MARY "POLLY" COOPER MATHENY
1800-1856
by Don Rivara
donrivara@aol.com
The firstborn of Isaiah and Elizabeth Montier Cooper, Mary, nicknamed
"Polly," was born 23 February 1800, in Hardin County, Kentucky, no doubt. We
haven't any documentation on Hardin being the the county of her birth, but all
evidence points to it. She was the only Cooper child born in Kentucky.
Job Cooper, Mary's great grandfather, lived there at the time with his
second wife, Rebecca "Becky" and other relatives. The Coopers probably lived on
a farm adjacent to that of Isaiah and Rachel Younger Matheny. (In the 1810
U.S.Census the widowed Becky Cooper was in the next-enumerated household to
Isaiah Matheny's.) According to her granddaughter Lenore Rogers, Mary was a
second cousin to her future husband, Daniel Matheny, son of Isaiah and Rachel
Younger Matheny. Delving into old records of what are now Jefferson, Mineral,
and Hampshire counties, West Virginia, one can find early Cooper-Matheny
connections, but the kinship between the two has yet to be proven. ( This may
prove to be an impossible task because this area was the most actively contested
throughout the Civil War. Winchester, the county seat of adjacent Frederick
County, Virginia, changed hands between North and South some seventy-five times
during the war. Romney, county seat of Hampshire County, changed hands some
twenty-five times. The courthouses and their records suffered considerably.)
Earlier, from the time of the French and Indian War, the family of Thomas Cooper
lived in what is now Clark County, Virginia, between the Shenandoah River and
the Blue Ridge; the Mathenys lived nearby in what is now Jefferson Countly,
West Virginia, between the Shenandoah River and the Blue Ridge--they were
clearly neighbors. In Kentucky there were Youngers who lived across the Rolling
Fork of the Salt River from the Coopers and Mathenys in Bullitt County, probably
kinsmen of Rachel Younger Matheny, Daniel's mother.
Mary didn't spend much of her life in Kentucky. Before she was three, the
family moved north across the Ohio River into Clark County, Indiana Territory.
There she spent a childhood worrying about the Indian threat. The drunken,
brawling Indians who came to trade at Springville were people from whom she
learned to stay away. When she was but eleven, the territory became embroiled
over British-incited Shawnee depradations. General William Henry Harrison
defeated "the Prophet," Tecumseh's brother, at Tippecanoe Creek that year.
Nearby at the Pigeon Roost settlement, Indians attacked, savagely killing the
settlers and scalping them. A slain pregnant woman even had her child torn from
her womb and scalped. Another dazed woman wandered into a blockhouse a few
miles from the settlement carrying her dead baby she had inadvertently smothered
while holding her hand over the child's mouth while hiding herself and her
children from the attacking Indians. Mary's father joined the war to protect
his family.
It probably wasn't until after the War of 1812, when things settled down on
the Indiana-Kentucky frontier, that Mary went away to finishing school. There
was one in Kentucky (Lexington, I think). It was probably that one that Mary
attended. We know of Mary's attendance there from her daughter Charlotte
Matheny Kirkwood's memoirs. Mary was forever trying to instill the comportment
of a "lady" into her daughter, who said that her mother's efforts were not very
productive.
Young Daniel Matheny, serving under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New
Orleans, like all the participants at the battle there in January of 1815, was
unaware that the British and Americans had already signed a peace treaty ending
the War of 1812 some weeks earlier. When the news arrived, Daniel was mustered
out of the army and returned to his parents' home in Hardin County, Kentucky.
While in New Orleans, Daniel had witnessed a slave auction. An old slave
begged the young man to buy him, sensing a better life with him than in the
killing sugar cane brakes of Louisiana. This event forever turned Matheny
against slavery, and, said his daughter Charlotte, caused him to move to the
North. The Ohio River even then was a boundary separating the Southern slave
culture from the North, but it wouldn't be until 1821 when the Missouri
Compromise was reached that the river became the official boundary between slave
and free states. Sometime in 1817 or 1818 Daniel, with his brothers Joshua and
Henry and sister Mary Matheny Cooper (Mrs. William Wood Cooper), crossed the
Ohio, the northern boundary of Hardin County, Kentucky, and settled in Indiana
by his kinsman Isaiah Cooper in what was to become Owen County.
Our earliest record of Daniel in Owen County is July 4, 1818, when Isaiah
Cooper got into an altercation with a neighbor while betting on Daniel's
marksmanship. Apparently Daniel was quite a marksman. Since Owen County had
first been settled in 1817, Daniel wouldn't have been there any earlier than
that.
There was clearly a self-confidence about Daniel Matheny that made him a
leader among his peers. It was exhibited throughout his life. That he was
attracted to Mary, whose finishing-school education gave her a touch more appeal
than most frontier girls, is no surprise. They were married in Owen County,
Indiana, 19 December 1819.
The Mathenys had their first two or three children while in Owen County.
Adam was born 20 December 1820; Elizabeth, 26 March 1823; Rachel, 9 December
1824 (Rachel did not survive to adulthood.) 1824 was the year that Isaiah
Cooper was commissioned as a justice of the peace and began his decline. That
was about the time when Daniel and Mary moved to Edgar County, Illinois, a short
distance west. Records show that on January 24, 1825, Daniel and Mary purchased
68.84 acres in Edgar County at $1.25 per acre in a federal land sale.
