HISTORY OF THE KIRKWOOD FAMILY

The first Kirkwood in the family about whom we know anything was Joseph Kirkwood, the son of a John Kirkwood. We will call him Joseph I to distinguish him from later Josephs. Joseph was a ship designer for the Royal Navy in the shipyard at Kirkintilloch, which was then in the county (shire) of Dunbarton, but is today in Strathclyde about ten miles northeast of Glasgow. He married and had a family, but a smallpox epidemic took the lives of his wife and two young daughters. Joseph then married a woman named Flora and came to America, settling first in Boston and later in the city of Wheeling (then part of the state of Virginia, but now part of West Virginia). It is interesting that Wheeling was the center of the locale where the Coopers, Montours, and Oldhams were living in the early 1800's. It seems possible that the families were acquainted before arriving in Oregon. Joseph died and was buried at Wheeling.

Following his father and step-mother to America in 1822, when he arrived, James Kirkwood [1800-1867] was twenty-two years old and already married with a son Joseph [II] [who later married Louisiana Matheny Cave]. There was quite a a bit of stealth involved in his arrival. Britain wanted to maintain its monopoly in the glass industry and therefore refused to allow its glass factory craftsmen to emigrate. A Boston firm, the Boston Glass Company, wishing to establish a crown glass factory in America, smuggled several craftsmen aboard one of their ships, masquerading them as sailors. Thus James Kirkwood, a glassblower specializing in making crown glass, was among those who made the first crown glass in America in the 1820's. [Crown glass is an elegant glass made by twirling the glass around a stem, flattening the glass to as wide as 60" in diameter.]

His wife was Christiana Davie, a native of Stirling, a city about fifteen miles northeast of Kirkintilloch. Her mother's maiden name had been Duncan; the mother's brother was Rear Admiral Duncan of the Royal Navy.

In Boston at least three more sons and two daughters were born : James II, Henry, John II [1828-1915] [He married Charlotte Matheny in 1852.], Mary, and Christine. From here, James moved his family to Redford, New York, where he and his oldest sons worked at a glass factory. Once, when he was in New York City, James encountered one of his sisters who had run away from home and eloped with a man. She gave James her married name and her address, but James was drunk at the time and lost the name and address. He never saw nor heard of that sister after that. From Redford, James moved with his father's family to Providence, Rhode Island, awhile then to Wheeling on the Ohio River. There his daughters Mary and Christine died, followed by his wife Christiana in 1844. His father also died there. James and his four sons moved to Missouri. There was a son named William, but it is unknown if he moved to Missouri.

Early in 1846, James and his sons Henry, Joseph, and John joined an emigrant party planning to cross the plains by ox team to California. His son James chose to remain in Missouri. Along the trail, because of some kind of discord among the brothers, Joseph Kirkwood decided to head to Oregon instead of California and took a job driving a wagon for a Mr. Gilmore. About the last of July at the Sweetwater River, James Kirkwood and his two other sons and their party were met by Lansford Hastings [upon whom much of the blame for the fate of the Donner Party rests] and an Indian named Lewis, who had come out from California to meet them and their pilot. There it was decided by Hastings that the group of travelers was too small to make a new road, so it was decided that the group should go to Fort Bridger and wait for more emigrants, while he, Hastings, would go ahead and mark the trail for them. Hastings's guide book, published in the East and widely disseminated there, promised to produce more converts to his new "shortcut" via the south side of the Great Salt Lake.

At Fort Bridger, the Kirkwoods and their fellow travelers waited. Upon the arrival of the Donner Party, they felt their numbers sufficient to begin the journey. The Donner Party followed the Kirkwood group at the rear until they reached Weber Canyon. Here the Kirkwood Party awaited the Donners' arrival. The Kirkwood group proposed to build a road down the canyon, but the Donner group disagreed and would not help build it nor use it after it was built. This was one more wrong choice made by the leaders of the Donner Party. Here the two groups separated, one heading to an infamous fate.

