THE
FISK
FAMILY SAGA CONTINUES:
SEVEN
GENERATIONS OF OREGON PIONEERS
Edited
for the occasion of the marriage
of
Lt.
Mark W.Turner, U.S.C.G. and Lt. Heather
Klemme, U.S.C.G.
Ashland,
Oregon July 28, 2001[1]
1800
hrs, Ashland Springs Hotel
in
the company of Friends and Family
The
Itinerary for heat24
Emma
Maya Little
from the Grant County Library/Courthouse,
Canyonville Oregon
Nathaniel
Willis Fisk and wife Esther were Oregon pioneers. They are the great, great, great, great grandparents of Katie
Turner , her new sister, Claire Turner, and and her cousin in the oven, Emma Fisk-Little. Currently, the sixth generation of
Erika Lindsey Fisk, Tanya Ashley Fisk,
Tiffany Danielle Fisk, Damon Marshall Fisk, Bryan Turner, Mark Turner and Ann Marie Turner are in
the process of extending a story that began with Nathan's birth in 1820. The
locale was south-western Ohio in the river county of Hamilton.
The county seat was Cincinnati, an interface between the mid-west and the olde
South.
The
fledgling states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois , newly hatched out of the old
Northwest Territory, were attracting both speculators and settlers drawn by the
promise of virgin and fertile prairie land selling at $1.25 per acre in lots of
80 acres. Emigrants left the safety and security of their hearth and home in
the former Upper and Middle Atlantic Colonies, traveled the 600 miles of the federally financed, troop protected
Cumberland Road ,and crossed the Allegheny Mountains by foot, horseback and
Conestoga wagon into the wild frontiers of the near Mid West.
Others
floated down The Ohio River Valley to Cincinnati and beyond to the Mississippi
towns of St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans . The rivers and towns alone
the Ohio-Mississippi frontier were later connected to the Great Lakes when the
Illinois Central Railroad, the first of the federal land grant lines, linked
lakeside Chicago in northern Illinois with riverside downstate Cairo to
the south. Steam power was poised to drive the expanding network of rivers,
canals, and rail lines that moved people, raw materials and manufactured goods
between the frontier and ocean spanning markets.
Was this too much
civilization for the young Fisks ? Perhaps Nathan W. and the former Esther Tripp
were struck by the name "Oregon", the county seat of County Ogle, Ill. where their
marriage was recorded twelve years prior to heading for the Oregon Territory and
the Pacific Rim.
They departed
Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, from Mt. Carroll, Carroll County on eastern bank of the
Mississippi on 1 May, 1852. With their five children, Nathan now 32 and
Esther 28, in the good company of 35-40 friends, ferried their wagon train
across the Mississippi River into Iowa where they
joined missionaries, farmers, frontiersmen, fortune seekers, Mormons and miners on the Trail to the Oregon
Territory. They were followed the advice of Horace
Greeley and Bishop Berkeley' to hitch mule to wagon, fate to fortune and
follow the setting sun to the Far West and the Pacific shore. One can only speculate as to their
motivations for joining one of the world’s largest land migrations.
One reason may have been to sell out at a
profit and self finance a move given the guarantee of 640 acre of free donation
claim land to couples completing the
trek to Oregon. A second
may
have been to escape malaria, cholera and TB. A third may have been to avoid the agricultural commodity price competition family subsistence farmers in the
heartland faced from the plantations of the south. Agricultural commodity prices
in the Far West boomed because of the recent wealth generated by
gold and silver mining. That wealth later provided the Union cause and
the Federal Treasury a critical ace in the hole for financing the Civil War
effort.
Whatever the
motivation, Fisk family lore is a narrative shared among the more than 100,000
pioneers who eventually migrated west on a dangerous five to seven month trek to the Oregon Territory .
Footnotes:
' Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography, Philip B. Kunhardt.
Alfred Knopf Publisher, 1992. A recent, wonderfully illustrated, high quality
publication from a tightly controlled collection of Lincoln documents and
memorabilia.
Greeley
was a 19th Century New York newspaper publisher, political
activist and social reformer. "Go West, young man, and grow up with the
country."
