At one time, one of Cornwall’s biggest exports were its tin miners. Many were employed in the mines of Virginia City and Grass Valley, the latter which holds a special Cornish Christmas celebration each year.
In 1869, for some strange unknown reason, a stray Cornishman, Robert Miles Smith settled on 160 acres which is now a part of the Fleming Wildlife Unit, in the Honey Lake Valley. In many cases, usually immigrants locate where fellow countrymen have settled. This, of course, was especially true of the Swiss Italians of Honey Lake and Sierra Valleys. In Smith’s case, his family consisting of his aged mother, Mary, brother John P.M. Smith and sister Jane joined him the following year. They constituted the entire Cornish population of Lassen County.
Robert died unexpectedly in 1873, and his brother took over the family property. In the meantime, Jane married Honey Laker, William Martin Tanner, my great grandparents. In 1891, John P.M. Smith sold his 160 acres to L.W. Brubeck for $2,500 and returned to Polgooth, Cornwall, England with his mother. Upon his return he married and had seven children. According to his granddaughter, Ecla Penfold, that he never worked when he returned to Cornwall. That $2,500 went a long ways, as he died in 1931.