FAMILY HISTORIC SITES: The Hewitt School (Unionvale School)

July 4th, 2021

It was started by Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt for their children. John ??Cooper taught Jasper Hewitt at that school. But the story was that he was not good???
Is Unionvale School the Hewitt school?

“My first day at school as a visitor was to the old schoolhouse at or near the northwest corner of the old farm, under a very large, spreading oak tree. I was a very small boy but all of my older brothers were there. The teacher was a Mr. Turner. I sat just across the aisle from Henry during the day. I suppose I got restless and caused a disturbance. Mr Turner, the teacher, threw a large piece of chalk the size of a hen’s egg and struck the desk just alongside of me, frightening me nearly out of my wits. Henry, always ready for justice to be maintained, said to me, “Jasper, throw it back at him!” But this small boy was much too scared for that, as Turner was a very large man.

In the years that followed, many happy days were spent in this school house, several of the teachers I recall were Eliza Robinson (my first), Mary Watson who gave me a Methodist hymn book and wrote in it “To Jasper for good conduct” Dec. 20, 1870” this I now have and prize it highly as it was about the only teacher gift I ever received on this score. Ella Watson, John Cooper who knew how to call hogs I suppose but not teach school. The Pupils would not mind him so he would call a boy out, split a small stick put it over the boy’s nose and compel him to stand before the school and study, or split small sticks, build a pen on his head, when Cooper walked away a small move of the head and down went the pen much to the delight of all. Another was my brother Andrew who licked me on the road house on our way from school because I thought him just Andrew and told him so.

With this school house I associate the the Dumasu children who (3) were drowned in the slough just at the north east corner of our farm. Frank Gaues??, Etta and Tommy Morrison, the McCauthou?? boys, the nine Pitman girls along side the nine Hewitt boys. We only had school three months in the year so the next year would review?? what we went over the last, then the three months were most gone, so it was over and over again.

-From Jasper Hewitt’s memors

LOCATION: Proceed north on Wallace Road passing through the hamlet of Unionvale [on Hewitt land]. On the northwest corner of the DLC, near the oak trees was the Hewitt school.

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VIRTUAL MUSEUM: Photos of Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt Family

July 4th, 2021

FROM CORAL HEWITT NOLAN

Family picture of Henry and Elizabeth Hewitt.  Photographed in Salem, Oregon about 1879.

Photos of Henry and Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt’s family

FAMILY DONATION LAND CLAIMS: Jasper and Emaline Allen Matheny DLC

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