William Henry Scodie

1825-1898

Block 20, Lot B6

He was born Wilhelm Heinrich Schodda on June 18, 1825 in the Duchy of Hanover in Germany. Wilhelm left Bremen, Germany as a teenager, worked as a ship's cabin boy, then in Santiago, Chile as a cook. After going to Australia, he arrived in San Francisco in 1855. In 1856, he was in the mining town of Keyesville here in Kern County. In the 1860 Census, he was listed as a "merchant" aged 33. He ran a small hotel and changed his name to Scodie (easier for the Americans to pronounce he thought). He saved his money and looked for land to buy. In 1861, he bought a ranch in the South Fork Valley. J V. Roberts and his Indian wife Ellen on the Bloomfield Ranch were his only neighbors.

Will Scodie operated the stage stop known as Scodie Station for travelers which included a hotel, store, bank and blacksmith shop in an existing adobe ranch house. All was not peaceful for the store keeper. He survived several robberies and at one time was robbed by the infamous outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez’s gang. Will was relieved of $800, a string of horses, and a change of clothes.

In the early 1870s, at about age 48, he married a young Indian woman, a Tubatulabal named White Blanket. William and White Blanket Scodie had one child, a daughter, Sophia. It was Sophia who named the station Onyx. When the postal department needed a name for the post office, Will left it to Sophia. She thought Scodie sounded too much like Scotia, and while thumbing through a dictionary found "ONYX". She liked the sound and so it was to be.

After White Blanket died, Will married Elise Stahlecker Marx and they had a child named Willma. William Scodie died November 4, 1898.

The Old Kernville Historic Cemetery Tour was researched and created by Kern River Valley Historical Society members Jenny Hanley, and Richard Rowe as part of the 2010 Kern River Valley Historical Society Annual History Days, celebrating the history of the Kern River Valley.