WPA Interviews

INTERVIEW

Interview with Silas V. Barr.

My name is Silas V. Barr. I was born on March 13th, 1855 in the hills to the north of present Crawfordsville and in the Crawfordsville School District. Most of my life has been spent either in the Crawfordsville Neighborhood where I was born or on the home farm where I now live near Sweet Home. I have therefore lived practically all of my eighty-five years in one community. That should give a man some knowledge of its history.

I have seen the town of Sweet Home grow from a mere mountain settlers community to the third town in size in Linn County. (Some claim it is now second in size.)

The town of Sweet Home was settled first by the Ames Family, the Morris Family, the Moss Family and near at hand the Splawn Family. There was also a family near here in early days-named Turnbull. Of these families the Ames, Morrises, Splawns and Turnbulls were all Mormons or Latter Day Saints. The Mormons were quite active here in the early days and held meetings in various residences, halls and public buildings but they never actually built a church-house of their own. Now most of them are gone but a few descendants of the Ames families still cling to their old faith.

My own people belonged to the Christian Church and that is the church which I still attend in Sweet Home.

The Sweet Home neighborhood had many active Baptist Church Members in early days. There were many Baptist Meetings held in this region, most of them by Elder Joab Powell and his helpers. On the part of the farm where my home is situated there was once a Baptist Church called "The Liberty Church."This was organized at a very early date but I do not know the year. (Oct. 3, 1853, Ed.) The church was built on a corner of the Oliver H. P. Derby donation claim which I now own. There are also a few graves on the old church grounds, all that remains of a pioneer cemetery.

I can remember the old 'Liberty Church' well. It was a large "box" building and stood near the center of the old church grounds on a level tract of land just north of the road leading up the hill to my house. The cemetery was on the hillside further south. There are a few graves still there although many of the bodies have been taken away and reburied in the Nye Cemetery further down the hill. There are still the remains of a picket fence, which surrounded the grave of William Morris, a ten-year old boy who died of diphtheria in 1861. The fence is now rotted and fallen and the gravestone has been set against an oak tree a rod or so down the slope from the grave. There is also another stone leaning against the same tree, that of Carrol Morris, a brother of the first. He died in 1866 as an infant, but in spite of the fact that his monument is beside that of his brother he is not actually buried here. The facts are as follows- The child, Carrol Morris died and was buried in what we call the Fern Ridge Cemetery, which is also on my land but a mile further up the hill. A few years later his people had a gravestone made and took it up to place it at his grave but in the meantime the brush and grass had so overgrown things that they were unable to locate the exact spot. They therefore brought the stone down to the Liberty Church Cemetery and set it up beside that of his older brother. (These were the children of A.P. Morris whose donation claim was next east of the church site.)

There were many meetings held in the old Liberty Church and people would come and attend and camp for weeks. During one revival or protracted meeting there were so many converts that it became difficult to take them all to the river for baptism. Joab Powell therefore secured some planks and built a big baptistery just below a spring on the church grounds. The flow from the spring filled the baptistery and did very well, saving many trips to the river. That old baptistery remained there for many years long after the church had been disorganized and the building torn down. When I was a boy we used to use it for a swimming pool. The old spring, and spring run can still be seen there north of the site of the old building.

While speaking of cemeteries, I should tell you of the other cemetery on my place. It is nearly a mile west of my home and on land that was originally a part of my father's land claim. All of that country was, and still is, known as the "Fern Ridge Country."The early settlers there were my father, Jesse Barr, the Lewis Family of whom Fielding Lewis was the father, the Lewis Tycer family, the James Arnold family, John Josslyn, E.H. West and John H. Wright. All of these came early enough to secure donation claims.

The neighborhood cemetery for these families was on a portion of my father 's claim, in Section 34. There are still three graves there, of which I know but like the Liberty Church Cemetery, many bodies have been removed to the more convenient Nye Cemetery.

