Boones in Oregon

Besides my own genealogy, I am working on a project I call "Boones in Oregon." The object is to document those descendants of George and Mary Maugridge Boone who migrated to Oregon. My cousin is a 7GGrandson of George of Mary. From his grandfather Phillip Merwin, his ancestry is Phillip Clark Merwin, Mary E. Boone, Jesse Van Bibber, Alphonso, Jesse Bryan, Daniel M., Squire, George.

Alphonso Boone came to Oregon with all of his living children (excepting only George Luther, who stayed in Missouri) in 1846. They took the southern route, sometimes called the Applegate. When the wagons set out from Missouri, they were a very large group that formed and reformed several times along the trail. Alphonso and his family initially set out with a party of extended family friends, including former Missouri Governor Lilliburn Boggs and his wife, Panthea Boone (Alphonso's sister). Some of the large train were bound for California, such as the Donner party, and some were bound for Oregon.

Apparently the winter that year was unusually early and severe, trapping the Donner party in the mountains even though they were only a few days behind Lilliburn Boggs and his party. Boggs and his companions made it to California, most of the Donner party did not.

Alphonso and his family opted to take the Applegate Trail into southern Oregon. They branched off from the California trail at the Humboldt River and took the route Jesse Applegate and his brothers has blazed earlier. Unfortunately for the large party of pioneers and their wagons, all the Applegate brothers had done was blaze the trail -- marking where a road should be built. The travelers had to build their road in order to travel on it!

Look here for a good depiction of the map of the various Oregon and California trails. If you have ever driven from Ashland, Oregon, up I-5 to Roseburg and then into the Willamette Valley, you will have closely followed the route the pioneers took. The route climbs and dips from mountain summits to river valleys. It was the end of fall as the wagons began this arduous task, and they were soon bogged down in the wild and wet winters that happen in Oregon. Many possessions were either lost or left along the trail. Alphonso and his sons were carrying Daniel Boone’s surveying instruments with them, and left them cached along the trail. They went back later for them, but either misremembered the place or else natives had taken them.

The party arrived in the Willamette Valley at Mary’s River on Christmas day, 1846. Among the people in the train was George Law Curry, destined to court and win the hand of Alphonso’s oldest child, Chloe.

Did you enjoy this? More about Oregon Trail pioneers can be found at Stephanie Flora's award winning site, The Oregon Trail and Its Pioneers.

This and That

First a kind word for Dick Eastman and his Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter: he really gets it right. In a new post, I Have a Complaint, he makes an excellent point about subscription genealogy sites such as Ancestry and Footnote. I urge you to read it.

I had a lot of fun yesterday, at the Genealogical Forum of Oregon (GFO) first and then a trip to Lone Fir Cemetery. This being a holiday weekend in Oregon, it was a slightly cool, overcast day, perfecting for hiking around a cemetery or spending some time indoors.

At GFO I found both the death returns and marriage records I was looking for. It is always a thrill to me to see a part of the past this way. One of the death returns I was looking for was for Chloe (Boone) Curry, wife of Oregon's last Provisional Governor, George Law Curry. The death returns are microfilmed, and somewhat difficult to read, but the date of death was very clear: 10 Feb 1899. Then I went to Lone Fir and found the Curry family marker. I found the full name and dates of birth for some of the family, but as I transcribed the inscriptions I got a huge shock -- Chloe's dates on the stone are given as 1822-1889. That's a ten year difference! Now I need to go back to the GFO library and look in the Portland city directories for 1880 to 1900, and find out when she stops being listed. Drat the fire that destroyed the 1890 census!

That trip will fit perfectly, because Lone Fir is sponsoring a class on how to clean stones safely on Saturday, and I am going to that. Watch next week for tips from the class.