Jasper had sired ten children in his first marriage, but one by one he had lost most of them, three married daughters from tuberculosis in recent years.  Only three of his children were still living, two of them far from San Francisco.  His youngest son, Guido, came to visit his father at the Fairmont and then quickly headed to Mexico to take over care of the finca [coffee plantation], ostensibly to help out his father.

Death came at the Fairmont on June 15.  The local Masonic lodge conducted the funeral. Libby Matheny was the only family member in attendance, and few, if any, friends attended. He was buried at the Masonic Cemetery in a city where he had no family to visit his grave. It was a lonely, unheralded end for a man who had been on the first wagon train to make it all the way to Oregon in 1843 and who had been a frontier sheriff, a businessman, a loving family man, founder of a Mexican coffee plantation, and one of three partners who had founded the city of Spokane.  He had interacted with many of the renowned people of the West.  He had possessed the soft-heartedness of a poet, a rare integrity, and the physical toughness that made other men listen to him.

There was no rest for Jasper even in death.  San Francisco passed an ordinance soon after he died to remove all cemeteries from within the city limits.  Every effort was made to find relatives of those buried in the Masonic Cemetery, now the site of the University of San Francisco.  When the families were found, the bodies were relocated where the families wished.  The rest were interred in a mass grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in the town of Colma, just south of San Francisco.  Their tombstones were later used as landfill in the approaches to the Golden Gate Bridge. The cemetery was likely unable to contact any of Jasper’s family and his remains probably ended up in the mass grave. The cemeteries in Colma have no record of him, and the Masonic Cemetery records were destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906. 

1834-1837- Beginnings

2

Jasper Newton Matheny was born 4 August 1834 in Schuyler County, Illinois, the son of Daniel Matheny and Mary “Polly” Matheny.  Like many other babies across Andrew Jackson’s America, his Christian name had its origin in the struggle for independence of the thirteen British colonies in North America.  In 1775 Sergeant William Jasper enlisted in the 2^nd South Carolina Infantry and rescued the South Carolina state flag at the Battle of Fort Moultrie a year later.  He joined Patriot forces in Georgia soon afterward, and, in the summer of 1776, he and Sergeant John Newton waylaid British troops escorting Patriot prisoners of war from a British camp near Ebenezer, Georgia, to Savannah.  The two men freed the prisoners when the British patrol stopped to get a drink of water from a nearby spring.  Jasper was later killed at the siege of Savannah on October 9, 1779, while rescuing his regiment’s flag from a dying lieutenant.  He was in his twenties.  Newton, too, died a hero’s death.  The two men’s names were linked in Revolution lore, spread, no doubt, by the Patriot prisoners they had rescued.

Little Jasper’s color wasn’t so obvious at first, but as the child grew and played in the sun, his swarthy skin must have brought questions about the family ancestry.  Jasper was dark for reasons that his parents kept from their children.  His three older brothers dubbed him “the black calf” for his skin color and his passion for milk.  None of them knew that their Grandmother Cooper, born Elizabeth Montier, was, but for her one thirty-second French blood, an Indian.  She lived in the white frontier culture with her husband, Isaiah Cooper, and probably passed herself off as French.

For frontier people, like Jasper’s parents, Daniel and Mary “Polly” Cooper Matheny, Indians were savages, certainly not equals to their white neighbors.  Halfbreeds were regarded almost as low as Indians themselves.  So none of the family ever spoke of Elizabeth’s ancestry.  It didn’t matter that Elizabeth’s father, John Montour, had led more than 800 Indians to fight in the Patriot cause in the Revolution and had held the rank of captain.  It didn’t matter that her grandfather, Andrew Montour, had been George Washington’s Indian liaison in the French and Indian War and had worked for the colonies of Pennsylvania, and Virginia as interpreter and Indian agent. It did not matter that her great grandmother, Madame Montour, was also a famed interpreter and Indian agent for the colony of Pennsylvania and would have a Pennsylvania county named for her.  Elizabeth was an Indian and would not have been welcomed by white frontier society had she admitted it. It had been fortunate that Elizabeth’s father had corrupted the pronunciation of the family surname from Montour to Montier so that no one would associate her with the well-known Indian family, the Montours.

Jasper’s grandfather, Isaiah Cooper, also had a problem that likely wasn’t spoken of.  Almost all of the frontier families grew corn on their farms, which were newly hacked from the wilderness.  In this rich, new farmland, the corn thrived and was bountiful.  This posed a problem for the frontier people.  It was costly to ship corn as meal to the markets in the East, making the profit margin small.  By fermenting the corn into whiskey, however, the profit margin was much higher and made transportation costs less prohibitive.  An unfortunate side effect of whiskey production was the increased use of their product by the producers.  Whiskey was present at all social and political functions—as was the drunkenness it spawned.  Jasper’s grandfather had shown great promise.  He was one of the founders of Owen County, Indiana, and served as one of its commissioners and as justice of the peace.  But the whiskey twisted Isaiah into an incompetent, brawling thorn in the side of the residents.  He was impeached, convicted, and thrown out of office.

Before her father’s deterioration, Polly Matheny had spent her youth in Clark County, Indiana, with the terror of Indian attack an ever-present danger.  Her father had served in the War of 1812 in a group of rangers who roamed the territory to prevent Indian problems. The firstborn child of her parents, she was sent to a finishing school, probably the one in Lexington, Kentucky.  This was very unusual for a frontier girl to have had such an education. It instilled high standards of behavior in Polly and a desire to instill those standards in any children she might have. Her piety also contributed to these high ideals. After the war, the family moved in 1817 to what is now Owen County, Indiana.  Soon after the Coopers settled there, three second cousins from Kentucky, Joshua, Daniel, and Henry Matheny arrived.  Daniel and Polly married in 1819.  Polly’s sister Rachel married Henry Matheny in 1822.

In the months following her marriage, Polly found religion, probably when the spellbinding Lorenzo Dow came from his preaching circuit out of the forest and preached at a camp meeting. Many pioneers named their offspring Lorenzo Dow.  Later Jasper and his brother Adam named a son each after this preacher with the gilded rhetoric. Due to Polly’s influence, a few years later, Daniel found the spirit also.

Perhaps it was Jasper’s profane, alcoholic grandfather that the family was escaping in 1824 when Daniel and Mary moved to Edgar County, Illinois, with their first three children; perhaps it was only a desire to seek new opportunity.  Not much is known of their life there except that two sons were born: Isaiah in 1826, and Daniel Boone Matheny in 1829.

The Mathenys were in Edgar County six years before moving to Schuyler County with their four living children: Adam, Isaiah, Elizabeth, and Daniel Boone Matheny.  A daughter Mary was born in their new homesite in 1832 about the time Jasper’s father went off to fight in the Black Hawk War against the Sauk-Fox tribe.  The father and three uncles fought in the war alongside such future notables as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. When the war broke out, it was legislated that the county had to provide 150 militia members.  The 23 of April 1832 was appointed as the day of mustering to attain the 150, either by volunteers or by draft. 400 men met at Rushville that day.  William Marshall, the orator of the day, rallied the men to volunteer, to shun the brand of cowardice, and to avoid disgracing their county by its requiring a draft.  At the end of his long speech, he struck up the marching band and followed it as the first man to enlist.  Not quite an hour elapsed until the requisite number of 150 had enlisted.  Daniel Matheny was one of the number.  He was selected as first lieutenant in Captain John Stennett’s Company, Odd Battalion, Mounted Rangers, Illinois Volunteers. (pp.159-160 History of Schuyler and Brown Counties, Illinois).  The soldiers followed Black Hawk and his followers into what is now Wisconsin, where the Indians were soon defeated; then all was peace again.

Jasper, Polly Matheny’s seventh child, was born 4 August 1834, there on the Matheny farm in the summer heat of Schuyler County, Illinois.  There was something special about this child that created a noticeably-close bond between mother and son.  His sister Charlotte would admit in her memoirs some ninety years later that Jasper had been her mother’s favorite child. Polly Matheny would never have admitted to this, and this formidable woman would not have been accused of favoritism by her children.

Daniel Matheny had been born in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1793 and had moved to Hardin County, Kentucky with his parents in the first years of the new century. When the War of 1812 broke out, Daniel enlisted and served until the war’s end.  He fought under Andrew Jackson at the final battle at New Orleans.

It was at New Orleans that a defining event for Daniel took place.  While on the streets of New Orleans, he witnessed a slave auction at the big slave market there, where most slaves were bought to work in the killing Delta sugarcane brakes.  He was twenty-one and his abhorrence at the spectacle showed in his face.  An old, gray-headed slave was on the block.  Looking down at the torment in Daniel, the old man reached out his hands and implored, “Oh, young massa, won’t you buy me?” Daniel was overwrought with the desire to purchase this poor man out of his certain fate, but, although the bid was low, his meager army pay was not enough.  He turned around and walked away, his soul in torment.  He vowed to move out of the South one day.

Daniel was descended from another Daniel Matheny who had come from England about 1660 and settled in Maryland until his seditious ways got him in trouble with the governing authorities and he had to flee hurriedly across the Potomac River to Stafford County, Virginia.  In the next century, when the Valley of Virginia was being settled in the 1740’s and 50’s, his grandson, John Matheny, moved to that area.  John was Jasper’s great grandfather.

The restless, ever westward-moving spirit that characterized the frontier people of the United States was strong in the Mathenys.  When the “Platte Purchase” opened up for settlement in northwestern Missouri in 1837, they sold their Schuyler County Illinois lands and were again in the Western vanguard.  Where they settled soon became Platte County.  Little Jasper was three years old at the time.  His earliest memories would be formed there in Missouri.

1837-1843- Missouri

3

Life in Missouri was relatively free from threats of Indian attack by this time.  The villains to most of the population of northeastern Missouri were the Mormons.  They were spoken of as blasphemers who committed crimes against decency by marrying clutches of women.  Their leader, Joseph Smith, was deemed an outright liar, who hoodwinked his flock into believing a fantastic tale of visitations by angels with golden tablets that told of the migration of lost tribes of Israel to the Americas.  Like the Jews, the Mormons considered themselves the chosen people.

Surrounded by three older brothers and two older sisters, Jasper had many teachers.  He was taught to hunt, raise crops, tend to poultry and livestock, and make his own musket balls and ramrods.  In the Matheny home, piety was the most important of the things a child must be taught.  Both Daniel and Polly took part in teaching their children to love and respect the Lord, but whereas Jasper’s father could couple his religious convictions with a hearty sense of humor, his mother was more serious about life and her religion.  Camp meetings were a regular part of frontier life until an area became populated enough to support a minister and, yet later, a church.  Jasper would have enjoyed the festive society at these meetings and the many children his own age with whom to play.

Missouri was a slave state, and many of the Mathenys’ neighbors were slave owners.  Adjacent to the Mathenys lived the Hunt family.  Polly Matheny frowned on her children visiting Davy Hunt’s huge log home.  It was probably not just the slavery that she did not want her children to come to accept, but that there was likely not the degree of godliness in the home that she would have liked.  On the few times that Jasper would have been permitted to accompany his father to the Hunts’ farm, he saw black, spotted wooden floors, a sharp contrast to Polly’s immaculately-white, scrubbed linwood floors.  The Hunts’ chickens ran loose and fouled the veranda with their droppings, which was totally intolerable to Polly.  Animals belonged behind fences or in outbuildings, not running loose in the yard.

Besides Polly’s sense of cleanliness, there were other reasons for keeping the fowl and livestock penned.  For one thing, there was safety for the animals.  Safely caged or in the barn, they were protected from predators, of which there were many on the frontier.  Another major reason for stockading the animals was to prevent them from destroying the family vegetable crop and Polly’s passion, her flower garden.

Early in his life Jasper probably learned to work helping his mother pick leaves from the mulberry trees that she kept to feed her silk worms.  Polly kept these in a separate out-building; their silk was used to make her own thread.  When the cocoons were at just the right stage of development, she would gather them up and throw them into a pot of boiling water.  Stirring a stick through the pot, she would gather the silken threads around the stick and use these to sew and knit.  She would always allow some of the cocoons to turn into moths to reproduce for the next crop of silk.  For cloth the family also raised cotton and flax and a few sheep. She did not spin the silk, just the cotton and wool.

 In the early years Jasper probably helped Polly with the spinning and carding but quickly outgrew these tasks when he began to accompany his father and older brothers more frequently to learn the tasks of men. The Mathenys kept bees as well.  They had several hollowed out gum tree stumps covered with tin that served as hives.  Jasper would watch fascinated as the bees would swarm and be guided into a new hive by his father.  The honey they produced was a delicacy.  There were few sweets on the frontier.  The store-bought sack of sugar and the jug of molasses were kept for cooking. Stores were far away and the prices were high out west.  The family needed to produce as much of its own needs as possible.

It was in 1838 that the trouble with the Mormons came to a boil.  Governor Lilburn Boggs gave the order that the Mormons must be driven from the state or exterminated.  In retaliation, someone sneaked into the governor’s residence in the night and stabbed him, although not fatally.  Daniel Matheny joined the militia and was elected captain of his company in the so-called Mormon War.  The militia drove the Mormons eastward across the Mississippi River into Illinois, where they soon had established themselves on the eastern bank of the River.  Jasper was too young to understand the source of the conflict, but he would have felt the absence of his father during the fray. During these times of trouble, Polly Cooper gave birth to a girl child, Charlotte, who would be called “Lottie.”  A special bond joined Jasper to this youngest sibling.  She would always see him as her hero and would name her eldest son for him.

Living in Platte County were Jasper’s Uncle Henry and Aunt Rachel Matheny and their family.  In 1839 an uncle, Enoch Cooper, joined the Mathenys with his family. While Jasper had many siblings and cousins, there were no boys his own age among the clan.  Uncle Henry hadn’t joined the militia with his brother Daniel because Henry had a strange malady.  He would suddenly become confused and lose awareness of where he was.  Ashamed of his condition, he would ask no one for directions to his home and would wander about until found or until he could find his own way back home.  Many times Aunt Rachel or one of her children would appear at the door of Jasper’s home and ask for Daniel to help her find Uncle Henry.  It wouldn’t do to be off in a war and have one of these kind of attacks, so Uncle Henry stayed out of the troubles.

Another Henry joined the family in 1840.  Jasper’s oldest siblings were reaching maturity, and his sister Elizabeth married young Henry Hewitt of a neighboring farm that year.  He was eighteen, she seventeen.  Henry was personable and god-fearing and was well-liked by the Mathenys.  The following year Jasper became an uncle when “Lizabeth” gave birth to a child the Hewitts named Ann Eliza.

Near the Matheny home was a soapstone quarry where Jasper liked to gather pieces of soapstone for whittling and carving.  There was also a creek in which to play and the bridge across it that led to the Layson home.  There was a large family of Laysons.  Three of them eventually married into Jasper’s family.

In the early spring of 1842 Platte County was abuzz with talk about a group who were planning to go to Oregon by wagon under the leadership of Dr. Elijah White, a missionary from the Willamette Valley, who was returning there from a trip to the East.  Henry Hewitt’s brother Adam had decided to go and was strongly encouraging Henry to take Lizabeth and the baby and accompany him.  Henry was greatly excited at the prospect of vast quantities of free land upon which to settle and he did his best to talk his father-in-law, Daniel Matheny, into joining the emigration.  Henry’s excitement was infectious and the Mathenys were caught up in the “Oregon Fever,” but it was late in the season, and the Mathenys would have to sell their farm, equipment, and possessions.  There was simply not enough time.  Henry had no farm to sell and had not yet accumulated a great amount of possessions.  Daniel bargained with his young son-in-law, “If you will wait until next year, Henry, we will go with you.  I need time to dispose of what we have here.”  Possessing the impatience and poverty of youth, Henry was disappointed, but the dream of the future was decided:  the Mathenys and Hewitts would be going to Oregon in the spring of 1843.  Aunt Rachel and Uncle Henry Matheny planned to make the journey as well.

The winter of 1842-1843 saw Dr. Marcus Whitman, missionary among the Cayuse and Walla Walla Indians, stop in St. Louis, urging the populace to head west.  Dr. Whitman assured his listeners that the entire trip could be made by wagon, although Dr. Elijah White’s 1842 party had left their wagons at Fort Hall. Peter H. Burnett, a Platte County lawyer, held meetings in Platte City where he spoke about Oregon from the courthouse steps, urging Missourians to emigrate to help make Oregon American.  He told of the great crops of wheat which it was possible to raise in Oregon. A treaty of 1819 between Britain and the United States had stipulated that both nations could occupy the Oregon Country jointly with ownership to be settled at some later date. Burnett argued that by settling in Oregon, people could guarantee that the land would become American. Many people signed up with Burnett to make the journey.  It is probable that Daniel and some of his sons attended one of Burnett’s Oregon meetings.

The dream of Oregon warmed the hearts of all in the family. No one wanted to talk about yesterday or today. Every evening by the fireside the trip to Oregon would be discussed.  It would take six months of travel to cross the continent over land inhabited only by Indians and wild animals. During the fall of 1842, Polly Matheny gathered seeds from all of the flowers in her garden and the gardens of neighbors and dreamed of the flower garden she would have in the West. Careful planning continued all through the winter.  Items were sold or discarded, and late in the winter Daniel found a buyer for his farm in a Mr. Collins.

For an eight-year-old, time goes slowly, and that winter it must have seemed to Jasper that the great adventure would never arrive.  Then New Year’s Day came, ushering in 1843, the year that the promised journey would take place. The days began to be longer and soon the first hints of spring appeared. What really made the journey seem imminent was when the four new covered wagons were brought home.

Buying wagons and food enough for six months cost a lot of money.  Many people could not afford the overland journey.  Jasper’s Uncle Enoch Cooper could not afford the long journey; so, with his family, he left Platte County to return to Pike County, Illinois.  Jasper’s Cooper grandparents and other uncles and aunts now lived there.  It was a sad parting for the family.  With such a great distance to separate them, they didn’t expect to see each other again.

The men would need their guns and plenty of ammunition in the wilderness. They used muzzle-loading muskets, so in the evenings Jasper and his three brothers would sit around the fire making ramrods for their guns and molding the round lead musket balls in iron molds.  Each ball needed to have the uneven place cut off where the mold had been.  It was a tedious task “necking” the shot.  The ramrods, too, had to be scraped with a piece of glass then rubbed with sand until they were smooth.

The Mathenys continued loading their wagons very carefully, selling or giving away many family treasures.  The process took several weeks. As she sorted through the family possessions, Polly’s chin would quiver as she forced herself to part with items.  When the wagons were finally loaded, not one item of doubtful utility was left, and there wasn’t room for one thing more.  When it was discovered that Polly’s bag of seeds had been overlooked in the packing, there was no place for it.   It was to begin the trip tied to her saddle horn.

Without telling his family, Jasper’s brother Adam had asked David Layson across the creek for permission to marry his daughter, Sarah Jane Layson, and take her with him to Oregon.  Mr. Layson was opposed to the idea.  He said that he didn’t want his daughter taken away by a foolhardy young man to starve in the wilderness or be killed by Indians.  Adam and Sarah Jane both felt extremely dejected, but, being of age to marry without parental permission, Sarah Jane decided to go anyway.  An elopement was planned for that Monday night before the Mathenys were due to leave.

It was planned that Adam’s cousin Sarah Jane Matheny, daughter of Uncle Henry and Aunt Rachel and best friend of Sarah Jane Layson, would be her friend’s  witness.  It was arranged for Sarah Jane to spend Monday visiting the Laysons and to stay the night.  It was laundry day so the two girls worked hard at washing clothes, for Sarah Jane wanted her clothing clean for the journey.   To stand up for Adam would be Aaron Layson, Sarah Jane’s brother, who was Adam’s best friend.  Aaron was to go to the Mathenys to spend the night with Adam.

The two girls went to bed and nervously awaited the signal to sneak out of the house.  As planned, the two youths arrived near the Layson cabin about eleven o’clock and blew a fox horn.  The girls put on their dresses, still damp from having done the laundry, and quietly sneaked out of the house. A minister across the township was waiting to perform the marriage.  The two witnesses were so caught up in the romance of the elopement and the adventure of the trip to Oregon that they, too, decided to marry. As if there wasn’t enough excitement already, now Jasper had two new family members making the trip.  There were now twelve in Jasper’s family and six in Uncle Henry and Aunt Rachel’s family.

Mr. Layson was furious when he was told what had happened.  He refused to see his children who had married even to say goodbye.  He would not let his wife take their clothes to them. The Mathenys shared what clothing they had with the newcomers and probably assisted them in purchasing some clothing before starting off.

Neighbors came to visit the family to bid them goodbye.  Parting was wrenching because no one expected to see each other again. As the wagons headed out, some of the neighbors rode along with the Mathenys awhile. Two little sisters of Sarah Jane and Aaron Layson followed awhile on foot, begging their sister not to leave them.  “Don’t go!  Don't go! We’ll never see you again!” There were tears in a number of eyes, including the men’s.  Finally the tired girls just lay face down in the road and cried as the wagons drew further and further away. But westering was a mighty force, and the Mathenys would  see some of their old neighbors again in Oregon in the years to come.

1843- Westport

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The sadness of parting was fading by the time the Mathenys reached Westport, now part of Kansas City, Missouri.  It was the general meeting place of those planning to travel to Oregon that year. Dr. Marcus Whitman, who had made a bold mid-winter trek east across the continent from his Indian mission on the Walla Walla River in the Oregon Country, through  his traveling partner, Asa Lovejoy, had promised to lead the emigration west and show them where wagons could be taken through.  Lovejoy had spread the word far and wide in Missouri that he and Whitman would accompany the wagons and pilot them to Oregon. Whitman would catch up with them along the way after finishing his business in the East.

The children, including eight-year-old Jasper, were busy making friends with newcomers during the wait.  By the time the emigrants had all assembled, there was a large group of boys near Jasper’s own age who were often noisy and rowdy.  The men were put through a regular army drill to prepare for any Indian problems that might occur.

At the orginizational meeting of the emigrants, Jasper was probably proud to see how his family took a leading role.  His brother Adam nominated his best friend Aaron Layson, who was now his cousin-by-marriage, to be the chairman for the proceedings, and Aaron was elected. Jasper’s father and William Martin were appointed to solicit the services of John Gantt, a veteran fur-trapper and “mountain man,” as a guide for the journey as far as Fort Hall; Gantt was unfamiliar with the area past Fort Hall. Lovejoy and Whitman would not begin the trip with the group but planned to catch up with the emigrants soon after their departure.  A large group of those assembled was not heading to Oregon at all and had their own leader, Joseph Chiles.  They planned to take the cut-off to California just past Fort Hall. He had made arrangements for the mountain man Joseph Walker to meet his party at Fort Laramie to lead them through a pass he had discovered through the Sierras.  John Gantt planned to travel on to California with this group after his duties with the Oregon-bound emigrants were finished.

