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Volume 057-4 - October 2003 (6 pages)
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Page: of 6
NCHS Bulletin October 2003
they had a son and daughter. In 1858 Oscar brought his
young family to Nevada City. Oscar is best remembered in
Nevada County history for his metallurgical and sulphurets
works on the Grass Valley to Nevada City road. It was the
first practical attempt on the coast to reduce auriferous sulphurets by the chlorinizing process. In 1858 he formed a
partnership for that purpose with G. F. “Fred’’ Deetken, a
Nevada City surveyor, that lasted until 1862.
On January 24, 1862, Oscar’s wife died soon after the
birth of her fourth child, Eugene. Apparently Oscar brought
his three sons and daughter Annie back to the East, because
Eugene died at Jersey City, NY, on May 7 1864. On August
2, 1866, Oscar married Emma Senner in Nevada City and
they had one son, Clarence, and two daughters, Ida and
Lou, who attended school in New York. In 1875 his son
Albert came to Nevada City to attend high school, and in
1883 he succeeded his father as manager of the reduction
works.
Oscar lived in Nevada County until a few months prior
to his death in January of 1892. He had been in ill health
for several years and in November 1891 he and his wife
and two youngest children moved to San Francisco, where
he died. Albert Maltman became a successful miner and
later was a mining engineer who was called to foreign
countries for his expertise, learned in Nevada County. Albert married another Nevada City native, Mary Gault, the
daughter of pioneer Alexander Gault. Albert died in Los
Angeles in 1930.
The Tomlinsons
Statira Tomlinson, the writer of the letter, was the
daughter of Anna and Oliver M. Tomlinson. On June 24,
1854, sixteen-year-old Statira was married in Nevada City
Office of the Coyote & Deer Creek Water Co. at Nevada City as it looked in 1851.
Oliver M. Tomlinson was president of the company in the following year.
to William Maltman. Mary Searls, wife of Nevada City attorney Niles Searls, wrote about the event in a letter to her
family, saying: “[Deb and Charlie Mulford] attended a wedding last Sat. evening of [Miss Statira Tomlinson to Mr.
William Maltman]. The bride lived in a very small house
and could only invite a very few, so her father selected, as
he said, his banker (Charlie), his lawyer, his merchant, and
minister, who with their wives formed the select few. . . . I
went with Charlie and Deb yesterday to call on the bride,
who is about 15 years old... .”
Except for her husband’s unfortunate accident and the
letter she wrote, Statira’s name might have been lost in the
annals of Nevada County history. Few women were mentioned or written about in histories of the early days. Not
much is known about her life from the date of her marriage
until that fateful day in December of 1870.
Statira’s father, Oliver Tomlinson, was living at Nevada
City as early as 1852, when he was president of the Coyote
and Deer Creek Water Co. at Coyoteville (a suburb of
Nevada City). It is possible that he came west in 1849, because his wife Ann and daughter Statira (then age 12) were
living in New York in Buffalo City, Erie County, in the
household of Asel Cobel in the 1850 census. (Cobel may
have been a brother or cousin to Ann, as the MaltmanCobel connection appears again much later in Nevada
County records.) Ann eventually came to California, and
was living in Nevada City with her husband by 1860, next
door to the Charles Kent family.
There are several references to Tomlinson in the 1880
History of Nevada County, California, but these are all
early references and none of the citations recognize him as
still living when the history was written. Tomlinson was
one of the founders of the Trinity
Episcopal Church when the church
was organized in 1855. He was a
contemporary of every early Nevada
City “mover and shaker,’ including
the most prominent citizens: Rolfe,
Belden, Mulford, Searls, Sargent,
Deal, Gray, Marcellus, Caswell,
Crawford and others.
Oliver is known to have constructed an early “elevator” on
Manzanita Hill to elevate dirt and
water to his diggings to which there
was no water supply. He was called
both ingenious and eccentric; today
we would probably call him a
genius-entrepreneur and inventor
who was probably ahead of his
time. His claims were rich and extensive and were surrounded by a
wide rim of hard granite. Drainage
could not be obtained and in 1855
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