1852 on the Oregon Trail - The Wapello Train

Profile manager: April Dauenhauer [send private message]

The goal of this free page is to create and/or improve profiles of members of the 1852 Oregon Trail wagon train from Wapello County, Iowa. This wagon train has the advantage of being in the Early Oregonians database created and archived by the state of Oregon; and also the the land Patents created by the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 and issued by the Bureau of Land Management. Oregon achieved statehood 14 Feb 1859, which was the deadline for the Donation Land Claim Act.

Right now this project just has one member, me. I am April Dauenhauer. I want to honor our ancestors who sacrificed and labored to create new farms in Oregon Territory.

Here are some of the tasks that I think need to be done. I'll be working on them, and would love to have you join in on any part that interests you.

• I have a working list of people who may have been on the train. More information can confirm or exclude their names. Can you suggest any more ways to discover the members of the wagon train?

• This Free Page is to encourage good profiles for people known to have been on the wagon train. Towards that goal, I hope to collect source references which are especially useful in understanding what it was really like for the pioneers on the Oregon Trail. See the first entry under Sources, below, for an example. (All are free).

• Will you join me? Please post a comment here on this page, in G2G using the project tag, or send me a private message. Thanks!

Sources

• Montgomery, Donna M. Wojcik, The Brazen Overlanders of 1845, 1976, Donna M Wojcik, publisher, Portland, Oregon. Free at Internet Archive

• On Raising and Training Oxen to Pull Wagons, This is a must read for Oregon Trail fans. How did that work, really? Oxen pulling wagons up hills and down hills, through rivers -- can you picture it? Read this and you will never look at those oxen the same again!

• Search the Early Oregonian Database. Shows who arrived, date, birth/death dates/places, relationships, Donation Land Claim number, list of databases used/searched to create profile

• Search the Bureau of Land Management database for your ancestor.

• Nemec, Bethany, c. 2019, Oregon Trail Mileposts, End of the Oregon Trail museum, Oregon City. This five page summary of mileposts on the Oregon Trail is an excellent resource for anyone wishing to get a pioneer's perspective on the Oregon Trail.

• Search Old Newspapers at Library of Congress

• Search Oregon Newspapers from 1846 to 2022, courtesy of University of Oregon at Eugene.

• Emigrants Diaries and Journals - Search these by the year traveled, and many other sections in this Oregon pioneers group of Internet pages

• The Magnificent Oxen at Centennial Farms

• Linn County, Oregon, Genealogy by FamilySearch. My family settled in Linn County; substitute your own family location.

• Oregon State Library, Oregon Trail Emigrant Resources (Oregon Trail Bibliography)

True Fiction

• Lead Me Home: Hardship and Hope on the Oregon Trail by Theresa Hupp, 2015 A wonderfully accurate, yet entertaining, story of the Oregon Trail. Highly recommend.

1852 Wapello County Iowa Wagon Train

The average wagon train had 100 to 200 wagons traveling together under one 'wagon master'. The first event for the travelers was to get themselves, their wagons, and their animals, over the Missouri river, to the west bank.

• Ages listed are how old they would have been in 1852, the year of their Oregon Trail Journey.

Names Below are Certain on the Wagon Train

Richard EVANS, 54 years, m. to Nancy

Nancy (Toone) EVANS, 54 years

Mary Ann Kyniston, 7 years

Edward EVANS, 22 years, son of Richard and Nancy

Mary Ann (EVANS) Sherrill, 19 years, married daughter of Richard and Nancy

James Sherrill, 22 years, Mary Ann's hsuband

Mary Jane Holloway, 1 year old, Mary Ann's niece

William L. Holloway, 25 years, father of baby, Mary Jane. William's wife,

Eliza Jane (EVANS) Holloway died, of childbirth 1851 or Oregon Trail in 1852

Jacob Thompson, 33 years, m. to Rhoda

Rhoda (EVANS) Thompson, 28 years

James Thompson, 7 years

Amelia Caroline EVANS, 16 years, m. James Parker Dec. 30, 1852 in Marion Co., Oregon

James Parker, age 32, m. Amelia Caroline Evans 3 months after arriving Oregon

Names Below are Probably on the Wagon Train

William P. Leach, 32 years, m. to Polly Ann (d. 6 Jun 1902)

Polly Ann (Martin) Leach, 31 years

(Polly Ann's sister Virginia Ellen (Martin) EVANS m. David EVANS, son of Richard & Nancy): David and Virginia EVANS stayed in Iowa.

Rachael Leach, 7 years old

James Leach, 5 years

David Leach, 2 years

Thomas J. Martin, 27 years (brother of Polly Ann Leach and Virginia EVANS) (d. 6 May 1869), on the Census for 1850 Wapello Co. Iowa

Selena (Plough) Martin, 26 years

John Martin, 13 years

Mary J Martin, 8 years

Uncertain if Names Below were on the 1852 Wapello County Wagon Train

Henry Williams and his large family of grown children may have been on the same wagon train as the Evans. Or not. They ended up in the same area of Linn County, and their families interacted with each other.

Henry Williams, 54 years

Mary E. (Buchanan) Williams, 50 years

Ann (Williams) Parrish, thirteen years old when her family came over the Oregon Trail to Linn County

Smith Williams, 25 years, m. to Arrenia (he d. 9 Sep 1870)

Arrenia Louise (Jones) Williams, 22 years (d. 20 Jan 1899)

Mary Williams, 22 years, m.David Miller Bond he d. 14 Jan 1869; m. James S Towne; (she d. 25 Mar 1908)

Mary E Williams, daughter of Mary Williams - Bond - Towne, newborn (d. 8 Dec 1928; m. Dr. Isaac D. Driver, Pioneer Methodist minister of Oregon)

What Might Indicate a Family That Was on the Wagon Train

• Number One indicator: they were related. Families who lived close to each other before going to Oregon, and then chose land claims close to each other when they arrived, were quite often related.
• People tended to migrate with friends they knew for a long time, or who were related. For this train, I'm looking for relationships to Richard Evans.
• Were they born in KY around 1798? Or in Lawrence Co. Indiana around 1830?
• Did they migrate from Indiana to Iowa between Dec. 1846 (when Iowa became a state in the union) and 1850 ( US census that lists the whole family)?
• Are they related to other people who lived in Iowa, and who are on the wagon train?
• Are they Farmers looking to homestead land in Oregon through the Donation Land Act?
• Are their names on an Iowa state census (1846 through 1852), and also on the Early Oregonian database? Their date of arrival is often given in the database.
• If most of the answers are yes, they might have been on the 1852 'Evans' Wagon Train, which arrived in Linn County, Oregon in September 1852.
• We know that a wagon train from Wapello County that left in 1852, had many people of the Koontz family, or related to them. Some of them were carpenters, or in other trades besides farming. We don't know if there was more than one wagon train leaving Wapallo County in 1852, or whether the Evans family and friends were on the same train as the Koontz families.