The Davidsons Arrive in Oregon

The Milton Township Diaspora (part 3)

When we last talked about Sarah (Montgomery) Davidson and her family, they set out from Fulton County, Indiana, and took to the Oregon Trail in 1852:

The Davidsons Take The Oregon Trail

Sarah and Henry Davidson took their four children and their adopted niece, Sarah Farrell, on the trip; we have only talked about Sarah Farrell’s life in Oregon.

But the Davidsons established themselves in what is now Halsey, Linn County, Oregon, and had two more children after arriving there. Sadly, Frances Mary Davidson (1850-1855), the youngest Davidson to make the trip from Indiana to Oregon, died soon after her two youngest siblings were born.

There are a lot of stories to explore, but here is a brief introduction to the Davidson children:

Lucretia Murphy

The eldest of their children, Rebecca Lucretia (Davidson) Murphy (1842-1917), married Henderson Warren Murphy (1835-1918), the son of John Eccles Murphy, the captain of the wagon train that brought the Davidsons to Oregon. Henderson and Lucretia farmed and raised livestock in Oregon and Washington Territory, and raised seven children. They eventually settled back in South Lebanon, Linn County, Oregon.

William Davidson

William Montgomery Davidson (1845-1939) married Sarah Rosetta "Rose" Morris (1848–1928), another Linn County neighbor whose family came to Oregon in 1853. They had seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood.

Theodore Davidson

Theodore Bruce Davidson (1848-1932) had eight children with his first wife, Margaret Ann Work (1855-1915), two of whom grew up to become doctors. He married his second wife, Margaret Ellen (Waggoner) Kizer, in 1917. Theodore was a dairy farmer, but he retired from his dairy farm after his parents died and he inherited the family homestead.

Thurston Davidson

Records say that Samuel Thurston Davidson (1853-1889) was born on the Oregon Trail, in the Idaho Territory, possibly in what is now Utah. He married Susanna Elizabeth Briggs (1850–1910) about 1878. They had a son and a daughter before his unexpected death at age 35.

Mary Malson Cunningham

Named for her aunt and her grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Davidson (1854-1929) was the only Davidson child born on the family farm after arriving in Oregon. She married her first husband, Charles W Malson (b. 1845), around 1874. Little is known about Charles, and they divorced in 1894. They had five children, but two of them may have died around 1880.

Mary’s second husband was Richard Ross Cunningham (1849–1926), a widower who had lost his wife and two children in 1891.

Oregon Pioneers

Sometimes it feels like great Historical Events overwhelm the small human events that make up our family histories. The Oregon Trail story is cemented into the American Experience, in part thanks to the old Oregon Trail computer game.

The game that spawned so many memes.

As evidence that this was the largest event in the lives of this particular family, almost every one of their obituaries mentions the journey to Oregon, and most refer to them as “pioneers” with some reference to the famous Trail, by date if not by name.

Most of the Davidsons’ descendants remained in Oregon, though a few exceptions spread out across the neighboring states, into Washington, or down into California. One of Sarah Murphy’s sons, Elbert George Wells (1890–1961), suffered from lung trouble and moved to the drier environment of Imperial Valley in California. There he married Loreto Villa-Escusa (1895–2000). Three generations of their family spent time in both Calexico and Mexicali, straddling the U.S.-Mexican border.

One of the most adventurous descendants was Elbert’s sister, Goldie Ruth Wells (1893–1979). She became a missionary to the Belgian Congo, where she assisted in establishing the mission station at Mondombe in 1919. She was decorated by the King of Belgium with the Order of Leopold II in 1937 for her long and outstanding service in the Congo. When she was in America, she was a popular guest speaker in churches throughout the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest.¹

We Are All Post-scripts

I think it’s unlikely that any of the grandchildren of Henry and Sarah Davidson had any memory of Indiana, let alone of Milton Township, Ohio. Sarah was only ten years old when her father, Caleb Montgomery, left Milton Township. She probably carried vague memories of some of her cousins, but almost certainly had no memory of the Callin family. And yet, six or seven generations later, her descendants are just as related to James Callin as I am.

Henry died on 19 February 1894 at age 75 and was buried in the Pugh Cemetery in Shedd, Linn County. Sarah remained in Halsey until moving to South Lebanon, Linn County, before 1910. She died there on 8 May 1918 at age 93 and was buried near her husband.

And in all likelihood, little memory of their lives before the Oregon Trail survived them.

1. Yocum, Edith Eberle, (1899-1966), They went to Africa: biographies of missionaries of the Disciples of Christ, United Christian Missionary Society, Missionary Education Department, Indianapolis, IN, 1945; biography on page 40.