Oregon150

by Governor Barbara Roberts
Portland, OR

As Oregon prepares to celebrate our 150th anniversary of statehood, my head is filled
with so many stories and memories I would like to share. However, I have selected a
personal story of a family search that seems perfect for this year of state celebration.

My family came to Oregon on the Oregon Trail in 1853. My great-great grandparents,
James and Almeda Boggs, both from Pennsylvania, left Iowa that spring with a wagon
full of their worldly possessions, an ox team, three children ages ten, eight, and four and,
yet unknown to them, a baby on the way.

They arrived in October of 1853 to accept their donation land claim in Polk
County. They had buried their 8-year-old daughter who died of yellow fever on the
Trail. Almeda was seven months pregnant when she reached Oregon. The child she
carried inside for every mile of that arduous journey was my great-grandmother Anna,
the first generation of my family to be born in Oregon, born on January 1, 1854.

Two years ago my younger son Mark and I traveled to southern Oregon on a
mission of family history-gathering. We were searching for the headstones of my Oregon
Trail ancestors. We knew that five years after reaching Oregon they had traded their Polk
County farm for another land grant farm in Douglas County. We believed they were
buried in one of the many pioneer cemeteries in the Roseburg area. Yet the wear and
ravages of 150 years made these sites difficult to identify.

Before his death, my Dad had searched unsuccessfully for the markers in a
number of cemeteries. My son and I decided we would search again.

We set aside three days for this adventure. We spent time in the county
courthouse, Roseburg City Hall, and the county museum. With better information, we
tromped through the first couple of burial grounds without success.

On our second day of searching, in the heat of August, we found our family at the
Civil Bend Pioneer Cemetery in Winston. We found the double headstone, the final
resting place of the pioneers who had made Oregon “home” for the next six generations
of my family.

We cleaned and polished the headstone, cleared the plot and took out our cameras
to record this moment where past and present came together for our family. It was a very
emotional “reunion” for me.

My great-great-grandparents lived to see Oregon become a state on February 14,
1859. Can you imagine what they would have felt knowing that one of their descendents
would one day become, not only an Oregon Governor, but the first woman governor in
our state’s history?

I believe James and Almeda Boggs would have been almost as pleased and
excited about my piece of history as I was to find their headstone and fill-in that blank in
our family’s history.

I will always remain proud of my Oregon heritage.