by REX NEEDLE

THE CALIFORNIAN gold rush of 1849 attracted thousands of prospectors who flooded in from around the world and fortunes were soon being made and lost in the gambling houses that mushroomed along with saloons and brothels in San Francisco which grew from a village to a city of 25,000 in the space of a few months.

Many adventurers from within the United States headed west and more sailed in via Cape Horn or by crossing the Panama isthmus while others arrived from Australia, China and of course Britain. Among them was John Thorpe Layton, second son of William Layton, a local farmer and landlord of the Bull Hotel in the Market Place at Bourne [now the Burghley Arms], who decided to leave home and seek his fortune in the new world. He is one of the few who did get rich and managed to keep his money.

In July 1849, when he was only eighteen, he signed on as a seaman aboard the barque Jane Dixon that sailed from Liverpool bound for California, voyaging around Cape Horn and arriving at San Francisco in January 1850. He spent the next few months engaged in boating and fishing on the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay until the spring of 1851 when he took a passage to the mouth of the Umpqua river in Douglas County. He landed at Gardiner and made his way through southern Oregon to the mines at Yreka and Scott River, northern California, remaining in the locality until 1st August 1852. He then moved to Jackson County, Oregon, and worked in the mines around Jacksonville until 1858, thence to Williamsburg, Josephine County, where he was engaged in trading and mining with fair success. In 1877, he bought a farm and established a homestead and in the process became the head of a family that survives to this day.

He was frequently attacked by Indians but he fought them off successfully and in order to help suppress the various uprisings, he enlisted on 8th August 1853 and remained in the army until 13th November 1855. While living in Jacksonville, Layton got married on 13th February 1856 to Mary Nail (born in Missouri in 1840) and they had five children before she died on 20th December 1864.

He was married again on 18th August 1866 to Harriett Doak (who was born at Illinois) and they had one child, William, but he divorced her in 1868. His third wife was Theresa Moore who he married on 8th November 1871 and they had nine children.

Twenty-five years after leaving Bourne, Layton had become an astute businessman and property owner, wealthy and respected in his community. His local newspaper at Jacksonville reported in December 1875: “He is at present generally acknowledged to be on the high road to fortune although the result has not been attained without the exhibition of uncommon pluck, energy and perseverance, through a long and protracted career of mining in which he is monarch of all he surveys.”

In 1904, his standing in the community was summed up in an account published in the book Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon which eulogised his life as follows:

“The claims of John Thorpe Layton, upon the consideration of his fellow residents of Jackson and Josephine Counties, rest upon his more than ordinary ability as a miner and prospector. The mining camps of this part of the state have long been familiar to him and of whom it may be said he has operated with a comparatively sure hand, and while making rapid progress, has proceeded with extreme caution in his investments.

“Since becoming a citizen of this country, Mr Layton has thrown his political sympathies with the Democratic Party but has always been averse to office holding. John T Layton was the owner of both the Ferris Gulch and Williamsburg mines, in active operation for more than 40 years, thirty miles of mining ditches dug by hired Chinese labourers, builder of the Grants Pass Hotel in 1889, and owner of 800 acres of mineral and agricultural land. He has led an industrious and well-directed life and has been interested in mining for nearly fifty-three years. He has established many warm friendships in the course of his coming and going in the west and is known for his generosity, his liberal mindedness, and his enthusiastic advocacy of the climate and resources of the state of Oregon.”

Layton died on 14th December 1905 aged 74 and is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery at Jacksonville, Oregon, where his grave has recently been restored to its original condition by his great grandson, Gene Layton of Avondale, Arizona.

John Layton's father, William, was born on 29th January 1799, and married Mary Ann Pears (1800-1855). He was landlord of the Bull Hotel in Bourne but by 1842, he had left the licensed trade and become a farmer. He died in July 1872 at the age of 73 and is buried in the town cemetery. The couple had eight children, John being born on 16th May 1831. He attended several schools in the area and then served an apprenticeship of four years at a hardware shop in Stamford before leaving for America in 1849 and never returned home.

On his death in 1905, he was survived only by his young sister, Charlotte, who was 15 when he left home. She spent her life as a teacher and in 1854, opened a private school in West Street, Bourne and ran it for almost fifty years, catering at first for young ladies and then for boys too. She also took an interest in the children who lived at the Bourne Union or workhouse and often took them gifts of clothing and sweets. Miss Layton retired in 1904 and made her home with Mrs G H Griffen in Harrington Street, a lady who had previously been in her employ.

She took an active interest in the London City Missions, acting as the local honorary secretary and undertaking the distribution of the society's magazine in the town and was also deeply interested in the society's waifs and strays and was an energetic collector of funds on their behalf. Charlotte died on Sunday 15th October 1914 at the age of 80 and was buried in the town cemetery and although she had specifically requested no flowers, there were several floral tributes from some of the 30 past pupils of her school who still resided in the town.

John Layton is remembered today in the United States where his descendents number several hundred but in Bourne, the name has practically disappeared and he is almost forgotten.