3 Irish born 18th Century English idealist philosopher
who lived for a time in Colonial Rhode Island."...westward lies the way of
Empire."
During their
journey to the "Eden of the West",
families ferried the Mississippi River, floated the Missouri River , forded
streams, fought Indians, fended off the effects of “bad water”, fixed broken
wagons as the caravan followed the gold trail to Jacksonville, Ore., Yreka,
CA., and Canyonville, Ore. What a circular log of travel the Fisks and their friends
recorded over the next twelve years:
The North Platte River in the plains, Independence Rock, South Pass in the
Rockies, Fort Laramie, Fort Hall, Fort Boise, the Snake River, the Blue
Mountains in north-east Oregon ,the Grande Ronde, the Umatilla River,
Fort Walla Walla, the Colombia River, the Dalles Rapids, the Barlow Toll Road
around Mt. Hood, St. Helens, an ocean shipping terminus on the Columbia River, the Willamette Valley,
Wolf Creek in the Valley the Rogue River, the Siskiyou Mountains on the
California/Oregon border, Greenhorn Creek, Shasta River, Klamath Lake, Lost
River, Sprague River, Silver Lake, Mountain Spring (Wagontire), Beaver Creek,
Crooked River, Murderers Creek, John Day River, Canyon Creek, Strawberry Creek,
Indian Creek, Camp Logan, and the Boise Military Road. The white
population of the Oregon end of the Trail was probably less than 3,000.
By the spring
of 1853, the Fisks were farming on Wolf Creek near Ashland and Jacksonville southern Oregon .
At the time, there may have been 2,000 dispersed pioneers in the entire Oregon
territory. With a few friends and neighbors they participated in or supported the
gold diggings near Jacksonville, fought in the Rogue River Indian Wars of 1853-56
and added two children to the family. In 1855,they moved from Jackson County across the Siskiyou
Mountains and the poorly defined Oregon-California border to gold
diggings near the junction of Greenhorn Creek and the Shasta River which
joins the Klamath River near Yreka, CA. They followed the
rough Siskiyou Trail over a pass on the California- Oregon border. That
trail is now part of I-5 , a route without a stop light that stretches from the Canadian border to Seattle and
Portland to the
Sacramento River Delta and the Mexican border.
During
a trip to work the silver mines of the Salmon River
country of northern Idaho during the winter of 1862-63, Nathan learned, while at
the Dalles, Oregon ,on the Columbia River near the mouth of the John Day River,
that a gold strike had been made at Canyon Creek, in the upper valley of the
southern branch of the John Day River. Canyonville, Oregon would soon boom to
become larger than Portland if one included in the count the population
majority, the Chinese who worked the tailings. Canyonville become the
county seat when Grant County was carved out of Wasco County, which in 1856,
included the major portion of the high dry sagebrush deserts and Douglas Fir
forests across the Cascade Range. from the western one-third of the State characterized
by the lower Columbia River and the Willamette River and Rogue River Valleys
Land of Giants: The Drive to
the Pacific Northwest. 1750-1950. David Lavender. Double Dav 1958
Thus, by 1864, it was again time to gather friends and children
augmented by two, to hitch up the wagons, and blaze a new trail across the arid
south-east corner of Oregon and to enter the southern back door of the upper John Day Valley’ The route to the central eastern portion
of Oregon ran through what is now Klamath County, (no water for irrigated
agriculture) and even dryer, Lake,
Malheur and Harney counties. The trip,
as recalled by Ralph Fisk, took two months.
It was in the
upper John Day Valley that four generations of Fisk men and women were buried
or born. Nathan Willis died in John Day City, 29 October, 1879 from an infected boil on the back of his neck. His son, Nathan
Taylor Fisk, was the father of Daniel W. Fisk and the grandfather of Wayne
Norris Fisk. The later two were born in Grant County, Oregon ---Wayne
in the mill town of Austin, up Dixie, near the Middle Fork of the John Day River. It was in Grant Co. that
the Fisks panned gold, fell timber,
sawed logs, fished the streams , hunted deer, hayed the meadows, planted apple
orchards, milked the cows, cured the bacon, raised and educated their
kids, and petitioned the Columbia Regional United States Army Command and the
Congressional Delegation for
several companies of soldiers to
protect settlers, property and livestock from the migrating and Snake Indians. They
probably voted for A. Lincoln in 1860
and 1864.