 The Mathenys were at Westport  about two weeks before the 119 wagons and more than a thousand people were ready to depart. They needed to wait until the grass was high enough to provide food for their animals. The Matheny party included Daniel Matheny, 50; Mary “Polly” Cooper Matheny, 43; Adam Matheny, 22; Sarah Jane Layson Matheny, 16; Henry Hewitt, 21; Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt, 20; Ann Eliza Hewitt, 2; Isaiah C. Matheny, 17; Daniel B. Matheny, 14; Mary Matheny, 11; Jasper Matheny, 8; Charlotte “Lottie” Matheny, 5; Uncle Henry Matheny, about 43; Aunt Rachel Cooper Matheny, 40; Cousin Sarah Jane Matheny Layson, about 18; now-Cousin Aaron Layson, 23; Cousin Lucy Ann Matheny, 14; and Cousin Isaiah Matheny, about 15.  They numbered eighteen people.  The Daniel Matheny family had four wagons and the Henry Matheny family probably had a couple, so their party made up five or six percent of the total number of wagons.

At last the wagons headed out. Everyone was elated.

1843- On the Trail

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Peter Burnett did not last long as the wagon master.  At the first grumbling, he resigned.  This was to be a life-long trait.  He would aspire for office and then quit when the going got tough.  He would even quit the California governorship eleven months before the end of his term.  Daniel Matheny nominated his friend David Lennox to be the new captain, and he was elected.  The Lennox family had lived near the Mathenys in Schuyler County, Illinois, and again in Platte County, Missouri, so they were well acquainted.

At the crossing of the flooding Little Blue, a swirling, muddy river, the first change in the emigrant population took place.   In the driving rain, John Ford pulled his wagon aside and sent ahead for his mother-in-law to come back to help her daughter, Beedie Ford, in the delivery of a baby.  Tillman Ford, later a lawyer in Salem, Oregon, was born there before the crossing of the Little Blue.  It was just about dark when the Ford wagon arrived at the river and called for help.  Beedie’s father called to John to make camp and wait there until daylight to cross, but Beedie wouldn’t have it.  She was terrified of Indians and said they would cross if they had to swim.   Several of the Matheny men slipped off their boots and heavier clothing and went into the stream in case of disaster.  The light wagon rocked in the current and the men steadied it to safety.

It rained continuously all that night.  The water came under the tents and forced the families out of them.  Some of the emigrants got into their crowded wagons; others piled up their ox yokes and made beds on them.  The Matheny boys stayed in the water, deciding that they could get no wetter than they already were.  Daylight shone on a muddy, wet bunch of people.  The party lost several days cleaning and drying their wet gear.

On the evening of the second day of travel the emigrants arrived at the Kansas River.  Edward Lennox, then a sixteen-year-old boy, recalled in his memoirs that the river was high due to recent rains.  The crossing promised to be difficult.  A Frenchman who lived nearby had three log dugouts that Edward’s father, Dave Lennox, rented the next morning.  The emigrants secured them together with planks on top to make a makeshift raft.  All of the hundred-plus wagons had to cross in this way, one at a time.  It took two days to get everyone and the stock across.

William Vaughn almost became the first fatality of the journey while swimming the river leading some stock.  He was suddenly seized by cramps in the middle of the river and called for help.  James Nesmith and P.G. Stewart rushed to his assistance.  Nesmith dove in and reached Vaughn, but Vaughn grabbed on to Nesmith and threatened to drown the both of them.  Nesmith kept repeating, “Let  me go and I will save you,” but Vaughn kept grasping.  Finally Nesmith had to dive away from Vaughn to keep from being drowned.  Then he and Stewart pulled the now-unconscious Vaughn out of the water.  Vaughn appeared to be dead, but Nesmith told young Edward Lennox to get him a keg.  The boy brought the keg and the men lay Vaughn over the keg and rolled him back and forth over the keg while pumping his arms.  Finally Vaughn regained consciousness and was taken to a tent and covered in warm blankets. After two days, Vaughn was back to normal.

It was there at the Kansas River [then called the Kaw River] that the party met its first Indians, the Kaws [a.k.a. Kansa or Kansas] Indians.   The emigrants camped on the south side of the river near a Kaw village.  There were huts and cabins along both sides of a street that paralleled the river.  These settled Indians grew corn, beans, and pumpkins.  Some of the men were more than six feet tall and walked with an erect bearing.  They wore their hair in the Mohawk style, with the crest of hair colored red. Jasper had listened to his father tell stories of Indian treachery and depradations, so he was likely very fearful of these Indians.

Two days after crossing the Kansas River, the group met a war party of about one hundred Kaws dressed in feathers and warpaint.  Some among the group were wounded and limping.  Others had blood on their faces and were bandaged in various fashions.  Tired and in a hurry, the Indians said that they had been on a buffalo hunt when they were attacked by a party of Pawnees.  They claimed that they had defeated the Pawnees, but the travelers soon came upon the battlefield where several dead Kaws lay.  Had the Kaws been victorious, they would not have left their dead, so their claim of victory rang hollow to the members of the wagon train. A Mexican in the train cut off an Indian’s hand and brought it to camp where he hung it on a stake about a yard high.  The barbarity of the action enraged the emigrants and the man was told to leave the wagon train.

Some of the families in the emigration, such as Jesse and Lindsay Applegate and Daniel Waldo, owned large herds of stock that with difficulty could be herded up and ready to go by ten o’clock each morning.  It was decided to break up the wagon train into two groups.  Thirty-three wagons under David Lennox made up the advanced party of those with only a few head of cattle.  Jesse Applegate was elected captain of what was called the “cow column.”  There were then three separate groups traveling together:  the California-bound group and the two Oregon-bound groups.

Whenever the grass was plentiful, the wagons would pause for a few days to fatten up the stock.  During this time the women would bake bread in the Dutch ovens and cook up enough food to last until the next lay-over.  They would also do laundry.  The men would tend to the wagons and stock and hunt for game.  The children would play games.  When not otherwise occupied, the men would sit around on the grass and tell stories and visit with each other or sometimes lie in the shade of the wagons and sleep.

In the early morning hours one night the trekkers were awakened by the boom of musket fire.  In the prairie quiet, the shot sounded like a cannon burst and all in camp were up instantly to stave off the Indian threat.  By the light of the guard fire in the center of the camp, the embarrassed sentry, Nathan Sutton, had to explain how he had mistaken a mule that had broken loose from its tether for an Indian.  The mule lay dead just outside the camp with a bullet square between his eyes.  Sutton would never live down the mistake.  All the way to Oregon he was taunted with “Have you seen any more four-legged Indians, Nate?”

Peter Burnett had been a lawyer in Platte County, Missouri, and was known by the Mathenys there.  His children were to remain friends of the Matheny children for many years thereafter.  In California in 1896 Isaiah Matheny listed one of them as a reference who could verify Isaiah’s allegations on his request for a military land grant. In her memoirs, Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood told of the Burnetts crossing the Platte in 1843:

We crossed on the fourth day of July, and Peter H. Burnett crossed a few minutes later.  I remember that because Aunt Rachel, who had gone over some days before, had a big dinner all cooked and ready for us.  Someone had killed a buffalo, and Aunt had a great pan of juicy steaks all broiled and piping hot.  We were terribly hungry, and it was not till after the steaks were eaten that we found they had been broiled over buffalo chips.  Mrs. Burnett was not altogether happy about it.  She even said she would have starved before eating anything cooked on them if she had known it.  I guess that was not altogether true, for a few mornings later, the Hon. Peter H. was surprised when he went about daylight to gather a good supply before other people were up.  The boys said he was gathering them in a big white tablecloth.

At the mile-wide Platte, the wagons were taken apart and wet rawhides were stretched over the wagon boxes and secured in place.  The hides had been saved just for this purpose when buffaloes had been killed.  The wagon boxes were then placed in the sun to dry and each wagon, in effect, became a small flatboat.  They were then loaded with the running gears and the belongings of the family.  On top of it were set the women and children and the men who could not swim.  The crossing took two weeks for everyone to make it.  Everyone helped each other.  Jasper’s father and his two oldest brothers stripped to the waist and spent most of the two weeks towing the wagons across the extremely wide river.  Each wagon had two swimmers in front with ropes in their teeth pulling the wagon and three on each side doing the same thing to keep the wagon steady.  On one of these trips, one of the swimmers passed out and would have drowned if Daniel Matheny hadn’t caught him and helped put him in the wagon.  Some of the men had terrible sunburns from the continued exposure to the sun.  Adam Matheny was so blistered that he became ill and had a high fever.  His mother doctored him with flour and cream.

The caravan was in the heart of buffalo country.  The hunters would roam ahead taking extra mules and horses to carry back the meat.  Once Daniel killed six fat cows within the space of an acre.  During lay-overs, the party would cut the buffalo meat into thin strips and make jerky by drying it in the sun.  They also made pemmican in the Indian fashion, pounding the dried meat into powder and storing it in burlap sacks.   The buffalo were abundant; sometimes they were even found mixed with emigrants’ cattle in the mornings, quietly grazing with them.  Antelope and jackrabbits were abundant as well.

As fatigue set in, most of the Oregon-bound men and women became irritable.  Being civil with one another proved difficult for some.  Small groups of men would sit and vent their complaints about others, especially their guide John Gantt.  They questioned his credentials as a guide and professed to believe that he wasn’t even a mountain man at all and didn’t know anything at all about where he was leading them.  They felt the journey was taking too long, and that Gantt was leading them in unneeded crisscrossings.  Finally, they challenged him to his face.  Gantt countered the malcontents by challenging them to climb with him to a protrusion of rock nearby.  Reaching the summit of the bluff, he pointed to a deep ravine in the distance up the trail and told his doubters that it was Ash Hollow, a favorite resting spot for mountain men. He said that currants would be found there in abundance.  Arriving at Ash Hollow with its spring and currant bushes silenced Gantt’s critics, but querulousness would continue along the trail, especially among those for whom civilization was a thin veneer.

When the emigrants were somewhere along the North Platte River, Dr. Marcus Whitman and his traveling partner, Asa Lovejoy, caught up with them.  Jesse A. Applegate described Lovejoy as being a very clever and good-looking young man who wore a slouch hat.  Lovejoy, who had attended Harvard and graduated from Amherst, was later a co-founder of Portland, Oregon. Both Jasper’s sister Charlotte in her memoir Into the Eye of the Setting Sun and Jesse A. Applegate in his reminiscences, Recollections of My Boyhood, tell of Lovejoy’s entertaining the group by telling of what had happened to him the previous year when he went to Oregon with the 1842 emigration.  On a prominent cliff in the canyon of the Sweetwater River, several of the 1842 emigrants had climbed up high to carve their names in the rock.  When the others were finished, Lovejoy and his friend, Lansford Hastings, climbed the cliff to carve their names also.  Meanwhile, the others had returned to camp.  The young men were high enough now to see their co-travellers across the canyon in the distance making camp.  Then, looking down at the bottom of the cliff, they were paralyzed by what they saw: Indians had found their guns and were examining them, appearing delighted at their good fortune.  A noise brought their attention to the two young whites high up on the cliff, and the Indians motioned for them to come down.  The nervous young men came down but not before tying a red handkerchief on the cliff, hopefully to serve as a distress signal to those back at camp.  Just as the Indians were leading away their two prisoners, a group of men from the emigration arrived.  The Indians demanded a ransom for Lovejoy and Hastings.  Some tobacco was proffered and the Indians accepted.  The men and their guns were returned.  The Mathenys came to know Lovejoy quite well in Oregon, and he was fond of saying that as long as he lived he would never believe that he amounted to very much, remembering that his friends had traded him for a twist of tobacco.

If we could freeze that scene by the campfire with Lovejoy telling his story, one would see a founder of the city of Portland; the now nine-year-old Jasper who would one day be one of the founders of Spokane; a future United States Senator from Oregon, Jim Nesmith; and the man who would become California’s first governor, Peter H. Burnett.   The other man of whom Lovejoy spoke, Lansford Hastings, would later become infamous as the man whose misdirections led to the tragedy of the Donner Party.  He would also become a business partner of John Sutter of Sutter’s Fort, a lawyer and judge in Sacramento, and an officer in the Confederate Army.

After leaving Fort Laramie the wagons lumbered on; they passed the Devils Backbone, an outcropping of rocks that made travel difficult. Tempers boiled over and for awhile the three wagons of Lindsay Applegate separated from the emigration, leaving behind his brothers Jesse and Charles’ families.  Said Lindsay’s son Jesse A. Applegate in his memoirs, “Father had pulled out, preferring to face the dangers of the wilderness alone rather than face civil war.”

The wagon train crossed the Green River and passed through South Pass. Shortly thereafter a large number of Shoshoni [Snake] Indians rode at top speed up to the wagons and requested gunpowder.  The Indians were greatly excited and their horses were lathered. They held their empty powder horns upside down and pointed to the emigrants full powder horns.  Then they pointed to an approaching cloud of dust in the distance and said, “Cheyenne!  Cheyenne!”  The Shoshonis made it clear that they were at war with the Cheyenne and were desperately in need of powder to defend themselves.  But as the riders approached, it was clear that they were not Indians but American soldiers.  It was John Fremont and his map-making expedition.  The expedition met up with the emigrants and then followed them for a few days.

Kit Carson was Fremont’s scout. Daniel Matheny had been acquainted with Carson previously.  Kit ate supper with the Mathenys and sat a long while around their campfire.  A crowd gathered around as he told the group what lay ahead and gave advice about camping places.  He wore a battered broad-brimmed gray hat.  Probably every boy in the emigration had played at being Kit Carson, the Indian scout.  Jasper’s dark eyes were no doubt focused on Carson’s every word.

Soon the wagons, followed by Fremont’s party, arrived at Soda Springs in present-day eastern Idaho. Then it was part of the Oregon Country. There was a lay-over here.  The women were happy to have hot water to do their laundry and to cook with. Fremont and his men were lodged in a very large tent.  The hilarity that rose from the tent led Jesse A. Applegate to suppose that strong liquor was flowing inside.  The soldiers had been carrying soda water from the spring to their tent all day, presumably to mix with their liquor.  When a very large decomposed frog was pulled out of the spring by one of the emigrants, the laughing emanating from  Fremont’s tent ceased.

The map-making troop had a shiny brass cannon, a six-pounder, which intrigued the children of the emigration.  Also of great interest was the geyser along the bank of the nearby Bear River.  This the boys tried to plug with sod or whatever lay handy and watched with glee as the water propelled the plug into the air.  One boy put his hat over the blow hole and held it there, but the water popped a hole in the crown and escaped anyway.

After sojourning together briefly, the soldiers and the emigrants parted, each group having different destinations.  Soon afterward the wagon train reached Fort Hall, the British Hudson’s Bay Company trading post.   At the post were some Indians who had been sent by Narcissa Whitman to deliver a message to her husband, Dr. Marcus Whitman.  Whitman was told that some of the Indians at his mission were being surly and had burned down some of the buildings, including the flouring mill.  Mrs. Whitman had left for the Methodist mission at The Dalles for safety.  Whitman apologized to the group for having to leave them to ride ahead to his mission to settle down the rebelling Indians.  He promised to send the Cayuse Chief Sticcus, a Christian Indian, to guide the party.  Presumably Asa Lovejoy rode ahead with Whitman and the Indians.  The emigrants’ guide, John Gantt, left the emigrants at Fort Hall, having completed his contract with them.

At the head of Fort Hall was a man named Grant.  He tried to dissuade the travelers from taking their wagons with them, saying it couldn’t be done, but Dr. Whitman assured the party leaders that they could travel all the way to Oregon in their wagons.  He advised them not to listen to the Hudson Bay Company’s representatives because they were motivated by wanting to keep Americans out of Oregon to better England’s claim to the land.

Part of the emigration was headed for California, and they left Fort Hall separately because the California cut-off was only a little way beyond the fort.  Goodbyes were said and the groups parted company. The former guide of the Oregon-bound emigrants, John Gantt, went with them. The number of persons in the wagon train was considerably reduced.

Without a guide, the emigrants selected three men to plan the route for the wagons to take for the second half of the journey.  Daniel Matheny was one of the three.  Jasper didn’t get to see a lot of his father during the daytime because he was always scouting ahead.  Presumably Daniel returned to the emigration each night with the next day’s route already mapped out.  Somewhere along the Snake River the emigrants were met by Chief Sticcus, who spoke good English.  Sticcus could give good general advice, but the leaders themselves had to decide on the exact route that was best for a wagon road, since Sticcus could not help them with that.

The migration was following the Snake River Canyon through Southern Idaho, a hot, dry country with sagebrush and cactus and alkali. Jasper and the other children had to pick stickers from the prickly pear cactus out of their feet.  Many of the boys, mostly barefooted by now, walked behind the wagons, kicking up dust and sand and throwing rocks at the loose cattle, annoying those herding them.  One boy actually killed a calf by rolling rocks down the slope of the Snake Canyon and hitting it as it grazed near its mother.  The oxen had become thin and jaded.  The emigrants didn’t talk as much as they had formerly.  The food was diminishing and people began to worry about having enough to last the journey.  The caravan made camp near American Falls where there were Indians fishing and drying their catch of salmon. The stench of rotten fish was everywhere.  Jasper’s father traded for some of the dried salmon.  As the wagons crossed the river here, a salmon was caught in the wheel of Nineveh Ford’s wagon, and he quickly grabbed the forty-pound fish before it could escape.

One morning when it was time to yoke up the oxen for travel, the Mathenys noticed that one of their best oxen was missing.  John Gantt, the former guide, had warned the emigrants to proceed with all possible speed because winter was too near to lose even a day, so Daniel yoked up one his loose oxen and started down the trail.  Jasper’s brother Adam had driven the ox all the way across the plains and was not about to give it up for lost.  He searched and spotted the missing ox on the opposite side of the river just above the falls.  A group of boys with Jasper stopped to watch Adam as he prepared to swim the river.  Some of the men tried to stop Adam, saying it was too close to the falls to attempt to swim across, but Jasper, with the wisdom of a nine-year-old, yelled, “Never you mind, Adam.  Go ahead and I’ll see you over.”

Adam made it across without a problem, but it took him quite awhile to get the ox into the water.  He was tired when he started to swim back and Jasper saw him falter and sink low into the water.  He was caught in an eddy that was carrying him dangerously near the falls.  Then Adam seemed to regain control and swim strongly toward the shore.  Some of the men had waded into the water to help him.  Jasper and the others on shore saw the ox go over the falls and disappear into the spray.  A few minutes later they saw it wade out and begin grazing as if nothing had happened.  Adam made it to shore and herded the ox to the train.  Word had passed up the train that Adam was swimming across, and Polly Matheny was frantic with worry until news reached her of her son’s safety.   Idolizing his big brother as he did, Jasper never had doubts like the adults.  At the Boise River, another man wasn’t so lucky.  He drowned in the crossing.

The party left the Snake River at Farewell Bend and headed north into the Grande Ronde Valley.  They camped that night near a big tree, the only one in the valley.  Then began the difficult ascent of the Blue Mountains.  Some of the men of the party had to fell trees to make a trail.  This consumed precious time.  No immigrant train afterward would have to undergo this great effort because that part of the trail was already established by the 1843 party.  No wagon train had passed further than Fort Hall up to this time.  Jasper’s brothers and father were active in the felling of the trees.

Descending the Blues, the emigrants followed the Umatilla River and then headed north to Whitman’s Mission. The Whitmans were not there at the time.  Dr. Whitman had left for The Dalles to bring back Mrs. Whitman.  The wagon train would pass them coming back from the Dalles afterward.  At the mission the man in charge sold the immigrants potatoes and fresh vegetables from the garden, the first they had eaten in more than five months.  After passing the mission, the trading post of Fort Walla Walla wasn’t far away.  There were many Indians here, a mixture of Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Nez Perce.  The Columbia River lay near the fort.

Unable to speak each other’s language, somehow the emigrant boys, including Jasper and Jesse A. Applegate, managed to get into a confrontation with the Indian boys.  They were trading nails and scraps of iron of all kinds for the dried sweet root called yampa.  Some of the white boys had no pockets and the yampa was falling to the ground.  When an Indian attempted to pick up the yampa, one of the white boys booted him in the seat and he fell to the ground.  This started a war of rock-throwing, Jasper receiving one on his head.  Somehow he happened to have a copper vinegar spigot in his pocket that he had carried from Missouri to use as a toy gun and he pulled it out and leveled it at the Indians.  It worked.  The Indian boys thought it was a gun and retreated into the fort, but the white boys entered the courtyard of the fort and began pelting the Indian boys with anything in sight.  Captain McKinley, the Hudson Bay Company man in charge of the fort stopped the encounter and sent the white boys to the corral of wagons.  Polly bandaged Jasper’s cut head.  He was reprimanded for putting the entire migration at risk.

During the lay-over at Fort Walla Walla, Indians would quietly walk into camp and stand or sit by the campfires, sometimes to the dismay of the women who were trying to cook around them.  One of the young immigrant men who did not like Indians, gave an Indian a shove to get him out of his way, and when the Indian resisted, he seized a brand from the fire and struck him a heavy blow with it.  The youth had tried for the Indian’s head, but the Indian had ducked away to spare his head.  Others in the party subdued the reckless young man.  He very nearly incited a war with the Indians.   The following day Captain McKinley came out to the wagon corral and suggested that the travelers sleep inside the fort because the Indians had become somewhat hostile toward them.  Perhaps while sleeping inside the fort Jasper could see more clearly the error of his ways.

Ahead lay the Cascade Mountains.  The emigrants were faced with a choice.  They could make boats and float down the river or cross over the Cascades, a longer but safer route to the Willamette Valley, their destination. Some of the immigrants chose the river route and left their oxen at the fort and headed downstream.  The Mathenys decided to continue on with their wagons at least as far as The Dalles before making a decision.  It was while enroute to The Dalles that the immigrants met Dr. and Narcissa Whitman returning to their mission.

At The Dalles the Mathenys had to decide their course. But even then the mountains were almost hidden in the clouds, and snow might start at any time. Most of the immigrants chose the river route, and as they built their rafts, the Indians at the mission shook their heads, saying “Strong water” in their Chinook jargon.  Most of those who chose the river ended up regretting their choice.  Several men and children drowned, and many families lost everything they owned.  Daniel looked at the crude rafts that the travelers were relegating their families’ lives to and he said, “No.  We will leave our wagons and cross the mountains.” Jasper’s brother Adam and Aaron Layson were entrusted with the family possessions, secured on rafts, to be navigated down the treacherous gorge of the Columbia.  The rest of the family were to follow the Indian trail over Mount Hood. The family’s supply of food was meager.  Adam and Aaron were told to meet the family on the trail over the mountain with food after arriving at Fort Vancouver.  The Mathenys stored their wagons at the mission and left their extra stock there to pasture until the following spring.  They loaded up the pack animals and headed over the mountain with an Indian guide, whom they nicknamed “Heart.”  A Mrs. Payne, who had been widowed on the trail, and her children were taken in by the Mathenys and presumably crossed the mountains with the family.

