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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NCHS Bulletin October 2020 route was by coastal ship from Adelaide, sailing eastward to Melbourne, “a second San Francisco.” There they may have spent a night at the Cornish Arms Hotel, run by a compatriot. Then they traveled inland about 80 miles to the gold fields. The Bests settled in Creswick, a settlement between the more famous gold towns of Ballarat and Bendigo. “A Rerun of California” “Tn many ways, the Victoria rush looked like a rerun of the California bonanza” which had occurred a dozen years earlier. Men who had participated in the California Gold Rush made the initial discoveries in Victoria. As with California, all nationalities rushed to the scene, and the Cornish especially, coming from elsewhere in Australia, California and Cornwall. They found the gold fields amid undulating, volcanic hills, a westward extension of Australia’s Great Dividing Range. Previously Creswick had been no more than a flat, squalid tent camp with appalling sanitation. About the time the Bests arrived it began to show signs of permanence, though not of comfort. A surveyor had laid out streets and a few buildings rose beside them, though most residents still lived in canvas tents’. At the diggings the miners joined teams and staked claims. Using hand tools, they dug to uncover auriferous gravels or followed quartz ledges into the earth. They sold their gold to the Gold Commissioner, a state officer who had a tent in the camp. Weekly the gold was sealed in canvas bags and escorted by mounted troops to Melbourne. If they followed the common pattern, the Bests pitched their tent among other Cornish families and perhaps even among friends from St. Austell. Living among John, Samuel, and William Jr. Best lived their adult lives in Grass Valley. William mined while John and Samuel engaged in the retail shoe business. Courtesy Searls Historical Library. Caucasian miners had left. Later, again following the California pattern, stock companies would enter the Victoria gold fields to pursue deep level, mechanized mining. Living in tents didn’t inhibit the Bests’ thriving family. Betsy gave birth to four children, two sons and two daughters, who were baptized in the Primitive Methodist Church at Creswick. The Primitive Methodists, another branch of Methodism, ministered to families on the mining frontiers. Circumnavigating the Globe By about 1862, the Bests made plans to return to Britain. The fact they could afford the journey, paying their passage in advance, was a measure of their success. Having come to Australia a decade before as expectant parents, they returned as a family of seven with children ranging from about 3 to 10 years old. The usual sea route took them southeasterly below New Zealand, and then easterly past Cape Horn at the South American tip, and then north on the Atlantic. Ships on the Best’s sea route, through the Magellan Strait, provisioned for 140 days. Hazards along the way included drifting Antarctic icebergs, mist-shrouded islands and mountainous seas through the strait. The Best’s vessel hit an iceberg and put into Rio de Janeiro for repair. By the time they arrived in England, William and Betsy had circled the earth, something their forbearers could hardly have imagined. The Best family returned to England with a purpose. Their second son, John Best, born in 1857, had contracted bone tuberculosis in the hip, an ailment still present in developing countries today. As a result, his under-developed right leg was shorter than compatriots gave the Bests some sense of safety, but they still lived in a sometimes lawless place. They had to worry about claim jumpers and thieves, and if he was like most men, William slept with a revolver in reach. William and Betsy had sufficient success to remain in Creswick for several years and until the surface gold played out in the early 1860s. Then, as they had in California, the diligent Chinese entered the diggings to glean the gold the the left and walking was difficult. William Best had heard of a medical doctor in Cumberland, in northwest England (now Cumbria County), who could treat his son’s ailment. The doctor prescribed a lift in the boy’s right shoe so he could walk with a more regular gait. Having achieved their purpose in England, the Bests probably visited Cornwall. If so, it was the only time the folks at Longstone Farm saw the Best children. The Bests had no intention of repatriating; they had seen what the wider world could offer. In 1866 they left England again.