Thompson

Chapter 167

Felix Collard Planned for Texas but Followed Barlow Trail to Oregon


SPRING was on the Pike county Mississippi bottom prairies when the Collard-Hubbard covered wagon train started rolling in the second week in April 1847, but, early as was their start, the great North American winter was closing in around them as they descended the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains, on the famous Barlow Trail into Oregon Territory. Wolves, a ravenous pack, hung upon flanks and rear, waiting for the spent oxen to drop. The loads were lightened. Discarded baggage strewed the way. It became a race for life.

Stories handed down in the Gresham family, two of whose members married daughters of Joseph Barnett and Rebecca Cannon, tell of some of the bitter hardships of the last weeks of the long journey, of how the wolves howled and the chill winds of late autumn wailed in the mountains, and of how, among other things, even some of the precious plows that were being carried into the new territory, lashed to the wagons, were dropped beside the trail to spare the wearied oxen. Joseph Barnett, Jr. probably had an outfit in this train and the stories doubtless trace back to letters from the Barnetts and Cannons upon their arrival in the promised land of Oregon.

Felix Collard and his wife left a new-made grave behind them when they started westward. Marianne, their baby daughter, not quite two years old, born at Fairfield (Pleasant Hill) April 21, 1845, died in the midst of the family preparations for departure. She was the sixth in a family of nine children, six of whom were born in Pleasant Hill township. She is the only one of the family buried there.

A jury summons for Charles Hubbard, dated April 15, 1847, was returned by the service officers with the notation "not found in county." Marianne, child of the Collards, died in Fairfield April 7, 1847 and was buried there. These dates tend to fix the time of departure of this first Pike county wagon train to Oregon Territory as some time in the second week of April, 1847.

Records disclose that Felix Collard and Charles Hubbard had been busy putting their affairs in shape at Pleasant Hill, during the early spring preceding their departure, Felix Collard conveying some of his interests to his younger brother, John J. Collard. Other interests which the two brothers held in common were conveyed jointly a few days before Felix's departure. The last such transaction in the records is a deed, dated March 31, 1847, whereby John J. Collard and his wife, Mary E. Collard, and Felix A. Collard and his wife, Damaris Collard, for the sum of $40 conveyed to Alanson Mosher, early Pleasant Hill doctor, Lot 1 in Block 6 in the Town of Pleasant Hill (formerly Fairfield). The name of the town had been changed from Fairfield to Pleasant Hill in 1846. This transfer was attested by L. C. (Lycurgus) Lewis, a brother of Damaris Collard. Felix and Damaris appeared before Henry Ferguson, a justice of the peace, on April 1, 1847, and acknowledged their signatures to the deed. John J. and his wife acknowledged their signatures in September, 1847.

Alan Mosher became proprietor of a goodly portion of the original town of Pleasant Hill (the eight blocks constituting early Fairfield) when the Hubbards and Collards departed for Oregon. On April 5, 1847, Charles and Margaret Hubbard, for the sum of $20 in hand, transferred to Dr. Mosher all of their interest in Blocks 5, 7 and 8 in the original town of Pleasant Hill (formerly Fairfield). Charles Hubbard's brother Eli also had an interest in some of his property, which he also transferred to Mosher in 1849. In the same year, the Charles Hubbards, then in Oregon Territory, by Joseph Hubbard, Jr., their attorney-in-fact, transferred to Mosher Lot 3 in Block 3, Lots 2, 3, 6 and 8 in Block 6 and Lot 4 in Block 8, all in old Fairfield.

On April 5, 1847, just before leaving for Oregon, Charles and Margaret Hubbard constituted their oldest son, Joseph, Jr., their attorney-in-fact, with full power to act for them in all matters, to transfer property, to execute titles, etc., this commitment being of record in the deed records of Pike county. Joseph Hubbard, Jr., did not accompany his parents to Oregon Territory. On December 22, 1842, he had married Sarah E. Venable, with the groom's uncle, the Reverend David Hubbard, performing the ceremony. Sarah Venable belonged to a pioneer Pike county family which came from Missouri and located in Pleasant Hill township in very early times.

One of the most prized possessions of Felix Collard and his wife was an 8-day brass clock which Felix had bought at the public sale held in course of settlement of the Joseph Barnett estate in 1838. This clock had been brought by the Barnetts to the wild Missouri border near the close of the 18th century and was one of the wonders of the border settlement. Felix Collard paid $25 for the clock at the sale of Joseph Barnett's property, as shown by the attested sale bill which is of record in the Pike county archives and which is more than a century old. The clock brought more than any horse, cow or other offering at the sale, for times were hard in 1838 and there was little money in the land. Whether the clock reached Oregon Territory and is still possessed by some Collard descendant is unknown.