Awakening one morning on the mountain, Daniel found that the oxen were missing.  He sent four of the boys back to look for them while the rest of the family moved on. This party would have included Jasper’s brothers Isaiah and Daniel, Cousin Isaiah, and Henry Hewitt.  Jasper most certainly stayed with his parents. Heart looked up at the sky, shook his head, and pretended to shiver, letting the family know that it might snow at any time.  A few flakes were falling even then.  It had been supposed that the stock had not wandered far, but night came and the boys had not returned. Polly left behind caches of what little food they had tied to tree branches for them.  Then another night came and still the boys had not caught up.  Despite the peril of impending snow, the Mathenys decided to lay-over a day hoping that the boys would return during that time.  But night came.  Daniel knew by now that the boys had probably had to go all the way back to The Dalles or they would have reached the family by then.  He hoped they would be wise enough to remain there until he returned for them.  But meanwhile, he had to get his family out of the mountains before it began to snow.  The morning after the lay-over they would have to continue on their course to the Willamette Valley.

In the morning Heart appeared to reflect and then put his ear to the ground and listened.  Then he stood up and said, “Ting.  Ting.”  One of the family’s oxen wore a bell and he had heard it.  Before long everyone could hear the bell as they anxiously awaited the boys to catch up.  Instead of the four boys,  however, there were six.  Two of the boys at The Dalles had decided to come with the Matheny boys. They were very hungry because six had shared the food left for only four.  But the Mathenys had little to eat themselves, just some suet.  Polly had thrown some elderberries they had found into the suet, but it tasted foul.

The family was within sight of the Willamette Valley when Adam and Aaron arrived from Fort Vancouver carrying some biscuits in a pillowcase.  Adam reached into the bag and began broadcasting the biscuits as if he were sowing seeds.  Polly reprimanded him for doing so, but Adam had done so to deflect attention from the fact that tears were flowing down his cheeks. Adam’s recollection of this reunion was written in an 1892 newspaper article in Tacoma:

When we got to The Dalles, on the Columbia, or near the foot of the Cascades, we found there the end of the wagon road.  Here we halted, unyoked our jaded teams, and here started to the great Willamette Valley by other means of travel.  Now, for the first time, we scattered like the people from the tower of Babel when their language was confounded.  Some us went down the Columbia river on large rafts of dry logs, taking families and wagons, household goods, etc.  The rest of the party went with the stock over the mountain by an Indian trail, round the North side of Mount Hood near the border of eternal snow. In even scale the battle hung, no bad luck attending, and in a few days we all joined together again at the appointed place on the Willamette, where Oregon City now stands, meeting our wives and children all well and happy.  It really would make one laugh now to hear the hurried questions that were then so eagerly asked: “Is father and mother here?”  “Is my wife here?”  “ Is my sister’s little boy here?” and all answered in the affirmative.

It really seemed strange to see the eyes of so many filled with tears and their cheeks aglow with joy.  One old bachelor, standing away back in the crowd, grew discontented and sang out, with a loud, coarse voice:  “Is nobody sick- no property lost on the way down the river?”  Then he energetically exclaimed: “Thanks be to the Eternal King of Heaven.”  Then the amens and thank God went around lively for a little bit among the old people.

1843-44- A Year in the Tualatin Valley

The family trudged into the valley and somehow were ferried across the Columbia to Fort Vancouver.   They were cold and wet from having been in the rain all day.  Everything they had was wet.  There was no shelter anywhere at the fort because those who had arrived via the river had already taken every available space.  The Mathenys pitched their wet tents and attempted to dry out some of their bedding.  There was no dry wood anywhere.  Jasper’s mother and sisters began to cry and cry,  letting go finally at this very unhappy end to their long, long journey.

Within the next day or two, Daniel was able to rent one room of a cabin from a Mr. Foster at the falls of the Willamette, where the settlement of Oregon City was beginning.  Henry Hewitt found his brother Adam and was happy to learn that Adam Hewitt had built a small cabin for Henry and Elizabeth by the Tualatin River, a tributary of the Willamette River.  Wanting to be near their daughter, Daniel and Mary found a jerry-built cabin in the Tualatin Valley not far from Henry and Elizabeth’s cabin.  Uncle Henry and Aunt Rachel continued south up the Willamette Valley until they found a spot to settle and build a cabin.  For the bone-tired settlers, it was an unhappy, long and rainy winter.

It was about this time that an event occurred, recalled by Lottie in her memoirs:

We had been in the country only a few weeks and everything was still strange to us.  Father and the boys, with the exception of Brother Daniel, were away, when just about sundown of one very dark, stormy day, Mother was sent for.  Lizabeth had been taken suddenly ill.  She and Henry lived a mile or two from us and the trail led through a dense wood.  The country was full of wild animals, so mother could not go alone, though Daniel’s going left us children in the cabin by our lone selves.

Mother cautioned us about being very careful.  She had Daniel build on a good fire, and when they left, they closed the door and told us to bolt it from the inside.  She told us Daniel would soon be back, and under no circumstances were we to open the door till he came.

We listened till the sound of their voices coming back to us with the beat of the rain and the wind were lost in the distance; then we huddled around the fire and looked wide-eyed into each other’s anxious faces.  The shadows in the room took on weird shapes and the wolves outside seemed to howl nearer and louder than ever before.  We were too frightened to even talk.

All at once there came a knock at the door, and something fumbled and rattled the big wooden latch.  Catching our breaths in quick, convulsive gasps, we drew near to each other, and Sister Mary whispered, “Keep still.”  The door itself was of oak and strong enough, but the hinges were weak and we realized it.  We heard a voice, but the words were spoken in the Indian tongue, and we had not been in the country long enough to understand them. Jasper said over and over again, “Keep him out, Mary!”

Mary dragged benches and tables and stools and piled them against the door while Jasper loaded Father’s big old army pistol.  Father always kept it loaded in case of emergency, but Jasper, who was only about nine, did not know that, so he rammed in another load of powder and another bullet.  The tears were pouring down his cheeks and all the while he kept saying, “Keep him out, Mary!”

Outside, the rain was falling in torrents and the Indian continued to push and beat against the door.  At last the gun was loaded, and Jasper took his stand in the middle of the floor.  With the big pistol up and leveled ready, he said, "Let him in Mary, and I will blow a hole through his heart.”

But just then Mary heard a whistle and said, “No, no, Jasper! Daniel is coming!”  And so he was; whistling to keep from being afraid himself, I suspect.

The Indian heard him, too.  He stopped trying to break in and stood leaning on his gun.  Daniel recognized him to be a friendly Indian whom he had seen several times before, and he called to us, “Open the door; it is only an old Indian who wants to get in out of the storm.  He is not going to hurt you.” [Daniel knew enough of the Chinook to know what he was trying to tell us.] Mary opened the door because Daniel told her to, not because she trusted the Indian or felt satisfied about it.  I was terribly frightened.

The Indian came in, and to show his confidence and establish ours, he handed his gun to Daniel.  Daniel stood it in the corner with his own gun, while the shivering old fellow, drawing his wet blanket around him, said, “Hy-u snash.” [Much rain] and crouched down in front of our fire.

Daniel saw the gun in Jasper’s hands.  The Indian saw it too, and eyed it nervously.  To reassure the Indian, Daniel took the gun from Jasper, and, not dreaming that it was loaded, leveled it at the back wall and pulled the trigger.

There was a roar like a cannon and Daniel went backwards off of  his stool, while a portion of the mud back wall went out with a shower of ashes and sparks.  The Indian sprang to his feet and said, “Ugh!”  Daniel was as surprised as the Indian, for the doubly-loaded pistol had kicked him backwards to his full length upon the floor.

After a while, the Indian noticed that I was crying.  Pointing to the kettle of boiled wheat that sat in the chimney corner, he said, “Potlach tennis kluchman lip-lip sap-lil.”  [Give the little girl some boiled wheat.]  But I was not hungry for once.

When Father heard about it, he scolded Daniel for letting the Indian spend the night in front of our fire.  After all, it really was foolish of Daniel:  the Indian might easily have crept up in the darkness and murdered us all in our sleep.  Daniel argued that the Indian had nothing to gain by it, but, nevertheless, I think it was careless of him.

The Mathenys’ nearest neighbor was the retired mountain man, Joe Meek.  In the spring Meek sold Daniel some starts of potatoes to plant.  Polly’s seed bag provided seeds for a vegetable garden and one for flowers as well.  Before the arrival of the 1843 immigrants, there had been fewer than three hundred white people in the entire Pacific Northwest.  Now the new arrivals scattered up and down the Willamette River, staking out squatter’s rights to what they hoped would one day be granted to them legally.  Each family staked out a square mile, 640 acres as their own.

Two Indian boys who lived nearby were continuously at the Matheny home.  Their virtual nudity, uncleanliness, and body lice could not be tolerated by Polly Matheny.  She told them that they would have to stay away, or they had to be washed and dressed decently and stay away from the Indian camps where they would pick up lice.   One of the boys, the one the family called Jack, chose to live with the family and was to stay with them until he was a grown man.  The Hewitts also took in a couple of Indian boys.

Jack was a kind, honest, gentle boy whose only garment was a long deerskin shirt tied at the waist with a frayed piece of rope until the Mathenys provided him with other clothing.  Once Jack was caught by Daniel stealing some salt.  He took it from the storeroom and hid it under his blue soldier’s cap that he always wore.  Daniel noticed that the cap was sitting too high on his head.  He lifted the cap from Jack’s head and the salt came pouring down over his shoulders onto the ground.  He was on his way to the tepee of his blind old mother.  Jack was made to understand that this was stealing and was promised that if the family had plenty, he was welcome to take food to his mother if he asked first.

When Jack was grown, he went to live on the reservation with his people, where tuberculosis was raging through the tribes.  He died as a young man from the disease, as did almost all of his tribe.  By closely associating with Indians as they did, all of the Matheny children learned to speak Chinook, the jargon used among the Northwestern tribes to speak to one another.  This ability would help Jasper one day when he and his partners operated a store/trading post in the embryonic town of Spokane, where most of the customers were Indians.

As the signs of spring came, the spirits of the family lifted, and they continued to search for suitable land to claim.  A trip to Fort George [present-day Astoria] proved fruitless.  It convinced Daniel that he wanted to be somewhere near the Willamette River.  At one point Daniel and his sons started to build a cabin at what is now the site of Portland.  He recognized it as a good location for a city, but he changed his mind, feeling it was too far away from all the other settlers that he knew.

Hearing that his brother Henry and Rachel had built a cabin on the west side of the valley south of the Yamhill River, Daniel took Polly and Lottie over the Chehalem Mountains in the rain and arrived at Henry and Rachel’s claim nestled against the Eola Hills.  Jasper may have been along on this trip, but his sister did not mention him in her memoir of the journey.  Uncle Henry’s land was not on a watercourse, so there was probably a spring there.

While staying at Uncle Henry and Aunt Rachel’s, the men rode out looking for suitable sites for Daniel and Polly to settle.  They came across James O’Neil, who was located in a well-built two-story hewed-log home on a knoll on the  bottom land due east of Uncle Henry about two miles or so. There was a spring on the property as well. This home had been the home of the Rev. David Leslie when Jason Lee’s Methodist mission had been located just across the river.  The mission site had been moved twelve miles upstream to the present location of Salem a couple of years earlier, and O’Neil had purchased the squatter’s rights from Leslie.  There had been empty mission buildings across the Willamette, but the Applegate families were temporarily inhabiting them now.  Besides, Daniel knew that the buildings across the river lay on low bottom land that would be subject to flooding.  He liked the slightly elevated site of O’ Neil’s cabin, and made him an offer to buy the place.  O’Neil accepted.

That summer there was a lot of traveling back and forth from the Tualatin Valley to the Mathenys’ new home.  They needed to remain in the Tualatin long enough to harvest their crops.  It wasn’t until after harvest that the family completely abandoned their temporary homesite in the Tualatin.

The family had grown a bit that first year.  Adam and his wife Sarah Jane had a son, David Layson Matheny, and Henry and Elizabeth had a new son, Daniel Matheny Hewitt.  Aaron Layson and Cousin Sarah Jane also had a baby girl, Elizabeth.  The family had been fortunate.  There had been no deaths along the trail nor during that first hard year in Oregon.

1844-45 A New Life on the Willamette

7

It was beyond the Mathenys’ wildest expectations that in this wilderness they would find a ready-made house with fruit trees and a garden and some already-cleared acreage.  The family was elated.  The home was  well-finished with cedar lumber that the missionaries had shipped around Cape Horn from the East.  It had good sawed floors, not a dirt or puncheon floor like most cabins had.  The large stone fireplace had a big crane on which to hang kettles over the fire.  One can imagine the wide eyes of ten-year-old Jasper as he entered the family’s unique frontier home.

Included with the sale was a ferryboat that O’Neil had paid Lindsay Applegate to build that past winter. This boat was to prove a great source of income for the family. “Matheny’s Ferry” was established  in 1844 and is still operating 160 years later as the county-owned “Wheatland Ferry.”   The current ferryboat, the fifth in use since the government took over operation in the 1930’s, is called the Daniel Matheny V.  Each ferryboat has been named for the ferry’s founder over the years.  In a map made of the Oregon Territory in 1856, Matheny’s Ferry is one of the handful of place names listed.

The family learned that the Rev. Leslie’s first home had burned, and the other missionaries, lay persons at the mission, and the mission Indians had then built him this much better home.  But the Leslie family was ill-starred.  Mrs. Leslie died a couple of years after the home was built, and Rev. Leslie struggled along with five daughters.  Then it was decided to move the mission and the reverend had to abandon his home to move to the new mission site. In September of 1842 he was recalled by the mission board.  He prepared to leave and was boarding his ship at the mouth of the Columbia when Cornelius Rogers, a young teacher at the mission, stopped him to ask Rev. Leslie for the hand of his eldest daughter, fifteen-year-old Satira Leslie.  Having had feelings for awhile, he was forced to act or lose this young woman he loved.  Leslie consented, and this changed his plans.  Since Satira had been the de facto mother of her youngest  two sisters, Aurelia and Helen, since their mother’s death, Rev. Leslie decided to leave them with her and take only his two middle daughters with him.  It was a fateful decision.

Cornelius  and Satira decided to relocate from the mission to Willamette Falls [Oregon City] in the spring of 1843.  They decided to leave Helen with a friend at the mission because she was not well.  Satira, Cornelius, the toddler Aurelia, some Indians and other passengers headed down river toward the falls.  Just above the falls they stopped to portage.  Accidentally the dugout boat was given a jar and it hit the current, taking the Rogers family, a man named Crocker, and a couple of Indians over the falls.  The tragic deaths in such a small community of people put a pall over the valley.  Not long afterward Rev. Leslie returned, having had a change of orders while in the Sandwich Islands.  The reluctant missionaries had to share the heartbreaking news to him that two of his daughters were dead.  So it was into a house with a poignant history that Jasper and his family had moved.

The family had lived in the former Leslie home just a few weeks when the Mathenys noticed a small Indian boy named Nosta, about seven or eight years old, who seemed to belong to Kaufa, the chief of the small band of Indians camped nearby.  The boy seemed different from the other Indians.  He was a handsome child, and he carried himself with dignity with his shoulders back and his head held high. Jasper and his brothers sometimes went to the Indian camps and while at Kaufa’s camp, they saw welts and bruises on the boy’s bare legs.  James O’Neil, the former owner of the Mathenys’ home, said that the boy was a slave taken during a tribal war in the south of Oregon by the Calapooias, who sold him to Kaufa, a Yamhill Indian.  The Mathenys empathized with the boy and talked among themselves about what to do.  They decided to buy Nosta from old Kaufa.  They traded things they badly needed themselves:  a gun and ammunition, a horse, some beads, a shawl, and a richly beaded buffalo robe.

Polly immediately took over the care of her new child, naming him Joseph because he had been sold into slavery, but he was called Joe.  She had her sons give the boy a thorough scrubbing and cut his hair short.  Then she had them comb his hair again and again, dipping the comb into boiling water after each use to kill the head lice.  The boy had no understanding of what was being done to him or what other tortures lay in store.  All night long he sobbed on the bed that Polly had made for him.  It was a week or more before Joe got over his fear of the family.  He would tremble when anyone came near to him or came up on him suddenly, but Kaufa’s cruelty had not crushed his spirit.  As time passed the family grew very fond of Joe and later learned that his father had been a chief of the Rogue River Indians and was killed in the battle in which Joe was captured.

Jasper now had two Indian brothers and was no longer the youngest of the boys in the family.  Apparently Joe helped Jasper to operate the ferry in later years.  His hate for Kaufa never relented.  He would bristle every time Kaufa came to cross at the ferry.  When Joe was twelve or thirteen, Kaufa was crossing on the ferryboat.  When the chief began to lead his horse off the ferry, Joe jumped in front of him and twanged his bow in Kaufa’s face.  Jasper screamed at him, and Joe slowly lowered  his bow.  Jasper believed that Joe would have killed Kaufa if he hadn’t been there to stop him.  Joe was an expert at making bows and arrows and an expert marksman with  his bow.  He provided the family regularly with small game killed with his bow.

Like the Mathenys’ other Indian boy, Jack, Joe was not fated to have a long life. Jasper’s brother Isaiah would later take a job as the farmer for an Indian reservation in Southern Oregon, taking Joe with him.  As they passed a group of Indian women on the reservation, one of them stared at Joe and responded with animated gestures.  Isaiah noticed that Joe withdrew and appeared to want to evade the woman.  Later Isaiah asked Joe why the squaw was so excited.  Joe replied, “Oh, that was my mother.  I could tell by the tattoo marks on her chin.”  After Isaiah left the Indian Agency, Joe remained with his people probably because white girls would not consider marrying an Indian. Soon afterward Joe was dragged to death by a horse on the reservation.

The son of Dr. John McLoughlin, the chief factor at Fort Vancouver, owned a farm a couple of miles north of  Jasper’s new home.  He agreed to sell it to Henry and Elizabeth Hewitt, so the family was now clustered close to each other.  Adam and Sarah Jane staked out some land between his parents’ and that of Uncle Henry and Aunt Rachel.  Everyone helped them to build a cabin on it.  Now all the married members of the family had homes of their own and they could concentrate their efforts on building farms and other profitable ventures.

The Mathenys soon prospered as they harvested their crops.  There wasn’t much money in circulation in Oregon, so trade was transacted by barter, wheat becoming the usual medium of exchange.  They had just settled into their new home when the immigration of 1844 arrived, and the Mathenys continued their long tradition of aiding the food-poor new immigrants. They were already caring for Mrs. Payne and her family. She had been widowed while crossing the plains in 1843 with the Mathenys. It was while living with them that Mrs. Payne’s twin son, Newton, died; he was buried on the Mathenys’ land.   Mrs. Payne later remarried and moved away.  Over the years, many families who were in trouble were succored by  Daniel and Polly.  Their example would mold the character of their son Jasper.

During the winter of 1844-45 Jasper awakened early one morning before everyone else and went outside.  The ground glistened between the knoll where the log home lay and the river.  Excited, he rushed into the house and called to his sister Lottie, “Sis, Sis!  Come!  Get up quickly and see the snow.  The ground is just white with it!”  Lottie jumped out of bed and the two of them ran toward the glistening white, but it was not snow—it was water.  The Willamette had oveflowed its banks and all the lower bottom lands were inundated, making the ridge on which the Mathenys’ home lay, an island. It didn’t flood the home, but it came close.  It was to be one of many floods along the Willamette in those days before dams.

Daniel and Jimmy O’Neil fashioned a crude raft and floated to where the wet weather spring on the property was to look for Indian John and his family, who were camping there at the time.  They found John and his family perched in trees, their tepee bobbing in fifteen feet of water.  Daniel and O’Neil  helped the drenched Indians down from the trees onto the raft and took them to the Matheny home, where Polly helped to dry them out.  They lived with the Mathenys for about a week until the water receded.  During the time of the flood, Jasper was given the responsibility of  ferrying his family members to the bluff on the west side of the river and guests to the family home and back.

One guest was not very welcome at the Matheny home, a Mr. Dexter.  He wasn’t a friend, but anyone who had no place else to go for a bed or a meal went to the Mathenys’.  Jasper did not care for Mr. Dexter at all.  He was loud and dominated a conversation.  He was a know-it-all and was continually correcting and giving orders to the children.  No one was happy to see Mr. Dexter, but the adults were cheerful and polite to him.  He went to the bottom of the bluff across the floodwater and called.  Daniel told Jasper to take the raft and pick up Mr. Dexter.

Jasper was more skillful with a raft than most adults, but on the return trip, he had his first accident.  In a location where the water was five feet deep or so, the raft began to tip.  The more Jasper tried to right it, the more it tipped. Mr. Dexter scrambled wildly, doing what looked like a grotesque dance.  With nothing to hold on to, he toppled headfirst into the water.  Jasper quickly righted the raft and held out his pole for the struggling man.  He pulled him aboard and brought him back to the house to dry out.  He was very upset at Jasper.  Jasper told him, “If you could have held on just a little longer, Mr. Dexter, everything would have been okay.”  Daniel looked straight into Jasper’s eyes and cleared his throat.  He opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, but after studying Jasper’s innocent face, he turned away without a word.  Mr. Dexter spent a long while in front of the fire drying out.  Likely one of Jasper’s brothers ferried Mr. Dexter to the mainland when he was dry.

Records of the Manuscript Room, Oregon Historical Society Library, show that Daniel was a leader in early Oregon life.  He was appointed Judge of Election, July 5, 1845. For a quarter of century Great Britain and the United States had lived in the nebulous joint-possession of the Oregon Country.  The permanent border between Canada and the United States in Oregon would be decided sometime in the future.  But in 1844, with American immigrants streaming into Oregon and James Polk campaigning in the election to obtain the entire Oregon country for the United States, the “Oregon Question” heated to a boil.  The British man-of-war Modeste appeared in the Columbia, which only tended to stir up the patriotism of the American settlers in Oregon.  Two British agents named Peel and Park traveled the country querying the leaders of the populace about their loyalties.  After having spent the night at Jesse Applegate’s home in Polk County, Peel, Park, and their party arrived at Matheny’s Ferry.  As always, the Mathenys were hospitable and invited the party to their home.  When Daniel asked Peel how he liked Oregon, Peel replied “Mr. Matheny, it is certainly the most beautiful country in its natural state my eyes have ever beheld.”  Then, after a slight pause, he continued, “ I regret to say that I am afraid we [the British] are not going to be the owner of it.” [History of Oregon, Vol. I, Charles Henry Carey, Pioneer and Historical Publishing Company, Portland, p.451.]

1846- A Year of Change

8

Slowly the Mathenys made the acquaintance of the mission people because they crossed the Willamette at the Mathenys’ ferry, and the local Yamhill Indians often crossed the Mathenys’ claim and camped nearby.  The Applegates left the old mission site across the river from the Mathenys and settled about twenty miles southwest at Salt Creek.

There were a number of changes taking place in Oregon in 1846.  A treaty was signed with Great Britain making that part of the Oregon Country south of the 49^th Parallel part of the United States; that part that was north of the 49^th parallel became the province of British Columbia.  That meant that the future status of the Willamette Valley was no longer in limbo—it was American.  Also, the Mexican War had begun causing many California-bound immigrants to choose Oregon as their destination.  The valley was fast filling up with people.  Pressure was now applied to the United States government to recognize the mile-square land claims of the squatters who had helped make this part of Oregon American.

