Excerpted from Love, Captain Lewis, Oregon Historical Society, MSS 1509. Pages 1, 5-7.

MANUSCRIPT OF CAPTAIN LEWIS LOVE

(Commenced writing Nov. 1, 1899 and finished Nov. 29, 1899. Dictated to his granddaughter, Harriet LaVelle Peacher)

PREFACE

Captain Love was born in New York, Chautauqua Co., June 12, 1818. After living there till he was 15 years of age he moved to Fox River Co., Illinois in the year 1833. From there he moved to Missouri in 1845 and crossed the plains to come West in 1849. His mother was part Pennsylvania Dutch and part Yankee; she was born in New York and her name before she was married was Jane Demont (deMott). She was the mother of 6 boys and 2 girls all of which are dead (Nov. 1899) except Captain Lewis Love.

Mrs. Love, Captain Lewis Love’s wife was born in Tennessee, near a little town called Spy and moved to Illinois in 1833 where she met Mr. Love and they were married in 1836. Mrs. Love’s Mother’s name was Edwards before she was married and Mrs. Love’s name was Griffith. Her Mother was from Tennessee. She was born before the Revolution and has been dead 70 years.

There was born to Captain Lewis Love and wife six boys and 2 girls, namely Mary C. Love, Melinda Love, Green Love, Lewis Love, Fred Love, William Love, Jeremiah and Joseph beside four children which they raised but never adopted. There was three boys drowned, namely William Love and __________ and __________ (Names not given in the manuscript for the latter two)

CIRCUMSTANCES CROSSING PLAINS

1. The train which Captain Lewis Love crossed the plains in started from Lawrence Co., Mo., and when they got thirty miles north of Ft. Scott, they came to high water called the Osage River.There was only three families together at that time, so they went to work putting in timbers to make a raft to cross about 2:00 P.M. Two Cherokee Indians rode up and asked us what we were doing. They were on their way to the gold fields in California. We told them we putting in timbers to build a raft to cross the high water, so they said for us to turn our teams out and their train would come up that evening with 35 wagons and 85 men. So we waited till next morning, then went to work building the raft.
2. We got it all together in good shape in a stream called Sugar Creek, this being backwater from the Osage River. We floated down to the Osage so as to be able to cross both streams at once. There we found the river to be very swift, too much so to hold against the current. The we wondered how we was going to cross. Finally Capt. Love suggested that we take grapevines and make ropes. Two or three of the Indians kept interfering till the main body drove the others off and told them to stay until it was time for them to cross. Capt. Love took one man with him and they pounded the vines till they could be beat to make a cable. They made a cable to reach a quarter of a mile and forked it down near the raft to keep it from swinging around so as to pull across straight. We then swam over and took ropes to pull us in the direction we wanted to go. We put one wagon on the raft at a time and each trip the raft would sink knee deep till we struck the swiftest part of the river, then the raft would rise on top and float from there over. We commenced taking things across at 2:00 P.M. and that night at 10:00 P.M. everything was over safe. From that on the Cherokees became so much attached to me they would ride three or four miles to see me. . .

. . . We had to pull his wagon up all the hills, so that night we appointed a committee, I being one of them, to inform him that he must throw out some of those things or we would not help him any more. He refused to do so. Then I told his mother to get into my wagon, and if I reached my destination she would too. She said no, it would be too much trouble. Then a Mr. Person spoke up and said she could ride in his wagon part of the time. She refused the second offer so we had to proceed without them.

By this time provisions were getting scarce and we had no time to waste. Immediately after we left them we came to a mountain that took 14 yoke of oxen to pull up one wagon. The side of the mountain was full of Indians, some on foot and some on horses, watching us get up the mountain. After we all got to the top we proceeded on our journey, and before the night Morgan passed us driving his oxen without the wagon. He sent his mother and provisions and other things with Indians down to the mouth of the Deschutes River. When we reached there a man by the name of Coile went down on the bank of the river and found the old lady in a little tent with the bedding and everything else she had left was on the forward wheels of the wagon. He took her in his wagon and hauled her to The Dalles where she found her son.

