Salem Heritage Network
James Denny, one of the early settlers, thought this community ought to be called “Sublimity” because of the fine vista and sublime scenery in the hills around the town. The same is true today: on our visits we have been impressed by the peaceful quality of the town and the beauty of the farming community...
During the Christmas season of 2012, we took advantage of a break in local rain showers to visit Turner, hoping to take photographs when the sun broke through the clouds. We took 1-5, driving south out of Salem, and turned into Delaney Road at exit 248...
In our first visit to Jefferson, two historic buildings on Main Street were the focus of our attention. Although we were eager to see the volunteer-organized Community Center, the 1854 Jacob Conser house, just across the street, is the most recognized site in Jefferson...
The directions lay beside me on the car seat as I drove to my appointment in Woodburn. At the intersection, turn right, then left at the stoplight and so on. But still, I became lost. The driver of a trash truck was sympathetic and told me how to find my destination...
Just consider the word History: his story. That’s true, isn’t it? The heroes, adventurers and destiny-changers are most often the men of the past. But women have played the same dramatic roles. In nineteenth century Oregon, women transplanted to this western wilderness from comfortable homes in the civilization of the eastern “States”, lived in considerable physical hardship: death in childbirth being frequent. ..
Undated drawing shows front of mission. Almost thirty years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition, four desperate Northwest Indians trekked half way across the continent to ask General Clark for his “Book of Heaven”, hoping to save their people from disease and poverty...
On July 16, 1837 a triple wedding took place in a grove of fir trees, perhaps like this one, near the mission settlement. Two of these couples are well-known in Oregon history, the other largely ignored. Jason Lee conducted the first ceremony uniting Susan Downing and Cyrus Shepherd, the most gifted of the mission teachers...
Two of the first five women who came to the mission in 1837 brought three small children. We know little of Rachel Beardsley Beers. She married on November 17, 1830 and came to Oregon with her husband Anson and their three young children. A description of the couple was made by Dr...
Most of us have had an acquaintance (or member of the family) like Margaret Jewitt Smith. She was, to put it in more a modern-day term, “ahead of her time”. Even today, when a woman in America has more choices in her future than Margaret could have imagined, there are those who seek unconventional paths...
Elvira Johnson had been engaged to Rev. Henry Kirk Perkins before she sailed to Oregon. In November of 1837, they were married by Rev. Leslie. She was described as “a willing worker, amiable, well-thought-of, and a person who made every effort to be useful”...