|
|
|||||||||||
|
Emigrant of 1852 pictured below at far left John Wesley Lemons (1857 - 1932) Emigrant of 1875 pictured below at far right
Pioneer Family of the Month |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
| Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on May 20, 1787, Mary Ramsey Lemons Wood was the daughter of Richard Ramsey, a brick manufacturer who died suddenly due to heart disease, and Kate Ramsey, who died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 110. When Mary was two years old, George Washington became President of the United States, the first of 22 presidents under whom she would live. In her youth, future president Andrew Jackson once asked her for a dance. Mary married Jacob Lemons in 1804, and after raising a family over the course of thirty years in Tennessee, the couple moved on to Alabama in 1837 and Georgia in 1838. Jacob died in 1839, and Mary westered to Missouri ten years later. Along with two of her daughters, Nancy Bullock and Catherine Southworth, and their families, Mary headed overland to Oregon in 1852 at the age of 65. She completed the 2000 mile journey at her advanced age by riding her favorite animal, a bay mare named Martha Washington. The party followed the Barlow Road into Oregon City and eventually settled in Washington County near Hillsboro. As an experienced midwife, Mary was accustomed to earning money to contribute toward the family's welfare, and in the bustling years following the California Gold Rush she was able to step beyond the traditional role of a woman in American society. She served as postmistress of Hillsboro, built the Washington Hotel -- the first hotel in Hillsboro -- and managed it for several years. She married John Wood on May 28, 1854. In 1875, Mary's eighteen year old grandson, John Wesley Lemons, moved to Oregon. Rather than spend five months on the Oregon Trail, he took the Union Pacific/Central Pacific transcontinental railroad to San Francisco. He then headed north by wagon to Grant County in central Oregon, where he found work at a sawmill. John married Laura Ingle on April 4, 1876, and the couple moved onto the Pope ranch, now owned by Cedric Herberger. The frame house in which they lived is still standing. In 1878, they moved to the Ingle ranch, owned by Laura's father, where they lived until fire destroyed the family house two years later. By then, John had enough money to buy the Grant County Fairgrounds and turn it into the Lemons ranch. The old fairgrounds had a blacksmith shop, corrals, stables, and a pavilion. The Lemons made the pavilion their home until 1901, raising a family of eight boys and three girls by the old racetrack. The family did well over the years, as John built a flour mill on the ranch and brought the first threshing machine to Grant County.  On the heels of his success, other members of the Lemons family emigrated to Oregon, including John's widowed mother, Hester Noble Lemons, and his siblings. They settled in the John Day Valley, where the extended family homesteaded on 125 acres. John also homesteaded, himself, building the "Lemon Cabin" on Murderers Creek in 1903. However, due to a filing error, the family was never able to perfect the claim, and the US Forest Service took possession of the land. The cabin was not torn down, however, and soon became a favored refuge for hunters in the area. Thanks to their efforts over the years, the cabin was kept livable until it burned down sometime in the mid-1990s.Mary Ramsey Lemons Wood died on January 1, 1908, just after midnight on New Year's Eve. She was 120 years old and had outlived all four of her children. Her grandson, John Wesley Lemons, survived her by less than 25 years, passing away at the age of 75 on October 20, 1932.
|
|||||||||||
