Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 9/Mrs. Jesse Applegate

by Mrs. S. A. Long

MRS. JESSE APPLEGATE.

By Mrs. S. A. Long.

Cynthia Ann Parker was born on the Cumberland River in Northeastern Tennessee on the 15th day of August, 1813. Her father, Jeremiah Parker, was a native of a Northern State and was a flatboatman on the Mississippi River. This was before the days steam. And what were called flatboats were built something like a scow, loaded with produce and floated down the river to a market, usually New Orleans, where the freight was sold and the boat also; which last was usually broken up for the lumber used in its construction. This was Jeremiah Parker's business. His wife was Dutch; her name Sallie Ann Yauhnt. Her parents had emigrated from Holland in her youth. She was the mother of five children. Cynthia Ann was the only girl and was the fourth child. The mother died when Cynthia was seven and her younger brother was five years old. The father took the three older boys onto the boat with him and gave the two younger children to their mother's brother, John Yauhnt, in Missouri. There were few chances for education in those days, and the children received very little. Cynthia learned to spin and weave as well as other house work. And as she grew older found employment in the families of neighbors where she earned her food and clothes.

She did much work for a Mrs. English, who befriended her and to whom she became much attached. At this friend's house she met one evening at a log-rolling bee a young surveyor, Jesse Applegate, and three months later became his wife. They were married on the 13th of March, 1831. She was not yet eighteen nor he twenty years of age. The first year of their married life was passed in St. Louis, where he clerked in the Surveyor-General's office and where their first child was born. Later he took up land in St. Clair County, Missouri, on the banks of the Osage River, and she camped there 180 Mrs. S. a. Long. with him and helped him to build the log house where the first happy twelve years of their married life were spent. Those were prosperous and happy years. Her younger brother shared her home much of the time. She received occasional visits from her older ones. In after years she often spoke regretfully of the Osage home, of their kind neighbors, of the beautiful forest full of wild fruits and berries, of wild game, and of the great river with its plenty of fish. Here were born five of their children; here was their first sorrow, the death of one little child, who was remembered and mourned till life 's latest day— "Poor little Milburn," she often said. In 1843 came the journey to Oregon. Her younger brother, William G. Parker, accompanied them. She never saw any of her other relatives afterwards. The journey across the plains was full of novelty and incident, the event of a lifetime. There was enough of change and adventure to make each day interesting and pleasant. But with the arrival in Oregon came sorrow and privation. The great River of the West became the grave of another child, her oldest son, Edward— a fine, manly boy of ten years of age. They found themselves sur- rounded by a strange and not always friendly people, by a new and different country, whose forests, fruits and game were unlike anything they had known. What had been common comforts in the Osage home became luxuries in this ; the roasted possum, fat catfish, and sweet potatoes, were things of the past, as well as the wild grapes, plums, paw- paws, persimmons, and nuts, of the Osage forest. Wheaten flour, and sometimes only boiled wheat, wild black berries, strawberries and bitter crab-apple were their substitute ; but the unerring rifle brought much wild game to the frontier home. The flesh of elk and deer, grouse, pheasant, wild ducks and geese, the royal salmon and the speckled trout, bear steak, roasted squirrels, pot pies of wild pigeons. She was a great cook of meats, loved to try experiments in that line. Also she made great crocks of preserves of the wild fruits that were obtainable, black berries, crab-apples, strawberries and even the little gooseberries. And the product of her dairy Mrs. Jesse Applegate. 181 added to the bill of fare, for she was an expert butter and cheese maker. For a numbei' of years after gold was discovered in South- ern Oregon and California, Mrs. Applegate sold butter and cheese to the miners and received many dollars in return. The amount of labor accomplished by the pioneer mothers is a lasting reproach to their idle and incompetent descendants. Mrs. Applegate made all the every-day clothing for her hus- band and sons: coats, shirts, pants, underclothing, socks- spinning the yarn for these last. Made all the clothing of herself and daughters. And for many years did the work by hand. Sometime in the fifties a cook-stove and a sewing machine were brought into the house, greatly lightening her labor. Besides the sewing and cooking, milking and tending the milk, she found time for some work in the garden