In 2017, I conducted a Susanville Cemetery Tour, as part of the Lassen County Courthouse Centennial. The tour focused on those interred there that had an association of with the county. So I thought would share some of the graves we visited, and we start with Howard Meylert.

Poor Howard, he liked numbers, but the numbers did not like him. He died at the age of 44, after a 14 day bout of typhoid fever. In 1882, he came to Lassen County from his native Pennsylvania to work in his uncle’s general store in Janesville. At the age 28, he was elected Lassen County Treasurer in 1888 and re-elected in 1890. In the fall of 1892, near the end of his second term, he decided not to run again as the Bank of Lassen County was in the midst of formation. When his term expired he went to work at the bank as cashier. Do not let the title fool you, Meylert as the sole employee basically ran the bank. He remained in this capacity until his untimely death in 1904. On a final note, Meylert was the first person to hold an elected to a county office, but that as a elected official for Susanville as a Trustee, which he served in that capacity until his death.  

Tim

This is a special Tuesday Tidbit to compensate for Sunday’s rant. The Odette family were carpenters and they operated sawmill. When they had a printer print invoices, the said printer misspelled their name, leaving off the “e” at the end of name. It should be noted that the family patriarch Charles Odette was builder of the Leonard residence at the west end of Main Street that became the local Elk’s Lodge for nearly a century.

Tim

This is a topic we have not addressed. While not common, it was not unheard of where mutual parties exchanged properties. Government entities engaged in this practice.

For starters we begin with the Capezzoli/Tanner swap of the Standish/Tule District. Both ranches were approximately the same size between 450=500 acres each. Lena Capezzoli stated that in the 1920s, the property was jinxed as her father died there in 1915 and her brother, while coming home was involved a fatal car crash on Bass Hill in  January 1928.  Later, in 1928, the deal between the Capezzoli family and John and Lola Tanner was consummated.

Over time, the Tanners acquired surrounding small ranches like Stampfli and Whitehead. When the family sold it in September 2025, the acreage was 1550.

Tim

Utilities such as electricity and telephone service to the residents of the Honey Lake Valley presented many challenges.* It was the telephone prevailed years before electricity would be available to residents. On July 10, 1911, the Honey Lake Valley Mutual Telephone Association incorporated as a co-operative.  Its headquarters, was the hamlet of Buntingville. In 1924, the group had over 200 subscribers from Standish, Janesville, Milford, and Richmond.  Plagued with financial problems, it was taken over by the Lassen Telephone Company on July 21, 1924. Eventually, the Buntingville office was shuttered and transferred to Susanville. Lassen Telephone was later acquired by Citizens. 

Tim

*By1900, Chinaman Joe Folsom had developed a private telephone system in Wiilow Creek Valley. Likewise, Carey Sturgess did the same for Long Valley.

Support