Colver Letters

Genealogy from the Heartland

Marcia Philbrick


1849 Letter  
from St. Joe
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Transcription of
1849 Letter

1851 Letter
from Willamette Valley
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Transcription of
1851 Letter

1853 Letter
from Ohio
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Transcription of
1853 Letter

1857 Letter
from Ohio
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Transcription of
1857 Letter

1859 Letter
from Ohio
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Transcription of
1859 Letter

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Marcia Philbrick
March 2002

Colver Family Letters

In 1806, Rachel Currey married Samuel Colver in Champaign County Ohio. Rachel and Samuel had five children: Abigail, Sarah, Samuel, Rachel and Hiram. Sarah married Lyman Konkrite in 1827. By 1860 the Konkrites had migrated to Texas where Sarah died in 1874. Rachel married Robert Wilson in 1833 and moved to Illinois. Samuel married Huldah Callender in Logan County Ohio in 1843. Prior to his marriage, Samuel was in Texas where he served as a Texas Ranger under Colonel Edward Burleson. Hiram married Mariah Ward in 1841 in Madison County, Ohio.

In 1849, Samuel and Hiram had moved with their families to St. Joseph, Missouri where they were preparing to move to Oregon. In a letter dated in November (year not specified), Hiram writes his parents about their stay in St. Joseph and the desire to move west. Samuel added a note at the end of this letter. According to their respective land claims, Samuel and Hiram arrived in Oregon in 1850. The two families settled in Jackson County Oregon. In July 1851 Hiram again writes his parents describing the land and explaining why he doesn't believe his mother would be happy in Oregon.

In 1853, Samuel and Rachel write to their sons in Oregon. The letter urges one of the sons to come back east and help them move to Oregon. In 1857 and 1859, Martha Scranton writes to her sister in Oregon.


Photocopies of these letters were obtained from the Southern Oregon Historical Society and the Eagle Point Historical Society.

The copies have been scanned and converted to PDF files. Due to file size, each page is in a separate file. The PDF files containing the scanned images range from 200 kb to 340 kb. The transcriptions of the letters are also in PDF format and average 10 kb each.