It was in Edgar County in 1825 that Daniel Matheny found religion and joined
the Methodist Episcopal Church--his wife had converted five years earlier.
Daniel's obituary in the Pacific Christian Advocate, 29 February 1872, p.69,
gives the date and place. His wife's obituary in the 6 October 1856 issue said
she converted in 1820 in Edgar County, Illinois, but it should have stated Owen
County, Indiana. Religion was to become an important part of their lives.
The religion of the frontier was emotional religion. Whereas the
Presbyterian Church was the cult of the well-to-do, the Methodists and Baptists
appealed to the people, for they preached free will and universal grace. A team
of preachers would come together at "camp meetings,"as many as twenty or thirty,
and preach for four or five days by day and by night, their flock bringing
their own tents or wagons for temporary housing. These camp meetings provided a
natural outlet for the penned-up frontier emotionalism. The red glare of the
campfires was reflected from the tents, surrounded by the blackness of the
forest. A hundred persons might fall like dead men when under the spell of a
powerful sermon, while the groans of the spiritually wounded would echo through
the woods. Some of these ministers, called "sons of thunder," were mighty men.
They roamed from region to region, with or without road or path, with stools for
chairs and dirt floors for carpets, sleeping on bear and buffalo skins. One of
the most notable on the frontier, Lorenzo Dow, would emerge from the woods,
melancholy, tall and cadaverous, with his long black cloak and reddish beard and
his wild hair streaming over his shoulder. [Our Literary Heritage, by Van Wyck
Brooks and Otto Bettmann, E.P.Dutton & Co., New York, 1956, p.25] That Dow, a
Methodist, was influential in the spiritual life of the Matheny family is
evidenced by the two Matheny grandsons later named for him.
In Edgar County, two more children were born: Isaiah Cooper Matheny, 2
December 1826; and Daniel Boone Matheny, 5 January 1829. Shortly after Daniel's
birth the Mathenys moved to Schuyler County, Illinois, on the western side of
the state. The Mathenys left behind the lonely grave of their daughter, Rachel,
who had died in Edgar County in 1828.
It was in 1830 when the Mathenys arrived in Schuyler County, according to
Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt's autobiography. Should anyone research the Matheny
history in Schuyler County, he or she needs to beware of confusing the two
Daniel Mathenys who lived there. Both had similar military histories; they were
probably cousins. The other came to Schuyler County in 1826 from Indiana and
left in 1831 for Iowa. (By 1840 the other Daniel and his siblings had settled
in Ray County, Missouri, near where Mary and Daniel settled in 1837.) Our
Daniel registered three land patents in Schuyler County on 27 November 1830; 27
April 1831; and 28 February 1834. In 1834 he and Mary sold 51 acres; in 1836
they sold a similar-sized parcel; and, on 7 October 1837, they sold their 100+
acre farm for $1,600 (Deed Book "F", Page 435)
It was while the Mathenys were in Schuyler County that the Black Hawk War
broke out. It was legislated that the county had to provide 150 militia
members. The 23 of April 1832 was appointed as the day of mustering to attain
the 150, either by volunteers or by draft. 400 men met at Rushville that day.
William Marshall, the orator of the day, rallied the men to volunteer, to shun
the brand of cowardice, and to avoid disgracing their county by its requiring a
draft. At the end of his long speech, he struck up the marching band and
followed it as the first man to enlist. Not quite an hour elapsed until the
requisite number of 150 had enlisted. Daniel Matheny was one of the number. He
was selected as first lieutenant in Captain John Stennett's Company, Odd
Battalion, Mounted Rangers, Illinois Volunteers.(pp.159-160 History of Schuyler
and Brown Counties, Illinois)
It was probably in the Black Hawk War that Daniel met Abraham Lincoln, who
was serving from Sangamon County. Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood said her father
"knew and loved" Lincoln. But there are other possibilities as to how they met.
The best man at Lincoln's marriage to Mary Todd was a Matheny.
After a ninety-day enlistment expired and Black Hawk had been put on a
steamboat headed for an Eastern prison, Daniel Matheny was mustered out of the
service at Yellow Banks or Macomb, Mississippi (1856 Bounty Land Claim
statement). Why Daniel needed to be in Mississippi when the "war" had been an
intra-Illinois affair could be explained if he was one of the militia sent to
guard the steamboat carrying Black Hawk to the East. If this is so, then Daniel
probably interacted with a young soldier assigned to the escort, Jefferson
Davis, future president of the Confederate States of America, who expressed pity
on seeing the great conquered chief in chains. It is ironic that the same fate
would befall Davis some thirty-three years later after the defeat of the South
in the Civil War.
In Schuyler County, the Mathenys became the parents of two more children:
Mary, 4 April 1832; and Jasper Newton, 4 August 1834. Mary would have been only
nineteen days old at the time her father attended the Rushville muster. They
also made the acquaintance of the Thomas Cooper (III) family. Thomas was the
elderly first cousin of Mary's grandfather, Nathan Cooper. It is probable that
the encounter was by chance because Thomas had lived in Ohio for two decades,
far from Mary's family. These newly- found relatives apparently bonded with the
young Mathenys because two of Thomas's sons later settled in Wheatland, Oregon,
by the Mathenys.
