The Tehama County Genealogical and Historical Society, of Red Bluff, California, has just published a new 2011 revised edition of “Tehama County, 1856-2006: 150 years of Photos and History.” It is now available for purchase. The new edition has an index, making it a much more valuable book than the previous 2006 volume.
The revised edition is available from the Copy Center, 16 Antelope Boulevard, Red Bluff, California 9. Cost is $75 each. For more information call 530-527-6677 or just click here for ordering information.
This is in response to your blog entry about the Tehama County Sesquicentennial in 2011.
My great-grandfather was an early settler in Tehama City. He was from Tazewell County, Illinois, and in 1854 he went to California with his uncle and his family who lived in Richland, Ohio. They took a steamer to Panama, went overland to the Pacific and sailed from there to San Francisco. They then took a riverboat to the gold fields.
He prospected and worked in various camps and ended up in Tehama on the 1st of September, 1857. Here are excerpts from his diary.
“Tehama, California, September 1st, 1857/ Arrived in Tehama and purchased a house and lot in company with
george Opperman. Started a bakery and afterwards a restaurant and bar.
January 25, 1859. Bought George Opperman’s interest in Tehama Bakery and appurtenances belonging thereto for the sum of $550.
May 25, 1859. Sold one half interest to William Wilte for $650.
June 25, 1859. Great fire in Tehama.
July 18, 1860. Sold my entire interest to John Smith for $750.
Tehama, California, August 18, 1860. Left on board Steamer Swan at 6 o’clock in the morning for Sacramento, wehre we arrive August 19th at noon. Put up at the Ebner Hotel.”
The rest of the diary details his trip back to Illinois.
The fire was reported in the Alta California on June 26 which gave, “Particulars of the Tehama Fire.” The losses were estimated to be $100,000 total and John Kaufman’s loss was shown as $2,000. According to other sources. He rebuilt and then sold as indicated in his diary.
He married and used his money that he built a business block in Eureka, Illinois,in about 1860-61. He expected to run the resultant businesses with his two younger brothers. The Civil War broke out and his brothers enlisted. He sold the block and bought a farm in Cruger, Illinois which less than five miles from Eureka. Only one brother survived the war, the other died in a Confederate Prisoner of War Camp in Virginia.
If you want more details from his diary, it is on microfilm at the LDS library in Salt Lake. It also has his genealogy and mentions a number of other interactions with family and people with whom he work, worked for, and had business dealings with.
His oldest daughter Ida Jan Kaufman was my paternal grandmother who lived to the age of 93. She married Alexander Franklin Holmes in Illinois in 1885.