1827–1862

William Z. Walker was born on 21 October 1827 at Salem, New Hampshire to Henry and Anna (Woodbury) Walker. In 1849, at age twenty-one, he set out from Boston, Massachusetts, to mine for gold in California. William’s diary ends at Sacramento on 12 November 1849, and it is unknown when he returned to the United States.

William died thirteen years later on 14 March 1862 in the Civil War as a lieutenant for the Ninth Regiment New Jersey Volunteers. He was thirty-four years old.

William does not appear in the 1860 New Jersey or Massachusetts Censuses. His obituary, however, does record that he had been a resident of Haverhill, Essex County, Massachusetts before his enlistment in the Volunteers.