In 1837 the "Platte Purchase" was opened to settlement in northwestern
Missouri. The Mathenys sold out and headed there. They became residents of
Platte County, Missouri. Here on 5 May 1838, Mary gave birth to their last
child, Charlotte, who would be called "Lottie." As elsewhere, the Mathenys
prospered, and, by this time, their older children were nearly grown. They
were joined here by the family of Daniel's brother Henry Matheny, who was
married to Mary's sister, Rachel Cooper.
A religious sect called Mormons were creating quite a stir in the Mathenys'
area of Missouri in 1839. Their polygamous ways and unorthodox beliefs
unsettled their sanctimonious neighbors. Incidents occurred which only incited
greater passions between the two groups. Finally Governor Lilburn Boggs decreed
that the Mormons must be driven out of Missouri or "exterminated." He called
for militia volunteers. Daniel Matheny volunteered and was elected captain of a
company. It was during this so-called "Mormon War" that Alexander Doniphan
defied military orders and refused to execute Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader,
and other Mormon leaders; and a vengeful Mormon, in the middle of the night,
sneaked into the residence of Governor Boggs and stabbed him, albeit not
fatally. The Mormons were forced out of Missouri. They headed eastward,
crossing the Mississippi River to establish a new city, Nauvoo, on the Illinois
side of the river. Nauvoo was to prosper until the Mormons' intolerant
neighbors there drove them westward in 1846 to their final refuge in the Salt
Lake Valley.
About the time of the Mormon War, Mary's brother Enoch joined his sisters in
Missouri. It was there in Platte County that the two oldest children of Daniel
and Mary married and further expanded the family. Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth
Matheny married eighteen-year-old Henry Hewitt, 25 February 1841. Adam
Matheny's bittersweet elopement with sixteen-year-old Sarah Jane Layson five
days before the Mathenys embarked for Oregon is poignantly narrated by Charlotte
Kirkwood in her book Into the Eye of the Setting Sun. The excitement of
planning the trip, the discarding or sale of all non-essential possessions, and
the tearful partings are all touched on by Charlotte. Mary Matheny emerges from
the narrative as courageous, kind, resourceful, stern as a parent, generous,
pious, unpretentious, and desirous of living a more refined life.
Besides the Kirkwood book, there are other books written on the 1843 Great
Migration. Peter Burnett's memoirs, Recollections and Opinions of an Old
Pioneer, are available in many historical repositories, as are those of Jesse A.
Applegate, a son of Lindsay Applegate. Besides these, there are several others
that give the interesting details of that journey. It was the first wagon train
to cross the plains all the way to Oregon, and Daniel Matheny was one of the
leaders from the onset.
Matheny led a party of wagons from Platte County to Westport (Independence)
and at the organizational meeting there was commissioned, with William Martin,
to seek the services of Captain John Gantt as pilot to guide the party as far as
Fort Hall (Pocatello, Idaho). (Burnett, p. 101) The wagons left Missouri on May
22, 1843. At the Platte River, Dr. Marcus Whitman, returning from a visit to
the Presbyterian Council of Bishops in the East, caught up with emigrants and
traveled with them to advise them and attend to their health needs. At Fort Hall
some Indians from Whitman's mission awaited the doctor with distressing news.
In his absence, some of the Indians had burned the mission mill; Mrs. Whitman
had fled for safety to the Methodist mission at The Dalles. So the doctor left
for his mission, promising to send Sticcus, a Christian Indian who could speak
English, to guide the emigrants. Matheny was one of three men selected at Fort
Hall to scout the remainder of the journey for the best route for the wagons to
proceed. It was these three scouts that laid out the exact path the last half
of the Oregon Trail would take. And it was the men of the 1843 emigration who
hacked down the trees and made the wagon road through Oregon's Blue Mountains.
Henry Hewitt, driving one of Daniel and Mary Matheny's wagons, claimed to be the
first person to drive a wagon down the Blue Mountains into the Umatilla Valley
and second to drive an immigrant wagon to The Dalles, considered the end of the
Oregon Trail.
The Willamette Valley was the goal of the Oregon-bound immigrants. It lay
on the other side of the formidable Mt. Hood and the Cascade Range. The two
choices for reaching the Willamette for the immigrants intent on reaching their
goal that November were the treacherous Columbia River by raft or the longer
ordeal over Mt. Hood. The Mathenys entrusted their possessions to their son
Adam and his friend/cousin-by-marriage, Aaron Layson, who took them to Fort
Vancouver by raft. Daniel and Mary chose the route over Mt. Hood for their
family and livestock. The shortage of food and bitter cold caused the family a
great hardship before Adam and Aaron reached them with some biscuits that they
had purchased at the fort. The family then headed to Fort Vancouver, belonging
to the British Hudson Bay Company. The immigrants who had survived the quicker
river route already occupied all the available space at the fort, so the
Mathenys had to sleep in their rain-soaked tents.
