William Rennie lives in a handsome residence on Beach Hill, Santa Cruz, on the same spot where his first residence in this city stood, and where he has lived continuously since first coming to Santa Cruz, in 1869.
Mr. Rennie is a California pioneer. His first advent in the Golden State was made in 1849, one year later than his departure from his native heath in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He was twenty-four years old when he left home, and had learned the carpenter's trade. His intention was to go to Canada, but after landing in New York he fell in with another carpenter who persuaded him that the new territory of Wisconsin afforded a better field. So he went to Wisconsin instead of Canada, and has never seen Canada yet.
His residence in Wisconsin was of but short duration. The early snows put a stop to carpenter work, and Mr. Rennie went to Milwaukee. The discovery of gold in California excited great interest in Wisconsin, and several companies were organized for a trip to the far West. Mr. Rennie joined one of these, which left Milwaukee on the 6th of March, 1849, and arrived at "Greenhorn" Camp, on Bear River, California, on October 6 of the same year. The members of the party immediately set to work in rich diggings. Until the rains came they took out from $30 to $50 a day apiece. When the rain forced them to stop work, most of the miners went to Sacramento. Mr. Rennie then resumed work at his trade, and helped to finish the first brick building in that city. The next spring he journeyed by steamboat to the present site of Marysville, and worked in the mines there.
In the fall of 1852 the news of rich gold discoveries in Australia induced a company of fifty or sixty miners to charter a small English vessel for a trip to the country. After a two months' stay he determined to return to California, and embarked at Sydney.
The voyage was full of disaster and hardship. The vessel was wrecked on a coral reef about one thousand five hundred miles from the Navigator Islands and twelve hundred miles from the Sandwich Islands. Crew and passengers took the boats, but the boat in which Mr. Rennie took refuge was the only one who occupants were saved. They headed in the direction of the Navigator Islands. Their scanty stock of provisions was ruined by the heavy seas that overwhelmed their boat, and for two weeks they subsisted upon the flesh of the captain's dog and that of a shark which they captured. After three weeks of hardship they were picked up by an American vessel, when within two hundred and fifty miles of the Navigator Islands.
At these islands most of the shipwrecked mariners went ashore and waited the coming of some ship that could take them to San Francisco. A vessel came in about two months.
On arriving in California the second time Mr. Rennie engaged in farming in the Sacramento Valley. In 1859 he visited his native country, and was there married to Miss Margaret Dawson, with whom he returned to America next year. He remained in the farming business sixteen years, until 1869, and then removed to Santa Cruz, retired from active business life, and settled down to enjoy a season of repose, to which a long series of activity, privation, and hardship certainly entitles him.
Five children have blessed the union of Mr. And Mrs. Rennie, three sons and two daughters.
History of Santa Cruz County, California
by E.S. Harrison
Published by Pacific Press Publishing Company
San Francisco, Cal., 1892
Transcribed by Yvonne Valentine
Santa Cruz County Biographies ~ Archive Biography Index ~ Archive Index
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