[5] Briggs moved to California about 1852, living first in a place called Olita, then settling in Jackson, where he started a law practice, built a home in Greek Revival style, and became active in local politics.
[6] In 1855, when in the aftermath of a series of murders, lynchings, arsons and other outrages a public meeting was held to propose the outlawing of all "Mexicans" in Amador County, Briggs was especially "violently opposed" to the measure; others agreed, and the idea was abandoned.
[11] During his term in the Assembly, Briggs introduced a bill to move the state capital to local high point Butte Mountain in Amador, and providing for a sufficient number of balloons to be attached to the capital building to float and hold it suspended, so that in the case of high water or other danger it could be moved without additional expense.
[14] In 1865, he acquired the presses of the defunct Amador Dispatch (whose Mississippi-born editor had been arrested for celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln) and began publishing a newspaper called the Union Advocate in Jackson.
He appears to have been the Republican nominee in 1877 for the Assembly district including Inyo and Mono Counties; at least one California newspaper reported him as winning that seat, but the Legislature's own records do not show him serving.
Local historian J. D. Mason wrote, His petite form seemed made up of a bundle of nerves, as unconscious of fatigue as the wires of an electric battery, which seemed to flash to his brain and concentrate there all the vast vitality which nature had so bound together, whenever occasion demanded.