Deschutes River was quite deep and when we crossed the Indians acted as guides. We put a rope around the forward oxens’ horns, as the route was somewhat crooked. After I crossed another team started and it got about half way across and refused to go any farther. I got on my mule and took my good yoke of leaders and drove in and hitched them on ahead and pulled them out. In that way we had quite a time getting the oxen turned around in the water as it was very swift. The people in the wagon were so dizzy they could hardly sit in the seat. The Old Methodist National Bldg. was still standing when we reached The Dalles. But there was no white people except one Catholic priest amongst the Indians. There we left our wagons and hired Indians to take us to the Cascades in canoes.

We went on the river and got a small flat boat and brought it to the foot of the Cascades, and packed everything on our backs to this boat, the distance being about 5 miles. We then went on down in the boat which leaked so bad we had to keep three or four men bailing all the time to keep it from sinking.

At the foot of Cape Horn Mts. is where the last bite of bread was eaten in the train. I had been providing provisions for part of the members in the train for nearly 300 miles. That night we came to where we could get plenty to eat again. The first house we came to after crossing the plains was at Washougal and the next one we came to was at Ft. Scott. The man’s name was White.

When we got to the Cascades we learned how the Indians made their beds. The shore was very rocky so they would throw out the rocks from a place big enough to lay in and make the sand level and that was their resting place.

Before leaving The Dalles I hired an Indian at my own expense to drive the cattle down the trail as I had about 1/3 of the stock in the train. We crossed the cattle about 10 miles below the Cascades and next day we landed at Cas. with stock.

The next winter I went to work at a sawmill owned by a man named Parker about a mile and a half from where we landed. He paid me $5.00 per day and I agreed to work for him. A few days later I was offered work at another mill at Milwaukie at $7.00 per day. But as I had promised to work that winter, I stuck to my job. After we were at Parker’s a few days a man and myself took a skift (skiff?) and went to Vancouver for provisions. We got plenty of flour and 30 pounds of pork from soldiers’ rations. A barrel of thin syrup and a little butter so strong that it cured me from eating butter. We got the flour from the Hudson Bay Co. six miles above Vancouver. After we left there a heavy wind came up and while we was crossing the river the water kept splashing in the boat, and the other man became frightened. He was pulling and I was steering and he quit, so I said, “Pull, you devil, pull, or we will go down!” So he pulled like a good fellow till we reached the bank. Then we pulled on up near the bank till we got to Washougal. After we passed there a little ways the river became so swift that two Indians had to get in and help us out. One got on each side and pulled us over the worst part. Then we proceeded to where we was going without any help.

There was only two men in the country that had any stock before we came there. One was Mr. Parker and the other an old Hudson Bay fellow that came to Vancouver in 1824. They had drove their cattle off into the rushes over Cape Horn Mts., and immediately afterwards there came a two-foot snow. The river froze over and we had nothing to live on, but that flour and syrup that winter. Although I had five men boarding with me but they was glad to get what we did. We had bread and molasses for breakfast, and the reverse for dinner and supper.

In the spring I moved in a little log house joining my farm on Columbia Slough and soon after we all took the Mountain or Camp Fever, and also ran out of provisions, yet we had good friends. The year before we moved there, there was a good crop of potatoes raised on the place, and that year there was a few volunteer potatoes came up. Our friends, the wood rats, would dig them up and bring them in a pile them up in the log cabin and we would steal them from the rats and make our soup of them. This was our living for some time. We had no doctor only from the Hudson Bay Co. and he charged $50.00 per trip besides his ferriage which brought his bill to $52.00. Between him and the wood rats we weathered it through.