An empty cabin was found in the Tualatin Valley near present-day Hillsboro.
The Mathenys purchased the cabin as a temporary shelter. It lay near a tiny
cabin that Adam Hewitt, a brother of the Mathenys' son-in-law, Henry Hewitt, had
built for Henry and the Mathenys' daughter Elizabeth. [Adam Hewitt had arrived
in Oregon the previous year.] Here the family planted their seeds and other
crops in the spring of 1844. They lived here eight months. Their closest
neighbor, the legendary Joe Meek, loaned them seed potatoes to plant. That
spring Daniel and one of his older sons, probably Isaiah, took an Indian dugout
canoe and navigated down the Willamette River to what is now the west side
business district of Portland. He looked at the possibilities of the pristine
site and said, "If I can't find anything better to do, I can make a living
here." The men cut down some trees, squared the logs, and laid a foundation for
a cabin. But the project was abandoned because it was too far away from other
people. When Daniel and Mary heard in the summer that Henry and Rachel Matheny
had settled in the Eola Hills some forty miles upstream, they went to
investigate the area, crossing Chehalem Mountains during a storm.
Exploring near Rachel and Henry's claim, Daniel came across James O'Neil,
who was amenable to selling his squatter's rights to what had been the home and
farm of the Rev. David Leslie of Jason Lee's Methodist Mission, which had
recently been moved upstream to Salem. The 640 acre site on the Willamette
River included Rev. Leslie's large two-story log home, a barn, other
outbuildings, fruit trees, and several cleared acres under cultivation. It lay
twelve miles north of Salem on the Willamette's west bank. The major part of
Lee's mission had been on the east bank, slightly south of the Matheny property.
When the mission had moved, Leslie sold his rights to his home and farm to
O'Neil, who in turn sold them to the Mathenys. O'Neil also sold Matheny a new
ferry boat that he had hired a co-traveler of the Mathenys across the plains,
Lindsay Applegate, to build while the Applegates were wintering (1843-44) in the
main part of the former mission. It had been O'Neil's intention to begin a ferry
at the site, which had long been a fording place of the Indians.
There was a warehouse at the old mission where the few farmers of the area
stored their wheat. To reach the warehouse, farmers on the west side of the
river had to borrow boats to cross the river. Also contributing to the need for
a ferry was the school which had been established in February of 1842 at a
meeting held at what was to later be called Garrison's Landing on the former
mission land. Alanson Beers had donated a room in his house to function as the
school, but would-be students on the west side of the Willamette needed to cross
the river to attend school. Clearly there was a need for a ferry, but it was to
be Daniel and Mary Matheny who established the ferry late in 1844. Lindsay's
son, Jesse A. Applegate, in his memoirs, Recollections of My Boyhood, tells of
the building of the first ferryboat at what would become Wheatland, Oregon:
The absorbing thought of this winter [1843-1844] was keeping up the food supply.
The men were out at work in all kinds of weather, not for money, but for food.
Father [Lindsay Applegate] built a ferry boat for...James O'Neil. He first
caulked the openings between the planks in the bottom of the boat and then
poured in hot pitch. As it was a large boat, he used a bushel or two of
literature he found in the old [Mission] house. Tracts and other pamphlets that
had been left there by the missionaries were forced into the cracks with a
chisel and hammer.
For building the boat, father took his pay in provisions; pork and peas
constituted the greater part of these provisions. The French settlers [of
French Prairie] seem to have grown peas extensively...
The ferry begun by the Mathenys in 1844 was the first capable of
accommodating a wagon and ox team crossing the river. It was the only ferry
upstream from Champoeg seventeen miles away. The Wheatland ferry is still in
operation today, the oldest ferry in the state of Oregon. The modern mechanized
ferryboat is named the Daniel Matheny IV (It is the fourth ferryboat to have
operated at the site in its 152 year history.) Between 1844 and 1847, a great
many immigrant wagons crossed at "Matheny's Ferry." As the immigrants took up
farms, the ferry's use increased. At times, at the height of the wheat-hauling
season, there would be a long line to cross the river to the grain warehouse at
the former mission. There would be a large camp of the wagoners camping
overnight to wait their turn to be ferried. [Willamette Landings, Ghost Towns
of the River, by Howard McKinley Corning, pp. 97-102].
So the Matheny family, after harvesting their crops in the Tualatin Valley,
jubilantly moved into their newly-acquired home and settled in. Henry and
Rachel's land lay only two miles west. The men immediately began building a
cabin for Adam and his wife Sarah Jane and clearing more land for farming. The
women busied themselves making the house a home, planting gardens, and fretting
about how they were going to replace their tattered clothing. The tax list of
1844 shows that the Mathenys already owned 100 horses, 440 cattle, and 10 hogs.
How they came to have the feral hogs was a story related by Charlotte Matheny
Kirkwood in her book. A pregnant sow was found on Grand Island, where her sty
had been deposited in an earlier flood. The hogs, no doubt, had belonged to the
Mission at one time because there was no one else upstream who could have owned
them, unless they had belonged to James O'Neil.
