Fifty Years in Oregon was written by Theodore T.
Geer, a grandson of Joseph Carey Geer and a shirttail ancestor of
ours.
I have put much of the book on
this website. I started because several
chapters describe the early roots of our family history in Oregon. I
kept going because
I found many of the chapters from this perspective on the early
settlers and the history of Oregon to be quite
interesting.
Taken all in all, Oregon,
considering that it is situated on the western verge of the continent, has had a
most interesting, almost romantic, history. The very difficulty by which it was
reached in the early days made it doubly attractive to the adventuresome spirit
which dominated the men who took possession of it sixty and seventy years ago.
As I approach the point where this work must be drawn to a close, I realize what
an abundance of material there is relating to many prominent men who wrought
here in those days which I have not touched upon at all. It is a “far cry” from
the present “Oregon System” of choosing public officers to the manner of
controlling a Legislature in the “days of ‘49,” when the first territorial
lawmaking body met at Oregon City, then the capital. Nothing has been said of
Jacob Conser, Samuel Parker, John Grim, H. N. V. Holmes, “Bob” Kinney, A. J.
Hembree, Wesley Shannon, Nathaniel Ford — all members of that body — or of Fred
Waymire, James McBride, Ralph Wilcox, Ben Simpson and others who were members of
the next Legislature, all men of force, character and patriotic impulses, the
salt of the earth.
One of the prominent men in
Oregon for many years in its formative period was Benjamin Simpson, who bears
the distinction of being the only man in the history of the State who has served
in the Legislature from four different counties. He was a member of the House in
1850 from Clackamas County, from Marion County in 1851, and again in 1852; in
1853 he was a member of the council from Marion County, and served a single
term. In 1862 he had located in Polk County, and apparently from force of habit
went to the Legislature from that subdivision of the State. In 1872 he was
elected from Benton County, thus establishing a record that stands alone in this
State. A few months before his death, which occurred in Portland in the summer
of 1910 at the advanced age of ninety-two years, he told me a number of
incidents of his early experience in Oregon public life.
As to his election to the
Legislature from Benton County in 1872, he said:
“One of the most amusing
incidents connected with my public life happened in the election in June, 1872.
I had been living for a number of years in Salem, but in that year was engaged
in building a schooner over at Yaquina Bay. I had taken a twenty-two thousand
dollar contract and was employing a large number of men. I was there myself
practically all the time and when the campaign opened I conceived the idea of
going to the Legislature. I had no trouble in getting the nomination, but at
once the Democrats got busy in an effort to defeat me on the ground that I was a
carpetbagger, an importation, etc. From the day of my nomination the campaign
was red-hot and it kept myself and friends busy explaining that under the laws
of Oregon I was, under the circumstances, a citizen of Benton County and that,
further, I was there engaged in developing its maritime resources and that, in
my judgment, Yaquina Bay was destined to become one of the greatest seaports on
the Pacific Coast, etc.
“But this, argument had no
effect toward lessening the bitterness of the Democratic campaign, and I found
myself in the midst of the fight of my life. I voted at Yaquina and the next day
went over the mountains to Corvallis, where the results of the election were
being received. I arrived there late in the afternoon and saw a large crowd of
men standing in front of the courthouse. When I had reached a point two blocks
away I was recognized, and one of my most enthusiastic supporters and workers
started toward me and shouted at the very top of his voice: ‘Hurrah, Ben; hurry
up. You’re elected by sixty majority, and if you had really been a resident of
the county you would have beat ‘em by at least four hundred.’
“Of course the joke was on
me, but I had won the election all right and it was only one of the incidents in
the game of politics.
“In 1849 I took an active
part in bringing out Samuel R. Thurston for Congress. I wanted to beat Jim
Nesmith, who concluded that he would like to represent the new territory at
Washington, and Thurston was the best timber we had to do it with, I thought. He
was nominated and elected and on the morning he was going to start away a crowd
of us had gathered on the bank of the Willamette at Oregon City. Thurston lived
just across the river in Linn City, which at that early day was a serious rival
of both Oregon City and Portland. I had a store and sawmill at Clackamas,
another ambitious and promising town on the Willamette at the mouth of the
Clackamas River. The day before Thurston had been down to my store and bought a
bottle of vinegar. I furnished the bottle and he promised to return it the next
morning as he started to Washington. We had not stood long on the bank of the
river watching for him when he appeared and went down toward the bank to take
the ferry-boat. There was a woman there also, with an umbrella in her hand, and
when Thurston started to board the boat we could see that the two began a
vigorous conversation, attended by a series of gestures which indicated a
decided difference of opinion. The argument didn’t last long, however, for the
woman began to hunt for Thurston’s solar plexus with the point of her umbrella,
and a broadside sent his hat to grass, while the Congressman-elect grabbed her
wrists and held her until her ire subsided and he was allowed to depart in
peace.
