End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center • 1726 Washington St. • Historic Oregon City, Oregon
Oregon Trail History 101
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Frederick & Dora Keil, emigrants of 1855

Frederick Keil, born in 1816, was the nephew of Dr. William Keil, the founder of the Aurora Colony. William Keil is perhaps better known today for bringing his deceased son over the Oregon Trail in a lead coffin filled with whiskey to preserve the body. This was done to fulfill Dr. Keil's promise to his son to take him along on the journey west.

The reason for the journey was to continue Dr. Keil's communalist Christian teachings, which came from a Bavarian tradition teaching that living cooperatively, rather than competetively, offered a model for pious Christians seeking to follow in Christ's footsteps. Doctor Keil preached that individuals must sacrifice their personal ambitions in order to promote the good of the community as a whole. After establishing the original Aurora community in Bethel, Missouri, Dr. Keil decided to lead his followers west to found their own town.

Along with his wife, Dora, and his father, Henry, Frederick followed his uncle across the Oregon Trail in 1855. Their destination was a site on Willapa Bay in the Washington Territory which had been picked by scouts sent west in 1853. The journey was fairly uneventful save for a brief fright when Frederick and Dora realzed that their only child, born just the previous year, had fallen out of the wagon at some point. Fearing the worst, Frederick retraced their path and found the baby, happily unharmed by the experience, alongside the road several miles behind the wagon train.

After wintering at Willapa Bay -- and burying his son -- Dr. Keil decided that the location was too remote and began scouting the Willamette Valley. He found a promising spot on the Pudding River halfway between Oregon City and the French Prairie area. The new arrivals purchased the area from the early emigrants who had taken out Donation Land Claims. Frederick and Dora purchased 120 acres from Anson Cone's claim at $10 an acre and moved into Cone's cabin. Land in the Aurora Colony, of which Frederick and Dora were members, was owned communally, and the Colony at its height held almost 15,000 acres between not quite 400 settlers.

Doctor Keil died in 1877, and without its leader and guiding force, the colony finally disbanded in 1883. The land, businesses, and other resources were divided up between the Colony's members and became privately held. The town of Aurora was officially incorporated in 1893.

Frederick Keil died two years after his uncle, in 1879. His youngest son, Charles, took over the family farm. He built the family's first frame house the same year, where Dora lived until her death in 1906. With a few additions and modernizations over the years, the descendants of Frederick and Dora Keil are still living in that house today.