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and Jane Hattan Baker Pioneer Family of the Month July, 1998 Emigrants of 1846 |
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| The tale of Horace and Jane Baker is a classically American story of two people who headed West to reinvent themselves on the frontier. Jane Hattan had been married in the late 1830s to a man named Morris Baxter, but he vanished in April, 1843, never to be seen again. Family lore holds that, "Morris, with a considerable sum of money on his person, mysteriously and unexpectedly disappeared, and it is supposed that he was murdered by the bandits of the prairies." Though they were not married, Horace and Jane entered into an agreement in the state of Illinois to live together as man and wife. In 1845, Horace and Jane Baker decided to emigrate to Oregon in the company of Jane's brother and sister-in-law, Mark and Martha Hattan -- who were, themselves, ultimately married only six days before setting out on the Oregon Trail. Both Horace and Jane left behind the children of earlier marriages. Jane's three children were left in the care of her parents, Forsythe and Mary Hattan. Jane's son, Carlin, was later killed in the Civil War, and she never saw him again after leaving for Oregon. Jane's eldest daughter, Julia, emigrated to Oregon in 1882 and settled near her mother in Carver, Oregon, while her younger daughter, Mary, married and remained in Illinois. Mary returned to Illinois in 1883 to visit her. Little is known of Horace's first marriage, but probate records indicate that he left behind four children, ages 4 to 14, when he came to Oregon. The Bakers and Hattans set out on May 7, 1846, in the company of fifty wagons and about 300 people. Their journey to Oregon was relatively uneventful, though they encountered many of the same difficulties recorded in the diaries and reminiscences of other pioneers. At one point, the party's dogs ran ahead of the wagons to slake their thirst at an inviting spring only to discover that it was a hot spring, so near to boiling that the party didn't need to build cookfires that night -- they cooked their rice and meat in the spring water. At Independence rock, many of the group climbed up and recorded their names on the massive rock formation. At Soda Springs, the wagon train paused to let the women cook and clean. "After nearly sixty years, I can still remember how good the water was. It was splendid for bread," Mark Hattan later recalled. Along the Columbia River in Oregon, the Bakers and Hattans decided to take the Barlow Road over the mountains instead of risking a journey down the river, which at that time was undammed and quite wild. The party encountered Sam Barlow himself at the toll gate, where he demanded $3 for each wagon and $1 a head for loose livestock. The Bakers and Hattans were almost out of money by then, and tempers flared over the exorbitant tolls. At one point, Mark Hattan threatened to shoot Sam Barlow on the spot, but cooler heads prevailed and Barlow agreed to accept the few dollars the exhausted emigrants could pay. A few days later, the party reached Laurel Hill. The slope itself was intimidating, but part way down the emigrants could see the wreck of a wagon that had gotten out of control and hit a tree. The lead oxen had tried to go to either side of the tree, but their yoke struck the trunk and their momentum carried them around and snapped their necks. The Bakers and Hattans chained up their wheels, felled a couple of large trees, and chained the tree trunks behind their wagons so they would drag along the ground like anchors. Thus secured against the prospect of a runaway, they slid their wagons safely down the hill. After 160 days on the road, the Bakers reached Oregon City on October 10, 1846, and chose a homestead site along the Clackamas River. Horace and Jane filed for a 640 acre claim, but Jane's half of the claim was denied until the couple was legally married in 1852. They chose the site of their claim because it included a large basalt rock formation, which Horace, a stonemason by trade, intended to quarry and ship downstream on the Clackamas to the settlements growing up along the Willamette River. His venture was a great success, and the high-quality basalt from Baker's Quarry was used to build the Willamette Falls Locks, the Tillamook Light House, the Portland Hotel, Portland's Pioneer Post Office, and many other buildings, foundations, and rock walls throughout the area.  Horace was so occupied with his business that he neglected to build a proper cabin for his wife for ten years. In 1856, the neighbors took pity on Jane and built a cabin for the couple out of squared timbers originally destined for the gold mines of California. They built it in an unusual fashion, with a large sleeping room on the second story cantilevered out over the front of the cabin. This design was fairly common along the East Coast, but the Baker Cabin is the only known example of it in Oregon. It is also somewhat unusual in that no pegs or nails were used to fasten together the lap-jointed logs -- the cabin is held together entirely by its own weight.Horace Baker died in 1882 at the age of 80 and was laid to rest in Mountain View Cemetery in Oregon City. Jane Baker passed away 16 years later at the age of 79 and is buried in Pleasant View Cemetery in the town of Logan. Their descendants lived in the cabin until 1901, at which point it was abandoned.  In 1937, the crumbling cabin was restored by the Old Timers Association, which was renamed the Baker Cabin Historical Society in 1978 and continues to watch over the site to the present day. The cabin was listed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1976, and the most recent major restoration project was undertaken in 1991.The Baker Cabin Historic Site is located in the valley of the Clackamas River not far from the End of the Oregon Trail. Visitor information for Baker Cabin is available. All photos on this page appear courtesy of the Baker Cabin Historical Society. |
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