Plumas County Biographies

Arthur W. Keddie

Transcribed by Craig Hahn, Dec. 2004

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

 
He was born in Perthshire, Scotland, in 1842, and was brought by his parents to 
America in the following year, and settled in Ontario county, Canada, where he 
lived till 1863. He was educated to the profession of land surveyor, and served 
under a provincial land surveyor in the town of Whitby, the county seat of 
Ontario county, the three years� apprenticeship required by the provincial laws. 
He passed his examinations successfully before the provincial board of examiners 
in the city of Toronto. Immediately on attaining his majority, he left Canada 
for California, via Panama, arriving in San Francisco September 8, 1863. His 
first work in the state was the compiling of Holt�s maps of California and 
Nevada. He went to Plumas county in 1864, to survey the road between Indian and 
American valleys, and was afterward employed in making preliminary surveys of a 
railroad line from Oroville, via the north fork of Feather river, American 
valley, and Beckwourth pass, to Reno. In 1869 he returned to Canada (on the 
first train on the C. P. R. R.), married the eldest daughter of William Barnes, 
Esq. of Whitby, but soon returned to California, and has since been resident of 
Quincy. He has several times been elected county surveyor of Plumas. Mr. Keddie 
is a P. G. of the Odd Fellows lodge, and is now, and has been for the past five 
years, Master of Plumas Lodge No. 60, F. & A. M. He is a United States deputy 
surveyor, notary public, etc. 
 
Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties, with California from 
1513 to 1850. � Fariss and Smith, San Francisco,  1882. p 322