GEORGE THOMAS WILLIAMS  1869--1939

LULU LOUISE SPIERS  1875--1936

Most came to Shasta County for gold or to homestead, but George Williams came for his health. His parents, Robert and Sarah Catharine Wann Williams, had come west and lived in Oregon and Colusa County, California.  He was born May 3, 1869 in Quartena Valley. They were between two Indian tribes; George and his brothers played with the young Indians and George made and shot bows and arrows and did their Manhood Tests with them.

When he had consumption (tuberculosis) the doctor told him to live under the pine trees and brew tea with the bark and eat the sap. He went to his Uncle Oliver Williams who had homesteaded near Knob. He built himself a cabin over the hill from his uncle's and this treatment cured him.

Lulu Louise Spiers, born October 27, 1875 at Nevara Ridge in Humbolt County, was the daughter of John Richard and Nellie Cornelia Ruman Spiers. (Nellie was born on Ellis Island, as her parents arrived from Germany). Lulu and her sister were working at the Wildwood Inn when she met George.

They were married by a Baptist Minister July 29, 1897 at Jim Wright's home in Redding. George and Ella had three children:
 

George	b. Aug 20, 1898	d. Feb. 21, 1954	m. Jessie Murphy
Vernon N.	b. Jan. 21, 1900	d. Dec. 2, 1981	1st m. Gladys Murphy 2nd m. Della Brown
Loleta Lelia	b. Feb. 19, 1908	d. Apr. 2, 1994	m. Alva Graves

 
George built a house near his cabin; it had an attic, two bedrooms downstairs, laundry on the back porch, and a bathroom with a clawfoot tub.  Over the years, George bought another eight sections of land and added a meathouse, a smokehouse, shop, garage and large barn to store the surrey, hay wagon, freight wagons, the hay rake, the plow and a hay baler that the horses walked around to bale the hay. The children walked, rode horseback or skied to school and sometimes moved to be near a school, but always the family enjoyed life and their friends.

George was a charter member of the Harrison Gulch IOOF in 1902, but transferred to the Lodge at Igo when it disbanded in 1939. He was also a member of the Native Sons of the Golden West. George died July 18, 1939 and Lulu died September 20, 1946.

Source:  Shasta Historical Society - Nov 1998