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.

Lone Fir Cemetery

The link goes to the website of The Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery. Many of the contact links seem to be broken, but this info is still correct as of today: Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery, 503-775-6278 (Portland number). This cemetery is the final resting place of many Oregon Pioneers, including Asa Lovejoy and Gov. George Law Curry. Metro, the Portland regional government, has some of the history of the cemetery here. The Political Graveyard, a very interesting site, lists other politicians who are buried here.

The cemetery will have staff from the Friends of Lone Fir available all Memorial Day weekend to help you find the graves of the famous and ordinary folks buried here. In addition, they hold a midsummer (dates to follow!) event showcasing period reenactments of some of the people who are buried there. If you have relatives resting in Lone Fir, they would love to hear from you about your family stories. My great grand aunt, Lucinda Alnora (Steen) Taylor Wilson Auld (she outlived at least 2 of them ) is buried there.

Cemeteries are great places to learn about and reflect on the history of a place. Careful reading of the stones will tell you about storms, epidemics and other disasters. Curious social facts will come to light. There is a marker in the Franklin Butte Cemetery at Scio, Oregon, that memorializes a husband and wife, both doctors. Woman doctors weren't very common until after the 1950s. What does this say about the society they lived in, and what extraordinary people they must have been?

Older cemeteries are full of tiny graves, some with no marker, some with a small stone bearing just initials, that hold babies. Children died in appalling numbers in the 19th and early 20th century. Mothers and infants both died from the perils of childbirth. Young men died in accidents and from epidemics. We live in historically exceptional times and an exceptional place: in America in the 21st century we don't face starvation every winter and spring, if we break a leg we are unlikely to die from complications, pneumonia is largely preventable and often treatable. Diabetes can be managed, infants with heart defects can be saved by an operation, appendicitis very rarely results in death. Just 100 years ago, this wasn't true.

As we approach Oregon's Sesquicentennial celebration, marking 150 years of statehood in 2009, we should take the time to learn, and yes to teach our children, what it meant to be a pioneer in the 1840s or 1850s. Think about it -- personal sanitation? baths? washing clothes? growing, in some cases killing your own food, and not eating until you had? The list goes on.

So spend some time at your local cemetery this Memorial Day, or if you are camping or even just hanging out at home, talk about the way we used to live.