the 
mines, being familiarly known as "the kid," on account of his age. He won the 
confidence of his uneducated associates and was very useful to them in writing 
their letters, as they felt safer in intrusting the knowledge of their private 
affairs to him than to an older person. He studied in the University of the 
Pacific at San Jose from 1861 to 1864, and graduated as civil engineer from that 
institution, being as far as known the first graduate of the institution in that 
line. He then placed himself for two years longer under the tuition of Sherman 
Day, a noted mining engineer of that city and afterward surveyor‑general of the 
United States. In 1866 he moved to Virginia City and there began his career as 
surveyor. He made a complete topographical map of the whole of that mining 
region, remaining there about one year. Spending the intervening time as mining 
engineer in San Francisco he came to Los Angeles in March, 1868, and has been a 
resident here ever since, chiefly occupied as surveyor. He has occasionally done 
some assaying and other special work. Any one who has been a practical mining 
engineer never entirely loses his interest in that branch of his profession. The 
office of city surveyor of Los Angeles was erected at his suggestion in 1870, 
and he was elected its first incumbent. In 1867 Mr. Goldsworthy was married to 
Miss J. H. Bullis, who had been virtually a schoolmate of his college days, she 
being an attendant at a seminary for young ladies at San Jose while he attended 
the lectures at the University. They are the parents of seven children, four 
girls and three boys. The oldest boy, George L., is nineteen, and proposes, 
after graduating at a public school this year, to enter the University of 
Southern California. In politics Mr. Goldsworthy is a Republican, and in 
religious affiliation a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The 
unprecedented and rapid growth of this city, and his long and intimate 
acquaintance with its topography as a surveyor, has occasioned a great and 
satisfactory expansion in his professional labors.
 
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California �  Chicago, The Lewis 
Publishing Company, 1889   Page 744
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler