AUNT RACHEL COOPER MATHENY

1803-1877

Contributed by Don Rivara

Rachel was the second child of Isaiah and Elizabeth Montier Cooper. Born March 26, 1803 in Clark County, Indiana, a time when President Jefferson was negotiating the purchase of Louisiana, she lived for fourteen years in Springville Township and passed the difficult times of the War of 1812 there. Besides her several brothers and sisters, Rachel had as a companion a girl of her own age, Esther Cowan, whom the Coopers informally adopted about 1813. The Cooper children all appear to have been well-educated by the standards of the time. They probably attended a school in the Springville area or at nearby Charlestown. Her mother was illiterate, but Isaiah could read and write.

Rachel Cooper Matheny was quite a contrasting figure to her sister Mary, according to the images created in Into the Eye of the Setting Sun. Whereas Mary was bold, tidy, prone to tears, disciplinary, and aspiring to be lady-like; her sister was wise, patient, close-mouthed, pipe-smoking, and understanding.

She was fourteen when the Coopers moved to Owen County, Indiana, in 1817. It was soon thereafter that the Matheny brothers, Daniel and Henry, also moved up to Owen County from Hardin County, Kentucky. Her sister Mary married Daniel in 1819, and Rachel, nineteen, married Henry, who was about Rachel's own age, three years later, July 4, 1822. Henry was afflicted with narcolepsy. At any time he might fall asleep, later awakening confused and disoriented. Perhaps due to this malady, Henry never quite became the commanding figure that Daniel became.

If Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood's daughter, Lenore Rogers, was correct in a letter she wrote to a relative, Daniel and Mary had been second cousins; that would have made Rachel and Henry second cousins also. Whatever their status, the couple had only three children who lived to adulthood, although they may have had others who died young. The three surviving children were Sarah Jane Matheny, born c.1825, Owen County, IN, married Aaron Layson (c.1820-1886), May 3, 1843, Platte County, MO, died autumn 1849, El Dorado County, CA, buried Coloma, CA; Isaiah Matheny c.1828-1853; and Louisiana Catherine Matheny, born March 8, 1829, Owen County, IN, married (1) James Cave 1844 (2) Joseph Kirkwood 1847, Yamhill County, OR, died January 6, 1908, Yamhill County, OR. That Rachel and Henry had other children is evidenced by the early censuses. The 1830 U.S. Census of Owen County, Indiana, listed three sons: 2 aged 0-5, 1 aged 5-10, and another male age 10-15 who was too old to have been a son of Henry and Rachel. The 1840 U.S. Census shows only a son aged 10-15 (Isaiah) and the two daughters: 1 aged 10-15 (Louisiana), and 1 aged 15-20 (Sarah Jane).

Henry and Rachel did not leave Owen County, Indiana, when the rest of the family did, and there is no evidence that they ever lived in Schuyler County, IL, where Daniel and Mary lived. Yet the siblings reunited in Platte County, MO, in the late 1830's. Daniel and Mary were there in 1837; we don't know for sure what year Henry and Rachel first moved there, but Henry was already prominent enough by March of 1839 to be selected for the grand jury of Platte County. The John S. Malott who also served on the grand jury was probably of the family mentioned in Into the Eye of the Setting Sun, as was James Beagle, probably the father of Charlotte Kirkwood's lifelong friend, Nancy Beagle. Another member of the grand jury was Patrick Cooper, son of Missouri pioneer Sarshall Cooper, from Culpeper County, VA, perhaps a distant cousin?

Henry and Rachel were members of the "Great Migration of 1843," like Daniel and Mary. Charlotte Kirkwood mentions her aunt quite often in Into the Eye of the Setting Sun. Rachel kept a diary during the epic journey. It accidentally fell into a kettle of hot buffalo fat but was retrieved quickly by Rachel, but the outsides of the pages and the cover were damaged. The diary, thereafter dubbed "Rachel Matheny's History of Grease," was later destroyed when Rachel's home burned.

Rachel's daughter Sarah Jane had married Aaron Layson unexpectedly while witnessing the elopement wedding of Aaron's sister, also named Sarah Jane, with Adam Matheny. At first upset by the unplanned wedding, Rachel learned to have a very close relationship with this son-in-law, rearing his motherless children and housekeeping for him while he farmed her land. But that was to be in the future, During the 1843 migration, they were learning how to be kin. When the Oregon company met to organize at the grove West of Fizhugh's Mill on May 18, 1843, Aaron Layson was called upon to act as chairman, quite an honor for the twenty-three- year- old newlywed. Peter H. Burnett, later to become California's first governor was elected secretary. (James W. Nesmith diary, Oregon Historical Quarterly Vol. 7, p.329) At the end of the Oregon trip, Henry and Rachel wintered at the Methodist Mission at The Dalles, not entering the Willamette Valley until spring (unlike Mary and Daniel Matheny, who crossed over Mt. Hood and wintered in the Tualatin Valley).

In the spring of 1844, Rachel and Henry settled at what is now Hopewell, Yamhill County, Oregon, against the Eola Hills. When the first death occurred in the area, because their claim lay on high ground, Rachel and Henry donated a portion of their land as the local cemetery, where Rachel herself would one day be buried. At the Hopewell Cemetery there is a monument dedicated to Rachel.

Henry apparently accompanied Rachel's brothers to the California gold fields in 1849, and most of the women went too, including Rachel and her daughter Sarah Jane Layson. It was in what is now called Cooper Canyon a mile or two west of Pilot Hill, CA, where the Mathenys and Coopers worked the gravel. It was there in the autumn that "camp fever" ravaged the canyon. One by one Rachel saw her husband, her daughter, her brother John, and her father die there and be carried to the graveyard at Sutter's Mill (Coloma). She couldn't have helped wishing the family had remained in Oregon on their land, but now she had too much to do to spend too much time reflecting. There in the epidemic-plagued Mother Lode, she took over the care of Sarah Jane's motherless children, the youngest a newborn baby.

With Henry alive, the Mathenys had qualified for 640 acres of Oregon land, but alone, she could only qualify for 320. Her son-in-law Aaron Layson was now in the same situation; so he took over half of her land claim. She cooked, cared for the children (Ann, born c1844; James Benjamin, born c1846; and Cena Abigale, born 1849), and took care of the house; he farmed the land. Only twenty-nine when his wife died, Aaron never remarried until after Rachel's death many years later.

The 1850 Census shows that Rachel was living alone with grandchildren Ann E., 6; James R.; 4, and Abby, 1; Aaron must have still been in the California gold country. But by 1860 Rachel was again living with Aaron and two unmarried grandchildren. The 1865 personal property tax list shows that Rachel owned or produced that year 2 tons of hay, 40 bushels of apples, 2 hogs, 7 horses, 16 cattle, 10 bushels of potatoes, 100 pounds of butter, 70 bushels of wheat, and 100 bushels of oats. She had twenty acres under cultivation.

It appears that there was bad blood between the Laysons and the Kirkwoods. As early as January 1868, Joseph Kirkwood had foreclosed on a loan to his brother-in-law Aaron Layson. In March of 1874, Aaron Layson is on record as having sued Joseph Kirkwood, but no resolution of the case is listed the Circuit Court Journal. In 1876 Rachel sold her farm for $5,000 to her three Layson grandchildren. This sale may have provoked litigation. In March of 1877, Aaron Layson again sued Joseph Kirkwood. Records also show that in June of 1877, Joseph Kirkwood filed a suit against M.E.Bailey, husband of Cena Layson Bailey, the daughter of Aaron and Sarah Jane Matheny Layson. At the height this lawsuit, Rachel Cooper Matheny died on June 25, 1877, at the age of seventy-four. The friction among her family no doubt caused Rachel considerable stress.

Rachel had been the last of her generation of the family left in the Willamette Valley. Her brothers Enoch and Bill had moved to eastern Washington and her brother Isaiah to the Midwest; the rest were dead. She was buried in the cemetery on her own land, next to Mary and Daniel Matheny. In 1932 a monument honoring Rachel as the donor of the cemetery at Hopewell was erected at the cemetery. Her grandnephew, Dr.Jasper Hewitt, read her biography at the dedication.

The following are brief biographies of Rachel and Henry's children:

SARAH JANE MATHENY LAYSON

c.1825-1849

The older of the two daughters of Henry and Rachel Cooper Matheny, Sarah Jane was born in Owen County, Indiana, about 1825. [She was listed age 15-20 in the 1840 U.S. Census] She spent her maturing years in Platte County, Missouri, where her family became close with that of David and Anna Maxwell Layson. Sarah Jane, also the name of the Laysons' daughter about her own age, became her close friend. Sarah Jane Matheny's cousin Adam Matheny was a close friend of Sarah Jane Layson's older brother Aaron Maxwell Layson.

When the Mathenys made their plans to cross the plains to Oregon, the high excitement must have been infectious. Not able to part with Sarah Jane Layson, Adam spoke to her father for permission to marry her. The father was adamant: his daughter would not be taken on such a risky venture perhaps to be killed by hostile Indians or die of starvation in the wilderness. His refusal caused the young couple to elope with Sarah Jane Matheny and Aaron invited along as witnesses. Caught up in the romance of the elopement and the adventure ahead, Aaron, twenty-two, and Sarah Jane Matheny, seventeen, decided to marry on the spur of the moment during the ceremony for the other couple.

The wagons left Platte County and rendezvoused near Independence in a grove west of Fitzhugh's Mill. There, on May 18, 1843, an organizational meeting was held. Nominations were made for chairman, and it was probably Aaron's best friend (and now kinsman), Adam Matheny, who placed the twenty-three-year-old Aaron's name in nomination. Surprisingly, the group elected Layson chairman and the renowned Peter H. Burnett secretary. Under Layson's chairmanship, the meeting elected Burnett wagon master and authorized Daniel Matheny and another man to seek to hire John Gant as a guide. Aaron Layson held no other office of note in his life, but at Independence, all eyes were upon him. And so the Great Migration of 1843 began, in effect, a long, protracted honeymoon for the young couple, until the tedium of the trip dulled the adventure of it. ("Diary of the Emigration of 1843," by James W. Nesmith, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. VII, p.229)

Aaron and Sarah Jane settled next to her parents in Yamhill County and took up a donation land claim. Together they had three children: Anna E. Layson, born ca.1844, OR, married Wilson Gibson, died 1922, buried Hopewell; James Benjamin Layson (aka Jim Ben), born 1845, Yamhill County, married Sarah C. _____, died 1920, Hopewell, Yamhill County, OR; and Cena Abigale, born October 18,1849, El Dorado County, CA, married Rev. Mark E. Bailey, February 26, 1872, Wheatland, OR, died January 24, 1941, Vancouver, WA. A Julie Jones genealogical note says that one child of Annie Layson Gibson committed suicide.

The 1844 tax list shows that the Laysons had 25 horses and 90 cattle. Sarah Jane died of the camp fever in El Dorado County, CA, and was buried at Sutter's Mill (Coloma) just after the birth of Cena Abigale.

Circuit Court records show that in January 1868 Joseph Kirkwood won a foreclosure suit by default against A.M. Layson et al; perhaps Joseph had come to Aaron's rescue in January of 1862 when Williams and Lippincott, apparently an area banking partnership, sued Layson and won the case by default. Whatever the case, it appears that Aaron was not prosperous.

Aaron lived on many years, never remarrying until his children were grown and his mother-in-law had died. The following January 20 of 1878, at the age of about fifty-eight, Aaron married Eliza Jane Athey, a maiden woman also in her fifties, a sister of William Athey, who was married to William S. Cooper's daughter Charlotte Cooper Cave. In the 1880 Census, Aaron was listed as living in Marion County, Marion Precinct. He died in 1886 and was buried at Hopewell. Jim Ben lived out his life in the Hopewell area.

ISAIAH MATHENY

c.1828-1853

Isaiah Matheny was a son of Rachel and Henry Matheny heretofore only suspected of existing. The censuses of Owen County, IN, in 1830 and Platte County, MO, in 1840, clearly show that Rachel and Henry had a son. The 1849 Oregon Territorial census shows two adult males in the Matheny home.

There were two different Isaiah Mathenys. Mary and Daniel Matheny's son Isaiah Cooper Matheny (1826-1906) was the other Isaiah. Both served in the Cayuse War after the Whitman Massacre. Donation Land Claim records show two different claims under the name Isaiah Matheny. An Isaiah Matheny filed a land claim across the Willamette River from Daniel and Mary Cooper Matheny. This was probably Isaiah C. Matheny, yet

Isaiah C. also had a land claim just south of Amity on the Polk-Yamhill county line.

In October of 1853, Rachel Matheny, Aaron Layson, and Joseph Kirkwood petitioned the Yamhill County Circuit Court to administer Isaiah's estate. Isaiah had not lived to patent his land claim under the Donation Land Law. Isaiah may have been the brother-in-law of Joseph Kirkwood in the California gold fields [mentioned in Into the Eye of the Setting Sun] who was engaged in conversation with a stranger who turned out to be Joseph's father, James Kirwood. If this was Isaiah, he directed James and his son John to the whereabouts of Joseph in Oregon.

Isaiah does not appear in the 1850 Yamhill County, Oregon census, but he was probably in the gold fields at the time. After his death, his land claim was taken up in 1852 by William Matheny, a cousin of Daniel and Henry Younger Matheny, who had just arrived in Oregon from Missouri.

LOUISA CATHERINE MATHENY CAVE KIRKWOOD

[a.k.a. "Lucy Ann," a.k.a. "Louisiana"]

1829-1908

The younger of the two daughters of Henry and Rachel Cooper Matheny, Louisa was born March 8, 1829, in Owen County, IN. She was eight when the family moved to Missouri and fourteen when they crossed the plains to Oregon.

At the age of fifteen, on December 6, 1844, Louisa married James Cave, Junior, of a poor family told about in Into the Eye of the Setting Sun. The marriage was performed by James O'Neil, J.P. (who had sold Daniel and Mary Matheny his claim to the future site of Wheatland). Cave died shortly after their marriage; there do not appear to have been any children. At eighteen she married her second husband, Joseph Kirkwood, on April 16, 1847, and by him had twelve children.

Joseph was born April 16, 1820, the son of James Kirkwood, a Scottish immigrant. Kirkwood and three sons headed west after the death of Mrs. Kirkwood in the East. It was 1846 and neither Oregon nor California were certain to become American. Along the trail, apparently there was some kind of trouble. Joseph chose to head to Oregon, whereas his father and two brothers headed to California.

In Oregon Joseph found his way to the area where the Mathenys had settled in Yamhill County. On 16 April 1847, he and the young widow, Louisa Matheny Cave, were married. The couple settled on land next to Louisa's family on the east slopes of the Eola Hills.

It was in late 1849 that Joseph's father and brothers were talking to a man in the California gold fields (Aaron Layson or Isaiah Matheny). When he heard that their last name was Kirkwood, he said, "My brother-in-law in Oregon is named Kirkwood, Joseph Kirkwood." When the father and his son John heard of Joseph's location, they set out immediately for Oregon. The other brother, probably the source of the trouble with Joseph, did not choose to join his father and brother on the trip to Oregon. He remained in the gold fields and was never heard from again.

The two Kirkwoods arrived at Matheny's Ferry at Wheatland and asked the way to Joseph and Louisa's home. It had to have been a very pleasant reunion for Joseph, who by then had three children. The father and brother, John, never left the area. John married Charlotte Matheny soon afterward, and, like his brother, lived to an advanced age on his Yamhill County farm.

Roland Crosiar of Polk County says that his father, Ruthford Crosiar, told him that "Old Joe Kirkwood" did not trust banks. In his tack room he drilled the holes for the wooden pegs to hold harnesses; he drilled them extra deep so as to hide his gold coins behind the pegs. Many people who knew him say that Joe Kirkwood was a very difficult man.

Louisa, who went by "Lucy Ann" in her youth and "Louisiana" in her later years, died January 6, 1908, at the age of eighty-two at Hopewell. Joseph died there February 12, 1912, at the age of ninety-one. Both are buried at the Hopewell Cemetery. Their children were (1) Henry Kirkwood, born February 25, 1848, married Catharine M. Groshong, died January 16, 1932, Donald, Marion County, OR; (2) Ellen Kirkwood,born February 25, 1848 (a twin),

Hopewell, married James McDonald, July 28, 1879, died December 20, l917, McMinnville, OR; (3) Perilla Kirkwood, born December 29, 1849, Hopewell, married Virgil Smith, December 8, 1874, died August 20, 1896; (4) James K. Kirkwood, born 1851, Hopewell, not married, died September 28, 1935, Eugene, OR; (5) Joseph Kirkwood, Jr., born 1853, Hopewell, married Sarah Cooper Russell (his mother's first cousin, daughter of William S. Cooper), ca.1879, died ca.1930; (6) Daniel David Kirkwood, born July 28, 1855, Hopewell, married Elizabeth Blake (his second cousin, granddaughter of William S.Cooper), April 10, 1881, Colfax, WA, died June 26, 1911, Davenport, WA; (7) Homer C. Kirkwood, born May 31, 1857, Hopewell, married Hester M. Miller, September 29, 1885, Yamhill County, OR, died January 29, 1903, Hopewell; (8) Romietta Kirkwood, born June 30, 1859, Hopewell, married Charles E. Magers, September 7, 1895, Yamhill County, OR, died August 29, 1931, Salem, OR; (9) Thomas T. Kirkwood, born June 30, 1864, Hopewell, married Emma Sampson, December 26, 1888, died May 15, 1958, McMinnville, OR; (10) John Milton Kirkwood, born August 16, 1867, Hopewell, married ?, died May 6, 1961, Gladstone, OR; (11) Hester Lillie Kirkwood, born August 1870, Hopewell, married first: Francis M. Allison, 1892, second Amos Branson, died February 11, 1924, Polk County, OR; (12) Fred Kirkwood born March 1873, Hopewell, married Pearl Miller, February 1, 1902, Yamhill County, OR, died May 27, 1963, Salem, OR.

ELIZABETH MATHENY HEWITT

1823-1899

Elizabeth was the oldest daughter of the eight children of Mary Cooper and Daniel Matheny. She was born 26 March 1823 in Owen County, Indiana, and moved with her family to Illinois in 1827 and then, in 1837, to Platte County, Missouri. There the very pious "Lizabeth" met young Henry Hewitt, whose family had arrived in the area two years after the Mathenys. The young couple married 25 February 1841.

Henry had a brother, Adam Hewitt, who crossed the plains to Oregon in 1842 and was one of the fabled men at Champoeg who voted for the Provisional Government. (His name is on the monument at Champoeg.) Henry had wanted to accompany his brother in 1842, but he wanted his in-laws, Daniel and Mary Matheny, to accompany him and Adam. Daniel could not ready his family to leave so quickly, saying "Henry, if you will wait till next year, I will sell out and we will all go." [Fred Lockley column "In Earlier Days," 6 March 1918, Oregon Journal, based on an interview of Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood.]

On this journey Henry Hewitt, drove one of Daniel and Mary Matheny's wagons. Driving that wagon, Henry was the first to cross the Blue Mountains of Oregon and the second to reach the end of the Oregon Trail at The Dalles. The Hewitts made a donation land claim just north of Elizabeth's parents.

The winter of 1843-44 was spent in a one-room cabin on the Tualatin plains near present-day Hillsboro near Elizabeth's parents' family. The Hewitts' cabin had been built for them by Henry's brother, Adam Hewitt, who had come to Oregon the previous year. It was a dismal, rainy winter that had the family wondering why they had ever left Missouri. It was here, on April 2, 1844, that the Hewitt's second child, Daniel Matheny Hewitt, was born.

That fall the Hewitts settled on 640 acres, the site of present-day Unionvale, Yamhill County, Oregon, just north of Daniel and Mary Matheny's claim. Joseph McLoughlin, halfbreed son of Dr. John McLoughlin of the Hudson Bay Company, had built a small one-room log house on the place and had planted from seed about one hundred apple trees that were just beginning to bear fruit. The Hewitts gave McLoughlin a yoke of oxen and four hundred dollars for his squatter's rights, and they moved onto the property. There were five or six fenced acres. There were large fir and oak trees covering one fourth of the land, the balance being prairie. Here Elizabeth reared her daughter and many sons with nightly readings from the scriptures by the fireside.

Henry Hewitt joined his in-laws when they went to the California gold fields in 1848. Apparently he followed the gold rushes, because he was gone during the winter of 1862 to gold fields, probably in Idaho. Various family members participated in the Idaho gold rush, including Henry's brother-in-law, Joseph M. Garrison. During this time his family wintered in Salem. Another time, in 1874, the family wintered in Amity during Henry's absence while looking for gold, according to the memoirs of his son Jasper Hewitt. The 1874 venture was probably to the Black Hills of South Dakota because the gold rush was occurring there and his brother-in-law, Jasper Matheny, is known to have been there that year. In 1864 Henry was elected a commissioner of Yamhill County.[Lang's History of Willamette Valley, p.895] The 1865 personal propety tax list shows Henry and Elizabeth to have been quite prosperous. That year they either owned or produced 30 tons of hay, no tobacco, 500 bushels of apples, 40 hogs, 10 horses, 28 cattle, 100 pounds of wool, 40 bushels of potatoes, 40 sheep, 3 bushels of corn, 200 pounds of butter, 1,200 bushels of wheat, 1,000 bushels of oats. 170 acres of their 640 were under cultivation.

In the fall of 1875, leaving some of their sons to farm the Yamhill County land, the Hewitts purchased the Salem ferry from Elizabeth's brother, Jasper Matheny. The purchase included eighty acres on the west bank of the Willamette River opposite Salem and four lots on the Salem side where State Street ends at the river. The family lived alternately on the east and west sides of the river, finally building a new home on the west side. In 1883 the Hewitts sold the ferry and the Salem city lots to a Mr. Foster, receiving as payment $6,000 and 240 acres on Mt.Scott in Clackamas County near Portland. This land was sold to Harvey W. Scott in 1888 for $15,000 in cash. This land was where Lincoln Park Memorial Cemetery now lies and extended just over the top of the mountain. In the fall of 1883, the family moved back to their original farm after selling their 80 acres in Polk County (next to the Salem ferry) for $2,000. The original price the Hewitts had paid for the ferry and the 80 acres had been $9,000; so they had realized quite a profit ($14,000).

It was in the autograph book of Ann Eliza's daughter, Mary Thornton, that Elizabeth wrote this autobiographical note on 24 September 1885:

Mary--as I hardly know what to write in your album

On this page I will give you a short sketch of my history. I was born Mar. 26, 1823, in Owen County, Indiana, and in 1825 my Father and Mother (Daniel and Mary Matheny) moved to Edgar County, Illinois, and in 1830 we removed to Schuyler County of the same state, and in the year 1837 we moved to Platt County, Missouri, where we remained until 1843, and on the 8th day of May of the same year, I with my husband and our child started for Oregon, and on the 8th of Nov. of the same year we reached our destination and have lived in Oregon for forty-one years.

During my short stay in Missouri, there is three events I will mention. The first is my conversion when it pleased God for Christ's sake to forgive my sins and fill my soul so full of the love of God that I still thank and praise his Holy Name for such wonderful grace.

The second is my marriage in 1841, and the third was the birth of your dear Mother who has left us to dwell in a world of light and glory.

I am now sixty two years old,

written by your grandmother

Elizabeth Hewitt

Sept. the 24th 1885

[copied from Elizabeth's granddaughter Mary Thornton's autograph book by Jasper L. Hewitt, January 2, 1927]

Henry Hewitt was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and reared his children to believe as he did. He loyally read the Weekly Oregonian. His grandchildren recalled Henry holding a coal oil lamp in one hand, the Oregonian in the other as he perused the newspaper the evening that it arrived.