Felix Collard and Damaris Lewis were married on March 25, 1832. They settled a little less than a mile north and a little west of present Stockland. There, in a log cabin on a partially cleared 40, their first child. Mary Jane Collard, was born August 27, 1833, the year that Pittsfield was surveyed and the county seat moved from Atlas to the new town. Mary Jane, not yet 14 when the start was made for Oregon, later, in 1850, in Oregon Territory, was to marry Earl Douglas Jones who joined the Charles Collard outfit at Independence, Missouri, becoming a member of the first Pleasant Hill wagon train across the plains. Mary Jane has occupied a grave on the banks of Birch Creek near Pendleton, Oregon, since the closing year of the Civil War.

Second of Felix and Damaris Collard's children was John Jasper Collard, born in Section 13 in Bay Creek (Pleasant Hill) township, July 13, 1835. He was named (probably) for his father's brother, John J. Collard,

Note: John J. Collard always signed himself as John J., never employing the middle name. This middle name was assumed to be "Jasper" because of a deposition of record in the Pike county court, dated in 1853, which begins "I, John Jasper Collard, being first duly sworn, etc." The deposition is signed "John J. Collard." Mrs. Jennie C. Yokem of Pleasant Hill, a granddaughter of John J. Collard, is quite sure her grandfather's middle name was James. John J. Collard had an uncle in Missouri named James Collard and his grandfather Cannon (his mother's father) also bore the name of James. Mrs. Yokem thinks also that one of her older brothers, Leonard James Brant, must have been named for her grandfather.

John Jasper, Felix's second child and first son, was to marry Martha Frances Henderson, the Missouri-born daughter of Jesse Cloid Henderson, a Tennessean and an Oregon pioneer. John Jasper's wife's sister, Mary Ellen Henderson, became the mother of two girls who were to marry John Jasper's two brothers, Isaac Newton and William Franklin Collard, who were born after the Felix Collards settled in Oregon Territory. John Jasper settled near McMinnville, Oregon, where he died in 1906. He served in the Indian war from Yamhill county, Oregon. John Jasper was 11 years old when the Oregon journey began at Pleasant Hill.

Third of Felix's children was Elihu Benton Collard, born in Fairfield (now the town of Pleasant Hill) March 23, 1838. He was nine years old when the family pulled up stakes at Pleasant Hill. Later, in Oregon, he was twice elected sheriff of Yamhill county. During the Civil War he was in the gold mines in Idaho, where, with his partner, he once took 44 ounces of gold from a pocket within a few hours. He died on a near Lafayette, Oregon, in 1917.

Fourth of the Pleasant Hill-born children of Felix and Damaris Collard was Lydia Ursula Collard, born in the early town of Fairfield, November 7, 1840. She was six when the family started for the northwest. She was twice married in Oregon and died there in 1894.

Fifth of the children was Isaphena, born in Fairfield January 25, 1843. She was four when she crossed the plains in a covered wagon. Her sister, Mary Jane, and her brother, John Jasper, both had birthdays far out on the Oregon Trail. Isaphena (or Isaphene as the name appears in Victor Wayne Jones's records) in Oregon married Clark N. Greenman and had issue, but none of her descendants is living today. Isaphena died in Oregon City in 1917.

The sixth child, as already noted, died just before the start for Oregon. The five named above accompanied the parents across the plains. Their stories will be told in detail in connection with the family's Oregon history.

It seems probable that the Collards and Hubbards were undecided as to their destination when they left Pleasant Hill. Felix Collard seems to have looked with favor upon the new state of Texas, where his uncle, Elijah Collard, and family had located in 1834. Elijah and his sons had prospered in Texas. Elijah had married Mary Stark, sister of Rachel Stark, who married James Cannon and was Felix's maternal grandmother. Elijah at this time was in the last year of his life. His Headright League was on the San Jacinto river below Willis, Texas, although he never lived on it. He made his first settlement on Ware League about old Woodson place, moving later to Gourd Creek, where he died in March, 1848. Elijah had settled early on the banks of the Cuivre river in Lincoln county, Missouri. He was a justice of the peace in Lincoln county, until his departure for Texas in 1834.

Felix Collard doubtless had learned of the prosperity being enjoyed by his uncle Elijah, and by his cousins, Jonathan Stark, Lemuel and James Harrison Collard in Texas. The rich cotton lands of the Lone Star were being taken up, making a good real estate business, in which some of Elijah's sons were engaged. Fortunes were being made in cotton planting. Felix Collard, therefore, had seriously considered settling in Texas, and probably would have done so had it not been for a chance meeting with General Joe Palmer at the Missouri river rendezvous point for Texas and Oregon emigration.

