Archive for the ‘Family Donation Land Claims’ Category

FAMILY DONATION LAND CLAIMS: Two Isaiah Cooper Matheny DLCs

Sunday, July 4th, 2021

Isaiah Matheny (1827-1852) was a son of Rachel and Henry Matheny heretofore only suspected of existing. The censuses of Owen County, IN, in 1830 and Platte County, MO, in 1840, clearly show that Rachel and Henry had a son. The 1849 Oregon Territorial census shows two adult males in the Matheny home.
There were two different Isaiah Cooper Mathenys. Mary and Daniel Matheny’s son Isaiah Cooper Matheny (1826-1906) was the other Isaiah. They were double cousins. Both served in the Cayuse War after the Whitman Massacre. Donation Land Claim records show two different claims under the name Isaiah Matheny. An Isaiah Matheny filed a land claim across the Willamette River from Daniel and Mary Cooper Matheny. This was probably Isaiah C. Matheny, yet Isaiah C. also had a land claim just south of Amity on the Polk-Yamhill county line.
In October of 1853, Rachel Matheny, Aaron Layson, and Joseph Kirkwood petitioned the Yamhill County Circuit Court to administer Isaiah’s estate. Isaiah had not lived to patent his land claim under the Donation Land Law. Isaiah may have been the brother-in-law of Joseph Kirkwood in the California gold fields [mentioned in Into the Eye of the Setting Sun] who was engaged in conversation with a stranger who turned out to be Joseph’s father, James Kirkwood. If this was Isaiah, he directed James and his son John to the whereabouts of Joseph in Oregon.
Isaiah does not appear in the 1850 Yamhill County, Oregon census, but he was probably in the gold fields at the time. After his death, his land claim was taken up in 1852 by William Matheny, a cousin of Daniel and Henry Younger Matheny, who had just arrived in Oregon from Missouri.

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FAMILY DONATION LAND CLAIMS: Jasper and Emaline Allen Matheny DLC

Sunday, July 4th, 2021

Jasper Newton Matheny was the brother who sympathized with the South in the Civil War, so he probably did not get along well with family. He was born in 1834 and married into the Allen family in 1852? and moved next to them. He was granted a DLC that same year.
Jasper had a pink vest he obtained when trading for ferry passage. Jasper had run the Wheatland Ferry so he bought the existing Salem ferry and operated it, a wharf, and a warehouse, which he also owned. The flood of 1861 wiped out Jasper’s warehouse, which wiped him out financially. He and a partner had a gold venture in Idaho, not mining, but selling supplies.
He took partners, including James Glover and went to Spokane, which they founded.
Later he went to the mining fields.
After that, he lived in Mexico where he had a coffee plantation near the Guatemalan border. There he contracted malaria and died in San Francisco on his return in 1893. His funeral was in a San Francisco hotel.

When Jasper sold the ferry, he ended up having to foreclose on the buyer. Jasper’s sister, Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt, and her husband, Henry Hewitt, then bought the ferry

FAMILY DONATION LAND CLAIMS: John and Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood DLC

Sunday, July 4th, 2021

Charlotte Matheny (1838-1926) and John Kirkwood were married when she was 14.

Charlotte wrote her memoirs of the 1843 Migration, Into the Eye of the Setting Sun, when she was in her 80s.

LOCATION: From Hopewell, turn right toward Wheatland. Immediately after returning to the Lafayette Highway is the church (now Seventh Day Adventist) built by William S. Cooper’s son Enoch, who was a carpenter. Charlotte Kirkwood attended this church in her later years.
To the left immediately after the church, are two oak trees that are set back from the road. Here was where Charlotte and John Kirkwood’s home sat.
Behind them lived Daniel B. Matheny.

To the right at the next stop sign is Maud Williamson State Park where the reunion is held.  This was Adam Matheny’s land.