My farm was then occupied by a man by the name of Webb. He wanted me to buy the place on account of him going to the mines at Snake River. He was almost a total stranger and wanted $1000.00 for the place and stock, which consisted of two yoke of oxen and 3 cows. I finally made a deal with him. I paid $300 down and gave him my note for $700 payable in 18 months. After the bargain was closed and the note given, he went out and dug up a good-sized bucket full of money and wanted me to take care of it and also the note I had given him. I told him “No,” and he urged me so that finally I told him I would not like to have anybody know it was about the house. He said I was the only one he would like to keep it and that no one would ever know from him that I had it. The money consisted of Mexican dollars and gold coins. The gold was in $8.00 and $16.00 pieces called single loons and double loons. He said that if he never came back I would be that much better off. I did not see him any more for 18 months, although the mines he spoke of had never been discovered.

Soon after that Capt.Banburgan and Bradfords above the Cascades brought emigration down on a boat to the Cascades and took cattle for pay, and bought also a large number of cattle and sent them down for me to sell, which gave me something of a start. I also took jobs of work, times of being good. The old settlers had been to the mines and came back with quite a little money. They being too good to work after making a fine start. The first summer I cleared $8.25 per day outside of my commissions on sales. Lumber at that time was worth $100.00 per thousand feet, and I went to work hauling lumber from Will’s Mill to the river. When I went to work on Monday, I would take a cedar saw log on my wagon and get it sawed and Saturday when I went home I would buy a little more lumber. I was in need of a house very bad, so I went to work and hewed out sills and studding, and cut white fir timber, and made clap boards and shaved them for siding. When I got it up and painted very few people ever noticed the difference from sawed lumber. At that time it was the best looking house in the country. I spent a great deal of my time boring holes in burnt down trees and burning them up to clear a place to live on. After I had burnt off a great deal of timber in that way, I took a notion to cut the timber in saw logs and bring it to Portland, which consisted of about 15 or 20 buildings at that time. It was expressed along the river that I was a big fool for trying to get out saw logs when there wasn’t a boat on the river to tow with. But I had quite a number of oxen. I thought I could put the logs in the Slough and raft them as cheap as I could burn them.

There came a high water the next summer, and I had in about 300,000 ft. and started them for Portland. We kept close around Gattens Point and went out into the Willamette opposite Sauvies Island. Before starting I went to Vancouver and got four old government tents, put up masts on the rafts and stayed them with lines and stretched these tents up for sails. In a little over four hours we landed in Portland. Soon after this there was quite a number of other fools in the same business. Logging was carried on all along the Slough. I then took a contract for quite a large number of logs, the pay of which was to be part sawing and part money. When I got almost ready to start the logs to Portland, I received a word that the parties were broke. So I came to Portland and went to Mr. Mills the contractor and told him I heard he was broke, and told him I could not make the contract on those conditions. Then I went back and got my logs ready and brought them to Portland. So he offered to let me run the mill a month free. I told him I would not start it for a month’s run at all. He then wanted to sell me the mill. I think I made about four bargains with him before he would stand to it. I finally bought the mill to save myself on the logs, the raft being fully 3/4 of a mile long. I ran the mill a while, then sold out mill and logs, there being $6,000 due me. They kept insisting for me to wait longer and longer for the money, till I waited six years and had to take my pay in greenbacks which were only worth 50 cents on the dollar.

Before there was any steamers here and also before this logging contract, I took up a contract to bring up logs in the winter time. I think they were to be at Portland some time in January. I was not much acquainted with currents here and during this time there came a raise of about four or five feet in the Willamette, and I first thought I was not going to be able to get the logs to Portland. I came in and told the parties I didn’t think I could quite fulfill my promise on account of the raise in the river. So they said they would take them any time I could get them here. I went and bought a coil and a half of rope and spliced it together and pinned some logs together and made a windlass with a long sweep. I put that in a boat and would go up stream with it the length of the line. Put two men on the sweep to make it fast, then go back and take turns at Captain, and one man to coil up the rope. We brought that up the river against a pretty strong current, making about 3/4 of a mile a day, and we reached Portland in 16 days.

In 1875 I went into the merchandise business in Portland and had about the largest retail store in town. After running it some time I became too weakly to attend it, so had to put a man in charge . . .