San Luis Obispo County Biographies

THOMAS JEFFREYS WILLIAMS

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

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


THOMAS JEFFREYS WILLIAMS, Superintendent of Arroyo Grande, Nipomo and Los 
Olivos Lumber Yards, generally known as Captain Williams, was born in Pennsylvania 
of English parents. He received a good practical education at his boyhood home, 
leaving however, at the early ao-e of sixteen years in company with a schoolmate 
for the gold fields of California; they reached San Francisco by way of Panama on October 
5, 1858. After a few months' experience in the then small but busy city at the bay, he 
joined his fortunes with others from the Keystone State, in a trip to the mines, arriving 
in Nevada City, Nevada County, in January 1854. It has been said by many, and the 
Captain says it is true, that this was the year of flush times in California. After two years 
of mining in the hills surrounding the city of Nevada, Captain Williams, in company 
with a Scotchman by the name of David Thorn, established the Nevada Foundry, under 
the firm name of Thorn & Williams; they were very successful, building many quartz 
and saw mills and hoisting works for deep mining. In 1861 Captain Williams sold out to 
Mr. Hugh, and engaged to go to Arizona, to superintend reduction works at the Patago- 
nia mines, for Lieutenant Mowry, the pioneer of the Territory. He arrived there in April, 
1862. After a few months successful working they were compelled to suspend on ac- 
count of withdrawal of troops from the Territory. After indifferent success in mining 
in northern Sonora, Mexico, for the next two years. Captain Williams returned to 
California overland, by the way of Fort Yuma, in company with John Archibald, a 
merchant of Tucson. After a hard trip and many narrow escapes from the hostile 
Apaches, they reached Los Angeles in February 1865, where Captain Williams engaged 
to superintend mines for Colonel Rand, a gentleman from Boston, who purchased mines 
for a Boston syndicate at Havilah, Kern County. He remained here four years, taking 
out upward of half a million dollars in bullion. The company suspended work in 
1869, when the Captain entered the field of politics, being elected Clerk of the County 
without an opponent, in 1870; resigning before his term expired, he purchased a ranch 
and engaged in stock raising. After a few years he sold out and returned to the Mecca 
of all old Californians, San Francisco, where he received a State appointment. Seven 
years ago he was sent by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company to manage their lumber 
business on the line of their railroad, where he is still to be found. The Captain has 
three children, two sons and a daughter by a former marriage: his second wife who is still 
living was a Miss Hurlburt, of Middlebury, Vermont, a near relative of the Rockwells, 
and a direct descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims. Captain Williams' future home 
will be at Santa Maria, Santa Barbara County, where he has an apricot orchard of sixty 
acres one mile from the town. 

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.