Now aging and financially secure, the Hewitts did not leave their donation land claim again. Both died in 1899, Henry on January 15 and Elizabeth on October 13. Henry's funeral was at the Hopewell Church with Rev. C.E.Crandall, pastor of the Dayton Methodist Episcopal Church, presiding. Rev.Crandall also conducted the funeral of Elizabeth at the Hewitt home ten months later. The Hewitts are buried at the Hopewell Cemetery.

A half century after the Hewitts' deaths, their children placed a monument on the west side of Wallace Road near Unionvale to mark their parents' donation land claim. Since 1919 the Hewitt descendants have been reuniting. This was the origin of the Hewitt-Matheny-Cooper Family Assocation that still meets annually the first Sunday in August at the Maud Williamson State Park south of Dayton, Oregon.

The Hewitt children were Ann Eliza, born 19 December 1841, married John L. Thornton January 28, 1864, died 12 August 1883; Daniel Matheny Hewitt, farmer, born 2 April 1844, married Henrietta Miller September 16, 1867, died May 15, 1915 Monmouth, Polk County, OR, buried there; Henry Harrison Hewitt, lawyer, born December 7, 1846, married Maggie Rowland March 6, 1872, died February 18, 1931, Albany, OR, buried there; Adam Wesley Hewitt, farmer, born April 2, 1849, married Cynthia Pitman 21 July 1872, died September 9, 1930, Portland, OR, buried at Hopewell; James Andrew Hewitt, farmer and preacher, born August 25, 1851, married Mary Jane Rose, March 3, 1873, died June 10, 1925, Yamhill County, OR; Isaiah Cooper Hewitt, farmer, born May 5, 1854, married Linnie Holland, 1879, died June 22, 1930, Salem, OR, buried at Hopewell; Matthew Cresswell Hewitt, carpenter, born January 17, 1857, married (1) Malvina Janz (2) Rosa Hamlin, 1889, died August 29, 1945, Roseville, CA, buried there; Jasper Lewis Hewitt, dentist, born November 5, 1859, married Ida Ellen Harris, February 7, 1885, died April 6, 1946, Portland, OR, buried at Hopewell; Horry Wilbur Hewitt, born March 30, 1865, jeweler in La Grande, OR, not married, died May 3, 1947, Salem, OR, buried at Hopewell; Lorin LeRoy Hewitt, born May 5, 1869, Wheatland, doctor in Estacada, OR, married (1) Lena Miller, 1892, (2) Mabelle Holmes, 1928, died January 18, 1950, Dayton, OR, buried at Hopewell.

ANN ELIZA HEWITT THORNTON

1841-1883

Ann Eliza was born 19 December 1841, in Platte County, Missouri, the first child of Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt, the only daughter of ten children, the only child born in Missouri, the only one to die under seventy years of age, and the only one of the Hewitt children to make the epic journey of 1843 across the plains to Oregon; all the sons were born in Oregon. On January 28, 1864, she married John L. Thornton. The Thorntons belonged to the United Brethren Church and had six children before both parents died in the prime of life. Ann Eliza was forty-one when she died 12 August 1883. John survived her by only three years, dying 17 May 1887. Both are buried in the cemetery at Hopewell, Oregon. Ann Eliza's much younger brother, Jasper L. Hewitt, in his later years, wrote a memoir of his family. He described his sister caringly:

Ann Eliza Hewitt, my only sister, was married when I was yet in my fourth year so can not remember but one event before her marriage of her home life. One of our cousins a very large girl Elizabeth (Lizzie) Matheny who was much larger than brother Mathew backed him against the wall and bit his arm leaving the marks of her teeth as you would suppose Mathew's howl raised Ann Eliza quick and as Mother was not at home that day the sight of the bitten arm caused Ann Eliza to throw Lizzie on the floor and administer a spanking that, with the seen [sic] just before it, made an impresssion [that is] yet is quite vivid in my memory

As a little boy I loved to spend the day with my married sister whom I loved for she was so good to me and as her family grew up, I spent many happy days in her home. She had a good husband a thorough christian man member of the "United Brethern Church."

they had a lovely family of children...

Ann Eliza's children were as follows: (1) Mary Elizabeth Thornton, born 23 October 1864, Yamihill County, OR, married 31 May 1885 to Charles Dayton Ott (1858-1936), had one child, Otto Thornton Ott (1886-1956), who has many living descendants; Mary died 18 May 1891 at the age of twenty-six. Like her mother, Mary was the oldest child, the only surviving daughter among several siblings, and, like her mother, died an untimely death. (2) Edgar Henry Thornton, born 7 March 1866, married 21 April 1891 to Lea Emma "Libby" Ott, (sister to Charles D. Ott, who married Edgar's sister Mary), one daughter, Florence Thornton Phelan (1895-?); Edgar practiced medicine in Portland, died from hydrophobia (rabies) on 21 June 1915, buried at Hopewell (3) Olive Thornton, born 30 June 1869, died 10 September 1869 (4) Linzy Matheny Thornton, born 11 December 1870, Yamhill County, OR, married 6 April 1901 to Lily Pearl Hill (1872-1907) and in 1913 to Mayme Le May (1876-1958); he had no children, died 2 May 1936, buried Hopewell, OR (5) Olin Dow Thornton [again, the vestige of Lorenzo Dow's influence] born 20 April 1873, practiced dentistry, married 24 November 1897 to Mary Elizabeth "Lady" Hill (1876-1936), died 27 February 1938, buried at Hopewell, no children (6) Ruth Thornton, born and died on September 7, 1875, buried at Hopewell (7) Carl Doan Thornton born 9 December 1876. married 22 August 1913 to Mrs. Mattie (Squire) Smith (1882-?), one son, Edgar Hewitt Thornton (1917-1989), died 9 May 1935, buried Hopewell. OR (8) Jasper Thornton, born 19 April 1879, died 1 May 1879, buried Hopewell, OR (9) Ladrue Leslie Thornton, born 1 November 1880, Married 22 September 1918 to Rada F. Antrim (1895-1962), died 20 June 1950, buried at Hopewell, children: Leo Maze Thornton (1922-), John Antrim Thornton (1925-1925, and Myron Thornton (1926-1926).

DANIEL MATHENY HEWITT

1844-1915

Named for his grandfather, Daniel was born April 12, 1844, the spring following his parents' trip across the plains.

He was the only Hewitt child born in the small log cabin on the Tualatin Plains near present-day Hillsboro, Oregon, where the family spent their first year in Oregon. Daniel was one of the earliest white births in Oregon. There had been only a handful of such births up to that time. Most of the white men in Oregon prior to 1843 had married squaws and their children were halfbreeds. There had been some white births among the missionaries but no others. The cabin where Daniel was born had been built for the Hewitts before their arrival by Daniel's uncle, Adam Hewitt. When Daniel was yet a newborn, the Hewitts settled on their donation land claim near present-day Unionvale in Yamhill County. It was there Daniel grew to manhood and learned farming, to which he dedicated his life.

On September 16, 1867, Daniel married Henrietta ("Etta") Miller, daughter of George and Tabatha Curren Miller, who had come to Oregon from Iowa in 1862. Later Etta's brother Merritt Miller's children would marry into the Hewitt-Matheny family:

Lena Miller would marry Daniel's youngest brother, Lorin Hewitt; and Pearl Miller would marry Fred Kirkwood, Daniel's cousin.

In the fall of 1872 the Hewitts moved to Polk County, where Daniel owned a large farm on the Luckiamute River. In the fall of 1906,

Daniel retired from farming and moved into the town of Monmouth. There, on 15 May 1915, he suffered a stroke and died.

He was buried in a cemetery just south of Monmouth. At that time his son Early E. was living in Monmouth, while his son Guy G. Hewitt was living on the farm on the Luckiamute. Etta survived Daniel by nineteen years, dying 20 December 1934, in Monmouth.