Joseph M. Garrison, who had settled across the Willamette on part of the site of the old Jason Lee Mission, where the Applegates had spent the first winter, was one of the Mathenys’ closest neighbors.  He farmed and taught at the institute in Chemeketa [Salem] that eventually evolved into Willamette University.  He was widely respected and was elected to the Provisional Government as the representative of Champoeg [Marion] County.  He and his brother Enoch had crossed the plains with the Mathenys in 1843, and they knew him very well.  It is likely that they looked after his daughters when he had to be away, for "Joe" had recently lost his wife.

Girls on the frontier married quite young.  They attended school long enough to learn to read, write, and do basic mathematics.  If the girl was pretty and had a good personality, she usually began to receive proposals of marriage at the age of thirteen or fourteen.  Being a well-reared young lady, Mary Matheny, Jasper’s sister, was not yet fourteen when she married the widowed thirty-three-year-old Joe Garrison and went to live across the river as his wife and the stepmother of his daughters.  By the age of twenty, Mary would have four children of her own.

Travelers along the Oregon trail often carried letters from people in Oregon to be mailed in the East and from people in the East to Oregon.  It was probably in such a fashion that a message arrived from Jasper’s grandfather, Isaiah Cooper in 1846.  He and the families of his sons Enoch, William, John, and Isaiah, Junior, were on the trail crossing the plains and would arrive in the Willamette Valley that fall.  It was probably with mixed feelings that Daniel and Polly received this news.  While looking forward to seeing their kin, they probably worried about the drunken behavior of Grandfather Cooper.  It is likely that Mary and Daniel simply set home rules that there would be no liquor consumed on their premises.  Remembering their miserable first year in Oregon without adequate housing, the Mathenys set about building small log cabins on their property to house their expected influx of family.  It was a summer of anticipation.  They no doubt slaughtered some extra livestock and smoked them to ready themselves for the extra mouths to feed.  In the fall, when the first wagons could be expected over the newly-opened Barlow Road through the Cascades, Jasper’s brothers Daniel and Isaiah were sent to meet their grandfather and uncles and guide them to the Matheny home.  The boys waited in the Tygh Valley by the eastern gate of the road.

As the ferryman, Jasper was probably the one who first spotted the new arrivals.  The wagons would have been driven to the ferry crossing  while  his brothers Daniel and Isaiah and others drove the cattle into the river to cross.  Jasper’s heart was undoubtedly full as he ferried each wagon singly across the Willamette to the western shore.  He probably couldn’t talk freely due to the exertion of pulling the oars.  Likely he received help with the ferrying because the crossing of so many wagons would have been very exerting. Grandfather Cooper had operated a ferry in Indiana, so all of the Cooper men were experienced ferrymen.

The added family members more than doubled the size of the family in Oregon.  Besides Grandfather Cooper there were eight in Uncle Enoch’s family, six in Uncle Bill’s, five in Uncle Isaiah’s, and four in Uncle John Cooper’s family, including his brother-in-law Frank McClintock, for a total of  twenty-four persons.  Arriving with the Coopers were other non-family members of their party who would eventually spread out around the valley, but the Mathenys, known for their generosity, probably fed the tired arrivals awhile.

Also arriving in 1846, from Missouri, was Andrew Layson, the brother of Aaron Layson, who was married to Aunt Rachel’s daughter Sarah Jane; and Sarah Jane Layson, who was Adam Matheny’s wife.  Andrew brought word that his father was deeply sorry for how he had behaved when his children had eloped with the Mathenys in 1843.  Surely this was good news for Aaron and Sarah Jane, who had felt a hostile wedge had been driven between them and their family.  Andrew Layson would eventually marry Uncle Enoch’s daughter Liz.

1847-A Year of Troubles

9

The winter of 1846-1847 was probably a very festive one at the Matheny home.  With all the family there, the chores were shared, which gave everyone more time for merriment.  Jasper was surrounded by cousins that winter, most of them younger than he. Only Uncle Enoch’s daughters Jane and Liz and Uncle Bill’s daughter Rachel were close in age to Jasper.  The boy cousin closest in age to Jasper was Uncle Enoch’s son John, four years younger. There would have been cabin-raisings as each of the uncles selected vacant land to occupy.  Uncle Enoch settled just north of the Hewitts.  Uncle Bill selected some low bottom land across the river from the Mathenys next to Jasper’s brother Isaiah’s claim and his sister Mary Garrison’s claim.  Grandfather Cooper and his sons John and Isaiah settled at the confluence of the Yamhill and the Willamette rivers several miles to the northeast.

The mood turned grim when Adam’s wife Sarah Jane went into labor in January.  She had nearly died giving birth to her first child, David Layson Matheny, and again she lay in agony.   Jasper’s brother Daniel was sent to find and bring the doctor from French Prairie, which lay across the river to the northeast, as the family converged at the small cabin that was located where the Maud Williamson State Park is located today.  Everyone tried to be of some help.  Jasper and probably one or more of the men of his family would have been stationed at the ferry, with the boat across the river awaiting young Daniel and the doctor.  Polly and Aunt Rachel would have been ministering to Sarah Jane.   It was about dusk in the driving rain that Uncle Enoch’s wife, Aunt Esther, came to the top of the bluff and called down to those at the Matheny home and the ferry that Sarah Jane had died.  She had been nineteen years old.  The baby, named Sarah Jane after her deceased mother, was probably wetnursed by one of the aunts with babies.  Daniel would have busied himself with the construction of a casket as he had done when Mrs. Payne’s husband had died crossing the plains and when Mrs. James Cave had died in Oregon a short while before. Perhaps he stained it vermilion as he had Mrs. Cave’s.  Uncle Henry and Aunt Rachel had donated a hillside piece of their land claim to serve as the cemetery when Mrs. Cave had died. It is now the cemetery at Hopewell, Oregon.  It was to be the burying ground for all of the family and others in the area.  Uncle Henry and his son Isaiah probably dug the grave since the cemetery was on their property.  The women would have been busy washing the body and sewing it into a shroud. Some of the aunts and older girls would have prepared the food. Likely someone was sent to tell the neighbors of Sarah Jane’s passing and to invite them to the burial on the hillside. The baby girl born that day was to become the mother of Alma Thornton Lister, wife of Washington’s eighth governor, Ernest Lister.

The site of the ferry had long been a fording place for Indians who lived west of the Willamette River.  They would often camp nearby, enroute to French Prairie to gather camas and other plants they they ate.  On one such migration, Kaufa’s band was camped near the Mathenys’ home awaiting a paying customer to cross the ferry.  The Mathenys always allowed the Indians to cross free when the ferryboat  was making a trip across the Willamette.  But on this occasion, the Indians did not cross the river.  Kaufa had become extremely ill and was under treatment by the medicine woman of the band.  Her wailing chant could be heard through the night at the Matheny home, but it was to no avail.  Kaufa died  during the night and Jasper saw the squaws form a line and begin singing the death chant as  Kaufa’s body, wrapped in skins and blankets, lying across a horse, was led away to where he would be buried.  For a long while the chanting could be heard as the procession crossed the valley.

Among the seeds that Polly Matheny had brought to Oregon were some flax seeds.  The Mathenys are recognized as the first growers and processors of flax into linen thread in the new country.  Jasper and his brothers had to help in the processing.  The flax plants were pulled up when mature and spread on the ground in a low area where the water stood a long while after a rain.  The plants were turned over from time to time.  After allowing the plants to decompose slightly, about six or seven weeks, the flax plants were beaten until all the pulpy matter was loosened from the fiber.  Jasper and his brothers then beat the fibers on some wide boards to separate the fibers from pulp.  The fibers were then combed.  It was then ready to spin into thread and weave into cloth.

A man of vision, Daniel decided to build a town at the ferry.  He drew a map with lots and filed it at the county seat in Lafayette.   He named his town Atchison, after Daniel Atchison, a friend of his in Platte County, Missouri.  Atchison went on to become a United States Senator and, some claim, President for one day.  The town of Atchison, Kansas, was later named for him, thus so was the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad.  Daniel held a lot sale, and the little town was begun.  The advertisement for the lot sale was in the Oregon Spectator in several issues in the spring of 1847:

Sale of Town Lots

A PUBLIC SALE of Lots in the Town of Atchison, in Yamhill County, on the west bank of the Willamette river at Matheny’s Ferry, will take place on the 15^th day of May next, on the premises.  Wheat will be taken in payment.  Further particulars as to terms, &c will be made known on the day of sale.

DANIEL MATHENY

Senator Atchison, a slave owner, would later become a leader in the pro-slavery forces engaged in the struggle over slavery in the Kansas Territory after the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854.  This probably led Daniel to support the change of his town’s name to Wheatland.

Daniel was also engaged in other money-making enterprises.  Another ad in the Spectator appeared 18 Feb-15 April 1847 telling that Daniel was serving as an agent at “Willamette River Ferry” for the Portland Tannery (perhaps receiving and shipping hides to the tannery?)

It was in late November that year that a man on a lathered horse rode down to the east bank of the river and yelled to be ferried across.  As Jasper struggled across the river with the ferryboat, the man spoke in tones of urgency, telling Jasper to have all the men of the house meet him at the ferry.  Perhaps he told the boy that there had been Indian trouble.  Maybe he waited until the men were assembled to tell them that Dr. Whitman and his wife Narcissa had been murdered at their mission and that a number of girls and children were captives.  An army was being formed to rescue the prisoners and to punish the Indians.  Would they participate?  Of course they would.  Jasper’s brothers Adam, Isaiah, and Daniel reported for duty immediately, as did his sister Mary’s husband, Joe Garrison.  Cousin Isaiah Matheny, Aunt Rachel and Uncle Henry’s son, also went, as did all of the young men in the sparsely populated valley.  Jasper was too young at thirteen to be a soldier, and his parents depended on him to operate the ferry while Daniel worked the farm.  It was widely feared that a generalized Indian war might come about, so some of the men were needed at home to protect their families.

Adam told of his experiences in the war in a newspaper article in the Tacoma Daily Ledger of Wednesday, April 6, 1892.

Our place of rendezvous was where Portland now stands.  We soon got our guns and ponies and put in an appearance at the camp.  In a few days the old general had organized a nice little army of 200 or 300 resolute men, and we were almost ready to move, when far down the river some large boats came in view; full of poor, ragged women and half-starved and badly frightened children.  Our hearts swelled big with joy when we learned that they were the poor unfortunates from the Umatilla, who had regained their liberty through the magnanimity of the Hudson Bay company’s agents at Wallula on the Columbia. They had been bought of the Indians for 400 pairs of blankets and some other things which had been used to excite their cupidity.  The company put them in a bateaux and started them down the river for the Willamette Valley, accompanied by a few natives of the Sandwich  islands, whose skill as boatmen has never been excelled.  They had been ordered not to eat, sleep nor stop for rest until they were safe within the Willamette.  It was reported the next morning after the prisoners had been ransomed that the Indians had returned and demanded the prisoners back, but the commandant at the fort [Fort Walla Walla] told them they had been paid their price and should not grumble: that the people had gone to the Willamette.  They became greatly enraged and said they would go to Willamette, kill the men, destroy the country and take the women and children for slaves and wives. When this news came to our ears we sent up many cheers and gave thanks to God for his kindness in liberating the poor unfortunate women and children who were now with us.

The brothers went on to fight the Indians and later found the Whitmans’ bones scattered around the mission.  Jasper’s brother Isaiah went among the weeds and collected the blonde hairs of Narcissa Whitman that had blown into the weeds and caught around them.  He made a lock of hair from them and attached the lock to the pommel of his saddle.  He swore to avenge the Whitmans and distinguished himself in battle, as did his brothers.  As was the custom of the times with frontiersmen, they took scalps of the Indians they killed.  The Indians were pressured into producing the guilty culprits, and the Matheny warriors later attended their hanging in Oregon City.

1848-1849 Charlotte Remembers Her Brother

11

Jasper’s younger sister, Charlotte “Lottie” Matheny Kirkwood [1838-1926] survived all of her siblings by many years.  She was one of the very last survivors of the 1843 “Great Migration” to Oregon.  In the 1920’s she wrote her memoirs and had this to say about her brother Jasper, whom the family called Jay:

BROTHER JASPER was a bright-eyed boy with an upright lock of hair at the crown of his head.  He cried when he was angry—cried and turned white about his mouth—and the older boys came to know if for a danger signal.  They usually planned to stop just a little short of these manifestations, for in going too far, they found that trouble was abroad for them regardless of size or color or kin.

What a desperate little fury Jasper could be when driven beyond his self-control!  That took a great deal, however, for he was patient—entirely too patient, I used to think---and the other boys imposed upon him.  Even the Indian boys shirked their tasks when the stouthearted little lad worked with them.

Jasper was the ferryman.  Under his charge was a boat wide enough and long enough to carry a wagon and team.  This crossing on the Willamette is still made by ferry.  A strong cable holds the boat against the current, and it is propelled by a gasoline engine.  But in those days one small boy and two long oars kept the loaded boat on its course, and the current was strong, even stronger than now.  That was many years before wing dams and suchlike were even thought of.

I used to ride across with him.  I’d watch him dip the big unwieldy oars into the water and throw his weight there, his bare feet braced against a cleat, the muscles on his arms and back tensed for the heartbreaking effort.  His thin calico shirt, often wet, bagged and fluttered about him; his long black hair with its rebellious crown-lock, whipped back from a face flushed and strained with the mighty effort of fourteen years or so, and the determination of many years beyond that.  I was proud of him with a pride that made my heart glow, and a lump would come into my throat with the thrill of it.

He was such a small chap that dishonest travelers sometimes tried to land without paying.  I’ve seen him, with feet apart and his fists doubled, in front of men twice his size and many more times his age.  Once a half-breed came in a pink calico coat—a duster, perhaps, it would be called now.  It had a wide, elbow-length cape with a full frill around it.  The half-breed had no money and tried to land without paying.  I do not know what happened, but Jasper finally came to the house with his own shirt torn and the half-breed’s pink calico coat under his arm.

He thought the calico coat very fine indeed and wanted to wear it, but Mother explained that while it might be very becoming to a half-breed, and very suitable, it was not exactly the coat for a ferryman. “Jay” was disappointed---so disappointed that Mother said, “Never you mind, I’ll make you the finest coat that ever I can.” And that really meant a great deal, for Mother sewed with a very fine seam.

She had the cloth, a brown stripe, and such a coat as she made for him—undoubtedly it was the finest coat in all the country.  Jasper was proud of it and I was proud of it.  We could hardly wait for the first camp meeting, or other occasion as the case might be, when Jasper could wear it for me to admire and feast my eyes upon.

The occasion came, and it was not so very long, either.  Jasper washed and scrubbed and oiled his black hair to subdue the curls and waves and the stubborn lock at the crown.  At last, all was ready but the coat.  But it was gone from the peg; entirely gone from the house as well as the peg.  We caught a glimpse of it just rounding the turn in the trail.  It was going to Amity to see Isaiah’s girl, Emeline; it was going with Isaiah’s horse “Solex” and with Isaiah, himself.  When we saw the last of it, it was going very fast, the tail of it waving in the wind and slapping the sides of the horse, and catching at the twigs and overhanging limbs that bordered and encroached upon the trail.

Jasper was mad through and through but helpless, and every nerve in my small body pinched and quivered.  Jasper wandered away to the river.  He sat on a big stone with his chin in his hands and looked out over the ferry at the swirls and cottonwoods in the distance.  Tears dripped and spattered on his bare toes.  I sat by him and looked at the cottonwoods too.  There was nothing to say, nothing could help---our grief was surely too deep for mere words.  We sat and dwelt upon the things we would like to do to Isaiah, both of us silent, but with a nearness born of mutual grief…….

It was possibly before this…that Jasper wanted terribly to go to a camp meeting.  It was altogether out of the question because he had no shoes, and there were no shoes nearer than Oregon City.  He would have been quite happy to have gone barefooted, as he did at home and on the ferry, but Mother looked at his dusty brown feet and said, “No.”  To her, a camp meeting was entirely another matter.  Mother was foolish about such things.

The day before the meeting, a lone squaw came to the opposite side of the river and called, “Tennis man, mamook canin.” [“Little boy, bring over the skiff.”]

“Mika mit lite moccasins?” [“Have you any moccasins?”] called Jasper.

“halo,” [No] answered the squaw.  We never charged the Indians or missionaries or the tired immigrants for ferrying them across the river.  When the Indians came they waited until Jasper made the crossing for white people, then he would set them over at the same time.  So Jasper called to the squaw, “Klose, mit-lite, tennis lah-le Boston telli-kum cha-co nika ish-cum mika.” [All right, wait, in a little while white people will come, and I will get you.”]

She answered, “Klose” [All right].  Then she sat on an old drift log and waited.  The sun rose higher and higher---it was midsummer and very hot.  Toward the middle of the afternoon, she called again.  “Tennis man, mamook canin.  Nika potlatch, mika nika moccasins.”  [Little boy, bring over the skiff and I will give you my moccasins.]

“Nika ca-co.”  [I am coming.], called Jasper.  Much depended on it, so the little brigand made her take them off before  he landed her.  It was a hard-driven bargain and unfair, even Jasper was free to admit that, but grim necessity carried the whip.

The old squaw pattered away over the burning sand and rocks---and no doubt spent some time in freeing her toes of the troublesome burrs—while Jasper, in gaily-beaded moccasins wrapped high about his ankles with fine long buckskin strings, went to the camp meeting…

Our boys quarreled a good deal among themselves.  Jasper was quick tempered and the older ones teased him.  He had a funny little expression that he made use of when he had stood all that he was going to: “I’ll be at you like a thully-gust of wheelbarrows,” and he meant it.  He would fly at them like a young tiger, and someone, as a rule, got hurt.  Often it was Jasper himself, but it never seemed to teach him that they were bigger than he was.  Father would have put a stop to their tormenting if he had known of it, but no one ever told.  I used to get so angry at them that I would go off by myself and cry.  They teased me, too, but I never fought back, so it was not so much fun.

It was probably in 1848 or 1849 that the following event occurred.  We can date it because Lorinda Bewley, who had been an Indian captive following the Whitman Massacre, taught school in 1848-49 in a room of the Alanson Beers home located on what is now Wheatland Road in the Mission Bottom area north of Keizer, Oregon.  She was the teacher of Jasper’s sister Lottie. Jasper apparently wasn’t attending school at the time, but since he operated the ferry, he would put her across the river each morning and pick her up when she finished in the afternoon.

Even when we came, Oregon was well stocked with long-horned Spanish cattle.  At that time, California and Texas were Mexican territory…I remember them well.  I had reason to, for they chased me more times than I can count.  Though people said they were not dangerous, I was afraid of them. The rest of my family were not afraid of them, however, and told me that the cattle only followed me because perhaps they thought I carried salt in the bucket I carried with me to school.  Whatever they thought I carried, I carried it as fast as ever I could when that herd of cattle came bellowing after me.

I went to school across the river and about half a mile beyond it.  I never had trouble in going, but the cattle were usually somewhere near the river when I left school in the evening.  So I would scurry from one clump of scotch cap bushes to another, or get down on my knees and crawl through the ferns.  If I reached the strip of cottonwoods without being seen, I was safe enough for that time, but sometimes they would see me however hard I tried to dodge them.

Once I was chased to a refuge in one of the deserted Mission houses.  [The deserted Jason Lee Methodist Mission.]  The doors and windows were gone, so the cattle came to the very foot of the rickety stairs and I could hear them thundering about in the empty rooms below.  When I failed to reach the ferry on time, Brother Jasper took his gun and came to find me.  He saw the cattle and called, then, just as he saw me at the window of the old house, a big dun-colored cow saw him.

Pawing and bellowing, she went toward him with her head down.  But Jasper was a brave, resolute young chap; he did not give an inch to her, and when she came within reach, he gave her a good sound whack over the nose with his gun.  Throwing up her head, she galloped off, the rest of the herd following after.  That was the last time I went to school across the river.  My family decided that perhaps the cattle were dangerous after all, and concluded not to send me again.

1848-49 Gold!

12

In August of 1848 a ship brought the news to Oregon of the great gold discovery at Sutter’s Mill on the American River in California.  Matheny’s Ferry was the only ferry between Oregon City forty miles to the north and the headwaters of the Willamette, so most of the persons headed to the California mines crossed on the ferry.  Dozens passed in a day, in a hurry to reach the gold camps. Daniel Matheny, Uncle Isaiah Cooper Jr., Henry Hewitt, some brothers named Thorp, and Jasper’s older brothers Adam, Isaiah, and Daniel B. prepared to go.  Jasper and Jack and Joe, the Indian boys were asked to stay behind because they were needed to operate the ferry.  Jasper was fourteen years old and would handle the responsibility like a man.  Before Daniel left, he and the boys butchered animals and hung the meat in the storehouse.   The family larder was filled with the fall harvest.  Polly exacted a promise from her husband to return as soon as he had enough gold to meet their immediate needs.  Besides her own youngest children and the Indian boys, she also had Adam’s two motherless children to care for.  Jasper’s pregnant sister Elizabeth and her three children also came to stay with Polly while the men were gone.

In the fall of 1848, like other years, the extra cabins on the Matheny land were filled with newly- arrived immigrants who would winter there before going out to stake their land claims.  There were these extra mouths to feed besides the family.  Among these in 1848 were Dave Townsend and his wife.  In her book Into the Eye of the Setting Sun, Jasper’s sister Charlotte tells of a tragedy that unfolded while her father and brothers were in California:

Mrs. Townsend was a very superstitious and afraid of ghosts.  Always looking for the Judgment Day and praying her last prayer, she thought the Judgment Day had surely come the night our smokehouse burned.   The Townsends lived in one of our cabins and she saw the light coming through the window.  “Dave, Dave,” she called to her husband, “get up quick.  The world is burning up.  It is the Judgment Day.”

“Aw, shut up,” said Dave, who did not believe in anything.  “Who ever heard of the Judgment Day coming in the night time?

It was not the Judgment Day as she thought, but it was almost as great a tragedy for us.  Father and all our boys had gone to the mines, and before leaving had stored our smokehouse and the big cellar below it full of everything that we might need until they returned.  There were nine fat hogs salted and packed away, and a three-year old heifer was hung up to smoke.  Sixty bushels of potatoes were stored in the cellar, along with dried fruit, barrels of apples, and piles of carrots, parsnips, and other roots.  There were hanks of flax and bundles of tow, and kegs of lard and soap grease.  It was a terrible fire.  No one knew how it caught fire, but it was all gone…and winter had come.

About sundown that evening, a boy had come to the ferry and Jasper brought him to the house.  He was a straggler from one of the emigrations.  He told us that he was from Missouri, and he was a fine type of the class that he came from—simplicity itself, and green, oh so green, that Indian Jack said, “It is a wonder the cows don’t eat him.”  He was tall and rawboned, dressed in tattered homespun, and as awkward as any vision that the name of Pike County, Missouri could conjure up.  Anyone could see the childish unquestioning faith and innocence in the depth of his big blue eyes.

He had ridden a long way and was very tired.  Mother said, “The poor innocent boy shall have a place to sleep and something to eat.”  After a good hot supper, she sent him upstairs to bed; he was very tired, and the burning of the smokehouse did not awaken him.  In the morning he came ambling downstairs and we told him about the fire.  He did look so genuinely sorry and there was deep concern in his voice when he drawled, “Did all of the folks git out?”