Mary Matheny had begun the trip across the plains with her beloved seed bag
tied to the horn of her saddle. A lover of flowers, when she visited the
abandoned site of the Methodist Mission across the Willamette from her home, she
dug up the bushes and planted them in her own garden. She is credited with
having saved the "Mission Rose" that many historical-minded Oregonians have in
their gardens today, descendants of the bushes Mary saved. (p.241 of Pilgrim and
Pioneer, by John M. Ramsey) This rose today surrounds the Jason Lee monument in
the Mission State Park, planted by the park authorities.
Records of the Manuscript Room, Oregon Historical Society Library, show that
Daniel was a leader in early Oregon life. He was appointed Judge of Election by
the provisional government on July 5, 1845. For a quarter of century Great
Britain and the United States had lived in the nebulous joint-possession of the
Oregon Country. The permanent border between Canada and the United States in
Oregon would be decided sometime in the future. But in 1844, with American
immigrants streaming into Oregon and James Polk campaigning in the election to
obtain the entire Oregon country for the United States, the "Oregon Question"
heated to a boil. The British man-of-war Modeste appeared in the Columbia,
which only tended to stir up the patriotism of the American settlers in Oregon.
Two British agents named Peel and Park traveled the country querying the leaders
of the populace about their loyalties. After having spent the night at Jesse
Applegate's home in Polk County, Peel, Park, and their party arrived at
Matheny's Ferry. As always, the Mathenys were hospitable and invited the party
to their home. When Daniel asked Peel how he liked Oregon, Peel replied "Mr.
Matheny, it is certainly the most beautiful country in its natural state my eyes
have ever beheld." Then, after a slight pause, he continued, " I regret to say
that I am afraid we [the British] are not going to be the owner of it." [History
of Oregon, Vol. I, Charles Henry Carey, Pioneer and Historical Publishing
Company, Portland, p.451.] In 1846 the treaty was signed with Great Britain
dividing the Oregon Country at the 49th Parallel, assuring that the Willamette
Valley would remain American.
Somehow, Mary's father had gotten a letter to the Mathenys telling them that
he and his four sons and their families had sold their farms and were on the
trail in 1846 headed for Oregon. It was in October when Mary's father, Isaiah
Cooper, her four brothers, and their families arrived in the Willamette Valley.
No doubt an extra cabin or two had been built at this time for the expected new
family arrivals. Their sons Isaiah and Daniel B. had been sent to the Tygh
Valley near the gate of the new Barlow Road to await their family and to guide
them to the family's home. By that time, however, the Mathenys were harvesting
good crops and could easily share with the newcomers. The cabins built that year
served as temporary quarters for many a new immigrant family in the years to
come, for the Mathenys were well known for their kindness, which their daughter
Charlotte asserts in her book and is supported by Shannon Applegate in her
family saga, Skookum: Then November came and droves of emigrants arrived again,
trying to find friends or old associates with whom they might lay over until
spring. If they had no ties in Oregon, or people to call upon, they
traveled--desperate and hungry--on foot or in ramshackle wagons, to the very
doors of those reported to be kind-hearted. "Go to the Methodists," they were
directed. "Go to the Mathenys, or the Waldoes, or the Nesmiths," they were
told. "Go to the Applegates." What had at first felt half humiliating soon was
replaced by gratitude for the open door, the warm fire, and the Dutch oven
filled with meat and potatoes. But more than anything, they had appreciated the
good sympathetic company of people who understood what that long journey had
exacted from them--who had plucked miserable children from their mothers' aching
arms and said simply, "There...there...now. Soon things will right themselves
with you and yours."
The Christmas of 1846 was likely a happy one for the Coopers and Mathenys,
living in one place for the first time in more than twenty years. Daniel and
Mary now had four grandchildren with a few more on the way. Adam's wife Sarah
Jane was expecting another. This had to have been a concern not talked about
openly, for Sarah Jane had almost died giving birth to her first child. It was
while all the relatives were living with the Mathenys that winter of 1846-47
that Sarah Jane gave birth to her second child and died as a result. It was the
first family death in Oregon and the first family burial at the cemetery on
Rachel Matheny's land. The first non-family person buried there had been Mrs.
James Cave, but her children and other descendants married into the family
thereafter. For the account of the deaths of both Sarah Jane Matheny and Mrs.
Cave, read Into the Eye of the Setting Sun.
In 1847 Daniel established a town at the ferry site and sold lots. He named
his town Atchison after his Platte County friend, attorney David R. Atchison,
whose star was rising in Midwestern politics. [He was to become
president-pro-tempore of the U.S. Senate, and, some claim, he was technically
president of the United States for one day] An advertisement appeared in the
Oregon Spectator in the spring of 1847:
Sale of Town Lots
A PUBLIC SALE of Lots in the Town of Atchison, in Yamhill County, on the west
bank of the Willamette river at Matheny's Ferry, will take place on the 15th day
of May next, on the premises. Wheat will be taken in payment. Further
particulars as to terms, &c will be made known on the day of sale.
DANIEL MATHENY
April 26, 1847
Due to the location of the grain warehouse at Matheny's town and the town's
importance as a wheat-shipping center, the locals called it Wheatland, and the
name stuck. Wheatland prospered as more and more settlers arrived in Oregon.
