William Barker

William Barker (1817–1894), also known as Billy Barker, was an English prospector who was famous for being one of the first to find a large amount of gold in the Cariboo of British Columbia. He was also the founder and namesake of Barkerville, the most significant town during the region's gold rush, which is preserved today as a historic town. Biography Barker was born in 1817 in March, Cambridgeshire, England, and was baptised on 7 June 1817 in St Wendreda's Church, March. As a child he worked as a waterman on the waterways of England. He married widow Jane Lavender in Bluntisham, Huntingdonshire in 1839, and they had one daughter named Emma Eliza (born 1840). By the 1840s, railways had begun to replace canal transport in England, and Barker decided he would try his luck in America. He left his wife and child in England in penury; his wife died in the workhouse in Doddington, Cambridgeshire in 1850. Barker traveled to California, where he made little during the California Gold Rush, and afterward moved to British Columbia with many fellow miners as part of the British Columbia gold rushes. His party discovered gold in the Williams Creek area, and his fellow crew member "Dutch Bill" Wilhelm Dietz was the first to find a good amount of gold in the Creek Valley area.