In the early days all the roads followed the foothills or climbed up over the ridges. This seems foolish now but there was a good reason for it. First, the settlers lived on the ridges where there was good spring water and plentiful timber. Naturally they opened the roads to their hill homes. Second, the level lowlands were so undrained and mucky that in winter such roads became impassible. The hill roads on the other hand remained dry and passable. People also laugh today because so many of the old roads pass straight up over the most abrupt hills instead of angling up at an easy grade. That, too, was common sense. A load going straight up a steep hill is hard to pull but at least it keeps right side up, while if it slants up the side of a hill it would surely tip over a hundred times before reaching the summit. A grad up the easy slope of a hillside looks sensible now but think of the amount of dirt removed to make such a grade level and safe. The pioneers with only hand shovels had neither the time or strength to open up wide, easy grades, so they went the sensible way-Hooked many yoke of oxen to their loads and went straight over the ridges.

I was, however, telling you about the Fern Ridge Cemetery. The persons buried there whose graves still remain are-Carrol Morris, the child of whom I already spoke. His grave is not marked as his stone is beside his brothers in Liberty Cemetery. Besides there is Fielding Lewis, a very early settler. He died in 1866, ages 55 years. His wife, Rachel B. Lewis lies beside him. She was one of the earliest burials there as she died in 1854.

(Mr. Barr took the worker over the hills to this cemetery. The way was over high ridges and following an old pioneer road. Of this road, Mr. Barr said)-

This is the very old road which used to run over Fern Ridge and was used by the settlers here on their way to and from Lebanon. I can remember when the road was much used by ox teams bringing in supplies. Now the public roads follow the valleys and this is just an old trace through my fields and pastures, only used by myself in bringing in crops and in hauling wood.

When the county opened up modern roads through the country the Fern Ridge Cemetery was left far to one side and it became most inconvenient to bury there so the old cemetery was discontinued. This old trace which we are following dates back to at least 1855. We had mail every two weeks at Lebanon. Usually it was brought into Sweet Home Valley by some neighbor who went out to market. Someone would go out to trade and would get the mail for all the neighbors. Within a day or two after they returned the news would sift through the settlement that so or so had mail for us. Then we would ride over and get it.

This region has always been a stock range. The hill land is good but mostly better for pasture than for crops. We have raised sheep and cattle here all these years. I have specialized on good Durham's as better than jerseys. My young bulls sell at from $40 to $50 dollars, each which is a good profit while jersey males bring almost nothing. We also milk some cattle, the best of the herd, while the poorer cows are given the calves of the better ones to raise-two calves to each cow.

Sheep are profitable here, too. They live out and need little care. In the early days a big, wide branched fir tree with a rail fence about it was about the only sheep-barn that we needed.

In the early days the Indians came through here and had their camps throughout the hills. They never gave us any actual trouble except petty stealing but we were often in doubt as to their friendliness. Finally the Government took them away to the reservation but there was one old chief who was called Blackhawk who came back two or three times. He had always been quite friendly to the whites so the Government agents finally let him stay here. During the Indian troubles in Southern Oregon Blackhawk often told father that if the local Indians started to rise he would give warning. Father always believed that he was sincere in his promise. Blackhawk always told us that all this land on our old claim and back in the Fern Ridge country was his "Illahe". When Chief Blackhawk finally died I think that he was buried on the ancient Indian burying grounds on the Blankenship farm between here and Waterloo.

Deer used to run freely over all these hills. Some were black-tails but more were the white-tailed deer. The Whitetails were permanent residents here, and some of the black-tails, too, but most of the black-tails only stayed about in winter and went far back into the mountains in summer. There are a few whitetails still left here, but not many. Last summer there was a bunch of local black-tails on this farm but I have not seen them since the hunting season. Perhaps they were cleaned out then.

As a boy I kept a bunch of hounds to run deer. A man named John Lewis who had a claim next south would help get them. He would come to me and say, "Si, better take your hounds out today."I would start the hounds and they would usually run the deer down near Lewis' house. Lewis would shoot one and give me half of the meat. In that way we kept both families supplied. This John Lewis was a son of the Fielding Lewis who is buried on Fern Ridge. There is a grandson of Fielding Lewis still living at Portland. If I am not mistaken his name is also John. He was County Treasurer of Multnomah County for over thirty years.

