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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
Coast to Coast by Railroad: The Journey of Niles Searls (PH 21-1)(1972) (23 pages)
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Page: of 23
Mary Niles Searls, about 1851.
[Courtesy of Frances G. Long.]
and in 1850 he opened a law office in Nevada City, California.
The office was located in the back of a stationery store; its furnishings consisted of a pork barrel for a desk and a nail keg for
a chair. But this was the beginning of a career that led Niles eventually to the chief justiceship of the Supreme Court of California.
He maintained contact with friends and relatives in New York State.
In 1853 he returned east and married his cousin, Mary Corinthia Niles,
daughter of judge John and Polly Cook Niles, in whose home in RensSelaerville he had lived four years while studying there. They returned
to California to live, but Niles’ eyesight began to fail, and in 1863 they
returned to New York. He operated a ie and mill near Butternuts? until 1869 at which time, with his health restored, he made
plans to return to California. He decided to go west alone and
then return for Mary and their two boys—Fred and Niles Jr., aged
fifteen and nine respectively.
In the past the family had travelled by steamship by way of the
Isthmus of Panama, but now as Niles planned his journey the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads were about to meet at
Promontory Point, Utah, to complete the transcontinental railway
line. Niles decided therefore to make the cross-country trip by
rail. He left New York on May 8, 1869—two days before the
golden spike was driven at Promontory Point—and arrived in
California on May 19. His was probably the first trip across the
‘Butternuts is a township in Otsego County. It was also another name
for the village of Gilbertsville in that township. See Hamilton Child,
Gazeteer and Business Directory of Otsego County, New York for 1872-3.
(Syracuse, 1872.) Niles Searls’ farm was probably near Gilbertsville.
4