El Dorado County
Biographies
BENJAMIN F. EDMUNDS
Was born May 20, 1824. Is the sixth child and sixth son of a family of thirteen children, sons and daughters of Richard and Lydia Edmunds, of Cape May, New Jersey. Here Benjamine [sic] T. was born, and when but a small boy he removed with his parents to the city of Philadelphia, where he received a common school education. In 1839 he went to sea, and while a sailor visited the ports of Boston and leading towns in Maine, and sailed to New Orleans and Liverpool. After his return from the voyage he went to learn the weaver’s trade, which, however was not to his taste, and returning again to the sea, sailed to South America.
On the 12th day of August, 1849, he was paid off in the city of Valparaiso, and at once joined the ship “Ann” as second mate and sailed for San Francisco, where he arrived in February, 1850. He went at once to the mines at Nevada city, where he remained about three months; returning to the water again he went to the Navigator Islands for a ship load of hogs, perhaps the first swine shipped into San Francisco. The winter of 1850 he spent in Valparaiso, and returned to California in the spring of 1851, and in June of same year located at Coloma, where, with the exception of about 11 months spent in Nevada and Sierra counties, he has ever since resided, and engaged himself in mining. He has an orchard of about 350 trees and 300 vines, all of choice varieties. The grapes are the seedless centennial, and most valuable for raisins. In politics Mr. Edmunds is a Republican. His ideas of religion are best given in his own words, “I believe man is a being purely physical, subject to nature and consequently to necessity. Born without our consent, our organization is independent of us, and our ideas come to us involuntarily. Man’s will had no share in bringing him into the world, and he goes out of it against his inclination. All his actions are compulsion. Human actions are never free. They necessarily proceed form constitution and from received ideas strengthened by example, education and experience, the motive which determines man is always beyond his power. He is not a free agent. A debauchee may be persuaded to change his conduct. This circumstance does not prove that he is free but only that motives can be found sufficient to counteract the effect of those which formerly acted upon him. Choice by no means proves liberty. Since hesitation only finishes when the will is determined by sufficient motives; and man cannot hinder motives from acting upon his will, can he prevent himself from wishing to possess that he thinks desirable? Notwithstanding the system of human liberty, men have universally founded their systems upon necessity alone. If motives were thought incapable of influencing the will why make use of morality, education, legislation and even of religion? We establish institutions to influence the will; a clear proof of our conviction that they must act upon it. These institutions are necessarily demonstrated to man. The necessity that governs the physical governs also the moral world, where everything is also subject to the same law.”
Historical Souvenir of El Dorado County, California with Illustrations & Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men & Pioneers - Oakland, Cal. - Paolo Sioli, Publisher, 1883. p – 224-225
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler