Sacramento County Biographies

TIMOTHY LEE

Transcribed by Karen Pratt.

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


  
	About a year prior to the beginning of this century, there was born 
in County Kerry, in the south of Ireland, Timothy Lee, who grew up to be a 
plasterer by trade, and was married to Louisa Roach, a native of London, 
England, but of Irish parentage.  He emigrated to the New World in 1847 or 1848; 
settled in New York city, and, in 1849, sent for his family to join him there.  
He was the father of thirteen children; he is at this writing ninety years of 
age and still enjoys life in the City of Churches.  When the younger Timothy, 
subject of our sketch, joined his father in New York he was about fourteen years 
old.  He was educated there and learned his father�s trade.  In 1855 he removed 
to Madison, Wisconsin, where for some years he carried on his trade.  In May, 
1858, a party for California was made up, which our subject joined.  They 
crossed the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, went north of Salt Lake, through 
Sublette�s cutoff and located at Bear Creek in Shasta County.  They were engaged 
in mining until 1862 on Middle Creek, and then went to the Nez Perce mining 
district.  In 1863 he built a bridge across the Spokane River, getting a charter 
from Idaho to do so.  This bridge was located about sixteen miles below 
Cordalaine Lake and twenty miles above Spokane Falls and near the scene of 
Colonel Wright�s battle with the Nez Perce Indians, at which time 960 head of 
ponies were destroyed.  In the year 1868 he sold out his bridge and made a trip 
East, going to New York and Wisconsin, where, in November, he was married to 
Miss Minnie Helm, and upon his return to the coast he came to Sacramento; since 
that time he has made it his home.  In 1876 he held the office of deputy sheriff 
for four years, in the year 1880 was a member of the police department, and 
later was under-sheriff during the administration of Sheriff Estell.  At the 
expiration of Estell�s term, he was employed by the Central Pacific Railroad as 
one of their special officers.  In 1888 he was elected chief of the Sacramento 
force, which position he holds at this writing.  He well deserves the respect of 
his fellow-citizens.
 
Source: Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, 
California. Page 485. Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.