His brother Jasper had this to say about Daniel in his memoirs:

I do not remember many events in Daniel's life at home as he married when I was yet in my seventh year. I do remember how fine he looked dressed up and with peg-heeled red tight-fitting boots that fit like a glove with his trousers inside. These heels stood well under the boot so the track on the ground was as small as a child's foot. These were hand-made and in the style for dashing young men and were made of calf (hide). He also had a family failing--he was a wonderful athlete, could beat all from far and near at two hops and a jump running.

On one occasion when we boys went swimming with Father in the (Willamette) river just back of the place, Adam took a bad cramp and was sinking in deep water when Daniel swam to him, grabbing him by the hair as he went down for the third time and succeeded in safely landing him to dry ground, a great hero in the eyes of this small boy.

As a boy almost grown, I worked one harvest for Daniel and Etta on their 470 acre farm in Polk County, Oregon, on the Luckamute River eight miles from Monmouth. I found as we ran a threshing machine thru the neighborhood that Daniel was beloved by all his neighbors. They would say that his word was as good as any man's note. He lived on this farm for many years, rearing his family of two sons and finally died in his home in Monmouth leaving his wife and two sons and three grandchildren. His body was laid to rest in the burying ground just outside of Monmouth as you go to the Luckamute Country. Daniel was a faithful member of the Evangelical Church.

Early Ellsworth Hewitt, the older son of Daniel and Etta Hewitt, did not choose to be a farmer. Born July 16, 1868, he was named for two Civil War military leaders. Because his Miller grandfather was strongly pro-South, he was named for Confederate cavalry leader Jubal Early, and because his Hewitt grandfather was adamantly pro-Union, his middle name became Ellsworth for the colonel who organized the first Union zouave regiment. Early studied pharmacy and owned a drug store in Monmouth until 1925. Then he moved to Eugene, where he continued this line of work. Apparently Early married twice. His first wife was Jennie Davis (1869-1921). By Jennie he had a son, Lowell Dow Hewitt (1892-1982). On 14 November 1895, Early married his second wife, Lula Winifred Waller (1869-1942). From this marriage a daughter Eileen Edith Hewitt Travis was born. Early died May 2, 1948, in Eugene, OR, at the age of seventy-nine.

The younger son of Daniel and Etta Hewitt was Guy Glen Hewitt, born July 15, 1875, on the farm near Monmouth. Guy followed his father's inclination toward farming. On September 5, 1897, he married Cordelia H. Harmon (1880-1933), with whom he had one son, Derrel D. Hewitt (1910-1987). After his father's death, the Monmouth farm was sold. Guy then purchased a small

farm on Greenwood Road near Rickreall on Rickreall Creek. There he built a house and lived out his life. He was a dairyman, specializing in champion Jersey cows. Guy died at his home May 24, 1936, three years after his wife Cordelia's death. Until his death in 1987, their son, Derrel Hewitt, lived in the house that Guy had built in 1920 on Greenwood Road. When Derrel died in 1987, he willed the house and land to his grandson, Brian Hewitt, then in his early twenties. Currently Brian operates a truck farm and nursery on the site and yet another generation is growing up in the house that Guy Hewitt built.

HENRY HARRISON HEWITT

1846-1931

The third child and second son of Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt, Henry Harrison Hewitt was born December 7, 1846, the first of the ten Hewitt children to be born on the Hewitt Donation Land Claim. He attended the school on his parents' land and in September of 1866 entered Willamette University. Before graduating, Henry worked two terms teaching, one in Marion County and one in Yamhill County. Graduating from Willamette in 1870, he taught for another seven years: a year as principal at the Baptist college in McMinnville, two years as principal of the public schools of Amity, two years as principal at Scio, and one year as principal at Lafayette Academy in Yamhill County. While teaching at Amity he was the Yamhill County Superintendent of Schools for a year (1872). His last three years of teaching were spent at Albany Collegiate Institute, teaching Greek, Latin, and mathematics. While teaching there, he studied law and was admitted to practice in December of 1877.

On July 2, 1879, he opened a practice of his own in Albany with H. Bryant and later was associated with O.H. Irvine. Later that year he was elected to the School Board in Albany. In 1888 he was elected District Attorney for Linn, Marion, Yamhill, Polk, and Tillamook counties. In 1894 he was elected circuit court judge and served until 1898. From 1898 until his death, Henry was senior partner of Hewitt and Sox. Like his father, he was an avid Republican and served on the Republican State Central Committee.

Henry married Maggie J. Rowland (1850-1899), the daughter of Jeremiah Rowland, March 6, 1872. They had one daughter, Olga Lenore Hewitt (1874-1952). After Maggie's death, Henry remarried September 20, 1905 to Wallula Adelia Laughead of Salem, who had been his first wife's dressmaker; there were no children from this marriage. He died in Albany, February 18, 1931, at the age of eighty-four; his wife and daughter survived him. He was buried at the Masonic Cemetery in Albany.

Of his brother Henry, Jasper Hewitt recalled

As of my only sister and oldest brother, so of Henry. I can not remember much of his life at home because he left for Willamette University at Salem in the fall of 1866 when I was but

seven years of age. Henry spent four years in Willamette, graduating in 1870 and immediately began a ten-year period of teaching school, was married, and studied law, which he was to practice for fifty-odd years. So, as is usual when a young person leaves home for college, the home life is about done. Henry's wonderful life at home as a boy and his later years had a wonderful influence on my life. I remember him as a young man, steady, studious, cheerful, and always with a good word for things worthwhile and condemnation for dishonesty and trickery. After the death of Father and Mother, I often looked to Henry for advice.

Henry was a swift runner and an athlete and was always ready for a coon hunt or any honest sport.

My first day at school as a visitor was to the old schoolhouse at or near the northwest corner of the old farm, under a very large, spreading oak tree. I was a very small

boy but all of my older brothers were there. The teacher was a Mr. Turner. I sat just across the aisle from Henry during the day. I suppose I got restless and caused a disturbance. Mr Turner, the teacher, threw a large piece of chalk the size of a hen's egg and struck the desk just alongside of me, frightening me nearly out of my wits. Henry, always ready for justice to be maintained, said to me, "Jasper, throw it back at him!" But this small boy was much too scared for that, as Turner was a very large man.

Henry's only child, Olga, died childless, her only child having died in infancy. Born in Scio, OR, October 22, 1874, she attended Albany College and later married Dr. Charles Joseph Bushnell, a social science professor at Albany College, now Lewis and Clark College. Her husband's career caused the couple to move a great deal. He worked at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, OH; Trinity Union College in Waihachi, TX; Oklahoma Agriculture and Mechanical College in Stillwater, OK; Lawrence College in Appleton, TX; president of Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR, 1913-1917; professor of sociology at University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, from 1919. Bushnell was head of the Sociology Department for many years and did slum clearance work in Toledo. He founded Chi Beta Chi social fraternity there, and the Bushnell home was always filled with members of that fraternity. At the time of Charles's death in 1950, Olga was teaching at Mount Vernon School in Toledo. She died two years after her husband and was returned for burial next to her parents at the Albany Masonic Cemetery. Henry H. Hewitt has no living descendants.

ADAM WESLEY HEWITT

1849-1930

Adam Hewitt was born April 2, 1849, at a time when his father and Grandfather Matheny were in the California gold fields shoveling gravel into a "long Tom" to enrich the growing family. He was the fourth child of Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt; he was born on the family farm at present-day Unionvale, Yamhill County, Oregon. Like his brothers, he attended the school on the northwest corner of the farm, and then went into farming. After his parents' deaths in 1899, Adam settled on the northern portion of his parents' donation land claim in what came to be called "Adam's Grove, " a grove of oak trees in which his home was set. His brother James Andrew Hewitt farmed the southern portion. The first Hewitt family reunions were held at the old Henry and Elizabeth Hewitt home, but then they began to be held in Adam's grove, although one or two were held at Andrew Hewitt's farm.