tending some special plants. She had besides a little flower garden where were planted some old time favorities: Hollyhocks, SAveet William, and Sweet Peas, Wall Flowers, Pinks and Bean Catchers. How carefully she guarded the first rose bush— a slip of the pungent old Mission rose, always a favor- ite with her. She brought with her from Missouri a little pinch of seeds that were raised first in old Kentuck where the meadow grass is blue." This little pinch of seed was carefully planted and watched and the first little yellow heads of seed gathered as if they were gold. Now there are patches of Kentucky blue grass scattered all over Yoncalla Valley, the offspring, I candidly believe, of that little pinch of seeds. The Applegates moved to Umpqua in 1849. Yoncalla Val- ley was a wilderness, only the Cowan's lived in it. And the Scott's in the valley adjoining. There was an old Hxidson's Bay Company station at the mouth of Elk Creek called Ft. Umpqua. Some apple trees had been planted there and the first apples the writer of this ever tasted were plucked from these trees and sent as a present to Mrs. Applegate by the agent at the fort, an old Canadian, Old Garnier. Never in the forty years since then have apples tasted so good. The 182 Mrs. S. a. Long. forbidden fruit plucked by our mother Eve in Paradise must have been of that variety. In the early fifties there was a Hudson 's Bay Company ship- ping point at the mouth of the Umpqua accessible from the in- terior by mule trails through the Coast Mountains. And soon a little town was started, called Scottsburg, in honor of its founder, Captain Levi Scott, a brave and honorable Ohioan who, with his sons John and William, settled first in Scott's Valley, which still bears their name. Scottsburg at the mouth of the Umpqua, or rather at the head of navigation on the Umpqua, was the point where settlers of the southern part of the State and miners of Southern Oregon obtained their supplies to a great extent; these were carried on pack-trains for some years, but a wagon road was finally built down the Umpqua and later down the Elk River also. During the days of the pack-trains Mrs. Applegate made and sold much butter and cheese, securing high prices for her handiwork, for this was in "The days of old, the days of gold, The days of forty-nine." Mr. Applegate clerked for Allen & McKinley at Scottsburg for some years. He was also frequently away from home for months at a time following his vocation of surveying. His was the honor of establishing what is known as the Military Road across the Cascade Range by way of Diamond Peak. On this surveying expedition he accompaned, as surveyor and guide. Major Benjamin Alvord, who with a company of soldiers established that route. During all these absences Mrs. Applegate conducted the affairs of the farm, her admin- istration of them was never questioned or objected to. During the fifties a sewing machine, melodeon, and large library were brought into the house. Music, books, newspapers, were the amusements of the family— sometimes a little social gath- ering of the neighbor children. Mrs. Applegate had received no education and never at- tempted to read anything other than the large print of her Testament, with which she was familiar from Matthew to Revelation. But she was not by any means an ignorant woman. Her husband had adopted the habit of reading aloud to her in their early married life. This habit he kept up as long as she lived. Of evenings, when the day's work was done and the fires were lighted on the hearth in the winter, or of Sundays and leisure hours of summer, he would read the current news of the day—polities, congressional proceedings, and general news, as well as books of travel, historical works, novels and poetry. She listened with appreciation and interest and forgot nothing of what she heard. She liked best historical subjects and books of travel and historical novels. Her husband shared with her also his letter correspondence, which was extensive, reading to her the letters sent as well as those received.

She taught her children, first, virtue, next honesty. No lessons in acquisitiveness were ever taught by either parent. She was a member of the Christian Church, which she considered nearest the Savior's lessons of any, but she was not a bigot and attended the services of other churches and made their ministers welcome at her house, from the Archbishop of the Church of Rome to the humble followers of John Wesley. Archbishop Blanchet once celebrated high mass in her house, surrounded by all our Catholic neighbors, and I think she felt it a great honor.

Mrs. Applegate was the mother of thirteen children, nine of whom have descendants. At the present time, March, 1902, five of her children are yet living, forty-four grand-children, forty-five great-grand-children, and two great-great-grand-children, making a total of ninety-one descendants. She died on the first day of June, 1881, in the little home on the side of Mount Yoncalla where her last years were spent.