Says Victor Wayne Jones of Seattle, Washington, a great grandson of Felix Collard:

"In the spring of 1847 he (Felix Alver Collard) set out, together with his immediate family, his aunt, Margaret Cannon, who was the wife of Charles Hubbard, ans possibly some of his half brothers and sisters Thurmon, for Texas. But rumblings of the coming Mexican War (war had actually begun a year before, April 26, 1846, and culminated in the victory of the Americans at the storming of Mexico City in September, 1847) halted him, and we find him at Independence, Missouri, where most of the emigrants for western trails rendezvoused.

"To this place Gen. Joe Palmer had just arrived from Oregon Territory, in quest of settlers to take back to Oregon. Gen. Palmer told the emigrants the advantages of the Pacific Northwest country, its wonderful climate, rich soil, natural resources and the fact that slavery would never be profitable there. This latter fact appealed to Felix despite the fact that he had planned to go to slave-holding Texas, and he set out for Oregon with his family, traveling in an ox-drawn wagon, called a ‘prairie schooner,' so called because the wagon box was built like a boat and to be used in fording streams. Contrary to present popular fancy about driving wagons into the streams, they were dismantled and the contents ferried over in the wagon box, except where the stream was extremely shallow."

At Independence, Missouri, near Kansas City, our Pleasant Hill emigrants were joined, as we have seen in a preceding chapter, by an adventuring youth from Ohio, Earl Douglas Jones, who later was to marry Felix Collard's oldest daughter, Mary Jane. Earl Douglas was a son of Samuel Jones, a native of Ireland, who came to America some time prior to the second war with England. The first record of him is in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in 1821. His third child was the first white boy born in the new settlement. Later he moved to Big Island township in Marion county, Ohio.

Prior to 1815, Samuel married Lydia, daughter of Deacon Israel Douglas, kinsman of the line from which came Stephen Arnold Douglas, and his son, Stephen Arnold Douglas, the statesman who became so well known in the political history of Illinois and the nation. Deacon Douglas, born in Colchester, Connecticut, December 9, 1742, married Abigail Hull of Clinton, Connecticut, descendant of George Hull who came to Connecticut in 1635 from England and was the first man to be granted fur trading rights (exclusive) upon the reaches of the Connecticut river, and who was, so far as known, the first Englishman to be granted fur trading rights in North America. His brother, the Reverend Joseph Hull, founded Barnstable, Massachusetts.

Samuel Jones and Lydia Douglas, parents of Earl Douglas Jones, were probably married in Leyden, New York, as her parents moved to that place in 1806 and remained there until their deaths. Lydia's father was a soldier in the Revolution.

Little is known of Samuel Jones. He followed the carpenter's trade and was a large and powerful man. His grandson, William Walter, is quoted as saying there were only three things definitely known about him, viz: That he came from Ireland; that he was a large man, weighing about 210 pounds; and that he was able to pick up a whisky barrel containing 32 gallons and drink from the bunghole.

Earl Douglas Jones was born March 10, 1825, in Marion, Ohio. He was therefore 22 years old when he joined the Pleasant Hill wagon train at Independence, on the Missouri river, in the spring of 1847. Mary Jane Collard, a member of the same wagon train and the girl he was to marry, reached her 14th birthday while crossing the plains. At Independence young Earl Douglas joined Charles Hubbard's outfit. In exchange for his passage across the plains he agreed to help drive the ox team and make himself generally useful.

Mrs. N. R. Cooley of Woodburn, Oregon, a daughter of Charles Hubbard and Margaret Cannon, writing to Victor W. Jones February 1, 1921, says in part:

"I am a cousin of M. I. Collard (probably Isaac Newton Collard) and one of the family of Charles Hubbard that Douglas Jones helped across the plains in 1847. I was only 4 yrs. Old in May on the Plains so my memory is not very brilliant, but would say we all thought as much of Douglas as was possible. He was an all around good fellow as one would wish for. My people are all dead except my oldest brother William of Salem, Oregon. He is 84 years old. I was 77 last May." Both the writer of the letter and the brother are now dead.

Through the spring and summer of 1847 our Oregon emigrants journeyed on into the northwest. Fall came and still journey's end lay far ahead. Says the Collard great grandson, Victor Jones:

"After a weary journey of many months across the dusty plains and rugged mountains they arrived in Oregon City (end of the Oregon Trail) in the late fall of 1847. As they were coming down the western slopes of the Cascades, winter was overtaking them, their oxen were giving out, and much equipage had to be discarded by the wayside. This route over the Cascade Mountains from The Dalles of the Columbia was the famous Barlow Trail."