Adam's brother Jasper had this to say about Adam:

Many, many of my boyhood days revolve around my hero--Adam, just ten years my senior. As the story of my Mother goes, Adam would pick this little baby up (Jasper), carry me about, put me on his head or shoulder, toss me about, and call me his "little squirrel." So as I grew older, I would say "I is Addie's peril," trying to say squirrel. Mother used to take this little baby and her washing, Adam and her other smaller boys and walk a quarter mile through the woods to a spring, pull down a vine maple, fasten a quilt to it, and tie me in it.

When the maple would raise me up, Adam would swing me and sing to me while Mother did the washing. I did not think so much of this when Mother used to tell me of this, but now after she has been gone more than 32 years and I have children and grandchildren, it mellows my heart.

Adam was the hero of our family and the neighborhood. What he could not do in our minds was not worthwhile. He could run, jump, wrestle, work, ride wild horses, catch wild game, fight if imposed upon--though he wasn't quarrelsome, always of a happy disposition, an optomist of the optomists--and could do anything that was to be done. At one time when the dogs had a fox in a hollow log, he had it scared out and , as it came, he threw himself with a big white hat in his hands onto the fox, holding it tight to the ground till it was fastened. He took it home alive. I loved to be with him, work with him, hunt with him--time will not permit me to tell of the many pleasant events that flit through my mind in regard to him.

When Adam was an old man at one of our family reunions, he told us all to listen to his story how he was considered the wildest of the family when a young man, but how his life had been changed when he took Jesus Christ as his savior from sin, and the peace and joy that came into his life. He exorted all to follow this example as it would be the happiest day their lives.

Adam married one of the nine Pitman girls who had attended school on the Hewitt land along side the nine Hewitt boys. Cynthia Jane Pitman (1855-1932) married Adam July 21, 1872, in Yamhill County. Adam farmed in the Dayton area during his parents' lifetimes before buying out his brothers' interests in the northern portion of the old family farm. Adam and Cynthia had three children: Myrtle Alvertice, 1875; Martha "Mabel," December 23, 1878; and, much later, a son, Otis W. Hewitt, January 19, 1892.

Adam's granddaughters, Meda Becker Johnson and Marie Stoutenburg Solberg, in a 1995 interview, told of Adam shooting a skunk on his land and taking in the orphaned babies of the skunk. As the skunks grew, he would not permit his grandchildren to go near them, because, the skunks would become alarmed and spray them. Apparently they remained calm and did not threaten Adam because they were accustomed to him, but the granddaughters said that the shed where Adam kept the skunks smelled foul even if the skunks didn't

threaten their grandfather. The women also said that their grandfather had been very active as an unofficial veterinarian for neighbors. He called himself a "horse doctor" and even carried a satchel for his doctoring instruments. His wife Cynthia did not look kindly on the many requests for her husband's services. Once, when he prepared to go on a house call on a Sunday, she complained, and he answered," When the ox was in the mire, you pulled him out."

Adam also raised bees. He would don his bee hat and gloves and tie his trousers around his ankles. He raised wheat and other grains, including buckwheat, which he raised because he was fond of buckwheat honey. Adam built two different houses on his share of the old family Donation Land Claim. The "old house" was still there as late as 1914. Marie Solberg thinks Adam built the new house about 1918; he was very active well into old age. When a doctor prescribed a medication for Adam, he threw the medicine away, not trusting much in doctors, although his brother Lorin was one. For a coulple of years Adam lived in Portland, where he worked for the Albina Fuel Company, probably hauling fuel.

Meda had in her possession, issued to Adam in 1922, a "Life License for Pioneer; Civil or Indian War Veteran; or Veteran of the Spanish-American War Who is a Resident of the Oregon State Soldiers' Home...to hunt game birds and animals and to angle in conformity with the law." It is an interesting artifact that displays the value Oregon has always given its pioneers.

But even Jasper's hero grew old and the inevitable came--Adam died September 9, 1930, at the age of eighty-one, a little more than two months after his brother Isaiah and five months before his brother Henry. He was buried at the family cemetery in Hopewell, Oregon. Cynthia did not survive her husband by long; she moved to Portland after Adam's death to live with her daughter, Mabel Stoutenburg, and died there January 3, 1932.

The oldest of the children of Adam and Cynthia was Myrtle Alvertice Hewitt. Myrtle married Walter Herman Becker, an area man with aspirations of becoming a doctor. Apparently she waited for him to complete his studies at Willamette University, Oregon State College, and the University of Oregon, for they were married June 14, 1900, when she was twenty-five and he, twenty-six. They were married in Dayton, but later moved to Idaho, where Walter practiced for a few years before returning to practice in Portland. At the time of his death in 1944, Walter Becker was practicing in Vanport, Oregon, which was swept away in the 1948 flood.

They had three children: Haldon Becker, July 21, 1901; Meda Zillah Becker (Mrs. Nathaniel D. Johnson), February 16, 1908; and Herman Hewitt Becker, February 24, 1910. Meda Johnson was secretary for many years of the Hewitt-Matheny-Cooper Family Association, and until her death a week before her eighty-eighth birthday, she remained very active. When her final illness came, she was preparing for a foreign cruise.

When Walter Becker was fifteen years old in 1890, a great flood came to the Willamette Valley, the one that destroyed Champoeg for the last time and also left Wheatland moribund, the town founded by Daniel and Mary Cooper Matheny. Although Walter hadn't yet joined the family, his account of that flood in Wheatland is of interest to us:

FLOOD OF 1890 AT WHEATLAND

During the freshet of 1890, I was at home with my father in the village of Wheatland, which is situated on low ground on the west bank of and near the Willamette River about twelve miles below Salem. The village has a store, post office, blacksmith shop, and warehouse.

It was the misfortune of some farmers to have held their grain, which was stored in the warehouse, expecting to get a higher price for it in the spring of 1890 than had been offered in the fall of 1889.

In the latter part of January, 1890, the water began to rise and by February first, lacked but little more than three feet of being on the lower floor of the warehouse. By this time those having grain in the warehouse were very much alarmed and came down to move the same to the upper floor. Up to this time no one else seemed to be uneasy, but Sunday, February second, the water was in nearly every house in town and the men began taking their families in small boats to the high ground where they lived in a church until the waters subsided. The water had been so swift up to twelve o'clock Sunday night that it was not considered safe to bring the ferry boat up from where it was tied near the river channel. However, at that time the water did not seem so swift and we began ferrying. The first load consisted of five horses, a cow, and a calf; with these we landed safely and went back after a flock of sheep. On landing the sheep, we started out on a third trip. It was now so dark that we could not see where to go, and before reaching town, we first ran onto the top of a small ash tree that stood in a hollow, and by much hard pulling got loose from it. The next bad luck we had was to strike a stump that held us fast. With a great deal of difficulty we succeeded in freeing ourselves for the second time. It was 5 a.m. when we got back to town, where we waited for dawn. In the morning of February 3, the water was in both stores; in one it was so deep that we brought the goods out of the store in a small boat, the other one being on higher ground we could wade in and carry the goods out to the door until about

11a.m., that being the last trip in which I assisted as there were a great many people there from the country who were willing to help. At 11a.m. while we were at the store putting on the last load of goods, the warehouse went down the river and as it turned over, the sacks of wheat could be seen plunging out into the water in such a manner as to remind us of a flock of sheep. At 12a.m. February 3, I started out into the country, where I stayed with a farmer until the water went down.

The water raised until Wednesday, February 5, to the height of 12 feet above the ground where our house stood and about 10 feet where the store stood. It fell rapidly, leaving Wheatland with no fences but with mud to the depth of about one inch in every house. [Manuscript in the possession of Meda Becker Johnson, Portland, OR]

JAMES ANDREW HEWITT

1851-1925

James Andrew Hewitt was always known to the family as "Andrew." Born August 25, 1851, Andrew was one of three sons of Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt to choose farming as a career.

