Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 048-4 - October 1994 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 8 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-05 07:00:58 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:05:59 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:05:59

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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foundry from the Allan estate in 1907. He operated it for only and worked at the Charlestown foundry in Cornwall for 40 13 years, since he was already 60 years of age when he years. Young William went to work in the foundry when he acquired it. But he was a very important owner. was only 8 years old and remained there for ten years. We Like George Allan before him, he left his home in England can visualize the childhood life he must have led in those em, at an early age. He was just 18 when he left Cornwall to years, 1855 to 1865. Times were hard in Cornwall, many tin make his own way in the world. But he was already a and copper mines were closing, and life’s heavy burden fell foundryman. His father, Robert Martin, was a foundryman, upon children as well as adults. There were no child labor laws. We do not know by what means the money was raised to send young William off, but we can guess how his parents felt as he trudged off to board a ship bound for California, he and his parents having little expectation of ever seeing each other again. (So far as we know, they never did). The ship delivered him to Colon, on the eastern side of the Isthmus of Panama. From there he had the choice of crossing the isthmus on the back of a mule, if money permitted, or on his own two feet if it did not. At Panama City, he boarded another vessel for the voyage up to California. He may have had a relative or a family acquaintance already engaged in gold mining in the foothills of California, for when the ship put him ashore in San Francisco, he made his way directly to Grass Valley. I like that phrase “made his way’. When I try to visualize an 18 year old boy standing on the wharf in San Francisco, in 1866, all alone and wanting to reach a place about which he knows nothing, not even its location, the phrase “made his way” takes on new meaning. At any rate, he made it to Grass Valley, and worked for a time at the Sneath Clay mine in Nevada City. After that, he worked at the Pittsburg Mine, just below Banner Lava Cap™ road, on the north slope. Remnants of that mine remain. About 1867, moving about as miners did, he went up to Sierra County and worked as a timberman at the Sierra Buttes Mine, not far from the present Kentucky Mine Park. While working there, he and a group of other miners formed an academic class and undertook a course of study in the evenings. This certainly was unusual in a mining camp. In 1878, at the age of 31, he was back in Nevada City. He must have been far less profligate with his money than most miners of the day, for he was able to buy the Mayflower Mine at this time. The Mayflower Mine was located on the north slope, off Banner Lava Cap road. He installed a four-stamp mill in the mine. And here is where he first was noteworthy. To drive the mill he installed the very first commercially sold Pelton water wheel. We'd give a lot to know the whereabouts of that wheel! The second and more important reason for interest in Mr. Martin, is that he was the father of May Martin Goyne. The Martins had three children: May, who married Dick Goyne; she was an accountant and her father’s bookkeeper and office assistant at the foundry, William Robert, who became secretary of the company, and Lillian Beth, a talented musician May Martin Goyne in one of the many costumes she wore specializing in pipe organ. o during the years in which she directed, produced or perWe now jump from Mr. Martin’s operation of the Mayformed in most of the theatrical productions or parades flower Mine beginning in 1880, to the years after 1907, when that took place in Nevada City. (Searls Library photo.) he owned the Miners’ Foundry. That’s because all the inter32