Butte County Obituaries

George A. Martin

Submitted by Judy Lee

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Oroville Murcury News; Date Unknown

	Funeral services for George A. Martin, 95, Butte county resident
since 1853, will be held at 2:30 p.m. Thursday at Chapel of the Palms, under
direction of the Thomas Funeral Home.
	Mr. Martin died at his home on Bridge street Sunday.
	Military burial rites will be held following the funeral services, at
Berry Creek cemetery.


GEORGE MARTIN, OLD RESIDENT of BUTTE, DIES

	One of Butte county's oldest pioneers, George A. Martin, 95, died
at his home on Bridge street, Sunday. He had lived in this section since 1853.
	Mr. Martin, whose memory of early mining days, boom communities,
names and incidents was clear until his death, was born in Ohio Nov. 10, 1843.
At the age of four he moved with his parents to Keokuk, Iowa, where his father
was city marshal until young Geroge was eight years old.
	In 1851 the Martin family crossed the plains by ox team, reaching
Bidwell Bar in 1853. There they lived for a number of years. When Mr. Martin
was 35 years old he was married to Martha Ann Jackson. Their eight children
were born in Butte county.
CIVIL WAR VETERAN
	He was a veteran of the civil war, and one of the oldest living war
veteran in Oroville.
	Vivid recollections of early Butte county history were told by Mr.
Martin to Mercury readers in an article written ten years ago, when he was
84 years old.
	In 1853, he said, ther were 2000 miners in the vicinity of Bidwell
Barr, a booming mining town, then county seat. Officers of the county
included Peter Freer, sheriff; Judge Lewis; Pat Harris, district attorney:
Charles Lott, a lawyer. On the ferry boat, owned by a Mr. Van Norton,
emigrants were carried across the river at a cost of $1.50 for two yoke of
oxen and wagon.
STONE STORE STANDS
	The town at the bar burned in 1854, he said, and the suspension
bridge, material for which was brought around the horn, was built in 1855. 
Parts of the bridge were brought from New York around Cape Horn to
San Francisco, from that city by boat up the Sacramento river to Marysville,
and from there hauled to Bidwell Bar at a charge of $17 per hundred pounds
he recalled.
	The old stone building, still stands south of the bridge, and often 
spoken of as the jail, he declared, was not a jail, but a store building, built
in 1854 by Joseph Glucoff. The jail, he said was in the basement of the 
courthouse on the bluff.
FUNERAL NEXT THURSDAY	
	Surviving are his children, Edison and Harlan Martin of Napa,
Fred Martin, Erastus Martin, Mrs. Daisy Staggs of Fulton, Alfred Martin
of thermalito, and Charles Martin of Oroville; six grandchildren and two
great grandchildren.
	Funeral services will be held at 2:30 p.m. Thuirsday at the
Chapel of the Palms, under direction of the Thomas Funeral Home.Burial
will be at Brush Creek.