It
was the Sumpter Valley Railroad that brought the world to Prairie City and moved
timber for railroad ties from the Blue Mountains to the developing Utah
empire of a Mormon-Scot, David Eccles. His drive, vision and application of
those old scotsmen's tools, honest hard work, banking and steam technology was
personified by a Baker, Oregon based conductor on the Sumpter Valley narrow gage short line, David
Baird. We was known for his burr, handlebar moustache, spotless uniform,
accurate pocket-watch and two sons. One
of the son would become Dean of the University of Oregon Medical School; the other an Oregon State Supreme
Country Justice.
They must have also
been aware of national issues and world events, even in isolated Grant Co.
The Civil War was the issue of the day.
Consider the story of Edward Dickinson Baker,
after whom Baker City, Baker County, Oregon and a son of A. Lincoln were named.
Oregon got both statehood and her first Senator , Col. Edward Baker, a
Republican, in 1859-1860. He had
been a political confidant of his Springfield,
Sangamo County,
Illinois
friend, A. Lincoln. He was the namesake
of Lincoln's second son whose ultimately fatal pulmonary tuberculosis influenced
Lincoln to turn down the offer of an Oregon Territorial Governorship paying $3,000 a year. Baker had been an Illinois legislator, circuit rider,
orator, Indian fighter, poet , and Campbellite adherent. He left a bride to fight in the Blackhawk
War; he left the Congress to fight in the Mexican War; he left the U.S. Senate to fight for the Union during the early days of
the Civil War.
Footnotes:
See the five references to, (Baker, Edward) on a U of O
Knight Library Janus search. Included are documents, monographs and
dissertations in the Oregon and in the Rare Books Collections. e Lincoln. David
Herbert Donald. Charles Warren Prof. Emeritus, American History and American
Civilization, Harvard University. Simon and Schuster, 1995.
Col. Baker was to become the only member of the Senate to be
killed in battle during the Civil War. On October, 21, 1861, seven months after
introducing Lincoln's first inaugural address, and one day after visiting
Lincoln at the White House, "Ned" was killed leading a cavalry charge
against a Confederate position at the Battle of
Ball's Bluff on the Potomac
River near Leesburg, Virginia. Lincoln received the news of the loss of his
friend while making one of his frequent visits the telegraph office for reports
from the front. In that same battle, a future Supreme Court Associate Justice ,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a
Boston Brahmn , received the first of his three Civil War wounds and
became a captive of the Confederates in the company of a Revere and a Lowell.
On Dec. 11, 1862, in Washington D.C., Baker was
eulogized by Illinois, California and Oregon friends, Turnbull, Browning,
McDougall, and Nesmith! The ceremony was held in the black crepe draped U.S.
Senate chamber during a joint session of the new Congress. President Lincoln
attended and wept. Baker's final burial was in Lone Mountain Cemetery, San
Francisco, where he had previously eulogized a friend and political ally,
Senator Broderick who had been killed by journalist and political rival in a
duel. The ceremony was conducted by the First Unitarian Church preacher, David
King Starr, who had harangued the crowds at Union Square. He, like
Baker, helped to deliver San Francisco and California to the Lincoln Republican
Union cause by a narrow margin in the 1860 election.
It was from San
Francisco, where he was a successful and respected trial lawyer during the
vigilante days of the Barbary Coast, Shanghaied sailors, 1000 killings a year
and Vigilance Committees, that Baker sailed from San Francisco Bay to seek
elective office in the newly admitted state of Oregon. His Oregon political
guide and mentor was a Lincoln/Springfield friend, Dr. Anson G. Henry, then of
Lafayette, Yamhill County Oregon. Dr. Henry was serving as a Washington D.C. political
appointee and later became a confidant of the Lincoln family following the
President's assassination .
