Plumas County Biographies

Charles C. Thomas

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 a native of Maryland, and came overland to California in 1849, as a 
member of the Charlestown company from Virginia, in which were the late B. F. 
Washington and Joseph E. N. Lewis. They arrived in Sacramento in September; and 
Thomas, with a portion of the company, engaged in mining at Bidwell�s bar. 
Subsequently he was at American bar, on the Middle Feather. In the early spring 
of 1851 McElvaney, Thomas, & Co. erected the first store and hotel in Onion 
valley. The firm also built stores at Gibsonville, and at the forks of Poorman�s 
and Hopkins creeks. They were among the original members of the company that 
opened and worked the celebrated Eureka quartz-mine, and of the company that 
constructed the first flumes to drain the river at Rich bar, east branch of the 
north fork. Mr. Thomas was elected a member of the assembly in the fall of 1852, 
representing the Plumas portion of Butte county, and served one session. He 
retired from business in Onion valley in 1854, and left the state in 1862, going 
to Nevada, where he held important positions in the mines, and is now 
superintendent of the Sutro Tunnel Company.  
 
Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties, with California from 
1513 to 1850. � Fariss and Smith, San Francisco,  1882. p 293