The theme for this year’s Reunion was that we are all connected and we all belong. This was expressed in several different ways.
THE PHOTO BOOTH This year, our president, Merrilee Johnson, introduced the “Photo Booth”. Pictures were taken of individuals and immediate family holding up empty picture frames, to capture our current members for the family albums. The albums contain pictures and documentation of our family from all the generations. In them, you can find your ancestors and how you are connected. The albums are kept secure in the Yamhill County Museum and brought out for all to see each year at the Reunion. Family members can view them at the museum during the year. See the images in the “Reunion 2024 Photo Booth” posting following.
HMC FAMILY COUNCIL We all belong to the Hewitt-Matheny-Cooper Family Association. Its organization and projects are carried out with our collaboration. The HMC council is made up of six members. At every Reunion, two members of one of the three family branches, Hewitts, Mathenys, and Coopers, are elected. This was a Matheny year. Al Ernst was re-elected, and George Bailey was elected to be the newest council member. George is a descendant of Henry and Rachel Matheny. Henry was Daniel Matheny’s brother.
PROGRAM – TRAVELING THE TRAIL Today, we are connected to family around the country and the world. From attending the Reunion online to traveling to the Park in person, we belong. George Bailey his family are from Montana?? and drove out to the Reunion on the Oregon Trail, picking it up at Chimney Rock in Nebraska. See the “Traveling the Trail Today” posting following.
We are connected in our genetics and sometimes even our quirks and behaviors. Merrilee Johnson spoke about learning that the family “pout”, where when concentrating you extend out your lower lip, was inherited from Mary Cooper. Brian Hewitt said he and his kids do it and when he was young, he was told that he better put that back in or a bird would land on it. Jessica ???? said that she heard that, too.
PROGRAM – HOW WE BELONG Brian Hewitt, HMC historian, discussed the connections of our ancestors; how they lived and worked together despite any differences and how they were respectful and caring to others whose differences were beyond those in the family. He noted interactions our ancestors had that can serve as examples of how we can better get along in our more polarized society today. See the “We All Belong” posting.
Traveling the Trail Today
George Bailey; his wife, Anita; his brother, Stanley Bailey; his cousin, Susan Johnson; her husband, ????; Susan’s brother, Richard Fredenburg; George and Anita’s son ???? made a vacation of following the last half of the Oregon Trail starting at Chimney Rock, Nebraska, all the way to the Reunion. George, Anita, and ???? live in Montana. ???? are from??? They made their own wagon train, traveling in their three trailers. Stopping at historic monuments, museums, and interpretive centers, they followed along in Charlotte Kirkwood Matheny’s book, Into the Eye of the Setting Sun, and found it made the book come alive.
They were surprised that some of the buildings at the forts are still standing. Others are reconstructed. They also were impressed with the continued existence of the ruts from the wagon wheels, some four to five feet deep. Even more surprising were the ruts from where the pioneers walked alongside their wagons. The ruts were made by the thousands of people who traveled the Trail. Because our ancestors were the first train, at least to come the whole way to the Willamette Valley, the ruts did not exist as they came across. The grass for the cattle had not been overgrazed, and the water they had to drink had not been polluted by animals and poor human sanitation. Travelers that followed them dug many shallow graves in the trail. The bones were sometimes unburied by the wagon wheels. The Baileys and Johnsons saw mounds along the trail that were probably graves where over the last century and a half the dirt had piled up over the rocks that the pioneers had placed on them so animals would not dig them up. The depth of hardship of which they saw physical evidence, was sobering.
On Saturday before the Reunion, the Bailey clan visited the Hopewell Cemetery. They are descended from Henry Matheny, brother of Daniel Matheny, from whom most of us descend, and it was Henry’s wife, Rachel Cooper Matheny, who as a widow donated the land for the Hopewell Cemetery. It was Henry and Rachel’s daughter, Sarah Matheny, who eloped with Aaron Layson in the dual wedding, where her cousin, Adam Matheny married Aaron Layson’s sister, Sarah Layson, just as they were about to embark on the 1843 train.
