This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's .
Please share your thoughts on the matter at on the page.
You are welcome to edit this article, but please do not blank this article or remove this notice while the discussion is in progress. For more information, particularly on merging or moving the article during the discussion, read the .
If you created the article, please don't take offense. Instead, please join the discussion and consider improving the article so that it meets the .
William James Timmins was born November 3, 1860 in Penryn, Cornwall, England. His name is important in Utah history as first engineer of the firat sugar beet fqactory in Cache Valley which brought a cash income to farmers in Northern Utah who theretofore had no way of exporting a significant cash crop. This vignette is exerpted from the Brighton, Thornley, Timmins History (copies in the library of Utah State University and the LDS Genealogical Library in Salt Lke City).
Will was of Huguenot ancestry, The Huguenots were a Protestant group from the Pyrenees Region in the South of France. (The name Timmons, as originally spelled, apparently means “one from Mt. Timothy”). When the King of France was killed in a jousting tournament his nearest relative was the Count of Navarre who was a Huguenot. In order to united France, Henry of Navarre converted to Catholicism, but issued a decree of toleration known as the Edict of Nantes which for the first time in French history permitted non-Catholics to hold commissions in the army, high civil rank in the government, and to openly participate in commerce and industry. France flourished for a hundred years as never before. But Henry’s grandson Louis XIV, under the influence of his mother Catherine de Medici and the Catholic extremist the Duke de Guise revoked the edict in 1685 resulting in the slaughter of thousands of Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Night Massacre while thousands of others fled to the Netherlands, Switzerland, and England – all Protestant countries. This is when the first Timmons show up in Cornwall. With the passage of time, Will’s family became of the Anglican persuasion.
Cornwall being one of the chief mining counties of England, Will grew up to become a mining engineer. Attracted by the newly opened mines in the United States, Will sailed to New Orleans, then up the Mississippi, finally settling in Caribous County, Idaho not far from Soda Springs. There his fate merged with that of Helen Thornley . After marrying Helen (see her history) they moved to Montana where he ran the machinery in the mines near Butte and where his first two children were born.
In the meantime the sugar beet industry had been introduced to Utah and a new factory was built in Logan. Will Timmins was offered the job of chief engineer and the family returned to Cache Valley, never to leave again. It is reported that one of the factory’s unskilled laborer’s once complained to the Manager that Will Timmins just spent his time looking at gauges while the rest of the hands had to do hard sweat labor. The reply was, “Will Timmins looking at the steam gauges is worth any ten of you bozos.” He was a skilled and valued technician in a day when engineers were few and far between. As his son Mont grew older he apprenticed to his father and became a sufficiently skilled practical engineer that he was selected to run a locomotive during the First World War transporting troops and materiel from Orleans in central France to the front at Verdun near the German border.
Will Timmins had an inquiring mind which had to understand the operations of any machine he had access to. He owned one of the first motor cars in Cache Valley. No sooner delivered than he was dismantling it bolt by bolt on a sheet under an apple tree in his garden to make sure he understood how every gear, cam, and cylinder, operated to make the car run
He had just built a new home for his wife Helen when in a day before antibiotics and modern dentistry he got an infected tooth which became septic and he died age 61 of blood poisoning.
Will had four brothers. One settled in South Africa, another in Australia, Charles spent his life at sea, and Joseph remained in Cornwall – while Will contributed his life to the United States of America and Cache Valley. The family remains in touch around the world.
