Plumas County Biographies

Robert L. McGill 

Transcribed by Craig Hahn, Dec. 2004

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

 
was born in Scotland in 1818. At the age of eleven he ran away from home, went 
to sea, and coursed the raging main for three years, when he left his ship at 
Quebec, and sailed on the great lakes until 1849, when he came by water to San 
Francisco, arriving on the thirty-first of December. He had not been ten minutes 
ashore when he got the job of carrying a trunk from the wharf to Wilson�s 
Exchange, for which he was paid ten dollars. Two months after, he went to the 
mines and visited many camps, reaching Rich bar on the Feather river in October, 
1850, where he mined for some time. Later, he purchased and conducted a saw-mill 
at this place. In 1853, he did the first hydraulic mining in the county in 
French ravine. He followed the Fraser river excitement in 1858, and upon his 
return, a year and a half after, he mined at Rich bar, 12-mile bar, and in Round 
valley, where he built the Lone Star quartz-mine, which ruined him financially. 
In 1868 he went into the liquor business, and has followed it since. He is a 
member of Lassen Commandery No. 12.
 
Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties, with California from 
1513 to 1850. � Fariss and Smith, San Francisco,  1882. p 305