My father's name was Jesse Barr. He came to Oregon in 1853. He was born in Tennessee, near Nashville on October 18, 1818. Mother's name was Anna Kirk Barr. She was born in Tennessee. Mother and father were married in Tennessee and afterwards moved to Iowa. From Iowa they came on to Oregon.

After reaching Oregon mother and father lived in the hills above Crawfordsville for a few years and there I was born. Father was a miller by trade and he worked for R. C. Finley who owned the pioneer mill just below Crawfordsville. The first mill there was built in 1848 and was only a little affair. The present building was erected about 1853. The first little building was washed out by the high waters of 1861-1862. Even after I was a big boy and father owned this land near Sweet Home he would go down and work for Finley every fall until the first rush of the new wheat had been ground.

In 1855 father bought out the squatter rights of a man named Darby. This was not the O. H. P. Darby spoken of elsewhere, but a brother. Father had raised a good crop of wheat on the place near Crawfordsville where he first lived. He hauled it to Corvallis by ox team and sold it paying Darby $300 of the proceeds for his claim. Darby then went back to Missouri. We moved on the Donation Claim on the 28th day of March, 1855. Perhaps I should say that my parents moved on to the claim for I was then only fifteen days old.

Concerning my parents crossing of the plains, it was in the main quite uneventful. Indian troubles in plenty but no actual attacks. There were a great many buffalo killed by the emigrants but not so many as they needed for meat as it was quite dangerous to hunt far from the train. One of the members of that train was J. K. Weatherford, for years a prominent attorney.

He was just a lad at the time. (Note-This may be a mistake. Other information indicates that Weatherford did not come until ten years later.) "I still own about one half of my father's original claim. The other half went to others of his heirs. However, I also now own a large part of the Oliver H. P. Darby Claim, and it is on that land that I now actually reside. Darby sold his claim to Cyrus Vawter, a son-in-law of R. C. Finley the miller. (Vawter was also a miller.) Vawter sold to a man named Story, and I purchased the land from Story. I now own 625 acres of land and can truly be called "land poor."While Cyrus Vawter owned this land he deeded a tract 4x10 chains in dimension to the Liberty Baptist Church for Church and cemetery purposes. That was on March 2, 1860. The tract lay at the extreme northeast corner of the claim and the longest dimension, (10 chains) lay along the east border of the claim.

None of my father's relatives ever came to Oregon so far as I ever learned. Father was almost illiterate, so never wrote any letters back to his people. During the Civil War everything was in confusion back at his old home and all trace was lost of the relatives there.

In my father's family there were six sisters and five brothers. All of the brothers are now dead save myself and one other.

The brothers were-

James Barr.

William Barr.

Silas V. Barr. (The informant).

John Barr.

Marion Barr.

The Sisters were-

Emeline Barr Moss.

Nancy Barr Harrison. (Wife of John Harrison of Brownsville.) Catharine Barr Hamilton. (Lives south of Lebanon.) Ollie Barr Rice.

Backy Barr.

(Note-since this interview was carried on in the woods where Mr. Barr was cutting wood no birth or death dates were available.) Mr. Barr, though almost 85 years of age is remarkably vigorous and active. He was found in his pasture busily engaged in clearing land from oak and hazel brush, a task not easy for the strongest young man.)

Mr. Barr was married to Miss Lulu Hamilton who was born in Oregon Jan. 31, 1874. She is a daughter of Mr. Asher Hamilton who came to Oregon in 1864. To this marriage were born three children as follows-

Gertrude Barr Smith. Lives on a farm adjoining the Barr Farm.

Mar Barr Cross. Lives in Sweet Home.

Victor Barr. Oldest of family and only son. Lives near Burns, Oregon.

Copyright © 2000 Patricia Dunn. All rights reserved. This transcription may not be reproduced in any media without the express written permission by the author. Permission has been given by the Transcriber to publish on the LGS web site.