It struck me as being terribly funny and I laughed until Mother sent me from the room.  Mother had very little to laugh about then, and she had even less before the winter was over.  There was no one at home but herself and us children, and there were, of course, no stores anywhere.  It was a lean, lean winter at our house.

To add to the strain on the struggling household, Jasper’s sister Elizabeth gave birth to a son on April 2, 1849, whom she named Adam Wesley Hewitt.  The family probably had to kill some of their breeding stock to survive the winter, and Jasper and the Indian boys probably had to fish and hunt to help feed the family.

Being the ferryman, Jasper was probably the first to spy his  father and brothers coming up the river in the late spring of 1849, laden with several large chests purchased in San Francisco filled with practical household things for Polly, including bolts of calico, lace, broadcloth, flannel, and something for everyone. They had probably stopped at the junction of the Yamhill with the Willamette River to let Grandfather Cooper, Uncle John, and Uncle Isaiah Cooper know that they had returned, and the clan no doubt converged upon the returning family members.  It was a happy time and one of shock for Daniel and his sons to learn of the struggle that Polly had been undergoing since the burning of the storehouse.

Seeing the riches that Daniel and his sons brought back, inflamed Grandfather Cooper and his sons and Uncle Henry Matheny with gold fever.  In a matter of days most of the remaining men of the family who had not answered the call of the gold in 1848 were enroute to California.  Their wives went with them, probably because they had witnessed Polly’s difficult time while Daniel was gone.

That summer, using some of his $10,000 in California gold dust and nuggets,  Daniel began construction of a large frame home on the bluff above the bottomland of their farm.  It would be safe from the regular flooding that took place on the low land.  Jasper, of course, would have assisted in the construction, and he became a skilled carpenter in the process.  It was painted white with green shutters.  In 1849 it was one of the few frame houses in Oregon.  To celebrate the completion of their new home, the Mathenys invited everyone in the surrounding country for Christmas dinner.  There were not many people in that part of Oregon even then, but more than one hundred people attended that Christmas dinner of 1849. For weeks the family planned and prepared for the big dinner.  A steer was put up to fatten, hogs were killed, and  hams cured.  Cheese rounds were greased and turned every day for weeks.  Dishes and kettles were borrowed from neighbors and women arrived at the Matheny home to help.  There were great iron kettles of chicken dumplings and a young pig roasted on a spit over the hardwood coals in the fireplace, which could hold a four-foot log.  The new smokehouse had a raised dirt fireplace, where cooking was done in a large brass kettle.  A neighbor, Mrs. Louisa Eads, known for her skill at making johnnycakes, spent the morning by the fireside preparing johnnycakes on tilted boards by the fire.  Polly prepared dried tomato pie and dried blackberry pie, pickles, jams, and preserves, and big kettles of potatoes mashed with sour cream and butter.  The tables were spread out in the enormous living room that Polly had decorated with evergreens.  The party lasted well into the night.  It must have been one of the largest Christmas gatherings on the West Coast in 1849.

Perhaps the celebration was sorely needed by the family because word had probably come from California of the several deaths that had occurred that fall from camp fever in what is now called Cooper Canyon in the tent city where the Coopers and Mathenys were panning for gold.  Uncle Henry Matheny, Grandfather Cooper, Uncle John Cooper, and Cousin Sarah Jane Matheny Layson had died there.  They were buried in the cemetery at Sutter’s Mill, which is now the town called Coloma.  These were wrenching losses.  Aunt Rachel and her son-in-law Aaron Layson were both widowed.  She would rear his children [her grandchildren] and he would farm her land in the years ahead.  Aaron would never marry again until many years later after Aunt Rachel had died.  Uncle John’s widow, Aunt Jane, was in dire straits in California with her two small children.  She would, by sheer necessity, remarry in California before returning to Uncle John’s farm in Oregon.  Uncle Isaiah Cooper Jr. never returned to Oregon.  He left California and returned to Illinois, where he would later fight in the Civil War, losing an arm in the Vicksburg campaign.  Only Uncle Bill and Uncle Enoch returned to Oregon from California with their families intact.

In the fall of 1849 a new school opened across the Eola Hills to the west of Wheatland.  It was named Amity by the teacher, Ahio Watt.  Relieved of his ferrying duties now that his father and brothers had returned, Jasper enrolled in the school.  It was about a ten-mile ride from Wheatland. A classmate of his, Emeline Allen, who lived near the school, soon gained the attention of Jasper’s brother Isaiah, and he began to court the young girl. Jasper also attended Bethel College. [pp. 60-61, Early State Colleges of Oregon, by John E. Smith]

1850-1860 Young Manhood

13

The week after the big Christmas dinner, the new decade of the 1850’s dawned.  Jasper  would celebrate his sixteenth birthday that year and now towered over six feet.  He was to stop growing after attaining two more inches.  From his hard work, his musculature broadened and he would attain 225 pounds of solid muscle.

The next few years would be relatively happy ones for the family. They were prosperous, and it became easier all the time to buy things that had been unavailable in the first several years.  Peddlers, mostly Jewish, walked from farm to farm selling their wares, and for the Matheny sons, the settling of the Willamette Valley brought a selection of girls with whom they could socialize.  Now flush with California gold, Jasper’s brother Isaiah married Emeline Allen that March and his brother Adam, married Harriet Hamilton in May.  The younger generation of all the extended family were marrying and having children, and the family gatherings grew larger.  Jasper’s brother Daniel married Margaret McDonald in 1851, and now Jasper and Lottie were the only children at home.

In the fall of 1852, Henry Hewitt’s sister Margarette Hewitt Ring, arrived in the Willamette Valley with her husband, Thomas Ring.  They came from Platte County, Missouri, where the Matheny family had lived, so the Mathenys were happy to visit with the Rings at the home of Henry and Elizabeth.  Until the Rings found suitable land upon which to settle, they probably remained living with Henry and Elizabeth. Jasper saw much of them during this time. He especially enjoyed talking with Margarette’s sixteen-year-old stepdaughter, Mary Ring. Although he was just eighteen, Jasper proposed marriage, and Mary accepted.  Probably all the family members were pleased with this further cementing of the Hewitt family with the Mathenys, even if they were a bit young.  At the same time, Jasper’s fourteen-year-old sister Lottie was asked to marry John Kirkwood, a young neighbor with a farm and California gold dust in his possession.  The two couples decided upon a double Christmas wedding at the Matheny home, but the minister could not be persuaded to leave his family on Christmas Day.  The wedding took place the following day, on December 26, 1852, with both brides dressed in simple frontier calico dresses.

In 1853, the ten-year anniversary of the Mathenys in Oregon, the extended family was rapidly growing.  The seven children of Daniel and Polly were adding family members each year as were the families of Jasper’s uncles and aunts.   On November 19, 1853, nineteen-year-old Jasper became a father with the birth of Lorenzo Dow Matheny.  The child was named for the charismatic Methodist minister of the frontier, Lorenzo Dow, who probably had influenced the conversion of Mary and Daniel Matheny.  But the infant lived only nine days, dying on November 28, 1853.  He was buried on the hill at Aunt Rachel’s cemetery.  The young couple must have been despondent over this setback.  The anticipated joy at starting a family was crushed by the death of their infant.   That same year Jasper’s sister Charlotte gave birth to her first child, a son, whom she named for her favorite brother, Jay William Kirkwood. [Jasper’s nickname was Jay.]  This child would grow up to be a doctor, living in Grangeville, Idaho.

It is not known what Jasper did during the 1850’s as a livelihood, but he probably worked for his aging parents, operating the ferry and farming their lands.   He was too young to have taken advantage of the Donation Land Act of 1852, which gave up to 640 acres of land to those adults who had settled in the Willamette Valley prior to that year.   All of his siblings had acquired Donation Land Claims, including his sister Lottie through her husband John Kirkwood.  Jasper had run the ferry in the absence of his father and brothers and lost out in the gold of California, and then lost out in the availability of Donation Land Act claims.  Surely his family owed him for his dogged efforts in maintaining the family during the gold rush. It is not known whether or not his parents in some way compensated him for this.

The ever-kind ministrations of the family brought various new immigrants to abide in the Mathenys’ log cabins in the bottomland of the town of Wheatland.   Jasper and Mary probably lived in one of these.

Early in 1855 a second son, Henry Leuder Matheny, named for a friend who lived in Yamhill County, was born to Jasper and Mary.  Jasper was just twenty years old and Mary, eighteen.  The young couple must have been fearful of losing this second child after their earlier experience, but the child thrived and the future looked bright.

In 1856 an epidemic of cholera hit the Willamette Valley. The Pacific Christian Advocate, in its October 6, 1856  issue, announced the toll on the Matheny family:

Died-Mary, wife of Daniel Matheny of Yamhill County on the 29^th ult. of flux after an illness of three weeks, aged fifty-six years.  Thirty-six years ago, Sister Matheny experienced religion in Edgar County, Illinois (sic), and joined the M.E.Church.  She leaves a husband and seven children to mourn their irreparable loss.

Henry Leuder, second and only surviving son of Jasper and Mary Matheny of Yamhill County on the 15^th ult. of flux, aged 1 year and 10 months.

Mary Christiana, daughter of John and Charlotte Kirkwood of Yamhill County on the 13^th ult. of flux, aged 8 ½ months.

Virtually all of the babies in the family under two years of age died of the cholera, or the “deadly flux” as it was called. At the Hopewell Cemetery there is a row of large rocks that probably mark the graves of those who died during that epidemic.  When the diarrhea and vomiting occurred, babies could not be reasoned with to drink fluids and eat to maintain their health.  Adults and older children had a better survival rate, yet the deadly cholera hit hard.  Once again the young couple had to bury a son, and once again they were childless.

With Polly’s death, the family changed markedly.  She had been at the center of the pull of family that held her children at Wheatland.  There were many families now thriving in the Willamette Valley that felt a great loss.  She had been the angel who fed and housed them when they arrived exhausted, hungry, and forlorn in this new land.  Daniel now lived alone in the large house on the bluff, and the large family gatherings there ceased without Polly.  Henry and Elizabeth Hewitt convinced him to move in with their growing family nearby. Uncle Bill’s wife, Aunt Mary Ann, also died in the epidemic, and their infant son was taken in by Uncle Enoch and Aunt Esther.  Aunt Jane, the widow of Uncle John, also died, and their two children also went to live with Uncle Enoch.  Once again Death had taken a large slice from the family.  When the rains began to fall on Oregon that October, the world no doubt seemed a gloomier place.

It was about that time that Mary Ring Matheny realized that she was pregnant again.  It was probably hard for her and Jasper to become too excited.  Perhaps this child, too, would be taken away.  Again it was a son, Albert Lee Matheny, born April 30, 1857.  He was to be called by his middle name, Lee.  Once again Jasper and Mary began, most certainly uneasily, to have a sense of family as the infant survived a month and yet another month.

The 1850’s were a time of national polarization.  Everyone had a strong political opinion about the divisive issue of slavery in the territories.  Jasper and his brothers were members of the Democratic Party, but his brother Isaiah’s views were strongly influenced by the Allen family into which he had married.  They were from the South.  Jasper was a delegate of the Democratic Party’s Willamette Precinct to the Yamhill County Central Committee in May of 1858 [Salem Statesman, May 18, 1858].  He was renamed to that committee in November of 1859, which shows that he was still living in Yamhill County at that time.

On December 19, a daughter, Laura Bell Matheny was born.  Little Lee was now two years old and seemed to be thriving.  The Christmas of 1859 was probably a happy one for the young family.  Perhaps Jasper reflected on the many changes in his life and in Oregon since that bittersweet Christmas of 1849 ten years before.  Oregon was now a state and towns were springing up across the landscape.

The Salem Years 1860-1872

14

A short time before this, Adam Matheny had purchased 160 acres across the Willamette River from Salem, which lay twelve miles to the south of Wheatland.  It was probably early in the year 1860 that Jasper joined Adam in the move to the Salem area.  On June 23 of 1860 a tragedy in his brother Adam’s family, recalled by Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood, occurred, which suggests that Jasper was already in Salem by that time:

One day, my brother Adam’s children, little Caroline and her half-sister three or four years older, were playing on the bank of the river with a little neighbor girl.  They were playing house under the big willow that grew at the very edge of the water.

It was a very king among willows.  On one side, its lithe, low-hanging branches dabbled their tips in the river; on the other side, its limbs rested against a steep bank, and made a green leafy tent that was cool and enticing.  Its great gnarled surface roots were almost bare, for the river ran as swiftly as a scared hound, and when the water was up, a bend at that place drove the current into the bank, where it gnawed like a hungry wolf at the soft loamy soil.

And so the surface roots of the big willow were quite exposed.  They made such comfortable seats; and armchairs and tables and suchlike could be built on them with old box lids or a few boards that no one else seemed to care about.  As fine a playhouse could be built around those roots and under the shade of the willow as any small housekeeper could possibly wish for.

On this day, the group of chattering, happy children planned a feast.  The garden was full of young peas and carrots just prime to be eaten raw, and the turnips were as tender and sweet as snow-white turnips ever could be.  A most delicious feast it was to be, and the old willow was the very place for it.

When everything was ready—when a tablecloth of scotch-cap leaves had been spread, when make-believe knives and forks of maple seeds had been set—the children ran to the garden.  They gathered the nicest things they could find and hurried back to the willow tree.

Caroline ran ahead.  Holding her turnips by the long green leaves, she swung them round and round as she ran down the steep little bank.  A laughing, merry child, she failed to check her speed.  With a laugh still on her lips, she plunged headlong into the river.

The other children saw her—saw the little pink calico dress and the tangle of yellow curls that floated for a moment on the surface, before the current took her and hid her away.

When help came, she was gone.  They hunted her for days.  Brother Jasper, diving deep down, told of a submerged tree with many limbs twenty-five or thirty feet below the surface—perhaps she was entangled and held there by the jagged limbs.  Anyway they could not find her, though men came from everywhere to help.  They dragged the river and hunted down it for miles.

It was Daniel Matheny who finally found the decomposing body about ten days later.  The girl’s death rated only a sentence in the Statesman of Salem’s Asahel Bush, who was entangled in the heated politics of the momentous election of 1860, which was to determine whether or not the South would secede from the Union.

The story may not prove that Jasper was living in Salem at the time, but it suggests it. The Mathenys probably lived in a home in Block 4 of Salem, because land records show that they sold this property to W. Hauxhurst on November 18, 1861.  It was probably in this home that a daughter, Ida Rose Matheny, was born on February 15, 1861.

The first enterprise in which Jasper engaged upon moving to Salem was a butchering business, which did not last long.  In the August 6, 1860 Statesman appearing the following legal notification:

DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP

THE PARTNERSHIP heretofore existing between the undersigned, in the butchering business, under the style of Marshal & Matheny, is this day dissolved by mutual      agreement.  Jasper Matheny will receive the debts due and pay the demands against the late firm.  Geo.V. Marshall will continue the business at the old stand.

GEO.V. MARSHALL

JASPER MATHENY

Jasper next established a shipping, storage, and consignment business at a riverside wharf and warehouse that he had built. Much of what he took in was wheat as had been done by his father at Wheatland.  He would store the wheat and sell it for a commission. It was in 1861 that Jasper took on a partner.  In the Statesman of December 19, 1922, columnist Fred Lockley wrote of an interview with John G. Wright, a long-time Salem resident:

I saw where I could make some extra money by buying a half interest in Jasper N. Matheny’s wharf, so I did so.  The high prices being paid for supplies in the newly discovered mines in Boise basin and throughout the Inland Empire caused my partner and me to decide to get into the game. I was 24 and an outdoor man; so we decided he should stay and run the Salem end of the business while I went up to Orofino [an Idaho gold camp] with a stock of goods.

After selling out my stock at Orofino at a very satisfactory margin of profit, I ordered a big stock for the winter.  It was delayed, and, finding it impossible to get goods in to  Orofino, I took them to Walla Walla and started a store there.  That winter, 1861-1862, was one that oldtimers will never forget.  It was so cold and the snow was so heavy that most of the stock in Eastern Oregon and Washington either starved to death or froze, and in the Willamette valley, it was the year of the big flood.

News traveled more slowly in the day of the pack horse, the ox team and the canoe than it does today, when it is broadcasted by radio; so the first I knew of the big flood was when a miner brought in a copy of Bush’s Oregon Statesman from Salem and let me read it.  Almost the first thing I saw was that Matheney [sic] and Wright’s dock had been washed away, causing a loss of over $10,000.  We had a lot of wheat and other stuff stored on the dock, all of which was lost.  That, of course, was something of a financial jolt, but I figured there was lots more gold in the ground, and I would get enough of it to reimburse me for the damage the high water had done me...

…Late that fall [1862], I bought out the interest of my partner, Jasper Matheny in the steamboat dock, and became agent for the People’s Transportation company, organized by the McCullys of Harrisburg…..

The Salem newspaper that John Wright referred to was the Oregon Statesman; the issue was the Monday, December 9, 1861, issue, page 2:

THE FLOOD—GREAT LOSS OF LIFE AND PROPERTY

The flood reached its greatest height at Salem about six o’clock, p.m., Tuesday.  It was five feet above the highest water that has been known since the settlement of the country:  the freshet of 1844 being the next highest water that has been seen by Americans; although it is said that a similar one was witnessed by the Canadian trappers. On Sunday the 1^st, the river was at a high stage, and rising rapidly.  There had been very heavy rains, and a warm, dull atmosphere for several days—doubtlessly rapidly melting the snow on the Cascade mountains.  On Monday morning merchants began moving wheat from Matheny’s warehouse.  Before noon the water broke over at the upper wharf into the channel running near the foundry, and it was soon too deep for teams to cross.  The lumber road from Dorelle’s saw mill served as a bridge, and a great deal of wheat was taken over on that and a ferry boat.  Near night the boat sank,  full of wheat, and the water carried off the roadway from the mill.  During Monday night Matheny’s warehouse, Durelle’s sawmill, the cider manufactory, and all the houses on that bench of land were swept away....

From Wright’s interview it is clear that Jasper rebuilt the wharf and warehouse right after the flood, but 1862 was a difficult year.   It appears as if at least some of the farmers who had stored their wheat at Matheny’s warehouse lost it during the flood.  The State of Oregon had some brass cannons in storage in the warehouse that were saved, but after the flood Jasper had a difficult time collecting the storage bill from the State.  Finally he was able to get the legislature to propose House Bill No. 72, Relief of Matheny and Wright.  The bill passed both houses and the partners were able to collect the $35 owed to them by the State just as Jasper sold out his half interest to Wright.  The cannons had been purchased by the State at the same time that they passed a resolution condemning the rebellion of the Southern states.  They were in storage in case the situation in Oregon should require them. 

The war going on in the East had people in Oregon at each other’s throats in heated discussions.  Relationships were destroyed if people’s sympathies lay on the opposite side. Daniel Matheny and three of his sons came out strongly for the Union.  Jasper joined the Marion County Union Convention and donated money to the Sanitary Commission.  The Salem Statesman  of September 8, 1862, shows that he had donated $5 to this organization to help sick and wounded Union soldiers.  His brother Isaiah, however, had taken the Southern view of his wife Emeline Allen’s family, causing tensions in the Matheny family. The Civil War years were unsettled years in the West.  Most everyone had strong opinions about the fratricidal quarrel taking place in the East.

Another daughter, Mary Ella Matheny, was born on August 19, 1862, making four children for the Mathenys, but she, too, would not survive infancy, dying May 2, 1863.  Mary Ella is believed to have been buried at Hopewell, but no record exists.  Wooden markers decayed before the records were kept.

In the Salem Statesman of December 8, 1862, Jasper’s name was among the newly-elected aldermen of Salem.  From then on he would serve in  a civic office until he left Salem eleven years later.

On April 3, 1863, Jasper purchased the south eighty acres of his brother Adam’s farm across the river from Salem in Polk County.  He likely began to farm this land.  Sitting as it did next to the Salem ferry’s Polk County landing,  Jasper’s next endeavor was to buy an interest in the Salem ferry, owned by Rhoda White, the widow of the ferry’s founder, who had started the ferry in 1846.  Mrs. White’s ferryboat had sunk attempting to save the wheat from Matheny’s warehouse, and her stepsons wished to leave the ferrying business.  As an experienced ferryman, Jasper no doubt felt the partnership was mutually beneficial. On July 6, 1863 the new partners, which also included Dr. W. Warren and Samuel Buys [?], put up a $500 bond with the county to insure proper operation of the ferry.  The partners built a new steam ferry to replace the old rope ferry that wasn’t as dependable due to rope breaks, etc.

Minnie Maud Matheny was born on July 3, 1864, making the family once again four children, three daughters and a son.

After two years of partnership, Mrs. White sold her interest in the ferry to Jasper and his new partner, Lewis Johnson.  The new partners assumed the $500 bond with the county on July 6, 1865.

On June 28, 1865 Jasper and his brother Isaiah purhased Lot 7 in Block 65 in Salem.  This lot lay next to the ferry landing; it lay on the site of the Carousel Building in Riverfront Park today.  On the same day they purchased Lot 2 in the same block.  This was the lot directly behind their other lot.  It today abuts the railroad tracks.  Isaiah must have immediately sold his half interest in the lots to Jasper’s partner, Lewis Johnson, because Jasper and Johnson paid the taxes on the property.  The value of the property was assessed at $1,500 and the personal property, $1,500.  The tax bill stated that Johnson was in debt $1,075, presumably to Isaiah Matheny. Two weeks after the purchase of the lots, on July 10, Rhoda White, now Rhoda Howe, sold Jasper and Johnson 90 acres in Claim #51, Township 7, Range 3 in Polk County.  This included an interest in Boon’s Ferry.  On October 10, Jasper purchased the rest of Block 65.  He and his partner now owned the entire city block.

In 1864, 1865, and 1868 Jasper was again elected a member of the Salem City Council from the 3^rd Ward. His home was at the northeast corner of Capitol Ave. and Court streets, just across the street from the Capitol grounds.  It was there, on December 25, 1866, that his sister-in-law, Marthy Ring, of Benton County, married Mr. J. Mitchell of Benton County.

On the 10^th of December, 1865, a daughter, named Alice Gertrude Matheny, was born to Jasper and Mary, but she would be called Kitie, rhyming with mighty.  The family now consisted of one son and four daughters.

On October 13, 1866, Jasper bought a portion of Lot 8 in Block 47 of Salem for unknown business reasons. The following year, on May 24, 1867, he purchased 209.64 acres of the Daniel Delaney Donation Land Claim from Delaney’s son Daniel, Jr.  A month later, Jasper purchased another 308.43 acres of the claim from Daniel Jr.’s brother, William C. Delaney. The Delaneys had crossed the plains in 1843 with the Mathenys.  Daniel Delaney, Sr., had been murdered in 1865 by two others who had crossed the plains with them, and the sons had inherited their father’s land.  The murderers were hung; and no cemetery would permit them to be interred, so Daniel Waldo, yet another 1843 immigrant, took their bodies and buried them on his farm in what is now known as Waldo Hills.

