Plumas County Biographies

Lewis Stark

Transcribed by Craig Hahn, Dec. 2004

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

 
Squire Stark, as he is familiarly called, is a native of Tennessee, where he was 
born in the year of 1808. He came overland to California with his family in 
1852, and was among the first to go through Beckwourth pass, being conducted by 
Jim Beckwourth over his road. He went on to American valley. On his journey 
thence he camped in the ravine where Elizabethtown was subsequently built, and 
some of his boys, prospecting there, discovered the first diggings of that 
locality. Squire Stark concluded to remain there, and quite a village soon 
sprang up. The town was named after one of the squire�s daughter, W. A. 
Blakesley, of Quincy. In 1853 Mr. Stark was elected a justice of the peace of 
Butte county, and again in 1854, after Plumas was organized. He was re-elected 
in 1856, �57, and �58, for Plumas township. In 1858 he removed to Honey Lake 
valley, and was there a justice of the peace in 1860-61. He was nominated by the 
democrats for county judge in 1863, and was defeated by Israel Jones. He removed 
to Santa Barbara in 1867, but returned and settled in Quincy in the summer of 
1881. 
 
Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties, with California from 
1513 to 1850. � Fariss and Smith, San Francisco,  1882. p 286