Heater Bros Emigration, Henry County IAGenWeb

Family Notes

Emigration of the Heater Brothers, Benjamin, Lorenzo Dow and Solomon.

An emigrant train of covered wagons drawn by oxen left Mt. Pleasant, Henry County (near Des Moines), Iowa, May 1, 1850, and arrived at the home of Jacob Shuck in Yamhill County, Oregon, October 31, 1850, six months from the time they started.

Among members of the party were Benjamin Heater and wife Mary Jane and their two little daughters; Lorenzo Dow Heater, Solomon Heater, John Hash, Martin J. Shuck and a Mr. Harmon. The train was under the leadership of Captain Jesse Parrish.

Benjamin Heater owned a lot in Mt. Pleasant which he traded for a pair of pants when starting west. Financial conditions were not good and it was the lure of free land which could be secured in Oregon from the government which prompted the move.

The men of the party and some of the women and children walked most of the way to Oregon. They had no trouble with Indians on the way. The men carried ropes which were looped over the horns of the oxen to help guide and control them. While crossing the grassy plains along the Platte River, the oxen were so well fed they became high-strung and frequently ran away. Sometimes they stampeded from the corral by jumping over the wagons at night and sometimes they ran away while attached to the wagons. On one occasion they ran dangerously near the bank of the Platte River, barely turning in time to prevent a serious accident.

The party ran short of provisions in eastern Oregon and Lorenzo Dow and three others walked to Umatilla for help. They had two hot-cakes for breakfast before starting out and the only other food they had was three salmon skins which they obtained from the Indians. The round-trip took them one week. They hired pack horses to take the food back to the wagon train and from the Indians bought a canoe in which they came on down the river, carrying the canoe around the rapids.

The journey from The Dalles to Oregon City was made over the old Barlow Trail. In some places it was so steep that trees were cut and tied to the back of the wagons to serve as brakes.

The three brothers and other members of the party built a log cabin on a homestead of 640 acres near Springbrook, in Yamhill County, where Benjamin Heater and his wife lived until their deaths.

Lorenzo Dow's family remained in Iowa when he first crossed the plains with his brothers. After operating Graham's Ferry the first winter, he went to the California gold mines in the spring of 1851. He made $1100.00 which was a fortune in those days. He started back to Iowa by boat, walked across the Isthmus of Panama and took another boat. He arrived in Iowa in the fall of 1851.

The next spring the family joined a wagon train bound for the Willamette Valley in Oregon. There was some excitement when a band of Indians along the way rode up and down the train asking for pay to cross their land. When the chief was quite close to one of the wagons on which there was a little boy, this boy picked up his father's revolver which was in the seat beside him, and shot the chief in the back of the head. This caused the Indians to become very angry but they were soon quieted and given pay for crossing the land.

Another time the wagon train passed by an Indian camp where they were having a big pot of roasted grasshoppers for supper.

The Heaters arrived in Oregon September 1, 1852. Lorenzo Dow and Sophia settled on a donation land claim in the neighborhood of Union Hill. They first built a log cabin and later a more commodious home of lumber. There they lived until their deaths.

Lorenzo Dow was a tall, smooth shaven pioneer character in home-spun clothing. With his long legs, he thought nothing of walking to Salem to pay his taxes. He thought taxes were getting pretty high the year he paid $20.00 on his whole place.

Sophia was a very capable woman. She raised her own flax, beat it into thread which she wove into cloth on her loom. She also carded and spun wool into yarn and knitted all the sox for the family. When she and Lorenzo rode into town sitting on a spring seat in a big wagon, her knitting needles were "flying" as they jogged along. She didn't have to watch the stiches. She walked ten miles to Silverton many a time with a bucket of eggs on each arm, knitting as she went. She also wove yarn and spun it into cloth. She could catch, throw and shear a sheep as fast as anybody.

Sophia's loom, hewed out of a fir pole by L. D. is now housed in the Oregon Historical Society in Portland, Oregon. A picture of it appeared in the "Oregonian" some years ago and a copy of that picture is included in this book.

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The above is taken from stories written by Flodene Heater Jarvill, great-granddaughter of L.D. Heater and Elsie Winters, granddaughter of Benjamin Heater.

The research to find the ancestors of Lorenzo Dow was done by Sheila Neal Heater and Flodene Heater Jarvill; they also compiled most of the information on the later generations of Heaters and Scotts.

The Cooley-Jones family history was traced by Bernita Jones Sharp. She is also the one responsible for securing the copy of the wagon train census of 1845, when our great-grandfather Christopher C. Cooley and our great-granduncles, Jackson and Eli Cooley and James Officer, emigrated to Oregon.

Taken from: https://strobels.z1.web.core.windows.net/saintboniface/wagon-train-census.pdf

Resource provided by Henry County Heritage Trust; Transcription done by James Peters, University of Northern Iowa Public History Field Experience Class, Fall 2021.

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Family Notes *** Henry County IAGenWeb