Jasper bought out Johnson’s interest in Lots 2 & 7 of Block 65 on August 12, 1867. Two days later Johnson deeded the ninety acres to Jasper.  To buy out Johnson, Jasper took in some new partners: James N. Glover and Elijah and Richard Williams.  The group then purchased another ferryboat to hasten their customers’ journeys now that the ferry was in greater demand.  That year Jasper also took on the duties of Salem town marshall at a salary of $940.58 per year. The Pacific Coast Directory of 1867 listed J.N. Matheny of Salem, occupation “storage and commission.”  He was also active in the Masons in the Pacific Lodge #50 and attained the E.A. degree on September 6, 1870, the F. C. degree on January 31, 1871, and the M.M. degree on March 7, 1871.

Yet a fifth daughter was born on December 10, 1868.  She was named Sarah Agnes Matheny.  The Matheny’s eldest surviving child was the son Lee, now eleven years old.

From late 1869 until early 1873 Jasper was the sheriff of Marion County, with an annual budget of $3,873.35 to cover his salary and the operation of the jail. He had given up his role as the marshall of Salem to run for sheriff, and his partner, James Glover, took over as city marshall. At that time Jasper also gave up his post as street commissioner.  As part of that job, Jasper had proposed to the City Council the building of wooden sidewalks so town inhabitants did not have to walk in the mud. 

 The Salem newspaper, the Statesman, does not show very many crimes occurring in Marion County during Jasper's term as sheriff.  A three-year-old son of Joseph Baker wandered off, and presumably Jasper was involved in the search for him.  Also, Courtney Meeks, the half-breed son of mountain man Joe Meek had gotten drunk and killed a man in Washngton County.  He was on the run, and there was a $700 reward posted for his capture.  It would have fallen into Jasper role to advertise the manhunt and the reward.  A Mr. Adolph had sixteen half-grown ducks stolen, and the newspaper stated that the owner hoped the thief would choke on the bones of the ducks while eating them.  A theft in a Salem hotel room more properly was under the jurisdiction of Jasper's close friend James Glover, the Salem city marshal, but the two worked together closely.  A Santiam Indian chief named Joe Hutchins drank too much whiskey and woke up to find his feet in the campfire, his shoes burnt and his feet cooked.  He was not expected to live. An elderly negro couple were robbed while they attended Emancipation Day ceremonies.  A man from Harrisburg in Linn County was arrested in Salem for forgery by the constable from that town.  Jasper and Glover likely had a part in his capture.  Marion County was generally a peaceful place to live by today's standards.

The business of the partners now included a square block in Salem for storage, the ferry, the consignment business, and an interest in Boon’s Ferry. On April 14, 1869, Henry Boon and his wife Duenna granted to Jasper N. Matheny a quitclaim to the undivided one third interest in parts of Sections 21, 22, 27, & 28 in Township 7 Range 3W, being parts of the east one half of Donation Land Claim #51.

Later that year S. C. Tomlinson, on August 12, granted to Jasper ninety arcres in Claim #51 in Polk County.  Apparently Tomlinson had owned an interest in the Boon’s Ferry property.  Clearly the partners were prospering and buying out the entire Boon’s Ferry operation.

On September 21, 1869, Jasper and his partners purchased from Enoch M. Garrison 517 acres in Sections 1 and 12 of Township 8 South, Range 3 West.  Garrison was the brother of  Jasper’s brother-in-law, Joseph M. Garrison.  Garrison was leaving for Shasta County, California, and put up his donation land claim for sale.  Presumably this was  a farm.  There were various other land purchases in Jasper’s name for unknown purposes.

On April 10, 1870, a son, Guy Fawkes Matheny, was born, thirteen years younger than his elder brother Lee.  Guy was sometimes called Guido, as had been the famous English conspirator Guy Fawkes, for whom he apparently was named. That September Jasper acquired 38.56 acres on Henry Rick’s claim in Township 8 South, Range 3 West.

In 1872 Jasper’s father, Daniel Matheny, died on February 1.  He was buried next to Polly on Aunt Rachel’s hillside cemetery. Jasper’s wife Mary was almost nine months pregnant at the time. On February 20, she gave birth to their last child, Jasper Claud Matheny.  Mary was not well after the delivery and died two weeks later on March 3, 1872. Jasper purchased several gravesites as a family plot in what is now the Pioneer Cemetery in Salem.  Two months later the baby joined Mary in the plot.   Jasper was left with seven children to rear alone. Mary’s obituary appeared in the Pacific Christian Advocate:

DIED In Salem, Mrs. Mary Matheny, wife of J.N. Matheny, Sheriff of Marion county. She was a native of Indiana, and emigrated to Oregon in 1852, and on the 26^th of December of the same year was united in marriage to her now deeply afflicted husband.  In 1854 she professed religion at a camp meeting in Yamhill county.  For some time past she held no connection with the visible church, and during her sickness was so irrational as to be unable to converse, yet her earnest prayers and calls to her departed friends, together with the glow that lighted up her countenance, gave unmistakable evidence that her soul held communion with God after her mental powers faded.  She was a reader of the P.C. Advocate from its first number and called for it in her last moments.  She left eight children, the youngest two weeks old .  At 6 o’clock on Sabbath evening, March 3d, 1872, she “accomplished as an hireling her task,” aged 35 years, 10 months, and 3 days.  Her funeral was largely attended.

I .D. Driver, Salem, March 7, 1872

A generation had passed since the first settlement of the Willamette Vallley.  The younger generation began to look for opportunities for inexpensive land.  The Homestead Act of 1862 provided opportunities for 160 acres for each family.  There was no further west to go, so Jasper’s generation began to fill in the unpopulated areas of the West. Many people from the Willamette Valley began moving to Eastern Washington in the Palouse Country, and to the adjacent panhandle of Idaho, where the discovery of gold in the early 1860’s had attracted considerable activity.  They also were settling the southern part of Oregon and the northern California counties. That which kept Jasper rooted in the Willamette Valley was gone.  His wife and both parents were dead.  His brothers had scattered, as had his sister Mary Garrison.  He was ripe for new opportunities and a new life.

Breaking Ties 1872-1873

15

Land records in 1872  show that Jasper was divesting himself of his properties.  It appears that he sold his interest in the ferry in April of 1872 to A. H. Whitley of Polk County, just a month after Mary’s death.  On that date Jasper took title to 160 acres in Claim #69, Township 7, Range 5 in full or partial payment and transferred his interest in the waterfront real estate.  Ten days earlier he had sold the west one half of Lot 2 in Block 83 in Salem to Elizabeth Cook.  On July 20 he sold other lots in Salem’s Block 83 to John Ford, an 1843 immigrant whose lawyer-son Tillman was born on the trail with the Mathenys.  On July 20 he sold Lot 1 in Block 83 to Josephus Thompson. On February 3, 1873, Jasper sold Lot 8 in Block 29 to Ford.  On March 28, 1873 he sold 21.24 acres in Section 32 Township 7 South, Range 2 West in Marion County. In 1874  in the Salem Directory, Jasper was listed as a “trader” living on the southwest corner of High Street and Chemeketa, but the information for that book had been gathered the year before. By 1874 Jasper no longer lived in Salem.

In 1872 Jasper’s brother Isaiah, returning from California, had traveled east and settled into stock-raising in Paradise Valley, where the town of Moscow, Idaho, would soon rise on the Idaho-Washington boundary line. His brother Daniel B. Matheny soon joined Isaiah in Paradise Valley to escape the Modoc Indian War in Northern California.

James N. Glover, who was three years younger than Jasper, had known him for many years.  Glover’s  father, Phillip Glover, had settled in the Waldo Hills east of Salem.  Young Glover had left his family farm in 1857 and sold fruit for a year in Yreka, California.  He then returned to Oregon and took part in the gold rush in Idaho, where he did quite well.  He returned to Salem and used his capital to engage in a variety of business ventures; he and Jasper had been partners in the Salem ferry since 1867, and both had worked in law enforcement.  Jasper had been the marshall of the town of Salem and afterwards the sheriff of Marion County since 1869. Glover became the city marshall of Salem after Jasper vacated the post to become sheriff.

It was a year after Mary’s death, in April of 1873, that  Jasper, still the sheriff of Marion County, and his friend Glover resigned their law enforcement jobs and decided to go into the mercantile business somewhere in Eastern Washington Territory or in what is now Idaho, where new opportunities were opening up.

From the Reminiscences of James N. Glover, we learn that Jasper and Glover left Salem traveling north by train to Portland.  Arriving in Portland, they booked passage on a steamboat headed up the Columbia River.  There were two portages:  one of six miles at site of present-day Cascade Locks and one of fifteen miles at The Dalles. The men traveled comfortably in staterooms while on the steamboats.  They spent the night at The Dalles and headed east on the Columbia in the morning and then north after the Columbia’s great bend. Leaving the Columbia at the mouth of the Snake River, they proceeded eastward up the Snake to the confluence of the Snake with the Clearwater River at the newly-risen hamlet of Lewiston, Idaho. At the time Lewiston was little more than a trading post for the nearby gold fields.  They arrived at 7 o’clock in the evening.  The records of the Hotel De France in Lewiston show that Matheny and Glover spent the night of May 1, 1873, at the hotel.  The next morning the men visited a livery establishment and rented some Cayuse horses. They then provisioned themselves with rolls of blankets, cold meat, bread, and other necessities in case they could not find meals and lodgings at houses along the way.  Then they were off on their journey of exploration.

They first ferried across the Clearwater and climbed the Lewiston Grade.  It was so steep that they had to walk most of the way.  It took them about three hours to reach the top.  From the top of the grade, the partners could see a panorama of the valley below, in the distance the verdant fields at Lapwai, twelve miles to the southeast. Their goal for the first night’s lodging was Union Flats, near the present-day town of Colton, Whitman County, Washington.  At the top of the plateau the climate was quite different from the valley floor.  There was bunch grass everywhere except on the north side of some of the slopes, where snow still lay.

On the morning of May 3, it was extremely cold, the hoary frost looking like snow.  Jasper and Glover made their way down the mountain to the home of the missionary Henry Spalding at Lapwai.  It had been pointed out to them when they had been on the boat.   There was no trail, only sporadic bits of a path used by the Nez Perce. Spalding and his wife had crossed the plains with Marcus and Narcissa Whitman in 1836 and had survived the Whitman Massacre. Now aging, Spalding was revered by the Nez Perce. His garden seemed like a Garden of Eden to the partners, nestled within the dry landscape.  Rows of knee-high corn swayed in the spring breezes.

Not finding anyone to answer their calls, the men opened the door to the Spalding home.  They staked out their horses and spent the afternoon. Such behavior by today’s standards seems abhorrent, but in those days it was part of the code of frontier hospitality.  When Spalding did not surface, Jasper and Glover decided it was too late in the day to climb back up the mountain.  They spent the night in his house and prepared their breakfast before departing.  Just as they were about to leave, Henry Spalding appeared, saying he was glad they had availed themselves of his hospitality and encouraged them to spend another night with him, but the men felt the need to continue their expedition.  Bidding him farewell, they started up the mountain.

It took them half a day to reach the top, walking a good part of the way due to the steepness of the terrain. They then headed north to the home where they had spent the night on May 3 and spent this night there also.

On the morning of May 6 the partners set out with a goal to reach Colfax [Whitman County, WA].  They probably did not visit the homes of Jasper’s brothers Isaiah and Daniel in Paradise Valley [Moscow, Idaho], because it lay a little to the east of their route.  They continued on to Colfax and reached it about 4:30 in the afternoon.  Colfax was already a bustling village, though it was almost entirely surrounded by water from spring flooding when they arrived. At the time it was the only settlement between Lewiston, Idaho, and Fort Colville, Washington Territory.  Jasper had first cousins in Colfax, whom he may have visited for information about the area.  They were his Uncle Enoch’s son, James P. Cooper, and James’s sister Jane Lumison.  Jane and her family had left the Willamette Valley shortly after three of her children drowned  off Grand Island in a boating mishap in June of 1871.

If  Jasper did visit his family, he didn’t tarry because he and Glover were on a business trip.  They found a man with a little skiff and loaded their saddles and their bundles onto the skiff and let the horses swim along behind.  About sundown they arrived at a ranch cabin near where the town of Farmington, WA, is now located, about 45-50 miles southeast of Spokane on the Idaho border.  Jasper’s brother Daniel would one day serve as the visiting minister for the Congregational Church in Farmington while still living in Paradise Valley.  There were only one or two hovels there at the time Jasper and Glover spent the night.

On the morning of the 7^th, the partners awakened with another obstacle to overcome:  the spring flooding  measured about two and a half miles across.  It would have taken too long to ride around it, so the men forded it, although the water came up to their stirrups.

Where Tekoa, Whitman County, Washington, now stands, there was nothing but wild country with no roads or trails to follow.  The partners would pick up directions at every isolated cabin they came to.  Hangman Creek was almost overflowing when they reached it, and they went looking for a place to ford it.  They came across an Indian lying face down on the ground.  They thought he was warming himself in the sun, but discovered that he was digging sunflower roots.  Sunflowers are the first things that poke above the ground in the spring, and the Indians liked the milky substance they contained.  The Indian did not seem to understand the Chinook jargon, with which both Jasper and Glover were acquainted, but through gestures they were able to make the Indian understand that they were looking for the best place to ford the stream.

After crossing the stream, the men arrived at the present-day locale of Latah, Spokane County, Washinton.  There they found a man named Copeland building a temporary cabin of small poles that he had logged in the mountains nearby. Copeland and his family were happy to see the travelers, who were a rarity in those days.  Jasper and Glover ate lunch with the Copelands and were off again.

The duo followed Hangman Creek down six or eight miles and found the cabin of Richard Wimpey.  They spent the night with Wimpey, and in the morning were greeted with heavy frost, as had been the case since leaving Lewiston.  Despite the morning chill, every day since leaving Lewiston had been clear and sunny.

Soon after leaving Wimpey’s, the men encountered for the second time Harvey Brown, who was the mail carrier for the entire country from Lewiston to Lake Pend Oreille.  He carried the mail in a saddlebag, but it wasn’t very full.  There were not very many people in the region yet.  Brown told the speculators to be sure to go to Kendall’s Bridge.  He said that Kendall had a well-built site, but was old and had become too feeble to continue.  He was anxious to sell out.  The bridge was afterwards known as Cowley’s Bridge and Spokane Bridge, and lay eighteen miles east of the present city of Spokane.  Although the men had been traveling through bunch grass and scattered pines, Brown assured the partners that they were on the right course to reach Spokane Falls, their next destination.  They continued their journey with Brown awhile along Rock Creek until they came to the cabin of two bachelor brothers, Peter and Max Mulwine.  The two stayed for dinner at the Mulwines’ and left through a small gap and arrived in the Spokane Valley.

Trees dotted the landscape but became scarcer as the men approached the Spokane River.  Soon they had a clear view of what was known as Saltese Lake, a beautiful body of water close to a granite peak. The mountains to the west were green with spring vegetation.  The valley was filled with sunflowers and both men were entranced with the site.  They arrived at Kendall’s Bridge at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon of May 12.  Kendall had apparently lived there for many years.  He conducted the toll bridge and the trading post, which was a general stopping place for everyone who passed through the area.  He had more than a dozen buildings, including a store, a hotel, and a dining room, all built mostly of logs.   His principal trade was in all kinds of liquor, which he sold to Indians and white men alike.

Just as the travelers arrived, the people of the settlement were returning from burying Kendall.  Jasper and Glover took a room at the hotel and left their luggage there while they spent the rest of the afternoon looking around.  They spent a restful evening, had a good meal, and then took to their bed.  They talked about what they had seen and decided against making an offer on Kendall’s property.  For one thing, it would probably be in probate for quite awhile and they just didn’t like “the lay of the land.”

After breakfast, the partners convinced the men in charge of the bridge to let them cross on foot without paying the high toll that was charged.  On the other side they met Thomas Ford, the partner of M. M. Cowley.  Cowley and his family were not at home.  The men obtained what information they could about the area from Ford and then returned to the hotel.

The mail carrier Harvey Brown had urged Matheny and Glover not to leave the region without looking at the situation at Spokane Falls, where the residents were in a dispute and wanted to sell out.  After finishing lunch at the hotel at Kendall’s Bridge, the men started out west for Spokane Falls.  The trail was steep and rocky, an Indian trail used by everyone who traveled to the falls from the east. They arrived at the falls about 6 o’clock on Sunday evening, May 11, 1873.

There were three families and two single men living near the falls: J.J. Downing, his wife and daughter Nellie; Richard Benjamin and his wife; L.M. Swift and his wife; S. R. Scranton; and Walter France.  The entire settlement consisted of five cabins and a little shed that housed a sawmill.  The saw was powered by an enormous waterwheel.  There was a double log cabin a little southwest of the mill, belonging to Downing and Scranton.  Mr. Benjamin and his wife were living in it at the time.  About 150 yards from the Benjamins’ home lay a small cabin tacked together with lumber produced by the sawmill.  It was about sixteen feet square.  Nearby were three other log cabins, two yet unroofed.

The Downings had already eaten their supper, but Mrs. Downing prepared the hungry travelers a good meal anyway.  They sat around the Downing home until bedtime.  They were directed to sleep in one of the unfinished cabins, where they threw their blankets on the dirt floor.  The men fell asleep to the roar of the falls.

Glover awakened first and left Jasper sleeping as he explored the falls.  He was almost late for breakfast at the Downings’.  At breakfast, the men asked Downing if there wasn’t some kind of boat around so that they could cross the river.  Downing told them there was a pine log about ten feet long that passed for a boat.  It was hollowed out a bit to form a crude dugout.  Two men could cross in it if they didn’t move around and capsize.  The partners found it hitched to a post about three quarters of a mile up the river.  Both being experienced boatmen, they had no trouble making the crossing.

The men wandered up and down the northern bank until about noon, exploring as far down as the lower falls.  They were struck by the beauty of the place and could see a great settlement arising here.  They decided that here was where they would build their store.  The partners knew that the Northern Pacific Railroad had done a preliminary survey through the area, and, although it was just beginning to lay tracks in the East, someday it would be coming near here.  Their only worry should they buy the squatter’s rights to the site was that it might lay within the area that the government granted to the railroads for an incentive to build.  The government had agreed to grant the railroad in a forty-mile swath of land across the country every odd-numbered section of land. Matheny and Glover discussed the issue and decided to make an offer, but they did not want to appear overanxious.

Returning to the south side of the river, the partners met up with Downing.  Knowing that the men were sighting out opportunities in the area, Downing offered to sell them his squatter’s rights.  They discussed with him the fact that they would be taking a fifty-fifty chance that their investment wouldn’t stand if it fell within the railroad’s allotted land. The mail carrier, Harvey Brown, had already told the partners that Richard Benjamin had paid Downing $400 toward his half of the claim.  When asked about this, Downing said that the deal had fallen through, that Benjamin couldn’t pay the rest. Downing said he would take $2,000 for his interest.  The partners insisted on paying Richard Benjamin the $400 he had put down on the purchase as part of the $2,000 purchase price.  It wouldn’t do to start with a possibly clouded title to the site.   Prudence would have demanded that they discuss their ideas with Scranton, who owned half interest in the site, and presumably he agreed to go along with their ideas.

The site’s eastern boundary was what is now Bernard Street; the southern, Sprague Ave.; the northern, Broadway; the western, Cedar Street.  After lunch the partners “went down” after dinner to see a lawyer named Swift, probably in Colfax, to draw up the papers for the sale.  Before nightfall of May 12, 1873, half interest in the property belonged to the partners. 

1873-1875-- Town Founding

16

Because Glover was writing his reminiscences, he naturally writes always in the first person singular, I:  I did this; I did that, etc., it is difficult to determine what part Jasper played in the negotiations and the purchase.  Surely he did not stand around with his hands in his pocket.  He wasn’t that kind of person.

The partners left Mr. Scranton in charge of their interest in the property, and they left for Salem. Downing had asked permission to remain in  his house until the partners' return, which they agreed to. They headed for Lewiston via Spangle, Lower Pine Creek, and Colfax, camping on North Pine Creek the first night.  The next day, on the south fork of Pine Creek, they discovered so many crickets in the stream that they had dammed up the water.  They later asked about the crickets and were told that the crickets were a recent development.  Matheny and Glover worried that if the crickets became a hindrance to farming it might slow development in the Spokane Falls area.

That same day they arrived in Colfax, fording the Palouse River; the water had  receded considerably from when they had passed through there earlier.  They spent the night in Colfax and then reached Union Flats, where they had spent the nights of May 2 and 4.  Here they left their horses and saddles and walked into Lewiston the next day. They discovered upon arriving that the water in the Snake River had dropped so low that boats were not navigating on the Snake at all.  The partners had to take a stagecoach from Lewiston to Walla Walla and another to the town of Wallula on the Columbia River, by way of Pomeroy, Dayton, and Waitsburg, Washington Territory.  At Wallula, they took passage on a boat for Portland.  At Portland they boarded a train for Salem.

As the partners headed home, they discussed their plans.  They decided to have a small circular sawmill and a turbine wheel constructed.  As soon as the sawmill was set up and operating, they would open a small trading post.  Although the economy of the region was not thriving, they felt they could get enough business from the few settlers in the area, for there were no towns between Colville and Colfax.

Back in Salem, Jasper probably enjoyed a reunion with his childen after his absence.  The partners shared their plans for development of the Spokane Falls site with others.  People were very interested in their venture as they were about any new places opening up.  The westering fever hadn’t died when Americans reached the Pacific Ocean, it simply had changed direction. Cyrus F. Yeaton was interested in joining Matheny and Glover’s venture.  He told them he had experience in the mercantile business and would like to run the trading post as a partner.  Matheny and Glover discussed Yeaton’s proposition and decided to take him in as a partner.

They put in a rush order with a millwright for the  fabrication of the gears and saw blades for the sawmill.  By July 15, 1873, everything was ready, but Glover had not yet completed some business transactions.  Jasper and Yeaton, with the millwright and two assistants, headed for Spokane Falls.  By special arrangements with the steamship company, they were able to travel by water as far as Palouse Landing, at the mouth of the Palouse River on the Snake River.  They hired men with teams and wagons to carry their goods the eighty-five miles to Spokane.  They arrived on July 29.

Scranton, who was half owner of the property, apparently had been planning to be taken in as a partner, but before Glover arrived on August 19, a posse of settlers from Colville came looking for Scranton, and he went into hiding. He sent word that he wanted to sell out his interest to the partners, and when Glover arrived, he and Matheny were taken to Scranton’s hiding place.  From a February 14, 1917, news clipping in the Glover file, Glover described the transaction:

I found Scranton where at that time there was a little lake, just east of the present O. R. & N. depot. It was surrounded by a very thick growth of blackthorn, so dense that Matheny and I had to crawl in on our hands and knees.

We found Scranton lying on a buffalo robe with his weapons alongside of him.  After a 15 minute talk I arranged for him to come into the log cabin, where Downing and his family still lived at 11 o’clock that night when I would have all the papers ready to buy him out.  He came in and we bought him out and he disappeared.