“The melee furnished our
party a deal of fun and when he arrived on our side of the river Thurston
explained that he and his antagonist had had some differences (I have now
forgotten what the trouble was about), and he added, ‘Ben, in the scuffle I
dropped your bottle and it broke in a thousand pieces.’ He offered to pay for
it. bottles of any kind in those days being worth money, but I told him to let
it go as the fun was worth the price of a full-sized demijohn.”
Samuel R. Thurston, of whom
Simpson speaks in the foregoing incident, was a prominent figure in the early
territorial days, being the first delegate to Congress after the establishment
of the territorial government. He was born in Maine, in 1816, was a graduate of
Bowdoin College, and came to Oregon from Iowa across the plains in 1847. After
his election to Congress, in 1849, he went to Washington, served one term and on
his way home died at sea between Panama and Acapulco. His remains were buried at
the latter place at the time, but a few years afterward, the territorial
legislature having appropriated money for the purpose, they were exhumed and
re-interred in the Odd Fellow’s Cemetery at Salem.
The State has since erected a
monument over his grave, on which are these words:
“Here rests Oregon’s first
delegate; a man of genius and learning, a lawyer and statesman; his Christian
virtues equaled by his wide philanthropy. His public acts were his best
eulogium.”
Thurston was a very popular
man, proof of which permeates the early records of Oregon history; but not the
least conclusive is the fact that nearly every boy born in the territory in 1850
or 1851 has Thurston for either his front or middle name; among the latter the
writer of these lines is duly registered.
One of the best known of the
early pioneers was Samuel K. Barlow, who crossed the plains in 1845. Arriving at
The Dalles and finding that those who had preceded him had made the remainder of
the journey to the Willamette valley by rafting their belongings down the
Columbia River, he decided it was time somebody built a wagon road across the
Cascades. The result was the making of what was for fifty years known as the
Barlow road, over which, late in the season, he and his companions reached their
destination.
Barlow settled on a beautiful
small prairie just south of Oregon City which to this day is known as “Barlow’s
Prairie.” He came from Indiana and after a few years began to yearn for the
walnut trees with which he had been familiar in that State. Walnut trees do not
grow indigenously in Oregon, but when transplanted thrive fully as well as in
the Mississippi Valley. To gratify his longing for walnut trees in his new home
he arranged with Thurston, before his departure for Washington, to bring back
with him a bushel of walnuts which he would write his people in Indiana to send
to the national capital before his return. This was done and they were aboard
the vessel when Thurston died. This event unsettled the ordinary course of
things and Barlow’s walnuts were not heard of — or from — in fact, he had no
assurance that Thurston had started with them. After a couple of months,
however, he received word from an agent in Portland that there was a bag of
something there which apparently belonged to him and that there was a charge of
fifty dollars on it — for freight.
Barlow at once wrote the
agent that he would never pay such an outrageous price for the walnuts and that
he could keep them for his debt — that if he was going to be robbed, he wanted
it to be a first-class job! But, in describing the circumstance afterward, he
said the more he thought the matter over the more unreconciled he was to the
fact that only fifty miles away there was a bushel of real old Indiana walnuts —
right from his old home — and after a week of unrest he went to Portland, paid
the fifty dollars freight bill on his bushel of walnuts and went home, happy, he
said, notwithstanding the robbery!
But it proved a good
financial investment, after all, for he planted the nuts the following fall,
nearly all of them grew, and they did so remarkably well that within two years
he had sold fully a hundred of them at one dollar each and had enough left to
line the roadway lead ing from his handsome residence to the public highway.
Today the beautiful archway formed by the intertwining branches of those walnut
trees, now sixty-five years old, is admired by passengers on the Southern
Pacific Railroad as the train stops at the “Barlow” station; but not many of the
thousands of people, even Oregonians, who have commented on their beauty, are
aware of their Indiana origin or the part Samuel R. Thurston had in the original
transfer.
Several of the beautiful
walnuts to be seen on the streets of Salem, and in other parts of the State,
were obtained sixty years ago from the Barlow importation from Hoosierdom.
Next Chapter -
Oregon pioneers were often creative in the ways in which they handled civil
service and civil obligations.
If you are interested in finding this book, Fifty
Years in Oregon, it can
often be located at Powell's Books in Portland
which is one of the largest used book stores in the United States or, through the
Alibris service
which catalogs used books from stores across the country. For more information on the Geer Family, visit the Geer Family website. Other resources
and references include:
