Willamette Forks Ride

Before Coburg was a town, the hoped-for town was a couple of miles closer to Eugene, a bit west, and the cemetery I went to today was called West Point Cemetery, and was on the land of William Tyler Vaughan. I will have to go back and check these "facts" to make sure I have it right, but in looking at the land, I felt like I was right there in the minds of those earliest settlers when they pulled their wagons to a halt.

That big hill I passed so many times on the freeway that signaled the entrance to my Eugene home, the one with the columnar basalt surface that looks so interesting, and is probably the result of much mining, overlooks the land in a protective way. The freeway runs through that part of the valley just like a constant river, but in the little graveyard I could hear the kinglets in the incredibly large old Doug fir that sits right in the center of the plots, lying quietly in the shade of the Coburg Hills.

William Tyler Vaughan and his wife Phebe still lie there, buried over a century ago. Uncle Billy's son Thomas J. Vaughan and his wife Elizabeth are there, too, with a bigger headstone. Another of William T.'s sons, John Quincy, is also buried there with his wife, Flora.

John Quincy was interviewed by Fred Lockley and told the very amusing story of his father's original trip out west in 1845. They were living in Missouri when a neighbor asked Uncle Billy to accompany him for a couple of days to help him handle his large cattle herd. Apparently after two days he was tempted to take the whole trip, although he didn't want to leave "the old woman" without any money, so someone was sent back with some money he borrowed to tide her over until he came back. He said he would be back in a couple of years, and if he liked Oregon, they would move there. This train turned out to be the lost wagon train that took the Meek Cutoff, about which much has been written. Despite the difficult journey, he was committed to Oregon.

William Tyler Vaughan

He had nine children at the time, and in farm families all children worked, so with his large group of sons, he may not have been so necessary to the family that they couldn't get along without him, but of course I wonder how Phebe felt about it. Looking at their photos, I wonder if maybe he was irascible and some amount of trouble. In any case, he did return and in 1847 the whole family arrived in the Willamette Valley. According to family history Phebe Hazlett Vaughan was English, and was tall, stately and dignified, wrote a perfect hand, and dressed elegantly in silk and satin. On their trip west he brought the first purebred sheep to the Willamette Valley, though they left Missouri with 258 sheep and had only 100 when they got to Oregon. After less than a year on their 640 acres just over the Lane County line in Linn County, William was off to Sutter's Mill in the Gold Rush of 1849. He returned with a fortune, and went again with his two oldest sons to California, twice. They apparently made almost $20,000 mining gold, which no doubt funded their subsequent land purchases.

The land he chose was a peninsula next to the river, and somewhere I have a map of the donation land claim. Thomas later bought another 320 acres inside Lane County. I have a lot of questions about the Vaughans, and it was exciting in a quiet way to see their graves and imagine all of them there, living and dead. The big fir in the center was most likely one of the original trees on the plot, so all of them stood in its shade as I did. Six hundred and forty acres is a huge tract, so all of the land around the cemetery was theirs, at first.

Angeline Baber Vaughan

Floyd G. Vaughan was another of William T.'s sons,and must have stayed home to farm when the older young men went to California. His wife, Angeline Baber, was blind, and he had a special seat in the wagon for her, but when she was 47 she fell from the wagon and was killed. Her grave is there, and I expected to find some of her children buried there, but there were no other headstones near her. He went on to marry Miranda and have more children, including Grace and Bilyeu, and bought property near the Huddleston DLC, which later included my little piece.

Even though Coburg is only eight or ten miles from Eugene, it was a strenuous ride for me, as I am quite out of shape, but despite the traffic on the way back, I thoroughly enjoyed the day. I didn't even look at any antiques, so I have a reason to go back. I guess they have a Heritage festival in February, so I'll have to see what that's about. There may be a lot of Vaughan heritage still in Coburg, or at least I can imagine it to be so. I can find all kinds of old stuff and imagine it was theirs. There are also many descendants, and other associated families like the Barbers to look at. My aunt Lud used to work for a John Barber, an attorney. Maybe we are closer than we think to our history. I keep running across these family names, shared by people I know, whom I have never asked about their heritage. So many things to investigate!