Footnotes.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Amdel, Bison Book
Addition, University of Nebraska Press 4th Edition. 1994.
Today, part of Baker's San
Francisco legacy is found both south and north of the Golden Gate's towers. The
Gate's south towers,
near to the Presidio, frame the entrance to Lincoln Drive at Baker and
China Beaches near Sea Cliff, Lincoln Park, Lands End and Point Lobos.
On the Marin County side of the bay,
just to the east of
the bridge's north tower is Fort Baker .
In the wind shadow bay side of that tower is located a U.S.C.G. rescue
facility that is well know to Mark Turner. Near by
is one of Damon Fisk’s favorite
play/training grounds,
Mount Tamalpais and the Marin Headlands.
It is here that yet another circle is
closed and a critical cycle is begun; the Golden
Gate is a revolving door facing west to Asia through which pass descendants of
pioneers lured by land and gold, and China Clippers, seekers, adventurers and
explorers to and from the Pacific Rim beyond the California coast. People,
ideas, science, technology, capital, goods and services transported by jet
turbines, electro-diesel engines and digital communications, speed the pace of economic and political change that is
now part of the global marketplace . The speed of that
transformation is multiplied by technologies that supplements, or replaces, the railroads,
the newspaper, the radio, the steamship and the telegraph that helped open the
world to olde Oregon, Grant Co. and the insular John Day Valley to the world.
Businesses and governments
operate at the speed of light
and are instantly accountable to stockholders, responsible to voters,
responsive to polls and customers, reflexive to lobbyists and reactive to changing trends in
the growing global market place. In a word, the Information Age, as
described by Daniel
Bell, is
displacing the Industrial Age just as manufacturing has displaced Agriculture as
the defining expression of the march of applied Science and
Technology harnessed to Energy.
Perhaps
the wise perspective of Princeton Theoretical Physicist & Futurist, Freeman Dyson
is in order. His answer to the question as to what is civilization's most
significant advance is prescient: "Hay", was his answer.
from the John
Day Fossil Beds NM.site
When
you think about it, hay is but another form of stored energy that may be either
actual or potential. The forests, fossil fuels, hydro-potential, nuclear are
additional examples. And what is more "green" than hay?
The
political "Greens" would counter that the marginal value of hay is
diminished by genetic manipulation and gas guzzling John Deere tractors.
So let them reverse the Green Revolution, and bring back the pristine mountain
meadows, the hand sickle, and return women and children to the field to reap and
sow as happy primitives as romantically idealize by J. J. Rousseau.
What ever the case, to
paraphrase Ben Franklin's sage advice: "A prudent man
should seek a happy wife, ready cash, a faithful dog and a full barn."
These wise words will ring true through the ages, particularly in the northern
temperate climate zones. But enough of that heady stuff.
From
the Heart: To
Mark & Heather-- Much Happiness. To the rest of the sixth generation
and their friends--Much Success. To the seven
generation-- a Toast to the
Future:
"May
your barn always be filled with the passionate energy of youth, a mature
courage tempered by experience, and prudence sufficiently informed by the wisdom of the
ages ."
To
All, the Best,
Doug
Fisk, MD
webscribe2
dfisk@student.santarosa.edu
WORTH READING:
The
poem IF
by Rudyard Kipling in
PDF format.
FODOR'S EXPLORING CHINA
BOEDEKER'S CHINA CRADLES OF CIVILIZATION series Ancient Culture, Modern Land University of Oklahoma Press 1994
Robert E. Muravchich, Associate Director of the Fairbank Center for East Asian
Research. Harvard University and the Peabody Museum . See JKF
at the John King Fairbank site.
The
Conservative Mind
Russell Kirk Regency Press 7th Edition 1995
Printing Neoconservatism Irving
Kristol Free Press 1995 Almanac of
American Politics 1996 Michael Barone National Journal Press
Congressional Quarterly
Politics in America 1996 (Book and
Mac/DOS CD-ROM
with a
searchable
Adobe Acrobat, pdf file
And Then There was the Land. Victor David
Hanson, Prof. Classics, Fresno State University.
branded
by webscribe 2, Doug Fisk, MD , for IT3