Another enterprise undertaken by Daniel was serving as an agent at
"Willamette River Ferry" for the Portland Tannery (perhaps receiving and
shipping hides to the tannery?) [advertisement, 18 Feb-15 April 1847 in the
Oregon Spectator]
In late 1847 a rider arrived at Matheny's Ferry bearing the news that the
Mathenys' benefactor, Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and others at the
Whitman Mission had been killed by Indians of the mission and that women and
children were being held prisoners by the Cayuse Indians. The Mathenys' three
oldest sons, Adam, Isaiah, and Daniel, and son-in-law, Joseph M. Garrison,
joined the army being formed to rescue the captives and punish the guilty
Indians. The captives were ransomed. The army of 500 marched eastward to
punish the guilty Indians. Their task completed in the spring of 1848, and the
guilty Indians imprisoned to be eventually hung, they returned to Wheatland.
One of the rescued captives, Lorinda Bewley, came to the Wheatland area and
taught for a year at the school, a room in the Alanson Beers home next door to
Mary Matheny Garrison's home. Among her students was Charlotte Matheny
Kirkwood. (A rather romanticized book has been written about blonde Lorinda's
captivity and the chief who ardently desired her for his wife: Lorinda Bewley
and the Whitman Massacre, by Myra Sager Helm.)
After the resolution of the Cayuse problem, the territory had just settled
down when a ship brought news of the Calfornia gold discovery. The news stopped
Oregon's development cold. Nearly every able-bodied man and many women
abandoned their farms to get rich quickly. Many never returned and chose to
remain in California, including Peter Burnett, who became California's first
governor. The Mathenys were among the vanguard to reach the California gold.
Jasper, but fourteen years old, was left to run the ferry. Although some of the
family women joined their husbands in the mining camps, Mary chose to remain in
Oregon when her husband and sons headed south. The men left the smokehouse full
of food for the family's needs.
It was probably about December of 1848 that the party left for California.
The group included Daniel Matheny and his three oldest sons, Henry Hewitt
(married to Elizabeth Matheny), Joseph Kirkwood (married to Rachel and Henry
Matheny's daughter Lucy Ann), two brothers named Thorp, Isaiah Cooper, Jr.,
(Mary's brother), and probably some others. Enroute to California, the Matheny
party was attacked by Indians in the Modoc country. Isaiah Cooper, Jr., was
struck with an arrow that penerated completely through his torso. The party
outrode the Indians. [Jasper L. Hewitt memoirs] But later Indians stole some
horses in the night that resulted in a trackdown in which Isaiah Matheny nearly
lost his life in hand-to-hand combat with an Indian near Hangtown (Placerville).
(That story is later in this chapter in Isaiah's biography) When they reached
the South Fork of the American River, we learn from Abraham Garrison's memoirs
that the party was not very successful at first. They looked around the
surrounding area and finally located on a small creek that is a tributary of the
Cosumnes River. (In the early decades it was called Matheney's Creek.) Here
the group was quite successful. A mining camp grew up around what was called
"Matheney's Diggings." This evolved into the present-day town of El Dorado.
[California Gold Camps, pp.210-211]
Unbeknown to the men at the mines, Mary and her youngest children were
having a difficult time in their absence. The smokehouse in which all the
family food was stored burned to the ground. Most of the men in Oregon were
gone to the gold fields. It was a trying time for Mary. She had exacted a
promise from her husband that he would return after finding a modest amount of
gold--she said she didn't need great riches. This promise may well have saved
the lives of her husband and sons, because they were probably back in Oregon
when the "camp fever" killed so many of the family in California in the fall of
1849. We know that they were home by Christmas of 1849 because Charlotte
Kirkwood wrote about the joyousness of that Christmas in her book. Something
was occuring in the Matheny household that necessitated Jasper and Charlotte to
be living with their neighbors, the William Miller family, at the time of the
1850 U.S. Census (schooling?). Also staying with the Millers was Adam
Matheny's motherless son David Layson Matheny, seven years old.
The Matheny children, as did other pioneers in Oregon, married young even
for the standards of the times. Mary Matheny was just shy of her fourteenth
birthday when she married the widowed Joseph M. Garrison, thirty-three, on 16
April 1846. Jasper was barely eighteen when he married sixteen-year-old Mary
Ring, 26 December 1852. Charlotte was fourteen when she married John Kirkwood
on the same day as Jasper's wedding. Isaiah and Daniel were each twenty-three,
average for men of their time. With the money from his gold-diggings in
California, Daniel provided Mary with a beautiful new frame home on the bluff
behind their original log home and their more recent one on the banks of the
river. The California gold rush had brought a flurry of settlement to the west.
Wheatland gathered an imposing group of shops, stores, mills, warehouses, and
hotels. With the coming of the steamboats in the 1850's, commerce took a
noticeable upswing at the river ports. Almost daily, boats stopped at
Wheatland's wharves, bringing freight and new settlers up from Portland and
other downstream ports. At Wheatland cargoes of grain and farm produce for
Portland and the export trade were loaded onto the steamboats. The 1850's were
easier, happier years for the Mathenys.
