THOMAS WALTER NOLAND (1879-1910): "Walter," as he liked to be called, was born in 1879, in the Blanket Creek area of Tuolumne County, near Sonora. He was likely named after his father's brother, Thomas Albert Noland, who lived and worked nearby. (Perhaps young Thomas' immediate family used "Walter" to distinguish him from his Uncle Thomas and that name stuck!)

Walter married Lillian Mae "Lilly" Dambacher (1883-1983) on November 28, 1907, Thanksgiving Day. (The Dambacher family were early settlers of Tuolumne County, and is considered by some to be the oldest continuous family living in the county.)

Walter and Lillian had one child, Mary Louise (Noland) Anderson Starks (1908-2002). "Mary" probably came from her paternal grandmother, Mary (Walton) Noland, and "Louise" from Lillian's mother, Louise Regina (Bixel) Dambacher (1860-1951). Walter's daughter, who always preferred to go by "Louise," was born in 1908 at the Sonora Sanitarium. She was delivered and cared for by Dr. Robert Innis Bromley, the Sanitarium's founder.

Incidentally, the maternal grandparents of Walter's wife, the Bixels, owned a large brewery near Columbia. The brewery was established at an abandoned Indian village springs, and produced lagers, ales, wines and syrups for over 60 years. The brewery gardens were popular for socializing on Sunday afternoons. Still visible today is a two-story brick brewery building, hops kiln, and a stone spring-house. The brewery, originally built in 1856, is now owned by the State of California.

Getting back to Walter, he was a ditch superintendent for the Sierra Water and Power Company. Tragically, while duck hunting at the nearby Phoenix Lake in 1910, he drowned. Walter is buried in the Sonora City Cemetery.

[After Walter's death, Lillian married James T. Wight (1869-1918) in 1913, and had a daughter with him, Mabel May "Doll" (Wight) Grenfell (1917-1998). By 1920, after the death of her husband, Lillian married August Engler (1879-1961), and with him, had a son, Gerald B. Engler (1924-2014). Lillian Mae (Dambacher) Noland Wight Engler died in 1983 in Peaceful Valley, and is buried at Sonora's Mountain Shadow Cemetery.]