Before settling entirely into farming, Andrew spent a term teaching at the schoolhouse where he had formerly been a student, the school on the Hewitt land. His brother Jasper, Andrew's student during that term, recalled "my brother Andrew...licked me one day on the road home from school because I thought him just Andrew and told him so." Jasper had other reminiscences of Andrew as well:

James Andrew Hewitt was a short, stocky boy as I first remember him. At one time in his life he reached almost the 200 lb. mark, and he had small hands and feet. He was not of the athletic disposition as most of the brothers, but was as steady as a clock, positive (as most Hewitts) yet ready to concede your rights. Andrew was stern yet jovial and had a wonderful disposition if not imposed upon. He truly was a patient ideal man and a loving brother. Many memories revolve around him at our old home...He was studious and steady and would scrap to the last inch for what he thought right. Andrew was your friend (if true to him) to the last. He was a man of good language and thought, a tireless worker teaching school, on the farm, or wherever his lot cast him.

Andrew died on a part of the old homestead near Dayton, Yamhill County, Oregon, after spending most of his life as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he was licensed as a local preacher.

At the age of twenty-one, Andrew married Mary Jane Rose, fifteen, on March 3, 1873. Their marriage was to endure for fifty-two years. Mary Jane was a native of Scioto, Ohio, and had crossed the plains to Oregon in 1861 just as the Civil War was beginning.

She survived her husband by twenty-one years, dying October 6, 1946, at the age of eighty-nine.

The Hewitts had seven children: (1) Ella Belle Hewitt, born August 2, 1874, died August 7, 1889; (2) Olive Grace Hewitt, born August 27, 1879, married Clarence Rollie Smith (1875-1956), had three children [Erma Delta Smith Shelburne, 1902-1984; Elsie Velma Smith Warmington, 1904-1990; and Ilo Ildon Smith, 1897-1897], died July 28, 1949, buried at Hopewell, OR; (3) Leeta Inez Hewitt, born July 30, 1881, married Edward Morris Coats (1878-1958) on February 14, 1900, married fifty-eight years, died 1969, had four children: [Elvin Lowell Coats, 1902-1983; Eldon Andrew Coats, 1910- ; Eleeta Margaret Coats Hildebrand, 1915- ; and Elois Edwina Coats Demaray, 1923- ]; (4) Roy Reno Hewitt, born August 5, 1883, married Lena Mae Heise (c.1886-1962) on September 20, 1908, had one son [Ronald Roy Hewitt, 1911-1981], after Lena's death Roy married second Julia Stearnes and third Ada Thomas Tanner, died January 26, 1976, in Wooster, OH; (5) Sylva Leona Hewitt, born December 30, 1887, married first Henry Allen Kerr, July 24, 1908, eight children: Margaret Kerr Farris 1908-1996, James Andrew Kerr 1912-?, Marjorie Kerr Bauer 1915-, William Henry Kerr 1917-. Mary Alice Kerr Murray McClain 1919-, Kerwin Delore Kerr 1921-, Jean Milton Kerr 1924-, and Conrad Lewis Kerr 1926-1995; Sylva married second James Darbison in 1962, married third to ____Tauber, 1966, died 14 April 1970, McMinnville, OR, buried at Hopewell ; (6) Velma Hewitt, died age 6 mos., buried at Waitsburg, WA, at the cemetery in town; (7) Elmer Evert Hewitt, born March 16, 1893, married Helen Lenart, died March 10, 1970, Albany, OR, had four children: Velma Elizabeth Hewitt, born February 21, 1922, married James Pollard, who died c1957; Ella Jane Hewitt, born August 7, 1924, married and divorced Lee Cleveland, married Gene Shermon, who died in September 1970; Elma Helen Hewitt, born September 28, 1926, not married; Elinor Louise Hewitt, born October 4, 1928, married Gerald Denton in 1949 and divorced c1975.

James Andrew died of "Bright's Disease and old age" at the age of seventy-three, June 10, 1925, on the farm where he was born, and was buried at the family cemetery at Hopewell, Oregon. On the day Andrew died, Mary Jane had baked an apple pie and then

went out to milk the cow. Andrew had been ill and not out of bed for a year. When she came in, the pie was half eaten and Andrew sat dead in his rocking chair. [Julie Jones of McMinnville]

Another anecdote from Julie Jones is that Andrew's favorite fruit was ground cherries, sometimes called husk tomatoes. He liked them fresh and in winter kept a layer of them spread out under his bed to ensure a supply.

ISAIAH COOPER HEWITT

1854-1930

Isaiah was born on his parents' donation land claim at the current site of Unionvale, Oregon. In 1879 he was married to Linnie Idella Holland (1862-1929) and by her had seven children. Like his brothers Adam and Andrew, Isaiah lived on his parents' land until

their deaths, but apparently Isaiah sold out his interest after their deaths and moved to Salem in 1902. There Linnie died July 22, 1929. Eleven months later while crossing the intersection of Court and Liberty Streets, Isaiah was struck by a car and died from the injuries a few days later. Both he and Linnie are buried at Hopewell.

The children of Isaiah and Linnie were Cyrus K. Hewitt, born August 1880, married Elva _____, died 1955; Ivan L. Hewitt, 1882-1889; Alta Hewitt, born April 1885, married William Branson, died 1969; Alma Hewitt, born June 1887, married William New, died1971; Leonard Hewitt, born July 1889, died 1962; Elton Hewitt, born August 1897, died1971; Anna Eliza Hewitt, born July 1899, married William Carver, died 1979.

Isaiah's brother Jasper had the following to say about Isaiah in his memoirs:

Isaiah...was but about 5 years my senior so my many play days brought me near to his life. He was one of the truest, kindest and most loving brothers anyone ever had; it was never his fault if he had an argument with anyone. He was positive for only one thing and that was for the right, a great consciousness of right and wrong; he never forgot to make his word good. Isaiah was a small man; about 150 lbs was his usual weight, height 5'7", he , as Andrew, never partook of any athletic sports of any kind, only feats of strength. Isaiah would not pick a fight, but like most westerners of his tribe and date would defend himself against anyone twice his size when forced to do so. He spent most of his life on the old farm, but left the last fifteen or twenty years of his life. He was in Salem when he was run down and killed on the street by an automobile, June 22, 1931 when in his 77th year. He was a faithful member of the Evangelical Church.

MATTHEW CRESSWELL HEWITT

1857-1945

Matthew was the seventh child of Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt. He was born on the family's donation land claim. He became a carpenter and moved to Roseville, California, in 1892, the only one of the Hewitt sons to stray so far. There Matthew became a building contractor and was prosperous. The annual Hewitt family reunion was when Matthew visited his Oregon family in his later years. After the death of his brother Henry in 1931, Matthew was the senior family member at these gatherings.

Matthew married his first wife, Malvina "Vina" Janz while in Oregon. Their only child, Bertha Beatrice Hewitt was born in Oregon. Vina died sometime in the 1880's. Bertha later married Leland Stanford Tennant in California and had three children by him:

Leland S. Tennant (1908-?), James Hewitt Tennant (1911-?) and Robert Henry Tennant (1916-)

Matthew and his second wife, Rosa Hamlin, were married fifty-six years when he died at Roseville at the age of eighty-eight.

Their four daughters were Laura Wanda Hewitt, born 1890, married William Whitney Kennedy; Etta Eliza Hewitt, born 1892, married Percy William Dornfeld; Margaret May Hewitt, born 1896, died as an infant; Beulah Marie Hewitt, born 1897, married Harry M. Preisser.

His brother Jasper had this to say about Matthew:

Matthew Cresswell Hewitt...as man or boy was extremely positive, always good natured, jovial, a wonderful laugher, always ready with some funny story which he himself enjoyed. In his arguments you might think him mad from the tone of his heavy, positive voice, but instead there was a soft, kind heart and a desire for you to come through with your part of the argument, for he enjoyed it. Matthew was about five feet 7 1/2 inches tall, weighing about 175 lbs. when in Oregon and 160 in Cal. He was very athletic, enjoying running jumping, wrestling, boxing, or any test of strength...He dearly loved to sing, but in this was not as good as in athletics. In his prime, he was a master with a pen, drawing birds, animals, etc. He was a carpenter, a skilled finisher.