On January 28, 1853, the legislative assembly of Oregon Territory passed an
act commissioning Daniel Matheny, his son-in-law Joseph M. Garrison, and two
others to view and locate a territorial road from Salem to Dayton, crossing the
Willamette at Wheatland. [Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 6, p.368] [This is
now Wallace Road north of Wheatland and Wheatland Road between Salem and the
ferry.]
As always, their prosperity made the Mathenys redouble their efforts to help
the troubled new arrivals. On pages 86-87 of Skookum, Miss Applegate says
The emigrants of '47 brought sickness with them--terrible sickness. Not only
did they carry measles of the most virulent variety to Whitman's mission and the
surrounding country where the Indians were dying in untold numbers, but it was
said that they had brought something even more dreadful to Oregon. Some people
called it "cholera." Others referred to it as the "deadly flux."...
[Referring to the Applegate women] Each time Melinda, Betsy, and Cynthia
touched those children or emptied the dented basins or aired the pee-soaked
bedding, they had said to themselves, "Never mind,"--even though the very
thought made them quake. "Never mind," they'd said again and again. "Never
mind about the cholery."
And so it undoubtedly was with the Matheny women. In 1856 an outbreak of
cholera spread through the Wheatland area. It probably took the lives of Mary's
two sisters-in-law, Mary Ann Crozier Cooper, wife of Bill Cooper and Minerva
Jane McClintock Cooper Staggs, the remarried widow of Mary's brother John. The
Pacific Christian Advocate, in its October 6, 1856 issue, announced the toll on
the Matheny family:
Died-Mary, wife of Daniel Matheny of Yamhill County on the 29th ult. of flux
after an illness of three weeks, aged fifty-six years. Thirty-six years ago,
Sister Matheny experienced religion in Edgar County, Illinois (sic), and joined
the M.E.Church. She leaves a husband and seven children to mourn their
irreparable loss.
Henry Leuder, second and only surviving son of Jasper and Mary Matheny of
Yamhill County on the 15th ult. of flux, aged 1 year and 10 months.
Mary Christiana, daughter of John and Charlotte Kirkwood of Yamhill County
on the 13th ult. of flux, aged 8 1/2 months.
Mary and her two grandchildren were buried at the cemetery on her sister
Rachel's land at what is now Hopewell, Oregon. The deaths of two more
grandchildren that year were probably due to the cholera: Dwight Herbert, the
son of Mary and Daniel's son Daniel B. Matheny, who was born 15, August 1856,
died 4 October 1856, and Wilson H Matheny, Adam's son born 3 April 1853, died 26
August 1856. White marble headstones mark the graves of Mary, Daniel and
Rachel, who lie side by side. The graves of Daniel and Mary are enclosed by a
wrought-iron fence. A row of stones to the left of their graves probably mark
the graves of the babies.
On September 15, 1856 Daniel took advantage of a recently-passed bounty land
law which made him eligible for bounty land; he was granted 160 acres for his
Black Hawk War service. [1929 letter to Lenore Rogers from the Commissioner of
the General Land Office] The land was probably located far from the Mathenys'
home and was probably sold.
The following month the Pacific Christian Advocate, then published at Salem,
in its October 13, 1856 issue had this to say:
APPLES--We have lately received two monstrous specimens of apples. One from the
orchard of Mr. John Odell of Yamhill County which measured 14 1/2 inches in
circumference and weighs 20 ounces. The other was from the orchard of Daniel
Matheny of the same county. It is a Fall Pippin 15 3/4 inches in circumference
and weighs 28 ounces.
Soon the lonely Daniel moved up the road to the home of his daughter and
son-in-law, Elizabeth and Henry Hewitt and there spent his last years. But they
were not to be peaceful years. The challenge to the nation that the Civil War
brought stirred Oregonians to heated passions. The homes near the Hewitt farm
declared themselves a patriotic name, Unionvale. Union men organized throughout
the state to make their message clear to secessionists such as Senator (General)
Joseph Lane. The Oregon Statesman, in its July 8, 1861 issue carried an account
of Union activity at Wheatland:
UNION MEETING AT WHEATLAND
On Saturday, June 29th, the people of Wheatland and vicinity assembled for
the purpose of a flag raising and barbeque in the beautiful grove near the
ferry.
The people gathered in from every direction; by 12 o'clock some four hundred
persons having assembled, the meeting was called to order. A.A.Skinner was
chosen President; D. Matheny, Sr., D.C.Daugherty and S.Buell, Vice Presidents;
and A. Sieber, Secretary. A beautiful national flag was then presented in
behalf of the ladies of the vicinity by G. L. Woods, Esq., accompanied by a
thrilling and eloquent speech, to which the President replied, pledging the
gallantry and patriotism of the meeting to defend from dishonor that emblem of
our national sovereignty whenever and wherever imperiled. The procession was
then formed by S.M.Gilmore, marshall of the day, and marched to the flag staff.
when the "Stars and Stripes" were raised admidst the firing of a national salute
and the enthusiastic shouts of the people by Fathers Farnsworth and Cave,
probably the two oldest patriots on the Pacific coast, and who, as they stood
there, thrilled the multitude by the relation of the perils and dangers they had
encountered in the defence of that flag.
