“We Live in a Log Cabbin”

Mary M. Colby

INTRODUCTION

Millions of persons would never dream that two of their private letters, written in utmost confidence to close relatives, would be published and thus made part of their country's history. With the following documents, a very quiet personal experience is revealed in public print a century and a third after being written.

Mary M. Colby wrote the first letter on May 6, 1850, from St. Joseph, Missouri, as she, her husband and two children passed through the City on their way west. It was written to her brother and sister in Ohio. She wrote the second letter nearly two years later on February 8, 1852, from the new western land where they were living. The home address was “Lebenon,” Oregon, a new little town in Marion County a few miles east of Salem, the capital. That Lebanon lasted only a few years. The area where it lay is now rolling farm land.1

Mary Colby was 44 years old when she crossed the plains in 1850.2 She grew up in New England, as she was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, and lived most of her early life in Haverhill, Massachusetts. She was born Mary M. Edwards to John and Betsey Holden Edwards.3 She and Elias Colby were married on June 6, 1841, in Bristol, New Hampshire, after which they made the long trek to Uhrichsville, Ohio, where they farmed.

At the time of the 1850 covered wagon journey to Oregon, there were two Colby children: Frances Ann, age 8, and Allen James, age 6. The little boy lived only a few years after their arrival on the West Coast. The Oregon Statesman newspaper of Salem reported on April I, 1856, that Allen J. Colby had died on March 24, “aged about 12 years,”

Elias lived an active public life in the Colby's new Willamette Valley home. The Oregon archives are replete with references to his political activities, but with a bare reference to Mary in a census return. Elias was a Democrat5 and was made postmaster of Lebanon for a short time.6 He represented Marion County in the Oregon House of Representatives from 1853 to 1857 and in the State Senate for a term following that.

Their daughter, Frances, was married in her parents' home on April 3, 1862, to a prominent political figure, Blair Forward.7 He had been United States Marshal and at the time of the wedding was the Marion County Surveyor.8

The Marion County probate files reveal that Elias F. Colby died on April 29, 1884, leaving to his widow an estate of $12,243.15, “said widow” being “aged and in feeble health.” Mary M. Colby herself died at her home on November 24, 1889, exactly 39 years after their arrival in Oregon in 1850.9

The two letters reproduced here are located in the collection of the Haverhill Public Library, through the courtesy of whose director, Howard W. Curtis, we. have been given permission to publish them. We learned of the correspondence on reading a quote from Mary Colby in Lilian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey (New York, 1982), pages 155-57.

1 This is not the same Lebanon as the one in Linn County, Oreg., today.

2 We have so far found no record of Mary Colby's birth date. This age figure was worked out by studying the Federal Census figures for 1860, 1870, and 1880.

3 Letter from Haverhill Public Library, Howard W. Curtis, director, May 19, 1982.

4 Place of marriage from Land Claim Record, Claim No. 541, Marion County Oreg. Arch. Date of marriage from above cited letter from the Haverhill Public Library.

5 Salem, Oregon Statesman, April 17, 1860.

6 Ibid., Nov. 14, 1854.

7 Ibid., April 7. 1862.

8 Many references to Blair Forward in the Oreg. Arch.

9 Probate File No. 1185, Marion County Courthouse, Salem, Oreg.