One of my favorite No Trespassing Signs was the Baccala’s at Soldiers Meadows, Plumas County. It succinctly though I might not remember it verbatim, but it you get the drift: “If we see hanging you see around hanging today, you will be hanging tomorrow,” and poster was illustrated with a hangman’s noose.
When I began my research I was at “hanging” a lot at the Lassen County Courthouse. Needless to say, while they did the courthouse staff did not threaten my fate to the gallows, they put me work instead. From to time to time either County Clerk or County Recorder would receive a letter from individual doing genealogy. They would give me the letter to answer.
One of those early request came from Callie Quint seeking information about her grandfather David Boyer who died in 1883 at Mountain Meadows and buried at Susanville. Boyer, a Pennsylvania native, migrated to California in search elusive of proverbial pot of gold. Like so many others before and after him it was elusive and resulted in a hardscrabble existence. In 1875, he briefly operated a saloon at Prattville, Plumas County. The town catered to tourist trade that escaped the heat of the Sacramento Valley in the summer to what is now known as Lake Almanor. Boyer feeling pinched, pulled up stakes that winter and moved to Susanville. He soon learned the grass was not greener on the other side. He leased a boarding house, but that it did work out. An opportunity at operating a saloon at Janesville seemed promising, but it was not. Back to Susanville. His endeavors as an innkeeper or a bar keep just was not was in the cards to sustain liveliehood was not forthcoming. The paper trail disappeared. In the spring of 1883 he moved his family to Mountain Meadows, though what he did there is not that known. On July 2, 1883, David Boyer died of heart attack at the age of 53. He left a widow and four small children destitute. Amanda moved her family to Susanville did odd jobs, including a bakery to sustain her family. She left Susanville in 1885.
On a final footnote. This one instance helped me to develop my research and writing skills. For a time in the late 1970s, I penned a weekly history column for the Lassen County Times, and I wrote about Boyer. This caught Lassen College instructor Bob Middleton’s attention. Bob urged to me to get a teaching credential in history, and I did. In the mid-1980s I taught a course of research techniques on local history at Lassen College.
Tim