Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 074-4 - October 2020 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2023-12-30 11:48:46 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:34 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:34

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

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Nevada County’s Best Family Cornish Immigrants Find a Home By Gage McKinney The experience of immigration shaped the lives of the immigrants who settled Nevada County. The cultures that prepared them to embark, the hardship of travel and the need to prove themselves in unfamiliar settings—these experiences changed them and then continued to shape the lives of their descendants for generations. We can draw these lessons from the stories of many successful immigrant families, and none better than the story of William F and Betsy Best and their descenf dants. They hailed from Cornwall, a Celtic land, royal duchy and southwestern-most county of Britain. Today their descendants are third-and fourth-generation California natives’. Immigration was not the Best family’s first choice. In Cornwall, one is always near the sea, but the Bests weren’t seafarers and weren’t among the mariners who in colonial times established Cornwall’s links with America. They were tied to the land, especially near the county town of Bodmin, a place with churches and a priory dating back over 1,000 years. Over several generations, through marriages and new family alliancFamily. es, the Bests moved southwesterly : William Best (1823-1890) mined on three continents, pursuing china clay, copper and gold. The skills he acquired helped him make a success of the Magenta claim in Grass Valley, just south of today’s Memorial Park. Courtesy Best ‘Nevada County Historical society Bulletin eee 74 NUMBER 4 OCTOBER 7, They Likely Met at Chapel About 1824 William Best, who would become an emigrant, was born on the family farm. Being the fifth child, he had no prospects for inheritance, so he became a china clay miner and left the farm for the nearby town of St. Austell. There he became attached to Elizabeth “Betsy” Dyer, the eldest daughter among the 10 children of a clay pit manager. After her father died, Betsy also had to make her own way and apparently worked as a servant in a prosperous St. Austell household. The Bests had once worshipped as Quakers but more recently had become Bible Christians, a fervent, egalitarian branch of Methodism. William and Betsy may have met at chapel and known the simple pleasure of walking together for worship and singing on Sunday morning and then again for preaching in the evening. Children of the “Hungry ‘40’s” William and Betsy were raised in the cruel decade remembered as “the Hungry ‘40s,” years of potato famine, food riots and death. Especially in 1845-47, the fungus phytophthora infestans ravaged Ireland and the Scotto St. Stephens-in-Brannel parish. By the outbreak of the American Revolution, the Bests owned and operated Menmudy Farm. In the early 19" century John Best, who had been born at Menmudy Farm, acquired his own place, Longstone Farm near the hamlet of Pounds. Longstone lies beside some of Cormwall’s richest deposits of china clay used in English china. So in addition to tending his farm, John Best also worked as a china clay miner. tish islands and highlands. The potato was also a staple of the Cornish poor and the blight led to acute suffering. “Everything was very dear and the working people were half starved,” remembered a Cornishman about William Best’s age. The lean years caused couples like William and Betsy to postpone marriage’. People in the 1840s didn’t perish in their thousands in