We All Belong
Our historian, Brian Hewitt, talked about the circumstances of how our family came West and how they interacted when they got here.
Our ancestors were descended from the Huguenots*, who were persecuted in Europe. They emigrated to the Pennsylvania Colony because William Penn, who established the colony, allowed all peoples and they lived in peace.
They would have come west for the prospect of free land, but that probably wasn’t the only or even the main reason. They were most likely men who had wanderlust; they were enticed by the adventure of it all. They knew about the region because the British, Spanish, Russians, and French were already here. When they got to Oregon, they could go no farther west. This was the end of the world as they knew it.
Contrary to the image people often have based on what occurred with settlers of subsequent years, there was no free land when our ancestors came to Oregon in 1843. In fact, they had no legal claim to land until the 1850 Homestead Act. It was not uncommon for settlers to just declare ownership based on their word and descriptions of geographic features, e.g., “from the riverbank to the top of the rise”, or “as far as I can see from this point.” Unfortunately, that meant that they were claiming land that had already been home to the Native tribes.
When our family came here, they were not bothered by Indians. On the Trail, when they circled the wagons at night, it was to corral the livestock, not for protection. Brian’s grandfather, Derrell Hewitt, impressed on him that our family would not have been here except for the help of Sticcus, a member of the Cayuse tribe. Sticcus and his fellow hunters were returning from the Dakota land (which included what is now North and South Dakota and Montana) with their ponies loaded with buffalo meat and hides. Marcus Whitman, who was returning to his mission in what is now eastern Washington, asked Sticcus to guide the 1843 wagon train to Oregon. ??through the Blue Mountains??? Speaking no English, Sticcus did so and ensured our family’s safe passage. Brian’s grandfather spoke Chinook jargon and Brian remembers hearing him and others at the Reunion talking in it.
Brian’s grandfather told him a lot of the other pioneers did not like our family because our family did not charge the Native peoples for passage on the ferry. They let them cross for free after the paying passengers. Derrell said the Mathenys felt it was wrong to charge them because this was their homeland first.
Henry and Elizabeth Hewitt bought their land from the son of John McLoughlin. Even though Mr. McKay was the son of probably the most powerful man in the territory, he wasn’t allowed to own land because his mother was Native. The Hewitts asked Mr. McKay what he wanted for the land and he said four hundred dollars and a yoke of oxen.
Over time, both the Hewitts and Mathenys were known to take in Native children.
The Hewitts were adamant Unionists and the Millers were adamant Confederates. When ???? Hewitt and ??? Miller had a child, they named him Early Ellsworth after Lieutenant General Jubal Early of the Confederate army, and Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, a Union hero, the first to die in the Civil War.
Brad Kerr related a story told to him by George Gay a neighbor of the Hewitts, Mathenys, and Coopers. The story was about a settler and a Native American who fought against each other in the Cayuse War and later became friends.
Henry Hewitt reminded us that Horry, the eighth of the nine Hewitt boys, never married and was said to march to his own tune. He was the only one that did not profess to the Christian faith. However, no one put him down. It is possible he was gay, and family loved him even if they disagreed.
Most of our family were adamant abolitionists, opposed to all forms of slavery.
It is healthy to dialogue, disagree, and argue, but we all belong together because we are lucky enough to know where we came from.
Today we are polarized racially, socio-economically, and politically. There is only one race. We are all related. It is good to appreciate where we come from and remember who we are. We can learn from our ancestors and follow their model that we all belong.
*“Huguenots were French Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who followed the teachings of theologian John Calvin. Persecuted by the French Catholic government during a violent period, Huguenots fled the country in the 17th century, creating Huguenot settlements all over Europe, in the United States and Africa.” Mar 16, 2018. https://www.history.com.