Soon the men had built a new, larger sawmill, built and in operation by September 15.  Both Jasper and Glover were skilled carpenters.  With the first lumber that the sawmill produced, they built a store with a residence for Cyrus Yeaton and his family at the rear.  Glover was living in the small house that the Downings had lived in, and one of the unfinished cabins was roofed and made livable for Jasper and his family.  The store and houses were located on the north side of what is now Spokane Falls Boulevard about half way between Howard Street and Wall Street.  Jasper and Glover had ordered the stock for their store in Portland on their trip back to Salem.  As soon as the store was completed, the stock shipment was requested.  The store was open for business about the first of November.  The first stock the store carried was largely things attractive to Indians, since most of the population of the area was Indian. It consisted of cheap blankets, shawls, calicoes, beads, tobacco, sugar, tea, coffee, cutlery, nails, paints, and all sorts of groceries.  The Indians would usually pay in furs that they had trapped.  [News clipping in James Glover File at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Spokane]

Sometime during these first months Jasper’s children and his fifteen-year-old niece, Emma Garrison, arrived in Spokane.  [One writer mistakenly called Emma Jasper’s sister-in-law.]  Presumably Emma helped take care of her younger cousins and functioned as the woman of the house.  In later years, while living in Portland, Emma separated from her husband awhile and returned to Spokane, where she worked as an artist and had a studio before returning to her husband.  Emma probably also functioned as a teacher for the children because there was no school in the settlement until the fall of 1874.  At the end of 1873 Jasper’s children were Guy, 3; Sarah, 5; Kitie, 8; Minnie, 9; and Ida, 12.  Presumably Lee, 16, and Laura, 15, remained in Salem, because Spokane records show that Jasper had five children with him. 

The lots in Spokane Falls sold for $50 each.  The cash-strapped partners used the deed to a lot to pay for a running ad in the weekly Tacoma Herald.  Part of the ad read

Immigrants in search of homes in the great Spokane country should aim to locate as near as possible to the route to be followed by the Northern Pacific railroad.  There is no point in the Spokane country as promising as “Spokane Falls,” situated as follows:  about 80 miles south of Colville, 65 miles north of Colfax, 120 miles east of the Columbia River, 19 miles west of Coeur d’Alene, 47 miles west of Pend Oreille lake and 10 miles north of “Four Lakes.”

As the partners were busily constructing their store and other buildings, a great gathering of Indians began to take place.  The men learned that the Indians came there every year during the run of the white salmon.  They would catch the fish and then dry them for a winter’s supply.  It was the Indian women who caught, cleaned, and dried the fish.  While their women were thus engaged, the men would gamble and race their horses.  They had regular playing cards and played white men games of cards.

The store had been open less than two months when Christmas was celebrated at Glover’s home.  Jasper and his niece Emma Garrison and Jasper’s five children were present as were Glover and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Yeaton and their daughter Lulu. This was the first Christmas in the established town of Spokane Falls, now called simply Spokane. [clipping from Glover File]

In their conception of building a store and sawmill in the middle of nowhere, the partners had not well conceived the time it would take their business and the new town they platted to prosper.  They sold very few lots, and most of their customers at the store were Indians.  The Fourth of July of 1874 was used as a promotion for Spokane Falls.  People came from fifty and sixty miles away to join the celebration.  They brought their own provisions and bedding and camped for the three or four days that the celebration lasted.  The partners took cloth from the store and made a United States flag.  They raised a pole and hung the flag.  There were still quite a few pine trees in the street in front of the store, so the partners built a wooden dance floor under them for the celebration, hanging pine and fir boughs from ropes around it.  J. A. Perkins of Colfax gave the main oration on the fourth.  The white people danced in the afternoon and evening until a late hour, with the Indians peering through the evergreen boughs at the event.  After the white people went to bed, the Indians took over the dance floor and danced until morning.

The visitors brought their fishing tackle and fished for trout in the river.  The fish were so plentiful then that one could catch them almost anywhere in the river.  The fish were a major source of food for the partners during those lean years. [Clipping from Glover file]

About 1874 government surveyors came through the area and divided the land into townships and sections.  The partners filed a homestead on 160 acres that included their townsite according to the testimony of Arthur Yeaton, Cyrus Yeaton’s brother in a 1914 interview by columnist Fred Lockley.

The Northerner, a newspaper operating in Lewiston, made note of Jasper’s passage through the city in September of 1874:  “J.N. Matheny, an old Oregonian, passed through here on his way from Spokane Falls, where he has valuable property.”  Jasper was likely on his way to Salem to deal with his properties whose buyers were defaulting.

In the fall of 1875, according to James Glover in his reminiscences:

A little over two years after we came here, J. N. Matheny, the man who had accompanied me here on my original trip and been my partner ever since, wanted to leave.

“Jim, I’ve got cold feet,” he said.  “Buy me out.  I’ve got to get out of here.  I can’t support my family here any longer.  We have been here two years now and conditions aren’t any better than they were when we came, and I can’t see any prospects of any improvement.”

“I’m not in very good condition to buy you out,” I told him. “I’ve got everything tied up here.”

“It won’t take very much to buy me out,” he replied.  He named his price and I managed to raise the money and pay it.  It was only a few hundred dollars and neither he nor Yeaton had much money when we came, and I had been carrying them both.

According to Cyrus Yeaton in a 1927 interview by Fred Lockley for the Salem Journal, the parting of the ways was not so peaceful.  Said Yeaton:

Matheny owed Glover $3,000.  They quarreled over this debt.  I refused to take sides, which offended both.  Finally I sided with Glover and advised him to buy out Matheny, which he did.

The partners must have been under a lot of financial stress with the stagnant situation through which they were living.  Glover had the most ready cash because all of his properties had been liquidated.  Jasper still owned property in Salem that he had sold on installments, and his buyers were defaulting on payments.  There are records during these years of two properties being deeded back to him.  One was the new owner of the ferry.  Because he was desperate, Jasper sold his interest in the ferry to his sister and brother-in-law, Henry and Elizabeth Hewitt, no doubt at a reduced price, for he was unable to be in both Salem and Spokane.

Yeaton, who had an invalid wife, was to sell out to Glover the following year, leaving Glover as the sole proprietor of the stagnant project.  Glover tenaciously hung on to his investment, and by the late 1870’s the lots in the town were selling and the dream the three partners had envisioned had come into being.  Glover lived until 1921, venerated as the “Father of Spokane” in his lifetime and ever since.

1876-1879    Searching For Opportunities

17

In 1874 members of George A. Custer’s military expedition  discovered gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which began the gold rush there of 1875-76. After leaving Spokane with his family, Jasper went to the Black Hills to look for gold.  Apparently he wasn’t successful there, for soon he was in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon working for the federal government trying to buy back the homesteads of the settlers there who had been permitted to settle by a previous federal decision.  It was the government’s intention to give Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce followers the valley for a reservation.  Before this could be completed, however, some unruly Nez Perce killed some white settlers and the Nez Perce War had begun.  The government no longer chose to appease Chief Joseph by creating a reservation in the Wallowa, and Jasper was unable to work any longer because all the residents he needed to contact had fled for their lives. While in the Wallowa, he is credited by Wallowa County histories as having named Elk Mountain and Crow Creek.  Jasper must have told his family about the beauty of the Wallowa Valley because his brother Daniel later settled on the slopes of Elk Mountain and was buried there after his death about 1891.

About this time Jasper's daughter Laura died.  It is unknown if she was married, and where she died. 

Jasper’s brother Isaiah fought in the Idaho volunteers in the Nez Perce War of 1877, but we have no record of Jasper having done so.  Being a single parent, he likely didn’t choose to risk making his children orphans.  He was living in Utah at the time working for the Utah Northern Railroad building bridges and trestles as it made its way north. His second wife, Elizabeth “Libby” Lee Matheny, recalled their 1878 meeting in her memoirs:

The Utah Northern RR was being built at that time and I heard that they wanted someone to teach a small school in Oneida [Oneida County, Idaho], the terminus, so I applied and got the position.  There were twelve children, the oldest ten years old, who proceeded to fall in love with me, as did his father.  So there I first met my future lord and master, the tall dark man with six children that the old Scotch lady told me of-a son two years older than myself, the youngest ten years old [Actually Lee was born the year after Libby, and Guy was only eight years old, but two of Jasper’s deceased children were older than Libby.]  Oh, what a man!  Uncultured like myself, but a poet at heart, and he became my dearest Pal, an acquisition to any community.  He could build anything from a bridge, house, stamp mill, to boat.  We went from Idaho in a covered wagon to California.

But first I must tell you about the wedding.  We were married by a justice of the peace, a former cowboy, and the way of it was this: “Do you take this woman, Elizabeth Lee, to be your lawful wedded wife?” “I do.” “Do you take this man, Jasper Newton Matheny, to be your lawful wedded husband?” “I do.” “Well, I declare you married and anyone who says you are not is a damn liar!”

We had not retired yet when a most horrible noise began, bells, tin pans, whistles, a drum.  When my husband opened the door, there was a big crowd of men and boys gathered and each one made some kind of noise and it was a pandemonium. The great idea was not so much that they wished us happiness, as it was a custom to give free drinks to the crowd present and there was not a bum in town absent. And so we were joyfully launched on a sea of whiskey.  My poor blind husband introduced me to the crowd as “My beautiful young wife.”  Some of the wags when they met me afterward would say, “Well, how is the beautiful young wife?”  One husky youngster provoked me so constantly that I finally slapped his face. [I was no lady] so at last the tormenting stopped.

  Libby Lee had been born one of fourteen children to a Mormon couple in Tooele, Utah in 1856.  Although a towering six feet tall, she was still shorter than her husband, who was 6’2’’ and weighed a solid 235 pounds, all muscle. She had a spunky, liberated spirit and thought polygamy greatly unfair—a woman should be able to have multiple husbands if a man could have multiple wives.  She never sought to return to her Mormon roots, although her family remained strict in the faith.  She had gone to visit a married sister in Oneida County, Idaho, in 1878.  That is when she heard of the teaching job that was open. It was during the 1878-79 school year that she got to know Jasper.

1879--To California

18

  They married in 1879 and soon afterward left for California in a covered wagon.

Although Libby had experience taking care of her younger siblings and of teaching, she was not ready for the awesome task of becoming a stepmother to teenaged girls a few years younger than she.  Although Libby struggled in her relationships with the children, she and Jasper remained committed to one another, though it must have grieved him to have disharmony in his home.  That there was trouble between Libby and the children is hinted at in her memoirs and in a letter she wrote to Kitie after Jasper’s death, which will be presented further on.

            Libby recalled the family’s journey from Idaho to California in 1879:

On our way to California we met many Indians and their depredations were so recent that we were afraid of them.  There was a band of them hired to help a [sheep?] herder to make them cross the stream.  We were held up two hours while they were crossing.  The Indians were very savage.  They looked [at] and handled everything they saw.  The poor girls were very much afraid and crawled into the covered wagon.  A young Indian tried to follow them when I caught him by his braided hair and yanked him backward.  He fell backward on the ground and I feared that they would attack us then, but they all burst out laughing at the discomforted young brave, mounted their horses, and rode away.

We also hurried to move out of that creek bottom and went to the table land to make camp as far from the Indians as possible.  When the team was unhitched, hobbled, and turned loose, lights began to twinkle down at the foot of the precipice.  Many lights—and to our horror we found ourselves right over the Indian camp.  We put the five children in the wagon and slept, or tried to sleep, on the ground.  Every movement, the horses moving about feeding, every unknown noise that night meant only Indians, and before dawn we were up and away, with the terror of the Indians which, at that time, was bred in the blood and bone of every frontier child…So we plodded on, up hill and down, through sand and sagebrush, at times all pushing on the wheel to help the horses over a pitch of hill or a patch of deep sand, until evening brought the blessed rest--to horses and humans, many times making a dry camp when  we only had only enough water to wash our dry mouths.  Then-what JOY- when we discovered a water hole or a trickle of running water.  We would stay an hour or two resting our horses and washing and cooling ourselves.  Then the plodding along of our weary team, until the blessed dark and coolness brought back our courage and we could laugh at the past trials of the long road and the blistering heat. We reached Bridgeport, Nevada [California], where at last we recuperated, rested our horses, and lived the life of civilized people—not the life of luxury and comfort, with good roads, rest camps, water and food to be had at convenient stations—oh, but the toil and discomfort of the seventies!

One more incident I must relate of that trip.  I do not remember in what State this happened but I think it was in Idaho.  About four o’clock we reached an army post perched on a barren hill.  We were dirty, tired, thirsty, and altogether disreputable, no doubt, and [the children were] hungry, as young things get.  We hurried to be able to relax and rest.  Just as we had spread our canvas on the ground, there came a bunch of well-dressed officers and several beautiful ladies.  They came quite near and looked superciliously and made remarks, not seeming to care if we heard.  I never in my life, up to then, had felt such a perfect fury.

My husband said, “What are you doing? Don’t speak.  Let them look all they want.”

“Oh, no.  I am going to ask them to dine with us.”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t make a scene!”

“Oh, no—nothing like that.  Watch me!”

I approached the group the group very politely and said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.  We are about to dine.  Would you care to join us? We have no chairs, but old Mother Earth makes a seat that you noble defenders of our frontier must be familiar with.”

“Thanks,” said the one who seemed in command, “Our dinner is awaiting.”

“Then please do not let me detain you.  So pleased to have seen the friendly interest you have shown in we poor roamers.  Goodnight.  I wish you a pleasant trip.”

All the while his wife was talking to the soldiers and their ladies, Jasper sat worrying what his incensed wife might say.  When she returned, he immediately asked, “What did you say to them?”

“I only invited them to have dinner with us.”

“How dare you do such a thing, you imp?”

“You had better ask how they dared to insult us by staring at us like we were a traveling zoo.”

“Well,” he drawled, “ when I come to look at this outfit--well, I don’t blame them too much.  They don’t see people like us very often.”

“Well, you had better put your animals to bed—they are yours, you know.  I am not responsible if you and your herd look like animals.”

“Shame, they did not look at the children, and they only had interest in your unladylike antics.”

“Do you expect me to act like a lady with an empty belly and my eyes full of sand?  If you had only one inch of forehead, you would understand that no woman could do it.  You are free from my antics from now on.  Move your menagerie, you big chimpanzee!”

And, for fear I would cry, I walked off into the sagebrush.  He was so wise; he did not follow me.  He gave me plenty of time to cool off.  Everyone was in bed when I was starved out and shivering with cold.  But my supper was kept warm by the fire, and so, with infinite pain and toil, we finally reached the land of sunshine and flowers.

Libby’s behavior was young; she was twenty-three, half her husband’s age, and they were newlyweds on the journey to California, still adjusting to one another.

Perhaps it was late in the year when the Mathenys reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the threat of snow prevented their passage across the mountains, or perhaps they were merely tired of traveling.  Whatever the reason, they didn’t cross the mountains in 1879.  After reaching Bridgeport, Jasper found work as a carpenter in a nearby gold-mining camp called Lundy in a canyon near Mono Lake and the Nevada state line.  All of his children who had lived with him in Spokane were still at home.  His daughters Ida, 18, and Minnie, 16, were grown women by the standards of the time.  Also shown living with the family in the 1880 Census were a Peter Shean, 53, a baker from Denmark, and Libby’s brother, Samuel Lee, 20, listed as a miner.  The census was taken on June 26.  Soon afterward, Samuel and Jasper’s daughter Minnie were married.  Samuel was still active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and his and Minnie’s descendants would remain members of that church.  It is likely that Jasper built a stamp mill at the Lundy gold mine to crush the ore because his wife said he could build one.  This is the likely place that she saw him do it. 

We have no records of Jasper for the next couple of years.  He may have lived awhile in Monterey County, for Minnie and Samuel Lee had a daughter born there in 1881.  It also appears as if he was living in or near Los Alamos, Santa Barbara County, California, awhile because it was there that his daughter Ida Rose married Job Cornwell, June 13, 1883. It was probably while living here that Jasper came across a pamphlet that encouraged Americans to buy land in Southern Mexico and become involved in coffee growing.  As such literature does, it painted a rosy picture of the ease of such a project and the riches it could earn.  Presumably Jasper did some investigating before taking his family there in 1884. Meanwhile, Libby studied Spanish a few months. 

By 1884 his son Lee was four-years-married and living in Waitsburg, Washington Territory.  All of Jasper's daughters were gone from home. Sarah had married Charles Dyer and would soon die of tuberculosis. Kitie had gone to live with her brother Lee at Waitsburg, and would soon marry Herman Sattler.  Only fourteen-year-old Guy Matheny was left at home, but Jasper’s daughter Ida and her husband Job Cornwell decided to take part in the venture and accompanied the Mathenys on the voyage. 

1884--The Journey to Mexico

19

The family probably traveled to San Francisco to embark on the trip aboard the Pacific mail boat. They would be entering a country under the rule of dictator Porfirio Diaz, against whom the Mexicans would eventually revolt. Libby, writing in 1931 at age seventy-five in Cartagena, Colombia, shortly before her death, wrote of her first impressions of Mexico:

I do not know if I can remember or rather describe my first impressions; it is so long ago.  The whole world has changed so much.  I think I was astounded that the earth looked just like the earth in California…the air of the people was different.  There seemed to be no hurry anywhere.  People strolled about as though they had nothing to do and all the time to do it in.  So many dark-eyed black-haired people delighted me as I have always loved dark, flashing eyes.

Mazatlan, the first town we stopped at, was all an enchantment to me. “Compren naranjas!”  [Buy oranges!], a long, drawn-out wail.  “Chicarones!” [cracklins] “Pan caliente!” [warm bread].  I recognized so many words that I knew.  There was a great difference in the impression the men made to that the women made.  The men looked like bandits muffled up to the chin in their serapes [blankets] with their elegant hats, heavily laced and braided with gold and silver, or gold lace.   The hat sometimes cost more than all their other clothes. The women, on the contrary, wore delicate silks with many ribbons and laces, were of delicate figure, and were always attended by a duena or some gentleman of her family.  I speak of the higher classes.  The servant class were mostly of the Indian or mixed class and are called “mestizos.”  I thought everything interesting because it was new, I suppose.  Then, as our time on shore was so short, we went away not satisfied at seeing so little. Little I thought how tired I would be of the whole blooming show before I got away, which would be nine long years later.

Manzanilla was the next port, but we did not go ashore as Acapulco, the next port, was so near and as we were leaving the Pacific Mail boat there. At that port we took a coaster, which would take us to the port of San Benito, our final destination.  

We had to stay in Acapulco for several days before our ship arrived, but the days were filled with gossip.  The landlady had been there many years and could tell us about most of the foreign people who lived in the colony of Americans, where we were going to buy land to plant coffee.  There was some pecadillo to tell about each and every one…

1884---La Joya

20

Finally their boat arrived, and they left the state of Guerrero, in which Acapulco lies, and headed south, passing the state of Oaxaca.  San Benito was their port of entry.  It lay in the Mexican state of Chiapas, which abuts the Guatemala border.  San Benito has since been renamed Puerto Madero to honor Francisco I. Madero, hero of the Mexican Revolution. Libby did not recall it kindly:

…San Benito is a very bad port.  It is an open roadstead and passengers have to be lowered from the ship to a big bongo, who has a rig cable connected with the shore with a wheel at stem and stern, which the cable runs in; a dangerous and uncomfortable way of landing—the children were the first to leave and shouted with joy. [There were no children with the Matheny party, only the teenaged Guy. Perhaps Libby meant Guy, Ida, and her husband Job?]  The peons on shore wade into the water and carry the passengers ashore.  When it came my time, a little carrier stepped up and then backed away saying, “No. Ella es muy grande.” [No. She is very big.]  A  big strapping young man said, “Para mi, no,”  [Not for me]

So there we were, where we had dreamed of being for so many months. A miserable outlook!—low palm huts, the only half decent looking in the place …was not half as good as our stable at home.  We ploughed through the sand to the hotel—God save the mark!—a long, uncovered table where some men sat drinking mescal, the whiskey …and common drink of the country.

When our dinner was finally ready, the waitress had nothing on but a chemise and a shirt.  The girl looked at me and blushed and I felt the same, “You shameless hussy!”  Oh, the changes that time brings—that garment would today be thought silly and prudish.

Then the next day the enchantment began, and I feel again the pleasure I felt forty five years ago on first entering a tropical jungle.   The road wound about between bamboo and other trees unknown to me and all interwoven with creepers [vines].  There were great trees covered with bell flowers which grew in great bunches, and with lilac orchids.  I do not know the names of orchids, but there were a great many varieties, not on the coast but out in the  higher lands.   There were butterflies and strange brilliant birds.  The coast was sandy and this strip of woods cool and moist, muddy in places so that the ox carts, two wheeled and cumbersome, would sink half way to the hubs and have to be helped back onto the road.  There were two men to each cart, but they waited for another cart to come up.  Then they would combine forces and pull it out.  They were all black eyed and black haired—hair coarse and straight.

…We overtook a very old woman with an immense bundle on her back, and my husband, who was a most humane man, offered to carry it for her, but the agent who was riding with us said, "No, no! Don't do that.  If you are seen doing that, you will lose caste.  We must keep ourselves above them, or they will not respect us."

"So we have to deny our humane impulses to be respected?" I asked. 

"Yes, absolutely! We have to maintain our superiority or they would swamp us." And we found that to be true--you could not show the least human consideration, or they would be laughing behind your back saying you're "un pobre tonto" [a poor fool] and "muy igualdo" [equal to our servants].

Their destination was the town of Tapachula, twenty-four miles away, near which lay Jasper’s new land.  The land was up on the slopes of Mount Tamarra beyond the town of Tapachula.  Arriving at Tapachula, they were unpleasantly surprised:

…Tapachula was a great disappointment to us.  The land company who sold us our line described a flourishing city “built in the Moorish style.”  He must have meant “Primitive Moorish” because it had not one modern comfort.  No water system, no electric light, no sewers, with a river flowing out the back door with a big head of water straight from the mountain on whose volcanic slope we made our coffee plantation, Mount Tacarra.  We reached our final destination at five o’clock, saddle sore, tired, hungry, and generally demoralized.

The following story, although it dwells in pettiness, gives an indication of the relationship between Jasper and Libby:

We must have been a sorry sight, for our charming landlady seemed to consider us the “Tag, rag, and bobtail bunch” and she kept the same attitude toward us all the nine painful years that we worked next door to her meek, henpecked husband, dominated by this virago, whose tongue was a destructive fire…The reason was this—I was twenty-four years old [she was actually twenty-eight in 1884]-- and she was ten years older.  She could sing, but I could sing better.  I had a husband who adored me, hers only endured her.  Last, but not least, she had a mate that sang hymns and he liked to sing with me better than with her, and that was the deciding factor.  She was my mortal enemy for nine years—all for a man with whom I would not be seen at a dogfight.  And Jay sat back and chuckled, as he said, “watching the cat fight.”

That the henpecked husband and Libby could sing hymns together suggests that this was an English-speaking couple, for it is doubtful that Libby would know hymns in Spanish yet.  The area contained several American families and perhaps more German families getting into the coffee-growing business.  By “working next door,”  Libby seems to mean that the husband had a plantation next to theirs.