Safely through Weber Canyon, the Kirkwoods entered the Salt Lake Valley then turned south and crossed what the Mormons would presently name the River Jordan at the site of Salt Lake City. [Brigham Young and his flock were also on the trail that year.] [Isaiah Cooper and his sons were far along their way toward the Willamette Valley by this time in 1846, but they were traveling the main established trail.] [Also on the trail to Oregon that year was Andrew Layson.] [To really get the feel for what was happening on the trail in 1846, it is recommended to read 1846: Year of Decision, by Bernard De Voto]

Some weeks later the groups were met by Kit Carson and a group of scouts. Carson told the Kirkwood group that war had been declared with Mexico and he was attached to John C. Fremont's forces. He told the group that they must either head back to Missouri or join the army to help conquer California. They chose the latter. At Sonoma, where they had been told by Carson to enlist, they became part of Company B, California Regiment of Volunteer Infantry, and took part in the military conquest of California, before mustering out eight months later. The Centennial History of Oregon, Volume III, on pp.35-36 give us a few details of the fighting that John Kirkwood recalled:

John Kirkwood was often in the thickest of the fight and on one occasion had his tin cup cut away from his side by a lance. His captain was shot down by his side as was a companion on his other side, this being when they were on special detail duty, Mr. Kirkwood being the first one selected from his company to form a detachment to rescue four comrades whom the Spaniards had surrounded in a patch of timber...

Having carried a set of blacksmith tools across the plains in their wagon, James and his sons set up a foundry and machine shop at Sonoma after the end of their military service. They bought a lot for $16, built a workplace, and made a lot of knives and Spanish spurs, these things being of the greatest need in California. Their first castings were a set of lathe heads forged from melted down copper cannon balls. They also did some work on guns. They remained thus engaged until the discovery of gold made things topsy turvy in California. At that time, the Kirkwoods sold the lot and foundry for $l,000 and headed for the gold fields. They staked a mining claim on the American River. There trouble arose between the Indians and the miners and several miners were murdered. As they worked the claim, a miner from Oregon passed through. The Kirkwoods introduced themselves. The traveler said, "Kirkwood? I have a brother-in-law in Oregon named Kirkwood," whereupon James and John learned that Joseph had married the young widow Louisa Catherine "Louisiana" Matheny Cave in 1847 and had children. James insisted that they travel to Wheatland immediately and John assented, but his son Henry did not leave the gold fields (perhaps the trouble on the trail had been between Henry and Joseph?) So only James and John went to San Francisco, where they boarded the sailing ship John W. Cater for $110 and headed for Oregon. They were never able to locate Henry Kirkwood thereafter. Was he one of the numerous victims of the diseases that raged through the mining camps? Was he a victim of some of the criminal types that were ubiquitous in the mining camps? Is there a clan of lost Kirkwoods out there for whom Henry is the progenitor? Hopefully a Kirkwood researcher will someday provide that answer.

James and John were to have as perilous a time at sea as it would have been to have been alone in a California mining camp. During a storm the ship lost its rudder, making the crew unable to steer the ship. They drifted north as far as the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, where the passengers were rescued by Indians in canoes. They were taken to Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island. [Oregon Spectator, January 24, 1850] Indians then guided the group down Puget Sound to the approximate location of Olympia today. From there James and John walked overland to Wheatland, Oregon.

At Matheny's Ferry (Wheatland) James and John spent the night and were taken the next morning to Joseph and Louisiana Kirkwood's small cabin in the Eola Hills behind present-day Hopewell. Deciding to settle near his brother, John staked a claim on the prairie between present-day Hopewell and Wheatland. Joseph's claim lay just to the west of Hopewell.

John and his father then traveled back to California in 1851, no doubt trying to find Henry. While in California, they took work helping to rebuild San Francisco after the fire of 1852. Then they started back for their new home in Oregon. At Yreka, just across the California border from Oregon, John discovered a rich gold strike and saw the possibilities for great wealth, but his father insisted that they continue on their way; thus John's rich find made wealthy others who had flocked to the area. That December he married Charlotte Matheny. From this point, the history of the Kirkwood family blends with that of the Matheny-Cooper family. James Kirkwood died in 1867 and was buried in the Hopewell Cemetery among the Mathenys, Coopers, and Hewitts.

Contributed by Don Rivara