Currently I live about 10 miles from Oroville the (City of Gold). Sadly, these days Oroville is the punchline to many a bad joke, a kind of remote outpost of poverty, ignorance and desperation. The locals have a strong affinity for meth and to most it is a place to avoid entirely. Oroville was in the world-wide news a few years ago when the massive earthen dam that sits above it had a catastrophic failure and 150,000 people had to be evacuated. A total collapse of the structure was avoided but had the dam burst, Oroville would have been gone forever...
Thank you for that, mv52. Quite a coincidence, living so close. It sounds as though the verb "thrive" is overstating the case a bit, although I suppose it is a relative term in any case!
I did quite a lot of work in the late 1990s trying to pin down my great-grandfather's years in Oroville. Only limited success as I think that he arrived, and then left again, too early for the scant local records to have picked him up. He shared his surname (Myers) with the name of one of the major streets and this caused me to ponder on any possible connections. It sounds as though that street was named after an early leading citizen, perhaps a judge, by the name of Benjamin Myers, and certainly a contemporary of my great-grandfather. In that case, it wasn't my gt-grandfather who was a Henry; but I did wonder whether that was some family connection which would help to explain his extraordinary decision to set off into the unknown, and to this place in particular, whilst still barely out of his teens.
I had quite a bit of help from a local historian by the name of Jim Lenhoff, now long since departed. He was custodian of a nearby abandoned Gold Rush settlement which I think became a tourist attraction. I have done what I can to trace Henry's path and experience and I might, one of these days, put it online (but not here, though - although a possible title might justify the Brum connection: let's say "Birmingham to Butte County - and Back Again!")
Here is Henry, now a comfortable Birmingham citizen in around 1874, about 15 years after his return to England, and living in Monmouth Street. He is with his second wife, Rose, my gt-grandmother having died in 1872. I wonder what stories he told his own sons about his time in the earliest years of California. And how I wish they had come down to me!
Chris
