By Susan Couso
William B. Thorrington was lucky in many ways and was well suited to the sobriquet ‘Lucky Bill’. He was born in 1815, in Chenango County, New York, the only son of James and Mary Ann Thorrington, who also had two daughters.
Thorrington married Maria Loretta Perkins in about 1838. They had a baby daughter, who lived a very short while. Then, in 1841, their son William Jerome Thorrington was born.
For some reason, Lucky Bill always seemed to take the short cut to attain wealth. In 1844, when he was twenty-five years old, he was tried and found guilty of, “obtaining property by means of false pretenses,” after being involved in a counterfeiting scheme.
In 1848, he was out of jail and moved with his family to Marshall, Calhoun County, Michigan. But, once again, he got into some foul business. He was accused of forgery, and rather than face the justice system there, he decided to ‘hightail’ it west.
In 1850 he ended up in Sacramento, where he mastered the con-game and made a small fortune plying his skill at various schemes. His favorite was the ‘thimble rigging’, or as most would call it, ‘shell game’. Lucky Bill was an expert at this and very adept at moving the ball at will, without the ‘mark’ noticing. He was reported as making $24,000 in two months while working the streets of the capitol.
As locals caught on to Lucky Bill’s skills, he would be forced to change ‘climates’, moving to Placerville and other mining towns.
But in Placerville, Lucky Bill got into some ‘hot water’ as he swindled a wealthy resident out of a couple of thousand dollars. He was forced to hide out in the woods with another gambler until things cooled a bit. Then he headed back to Sacramento.
In the spring of 1852, Lucky Bill traveled back to Michigan. His alure to most of the feminine persuasion was evident, and when he began the trek back west, he enticed three young girls to accompany him.
Their families were enraged, and a search party of family and friends followed in pursuit. As the travelers reached Peoria, Illinois, the trackers overtook them. Two of the girls returned home, but Martha Lamb kept on with Thorrington.
On this trip back west, three of the Olds brothers; Luther, John and David traveled with him. By the end of 1853, they were all in Carson Valley and the town of Genoa, in Utah Territory.
The Carson Valley became Thorrington’s new home. He fit in well with the growing community, and its lack of local authorities seemed to fit his lifestyle well. He was, to put it bluntly, a sharp, a purloiner, a knave and a rogue.
He was six feet one inch tall and weighed in at two hundred pounds, with glossy black wavy hair described as, “like a raven’s wing”. He was a scamp, but he was also personable, impeccably dressed and well liked, especially by the ladies. Thorrington, and his gang of crooks and ‘wannabe’ crooks were quite content at Genoa.
Lucky Bill could also be generous, and on more than one occasion, he was known to have returned the money that he had so creatively won from his prey, when he discovered that they would be in extreme hardship.
Thorrington was usually on the side of the ‘under-dog’ in any situation, disregarding the circumstance which had placed the dog in that position.
Thorrington became part of the political movement to create the Territory of Nevada and in 1857 served on several committees to promote this idea. This might seem odd for a man who enjoyed the freedom of living in a community that was governed from over five hundred miles away, in Salt Lake City. But Lucky Bill was not always easy to read.
This conundrum of a person used his considerable skills well and managed to achieve significant wealth and prestige in the small area around the Carson Valley. He owned a ranch, a sawmill, and the Carson Canyon toll-road, among other properties, obtaining these assets by legal and sometimes less-than-legal means.
To spice things up a bit, Lucky Bill’s wife, Maria, moved from Michigan to Genoa with her teenage son, Jerome. This complicated the fact that Thorrington had his mistress, Martha Lamb in town, and by 1858, she was expecting his baby. Sometimes people make their own problems.
Meanwhile, in Honey Lake Valley, there was some difficulty. It began when William Combs Edwards killed the postmaster, named Snelling, in Merced County, California. In the Fall of 1857, he fled to western Utah (now Nevada). There, in Genoa, he met Lucky Bill. He mentioned the murder but insisted that it was self-defense. As Lucky Bill was known to befriend any sort of ‘riff-raff’, he had no problems with the man.
Edwards traveled between Carson Valley and Honey Lake Valley freely, even though Snelling was a Mason, and the Masonic Lodge had offered a $1500 reward for Edwards’ capture. While in Honey Lake Valley, he stayed in a cabin on Lassen Creek with John Mullen and Asa Snow, two characters of unappreciated repute.
In the spring of 1858, Thorrington decided to invest in some cattle, and first planned to go to Salt Lake City for the purchase. But he heard that Henry Gordier, who had a cabin on Baxter Creek at the south point of Bald Mountain, had some of these Mormon cattle.
Gordier, in partnership with Isaac Colthurst, had purchased a heard of fine Durham cattle from a Mormon family who was leaving the Carson Valley for Salt Lake City. These were the first Durham cattle to be seen in Honey Lake Valley. Gordier had done well for himself and was considered a ‘man of means’. He supposedly had made a small fortune in the mines of the Feather River region before settling down in Honey Lake Valley.
Thorrington came to Honey Lake Valley to inquire about buying some of the cattle from Henry Gordier, and after meeting with Edwards and John Mullen, he went home to Carson and left Edwards to make the deal.
Immediately, around the middle of March, Gordier disappeared, and Asa Snow moved into his cabin. When neighbors inquired, Snow said that Edwards and Mullen had purchased the land and all of the property belonging to Gordier, as Gordier was returning to France. The new owners had hired Snow to look after the place. According to Snow, Edwards and Mullen then went to Genoa with Gordier to seek out Lucky Bill, get the money, and finish the transaction.
Suspicions grew as Henry’s brother, who was still mining at Feather River, was contacted and said that Henry would never do such a thing.
A group of men went to investigate and found evidence of a struggle and eventually found Gordier’s body submerged in a deep hole where Willow Creek meets the Susan River. It had been in the water about six weeks and was a gruesome object.
Henry Gordier was buried, “in the graveyard about four miles south of Bankhead’s (Janesville).” This final resting place for Henry Gordier is now the Lakecrest Cemetery on the southwest corner of Highway 395 and Hicks Road.
Next Week – Part two: Frontier justice for the conspirators, with a trail leading back to Lucky Bill.
If you are a fan of our weekly history stories you should join the Lassen County Historical Society! It’s a fun way to be a part of our county’s rich history. When you sign up, you’ll receive regular Historical Society newsletters with interesting stories and information. Membership is open to anyone with an interest in area history.
Through your membership you help preserve local history. You can download a membership application by clicking here.