The procession then returned to the grove where an ample dinner had been
prepared, to which all did justice. After dinner, the meeting was addressed by
G.L. Woods, J.R. McBride, J.A.Waymire, J.M.Garrison and A.A.Skinner, all
declaring their unswerving attachment to our glorious and indivisible Union.
The proceedings of the day were enlivened throughout by cheering strains of
music from the Holddridge and Canby bands, to whom the thanks of the meeting
were tendered.
On motion, the meeting adjourned, with the request that the proceedings be
published in the Oregon Statesman.
As the founder of Wheatland, he enjoyed great respect among his peers. But
Daniel lived to see this great fete of his destroyed. The worst flood in the
history of the Willamette Valley on December 1, 1861 wiped out the low-lying
part of the town, including the grain warehouse with 7,000 bushels of wheat. It
also swept away the remaining buildings of Jason Lee's first Methodist Mission
and the entire towns of Champoeg and Linn City. This occurred just as the
nation was beginning its fratricidal civil war. His sons were bitterly split in
their loyalties; Isaiah, having married into the Southern family of Solomon
Allen, took a pro-Confederate stance. His brothers were adamantly pro-Union.
It must have seemed like dark times for the aging Daniel. Wheatland never again
resumed its former size. The flood also destroyed the homes and property of his
daughter Mary Garrison and son Jasper. With improved roads and the advent of the
railroads, river traffic declined in importance. Today only the ferry and a few
houses remain at Wheatland. An historical marker placed there by the family in
1959 sits inside the cyclone fence of one of the homes by the road.
In 1868 Daniel, who lived with the family of his daughter and son-in-law,
Elizabeth and Henry Hewitt, made what was probably his last epic journey. We
learn from Jasper Hewitt's memoirs that Daniel accompanied the Hewitts on a
journey to California, where he visited the families of his son Daniel in the
Fall River Valley and of his son Isaiah in San Jose. Daniel drove "a large
covered wagonloaded with our camping outfit and provisions and such like, this
driven by four horses." But after visiting first Daniel Jr. and then Isaiah for
a few months, Daniel, who was ailing, left for Oregon a few weeks ahead of the
Hewitt family, accompanied only by his able nineteen year old grandson, Adam
Hewitt. A smallpox epidemic in full force when Daniel and Adam passed through
Southern Oregon, and they were met with hostility by anyone they approached.
The seventy-eight year old Daniel died on February 1, 1872, and was buried
at Hopewell next to his wife Mary, whom he had survived by fifteen years. The
Pacific Christian Advocate listed Daniel's obituary:
DANIEL MATHENY was born in Virginia, Dec. 11, 1793, and died of congestive
chills February 1st, 1872, at the age of 78 years, 1 month and 20 days.
When quite young, he moved from his native State to Kentucky, thence to
Indiana, where he was married December 19th, 1819. In Edgar county, Illinois,
in 1825, he sought and found Christ a precious Savior (sic), and united with the
M.E. [Methodist Episcopal] Church. In 1843, he immigrated to Oregon and in 1844
settled at the place now known as Wheatland. The ferry over the river at this
place has long been known as Matheny's ferry. Here September 29th, 1856, his
wife was called to her long home. Most of the time since he has found and
enjoyed a pleasant home at his daughter's, Mrs. Hewett, near Wheatland, at which
place he died.
When quite young he enlisted, and served three months in the War of 1812,
receiving his discharge after the victory at New Orleans. He enlisted again in
1832, under General Atkinson, in what is known in history as the Black Hawk War.
His company elected him First Lieutenant, but owing to the general
dissatisfaction against the Captain he was compelled to serve throughout the
campaign as Captain. In 1839 he again enlisted, and was elected Captain. This
time he was engaged in the war of the Far West, or better known as the Mormon
War.
In his journey to Oregon in 1843, after reaching Green river, they were left
without a pilot or road. This made it necessary that some of the company should
go in advance of the train to explore and search out the best route. Col.
Nesmith, Captain Lenox,___ Kizer, and himself took upon themselves this very
dangerous and responsible work.
His wagon, or team, driven by his son-in-law, Henry Hewett, was the first one
ever driven down the Blue mountains into the Umatilla valley, and the second
immigrant wagon driven to the Dalles.
Nine days before his decease, when as well as usual, he talked to the writer
of his future home hopefully and cheerfully, and expressed much interest in the
religious welfare of others. He was never known to complain. The day before
his death he prayed, "Come quickly, Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus."
A few hours before he died he asked to be delivered from the severe pains
that racked him from which moment all pain left him. At various times he
repeated passages of scripture and hymns that he had learned when young and
treasured long years as a solace for old age. Among his last words he repeated,
"Come thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.
Streams of mercy never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise."
He has gone in the 79th year of his natural, and the 47th year of his spiritual
life, ripe in age and ripe in grace. Seven children and a large number of
grandchildren and friends survive him to battle with life and imitate his
virtues. May God bless them all, and sanctify this to their good.
T.A.Wood
After their father's death the Matheny children scattered as their energies
took them to far-off places. All four sons are buried far from their first home
in Oregon. All three daughters are buried at Hopewell Cemetery, where their
parents lie.