For a few months we lived we lived in this turmoil while Jay was cutting a road straight toward Mount Tacarra to reach an elevation suitable for growing coffee.  The jungle was the thickest I have seen in all the tropics. It took three weeks with one peon to reach a place where two roads intersected, one going south to Guatemala, the other turning at a right angle toward Tapachula, our future headquarters. [Apparently Jasper was building a road from this intersection toward Mt. Tacarra toward his land, which lay at a higher elevation.]  There he cleared a space at the head of a trickling stream, ran up a plain shelter, and we hired a mule to pack in enough things to camp with. Those were happy days, too short for all the work we crowded into them.  We could not get away from the pioneer idea of a house.  With the idea of wild beasts and savage Indians, we built a log house but roofed it with palms, and the roof, not having enough pitch, leaked like a riddle, but at last it was finished and we moved the rest of our things and the children and were at home.

Then began the colossal work of clearing a dense jungle, which closed us in like a solid wall, felling huge trees and, as soon as the leaves and brush was dry, burning it…Another mistake we made was planting the small coffee trees we found on an adjacent finca, pulling them up, taking them without soil.  Every single one died so we lost all that year’s work.  Our kind neighbors never said a word to warn us not to plant seedlings in the sun nor numerous other things that would have saved us toil and money.

My husband was the most unconquerable soul I have ever known.  He rose triumphant after every blow, and that year bad luck seemed to follow us and the blows were many and soul crushing. By the beginning of the next year, we were down to our last dollar.  We had found a grove of seedling orange trees at the trail crossing and we made an avenue from the edge of the clearing up through, up through the flat, and up to the top of a small hill, where we afterward built a birdcage of a house.  Those orange trees sold the place later on.

[ Selling our first finca meant] We had more money to buy a small plantation fifteen hundred feet high up, where we made our final stand and a nice little piece of money.

1884-1893     News From Back Home

22

The struggle in Mexico wasn’t all that was militating to pull spirits asunder.  Jasper received letters from back home.  One let him him know that his daughter Sarah Dyer had died of tuberculosis.  His daughter Minnie would write about the development of her two children until she became ill with the dreaded tuberculosis and died herself in 1886.  Samuel later sent news that he had remarried.  Jasper’s brother Daniel had been suffering from the disease for some years when the news came that he had died and been buried on the slopes of Elk Mountain in the Wallowa Valley.

Not all the news from home was bad.  His brother Isaiah may have paid a visit to Jasper and Elizabeth in 1889, for there is a letter in the family scrapbooks at the Yamhill County Historical Society Museum written by Isaiah to their sister Elizabeth Hewitt asking for Jasper’s address in Mexico.  Isaiah and his wife were planning “another” trip to Mexico and thought they might pay Jasper a visit.

News came of Kitie’s marriage to Herman Sattler and of the births and deaths children of Lee and his wife Nancy and of the Sattlers.  Jasper never lived close to any of his grandchilren to develop any personal attachment until in 1889 his daughter Ida and her husband Job had a daughter Elizabeth there at Tapachula.  Even this experience did not last long.  Ida, too, was struggling with tuberculosis and soon afterward the couple left Mexico and returned to Los Alamos in California. Ida lasted two years, dying in 1892.  Of Jasper’s ten children, only Lee, Kitie, and Guy remained.

1885-1893--- Ortega, Maldonado, et al

23

Jasper and Libby named the new land on the slopes of Mt. Tacarra  La Joya, meaning the jewel or the treasure.  It is not clear whether or not this land also needed clearing, but it probably did.  The very act of clearing the land for a plantation increased its value greatly, and Jasper was not afraid of the hard work.  [His son Guy would later tell a niece in a letter that his father had worked himself to death.]  Besides some hired peones, Jasper had his son-in-law, Job Cornwell, to help.  Guy probably helped some with the deforestation, but he was later sent away to school in the United States.  Besides the man-killing labor of clearing the jungle, the Mathenys were plagued by a villain who might have come directly out of an old-fashioned melodrama.  Libby tells of their archenemy:

Rafael Ortega, a rich Mexican, was building a very large place adjoining us.  His water supply had its source on the high part of our land.  It kept women and children climbing from a deep barranca to supply the needs of the plantation with water, so Jay ran a level and found that he could put the water in Ortega’s house at a nominal cost.

“Mr. Ortega, why don’t you have the water brought into your house?”

“Because I am not God to make water run uphill.”

“I will put that water in your plaza for one thousand dollars!”

“You are crazy!  You may know a lot, but you cannot do that!”

“Let’s make a bet—my finca against one thousand dollars that I can.”

“Muy bien.  Esta hecho.” [Very well. Done!]

“Well we must have a written contract on stamped paper and signed before witnesses.”

“Muy bien!”

Ortega was delighted with what he thought was a sucker’s deal.  He went around telling his friends that La Joya would soon be his.  “That American is crazy,” he would say.  The contract was signed with two witnesses, one chosen by each party.  Jasper selected the brother of  the  Jefe Politico [Chief judge] of Tapachula.  Jasper immediately went to work on the project, hiring ten men, and in ten days the water was in Don Rafael’s patio.  Ortega was incensed.  What he had wanted was La Joya, not a water supply.  He refused to pay, saying that it was a trick, that no man could possibly earn one thousand dollars in ten days. 

Jasper sued Ortega for his thousand dollars and won.  Ortega was an outspoken enemy of the Mathenys for awhile, but finally he resorted to friendliness on the surface as he plotted to make La Joya a failure so he could buy it for a pittance.  His first tactic was to intimidate the peons working for Jasper, right at harvest time, hoping to make them quit.  Some did, but the Mathenys somehow made it through.  Brazil had freed its slaves that had tended and picked the coffee crops there, and so it lost two coffee crops in succession for lack of an adequate labor force.  This brought the price of coffee up considerably and helped the Mathenys at a difficult time.

In addition to the coffee crop, Jasper built a sawmill on La Joya and began producing lumber.  With some of the lumber he built a four-room frame house to replace the old log cabin. The new home had running ice-cold water that Ortega said the Mathenys had stolen from him.  Libby had made a beautiful flower garden to enhance their home.  Jasper had built sliding doors for all their closets, something the Mexicans had never seen before.  Ortega would bring his visitors to look at the Mathenys' beautiful home and the sawmill and show it off as if he owned it, as he hoped to do someday.  He always brought a big basket to take back a load of vegetables or flowers because he had nothing but coffee growing up close to his house.

One day a fire broke out on the lower part of the finca near the creek, where the oldest and best-bearing trees were.  Jasper spotted it early and sent all his workers with wet sacks to beat it out, and Libby sent a runner with a note to a neighbor on an adjacent finca, telling of their mutual danger.  The neighbor immediately sent twenty-five workers to help keep the fire from spreading to his own plantation.  Within three hours, the fire was under control.  Ortega never sent anyone to help, though the fire might easily have spread to a big group of houses for his workers and a to wooden stamp mill that Jasper had built for him to beat the outer husk off the coffee, which by hand was a slow and costly process.

The following day Ortega appeared at the Mathenys’ smiling, ostensibly to offer his condolences.  After he left, Libby confronted Jasper with the probability that it was Ortega who had set the fire and that they could expect more of the same.  Always wanting to see the best in people, Jasper replied, “You are too suspicious.  He is a brother Mason.  He would not think of harming me.”  Libby thought othewise:

Jay thought well of the whole world.  He was suffering the tortures from a burn.  A coal of fire had fallen into his shoe and before he could get his shoe unlaced to get it out, he had a deep burn which was not healed when he died.  I pitied him.  But pity was swamped in the hate I felt for the rich man who was devilishly persecuting us.  I swore to myself to have revenge on him, sooner or later. [It proved later.], too late to help my darling, valiant husband who always gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. He believed in the lake of fire and brimstone as a future punishment.  I believed that here was our hell with Ortega a chief devil.

The next move was to try to steal the seedlings from our seed bed.  The man who sold us the place had planted it.  Ortega claimed the man had owed him money and that he was entitled to the trees in payment.

[Libby asked him] “Why didn’t you put your claim in while the man was here to defend it?”

“I forgot in my pleasure of getting rid of him.”

“Well, forget it and keep on being my good brother as you have in the past.”

The next day a peon who was watering the trees ran in  very excited saying that six men were coming up the hill to the bed.  Jay jumped to his feet and hurried up the hill to where the young trees were.  Without an arm of any kind, not even a stick.  We had a fiery young Mexican as a mayordomo [overseer].  I said to him “Teofilo, will you fight for us?”

“Si, senora.  Hasta la muerte!” [Yes, m’am, even to death].

“Come on, get the rifle.”

He had a machete belted to him.  I got my shotgun and away we went on the run.  When we turned the crest of the hill, the men were waving their machetes and telling Jay what they were going to do if  he resisted.  When they saw us armed with guns, they fell into a dead silence.  Jay turned to see what had caused them to stop their clamor.  He looked flabbergasted.

“Why, you little fool!  What are you doing here with that gun?"

“Let them touch you and you’ll see what I am doing. Never come out against Ortega without arms or you will end up missing someday.”

The next day we put all the men to taking up that bed and planting them along the creek where we could irrigate them, the only way to save them, as it was not the planting season.

The increasing illness of my husband had me very much worried.  He was a victim of fever but principally of overwork and anxiety.  In Tapachula he had bought a piece of land with a small house of wattle and daub whitewash, and surrounded by noble old coconut palms, a few cueva trees, the rest covered with timber suitable for firewood. Jay hired men to cut the trees and make them into cordwood, which was stacked ready for sale.  On going on a tour of inspection, he found a great blank in the trim rows of wood with broad wheel tracks making a broad curve where they turned toward the exit.  I followed the tracks two blocks away and found the cart still loaded, with no pretence of concealing it.

I asked the man, “Manuel, what are you doing with my wood?”

“It’s not your wood.  I bought it.”

“Mentirosa.  Voy a denunciarle.” [Liar.  I’m going to have you arrested.]

That afternoon I went to the police court and stated my case. 

“Where are your witnesses?”

“My evidence is the wheel tracks leading to my wood and back to his house where the cart is still loaded with my wood.”

“Circumstantial evidence is no good.  You must have two reputable persons as witnesses who saw him take it.  Otherwise your case is thrown out of court.” 

So, as I was sure that no reputabale people were likely to be found in that town, I had to lose my wood.”

One day while Jasper was away at San Benito, the port town of the area, a breathless boy came to Libby at home and told her to come, that Jasper had been killed.  Libby raced to San Benito to find a small, delicate man, “not my big, athletic husband.”  By the time the body reached the police station, the man no longer had his watch, hat, or boots.  The experience unnerved Libby and she broke down sobbing.

Thievery was endemic in the area.  One day when Libby was at the market there were a company of soldiers there.  Suddenly she felt a hand in her coat pocket.  She grabbed the hand and held it tight.  The commander came over and pulled the soldier’s hand out.  In it was clutched all of Libby’s loose change. 

Another time a thief stole a foul-mouthed parrot from the Mathenys that had been given to them by a foul-mouthed old doctor.  It was on a Sunday, and it was well known that the soldiers from the barracks were at liberty on Sundays.  Everyone in town watched all their possessions on that day, for the soldiers were notorious thieves.  Libby went to the barracks and complained to the colonel, who was from Sonora and could speak English well.  She asked him to accompany her so she could find her bird. He and Libby walked around the camp for some time.  The colonel, who was bald, took off his hat when suddenly a voice was heard to say in Spanish, “Go to hell, you bald-headed son of a bitch.”  The colonel turned purple with rage as the soldiers broke out in hysterical laughter.  Finally a sergeant brought in the parrot and explained to the colonel that it was the parrot that had made the statement.  Libby was happy to have her parrot back, but the parrot was still unmuzzled, “Ha, ha, ha, Go to Hell.”  She clutched the parrot’s throat to silence it and made her way out. 

The man from whom they had bought the house in Tapachula, a Senor Maldonado, was a person with no apparent redeeming qualities.  He was a drunkard, a brawler, and a tyrant over the weak.  All of the Mathenys’ neighbors rejoiced when they bought his home, believing he would move away.  When he saw that they were pleased at his moving, he decided to stay in the area.  Then his Sunday bullying of his neighbors began worse than before.  One day the Mathenys were startled by terrible screams.  Libby moved to investigate.

As I could not restrain myself any longer, I started to go over to their house, but my husband held me by manly force and did not let me interfere.  “That woman is as bad as he is.  So you keep out of it.”

 But later when I saw the beast stagger out and go toward the rum joints, I went over and found the woman stained and bloody.  I sent for a doctor and he found her covered with bruises and with two broken ribs.  I did what I could for her, but when she could talk, she told me, “Get out of here quick.  If he finds you here when he comes, he will surely kill you.  He hates you worse than he hates Don Jaspar1.  He says that you interfere too much.

And what do you think that brute of mine said when I told him?  “Well, he’s not such a fool as he looks.”  I would not speak to him for hours.

Afterward Maldonado drifted up to the coffee region and comported himself in the same way that he had in Tapachula.  One day he appeared at the Matheny home and  expressed repentance of the man who had been his former self.  Always the kindly, forgiving person, Jasper told Libby, “Poor fellow.  It would be wrong to refuse him a chance when he is sorry for his past faults.”  Libby didn’t agree that Maldonado had changed and didn’t feel like associating with him, warning her husband that he would regret associating with Maldonado again.  Maldonado began making ladders for the coffee pickers, sold them well, and paid for the lumber to make them.  Jay was jubilant over Maldonado’s apparent turnaround.  He did behave himself fairly well-- for awhile.

We were giving a Christmas party for all our neighbors and were building a wide porch around the house.  Because Jay was getting steadily worse in health, he called on Maldonado to do the work.  [When Maldonado didn’t appear to work on the porch one day, Jay went to Maldonado’s home.] He found him drinking and in an ugly mood. He told him that he wanted him to come and finish the porch.

“I’m not your slave to be called whenever you want me.”

“But you agreed to work when I needed you in payment for the house you live in.”

“I don’t feel like working.  I only work when I want to.”

“Then you will have to vacate the house at once.”

“Oh, will I? You get out or I will kill you.” And he ran at Jay with the sword pointed at his stomach.  Of course Jay had to back out. 

When Jay came down to the house, he had tears on his cheeks.  “What have I come to when I have no strength to defend myself in my own house? I was never in such in a fury in my life to see that brave, good man weeping for his lost youth and strength.  Then the woman appeared coming down the hill with a big basket on her head.

[Libby said] “That man will carry off something that is essential to the mill.  I am going to search her basket.”

“For God’s sake let her go.  Don’t you see him watching her up there with his sword? If you stop her, I will have to kill him.”

By this time she was near, and I walked out and stopped her.  “Lucinda, put down that basket.  I am going to search it.”

“You, search my basket, Puta? [whore]” I gave her a blow that knocked her down, and, in falling, she hit her head on a stump.

I heard a shout behind me to see that maniac rushing on my husband with his sword.

[Jasper warned] “Stop, Maldonado!  If you come near me with that sword, I will kill you!”  But he rushed on to his fate.  Jay grapped a piece of scantling and as the man came in reach, he brought it down with all his force, and cracked his skull like coconut.  There was one loud piercing scream and the brute was tamed.  This woman, who had lived a life of terror and was never free from bruises from foot and fist, fell on him and raved about her “dear, dear husband.”

Jay pushed aside tears running down his cheeks saying, “I am a murderer.”

“You better finish him,” I said, “or he will live to make you a lot of trouble.”

“Oh, you wicked woman! You got me into this.  You made me a murderer and now you glory in it.”

“Look here.” And I held up the swedging hammer, the one indispensable tool [as Maldonado well knew, the mill could not run without it.] to insert the teeth in the saw.  I found it in her basket when she was down.  I could have laughed with joy when I saw what I had done to  her.  She had an eye that looked like a purple egg fruit.

Libby then sent a runner to a friend’s house.  He arrived within an hour.  Meanwhile, Jay had bandaged Maldonado’s head.  When the friend arrived,  he said, “Jasper, you fool, why didn’t you finish the job?  Everyone who knows would say that you are justified.”  The friend then had some peones carry Maldonado to the nearest jusgado.

That was all the Mathenys heard about the incident for awhile.  Then they did hear that Maldonado would recover. They held their Christmas party, where everyone treated Jasper as a hero.  Two months after the event, Jasper received a summons to appear in court on a charge of attempted murder.

…What he suffered on that twenty-four mile journey only “The One who knows our thoughts and suffering” will ever know.  We arrived the night before the trial, and Jay tossed and turned and moaned in his sleep.  I could sympathize—for he was very sick and weak.

At ten o’clock we went to the Jefe Politico’s office where he sat alone.  He met us with smiling courtesy and smiled at Jay’s sorrowful face.  “Don’t worry, Don Jaspar, this case amounts to nothing.”

The appearance of Maldonado was a shock!  White as chalk, he was supported on each side by a friend, head bound in  heavy bandages.  He dragged himself before the judge.  No chair for him--no smiles!  Only a stern frown on the face of the judge.  I nearly pitied him until I remembered how we had suffered also.

“What do you want here?”  said the judge.

“Senor Juez, este hombre…[Mr. Judge, this man…]

[The judge interrupted him harshly.] “Este CABALLERO, canalla!” [This GENTLEMAN, you scum!”  Then I found out what justice was in Mexico. [The personal wish of the judge.] “You have caused trouble every place that you have been with your drunken violence.  Many have been weak enough to let you scare them, until this brave and good man struck you down.  He had every right to kill you and would have done better to finish you all at once.  You have no case in court and your sentence is to pay him all expenses you have caused him by your audacious demand.”  We thanked the judge and that afternoon went home with lighter hearts.

Ortega ceased his persecution as well.  Looking at that fading face and dwindling body, he thought he had only to wait to reach his heart’s desire.  But he thought me a neglible quantity and there is where he lost out in the end.

The Mathenys had planned for years to attend the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 “if nothing happens.”  But Jay was so ill that his doctors asked him to wait, but he was adamant. “Don’t let them make me stay, Libby,” he pleaded.  That appeal to Libby from her failing husband was to cause her more poignant anguish than that day soon afterward when she gently closed his eyes in death at the Fairmont Hotel.  But that was in the future. 

Boarding the ship gave Jasper hope, and he likely rested on the ship.  He and Libby must have spent quiet time talking about the exhibits that they most wanted to see.  He likely had hopes of seeing his children since he had come so far toward where they lived.  It would have been soothing to be away from all the demands of the finca and the sawmill.  It was going to be a glorious adventure.

Soon their ship arrived in San Francisco and Libby helped her husband slowly off the ship.  They walked toward the awaiting liverymen then headed toward the Fairmont Hotel.

Epilogue

24

Libby had lost her anchor and she was set adrift.  She continued on to the World’s Fair after burying her husband, but there she walked or sat alone, watching other people.  She claimed she only spoke to four people in a month: the man she rented Jasper’s wheelchair from, the hotel maid, the man at the ticket station, and the person at the hotel desk.  There was no one with whom to share the things she was seeing at the fair.  She had used so much of the travel money to pay for Jasper’s doctors and his burial that she was short of funds.  What had promised to be such a memorable experience soon proved empty.  She purchased a train ticket and headed home to Mexico.

I hit the trail for home, with dread of what might have happened in my absence. My young stepson [Guy/Guido] had left for Mexico before his father died.  So I had hopes that things would not be as bad, as he had every reason to protect his own interest as well as mine…All of these poverty stricken years while his father and I had been straining every nerve to build this plantation and he had stayed in Mexico only two years—it cost us great effort to send him home to school, and pay for his tuition.  And as the result was a bill for five hundred dollars lost at poker on the first day of his arrival.  I had a precious scotch collie, which  he had kicked to death.  The plantation neglected, drunkenness and insubordination among the people,  In fact a mess.

            I arrived without money and had to borrow to pay my men, so I put the young man on a salary.  Oh, no!  He would not work for me on a salary on a place that really ought to belong to  him.  So I gave him one hundred dollars and told him to go rustle himself a job.  He took the money I gave, his fathers horse and saddle and hit the trail for town and the gambling table.  In one week he had sold his horse and saddle and had not one red cent.  So he wrote to me begging to come back.  Nothing doing.

            When we were preparing for our trip to Chicago, Jay arranged all of his business, giving me sole ownership of La Joya, our plantation.  He made his will and left a life insurance policy to his three remaining children.

Guy tried to overturn his father’s will, but Libby won, and Guy soon left for the United States.  Lee died the year after his father and Kitie five years later.  The only one of Jasper’s ten children to witness the turn of the century was Guy, who died in the 1950’s in Los Angeles.  Many descendants of Jasper still have tenuous connections with each other as members of the Hewitt-Matheny-Cooper Family Association, based in Oregon.

Libby returned to the United States only two times more by the time of her death. She studied taxidermy and lived out her life in Latin America.  She is said to have married a man named Jack Burke, who quickly went through her money and then left.  She thereafter earned her livelihood as a taxidermist.  When she wrote her memoirs in 1931, she was living in Cartagena, Colombia.  She was in her late seventies when she went on a trip into the jungle for specimens and returned home with a fatal fever.  Presumably she is buried there in Cartagena.

Appendix

Guy Matheny wrote this letter to his sister Gertrude “Kitie” Sattler during the settlement of the estate:

Tapachula, Mexico

April 17, 1894

Dear Sister

I wrote Lee the other day concerining the settling of the will and as all of the heirs have to be present, while it is read and it is out of the question for you and him to come, I suggested that you send me your power of attorney along with his, and if you can trust me, I will collect for both you and him.  To do so the Law of Mexico is very much different from the States The reason I speak of trusting me is that Lee thinks someone is trying to beat him out of his little dab, and he would just as soon trust a stranger as me although I never stole anything from him.  I haven’t received baby’s picture yet.  I will send you my photo soon as I will have some taken before long.

The rainy season has commenced now and it will last for 7 mo and at first it is raining like Thunder. I have just finished dinner and am writing to you while having a smoke.  So you can see that life isn’t so grim in Mexico after all.  Well my dear sister I will have to close hope to hear from you soon concerning this. I  remain

With regards to all

Your Brother

Guido Matheny

Elizabeth “Libby” Matheny wrote the following letter to her stepdaughter Kitie.  Why Libby was living in Retalhuleu, Guatemala, is unknown.

Retalhuleu, Guatamala

July 2, 1894

Dear Kittie

I have just received documents from Lee acknowledging receipt of money.  I wish you had both joined in on that document as it would have cost just the same.  You would have received your money sooner and I could have got the business settled all the sooner.  Please attend to the matter, Kittie, ask Lee how he proceeded and do just the same.  You have heard from Guy that I was compelled to sell the finca.  I received for it 28 thousand Dollars and I have spent up to this time 13 thousand dollars paying debts, lawyers, and my personal expenses, so if the thing drags along much longer I will have to live and get money to go home.  Everything has gone wrong since your father died it has been just one long train of losses and expense.  Guy tells me you have three beautiful little girls, how I wish I had had one.  As soon as I can get the Estate settled I will help you more, Kittie  I will try to help you raise those little girls and perhaps make up to them in part for what I failed in to you.

With many kind wishes for you and them,

I remain as ever,

E. L. Matheny

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