He was a fine playmate, but when with the older set of cousins, Kirkwoods, Mathenys, Rings, etc. he would try to run away from we younger sets. They could not beat, so would wait for all. Matthew would sometimes hold me until the cousins would go ahead, then let loose and run; but he could not distance me enough for this to work.

He was a faithful member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and at one time was licensed as a local preacher. In his boyhood he would ride all the young cattle on the farm and also yoke them up and hitch them up to the running gears of a wagon and oh how much fun it was! Matthew was the only one of the ten children to leave the state of Oregon, his native state, to live-save Adam, who lived a short time in Klickitat, Wash, and Andrew for a short time at Ritzville, Wash. Matthew reared a large family in California where he worked as a skilled carpenter.

JASPER LEWIS HEWITT

1859-1946

Jasper was the only family member of his generation to attempt to record his memoirs and family events in the tradition of his aunt, Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood. Born on the family land claim just before the Civil War broke out, he grew up with a strong Christian influence, to which he mostly credited his mother. He enjoyed the many camp meetings attended by his family, the frontier version of attending church. Frontier people would gather into large groups to listen to sermons, sing hymns, socialize around their campfires, etc.

These might last several days. Jasper joined the Evangelical Church in Salem about 1877, but backslided. In 1884 he saw the light at a camp meeting near the old home in Yamhill County and remained a practicing Christian thereafter.

When Jasper was sixteen, the family moved to Salem (1875), where his parents bought his uncle Jasper Matheny's ferry and eighty acres of land adjoining the ferry. They built a house on the west side of the Willamette in Polk County. In Salem Jasper attended the old East Salem Public School and Willamette University. He also worked in the linseed oil mill, a grocery store, a book store, a spice store, and his parents' ferry. On March 9, 1884, he returned to live on his parents old donation land claim in Yamhill County, where they had recently returned. That winter he met Ida Ellen Harris and married her February 7, 1885. It was on the old family home place that his first child, Inez Lenore Hewitt was born June 6, 1887.

After his parents moved away from the farm to what is now Mt. Scott in eastern Portland, Jasper moved his family to Portland. There he worked at various odd jobs then at the Wiley Bullen Co. music store at 211 1st Street. After gaining this experience, he and his brother Horry went into partnership in a music store in McMinnville, which was not very successful. In September of 1891, the brothers sold the business and Jasper returned to the old farm, on a 55 acre parcel designated as his future inheritance, the northwest corner. There they stayed until the fall of 1896, when they moved to Portland, where Jasper studied dentistry and practiced until he retired. Although he had a city home, apparently he kept his portion of the family farm and enjoyed the outdoors and the nature there.

Jasper was a joiner. For many years he was a trustee of the old Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church in Portland on East 9th and Pine Streets. He was also president of the Board of Trustees of the Methodist Deacons' Home. He was active in the Sons of the American Revolution, the Y. M.C.A., the Shriners' Hospital, and the Oregon Pioneer Association, of which he was president for many years and was in the process of dismantling at the time of his death. (Sons and Daughters of the Oregon Pioneers was to be the successor organization.) He died of a heart attack at Laurelhurst Park on April 6, 1946, while playing a game of horseshoes at the age of eighty-six. His wife Ida had preceded him in death on June 13, 1938.

Their children were Inez Lenore, born June 6, 1887, married Earl Richard Abbett (1881-1967), no children, died June 6, 1980, Portland; Henry Harris Hewitt, born March 4, 1890, McMinnville, OR, married Martha Donna Hulett (1890-1976), died Portland, 1971; Ruth Elizabeth Hewitt, born June 30, 1903, Portland, married Charles Thomas Nunn, no children, died February 28, 1937.

HORRY WILBUR HEWITT

1865-1947

Horry Hewitt entered the world in a dramatic month. His birth on March 30, 1865, was followed within two weeks by Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination. Ninth of the children of Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt, he was born at the family land grant at Unionvale. He was the only child never to marry. Horry would have been ten when the family moved to Salem.

There he attended Salem schools and Willamette University.

Horry lived in a world of his own. Enthralled with nature, he was an expert on birds and spiders, of which he had a large collection. He also had a large collection of eggs of various bird specious. He often went to considerable personal risk to gather these. Horry also loved great literature and was an avid reader. He began his career in partnership with his brother Jasper as owner of a music store in McMinnville, but that venture ended on an unhappy note between the brothers. Horry then learned optometry and the jeweler's trade, moving to La Grande, Oregon, in the early 1890's. After retiring in the late 1920's due to the loss of the sight in one eye, Horry returned to the Willamette Valley, making his home in the Salem area. He died May 3, 1947, at the age of eighty-two and was buried at the Hopewell, OR, Cemetery.

His brother Jasper had this to say about Horry in his memoirs:

Horry ...was a stout, stocky-built man, 5'7" tall, weighing up to 190 lbs. at times. He was a good boy, very much by himself. When he was small, he played as other boys did and was good natured and full of fun, but as the years passed, he took to the woods and fields for his spare time. There he collected specimens of bugs, birds, wild eggs, etc. These he kept until he had cases of fine specimens. He was a great reader and of later years enjoyed a violin, banjo, or guitar during his leisure hours. Mother did not enjoy Sunday's violin music but Horry would sit in his room upstairs and play so softly it could not be heard below. He tried farming for awhile but it did not suit him any more than the girls did, for he never married. Thirty odd years of his life were spent in the jewelry business in La Grande, Oregon, where he stayed till the loss of one eye caused him to sell out. Horry was the only one of the ten children not to embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ, saying "Not for me."

Robert B. Hewitt said that his grandfather, Jasper, did not think highly of Horry, considering him a "slacker" in the world of work as well as in the spiritual realm and family life. He was also the only Hewitt brother who smoked. He smoked a pipe as well as self-rolled cigarettes. Some of the later generations, however, were fond of their elderly Uncle Horry. Whatever one's opinion of Horry, all agreed that he was of a different mold than the other Hewitt brothers.

LORIN LEROY HEWITT

1869-1950

Youngest of the ten children of Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt, Lorin was born May 5, 1869, twenty-eight years after his oldest sibling, Ann Eliza. Lorin had several nieces and nephews who were older than he was. Lorin attended Linfield College in McMinnville and later Willamette University. He received his license to practice medicine in 1907 and practiced in Independence, Oregon, for about ten years. When World War I came, he moved to Portland to take over the practice of doctors Bodine and Cantrell, who presumably had gone to the front to provide medical services. About 1940 Lorin "retired" to Dayton, Oregon, near where he grew up, but the needs of the community and Lorin's skill and desire, had him soon making house calls and a practice soon resulted. He died January 18, 1950, at the age of eighty, still a practicing doctor.

Lorin had married Lena Miller in 1895. Lena was the niece of Henrietta Miller Hewitt, wife of his oldest brother Daniel. Lorin and Lena had three children: Lois Elizabeth Hewitt, born June 1898, married Donno McCandless Pomeroy 1917, one child:

(Kenneth Hewitt Pomeroy in 1918), died 1923; Lavelle Miller Hewitt, born 1901, married Constance Whitney (1907-after 1995), died August 31, 1973, Portland, OR, two children (Merritt Whitney Hewitt 1945- and Elizabeth Eleanor Hewitt, 1946- ); Owen Hewitt, 1902-1904.

After Lena's death in 1926, Lorin married Mabelle Homes, who outlived him. For many years Lorin's grandson Kenneth Pomeroy lived with him and Mabelle.

Among Lorin's brother Jasper's comments about Lorin in his memoirs was this: "Lorin and his dear wife Lena kept his father and Mother, Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt, and lived with them in the old home. They will never be forgotten for their kindness

and thoughtfulness to these old saints."

Lavelle Hewitt was somewhat aloof from his family in his adult years and drank heavily according to his widow Connie in a November 1995 interview. She said Lavelle, who died from cirhosis of the liver, mistreated her and the children. Lavelle and Connie had no grandchildren; so Lorin's only future descendants must come through the family of his grandson, Kenneth Pomeroy.

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