I appreciated Robert McInnis of Centralia thinking of me when disposing of a history book about his late wife’s family called “Our People: A Story of the Fry Family,” written by Edwin Van Syckle and published in 1949 with a revised edition released in 1978.
I love Pacific Northwest history and learning about the people who shaped it. After reviewing the information, I’ll donate the 314-page book to a museum or library.
It’s always a treasure when our forebears take the time to record their stories in diaries, autobiographies, genealogies, or audio and video recordings. Those stories are priceless and help us learn about the past.
McInnis, 94, a retired railroader and Marine veteran, said his late wife, Barbara Williams, was descended from John Fry, the eldest of Amherst and Mary (Burlingame) Fry’s sons who crossed the Oregon Trail in 1851. What follows is a synopsis of the family’s life taken from Van Syckle’s book, which was based in part on a short autobiography written by John.
The Fry family had a rich colonial heritage in Rhode Island, where Amherst, who was born in 1798, married Mary Burlingame. Their first son, John, was born two years later, Nov. 17, 1826, in Foster, R.I. A year later, they moved to New York and built a house in a clearing. The family added three more sons — Amherst, Jason, and Harvey — followed by four daughters, Mary, Waitie, Julie, Elmira, and another son, Jasper. By then they had moved to Knox County in Illinois. In 1845, when John was 18, his father died. He and his brothers kept the farm running, but before long, their mother took ill and died in 1846, leaving behind nine children.
The girls moved into the homes of neighbors and a family adopted the youngest son, Jasper, while the older boys ran the farm for another three years. But by 1848, after meeting a man who had wintered in Oregon with the American Fur Company, John and his brother Jason caught “western fever,” a desire to cross the plains to Oregon and settle there.
Jason was the first to venture west in 1849, with his 47-year-old uncle Olney Fry and a man named Simon Markham (who later had a town in Grays Harbor County named for him). Olney had already traveled west once. Seventeen-year-old Jason drove a team of oxen and later described it as one of the happiest summers of his life.
While his uncle settled in the Willamette Valley, Jason worked on the Columbia River cutting pilings for wharves in San Francisco, cooking on a vessel, helping to build cabins in Portland, and assisting in a town survey.
Meanwhile, back in Illinois, John married Mary Ann Widener, an Indiana native. A letter Jason wrote, which cost 40 cents to mail, shared what he had seen and inspired westward moves by Fry family members. Although they had an eight-month-old son, Charles, John and Mary packed up and left Illinois on April 2, 1851, to cross the Oregon Trail, accompanied by John’s younger brother Amherst and three schoolmates.
After purchasing two teams and outfits, they followed what was called the old Mormon trail from Illinois to the Missouri River. On an early stop they awoke to discover it had snowed 15 inches overnight, but they kept traveling west, paying for meals during stays at farmhouses along the way until they reached the Oregon Trail. John accepted the gift of a dog, planning to give it away, but he instead kept it as a watchdog. They bought supplies at Cainsville on the Missouri River near Council Bluffs before leaving civilization for the 2,000-mile journey.
After joining a dozen other wagons, they selected a captain, a man named Riggs who died at the last crossing of the Sweetwater River; a wagon master to pick camping sites, lay out corrals and keep wagons moving; and a sergeant to assign guards. Other smaller groups asked to join their company, which soon grew to 27 wagons, 51 men and as many women and children along with cattle.
At Willow Spring in present-day Wyoming, John stood guard from midnight to morning in pouring rain and sleet, changed clothes in the morning, and took a short snooze before doing it again. When Native Americans visited the camp, one reached inside a tent toward John, perhaps to shake his hand, but his dog, Curly, lunged for the man’s throat but bit his hand. After John dressed the man’s wound, the natives left the camp and crossed the Platte River.
But the next morning, as they prepared to leave, about three dozen Indians armed with bows and arrows demanded payment for damages done by the dog. They wanted 10 cattle but eventually agreed to take one, but the travelers denied the request. They demanded the dog, but John refused, so they armed their bows with arrows as if to shoot Curly. The emigrants raised 15 or 20 rifles, creating a stalemate. Eventually, the wagons rolled west. The dog later attacked a friendly Native American who reached out to shake Mary Fry’s hand. Curly dragged the man 50 feet from the wagon and shook him. After John retrieved the dog and tied him up, the native fled, but the dog’s reputation preceded the train.
The travelers shot buffalo and antelope along the Platte River, supplying the emigrants with meat. When hunters found themselves lost, they fired guns to help guide them back to the train. Eventually, the company adopted a rule that men stay together when leaving camp so they wouldn’t be lost and delay the train’s departure. Those who strayed would be left behind.
When they came across 30 stray cattle guarded only by a dog, they auctioned them off with the understanding they would be returned if an owner showed up to claim them.
Before Wood River, they encountered as many as 300 Native Americans blocking the trail, so they stopped, silent. One man donned a military uniform, carried a sword and led the procession to confront the group. The natives demanded payment to cross their land, but the man in uniform pointed to a scar running down his face and denied their demands. They soon drifted away.
The emigrants set up camp there, but after heavy rains, the creek rose and flooded wagons. They quickly hitched wagons to teams and fled to higher ground but delayed their trip three days until the creek receded enough to cross on a makeshift bridge. Soaked and miserable, several wanted to turn back. John and the men in his group wanted to keep going, and those who wanted to retreat wouldn’t do so without them.
The weather improved, although they saw an eight-foot snowbank on the Fourth of July in the high country with grass and flowers growing nearby. They elected a new captain and a new sergeant, J.B. Gray, the man who had donned the military uniform, which irritated the disgruntled ex-sergeant so much that he and his partner often quarreled with Gray and plotted to murder him. John, who thought it was just talk, retired with his wife for the night. The pair approached Gray’s tent and tried to pick a fight, but the big Irishman who overhead the murder plot joined in to make it a fair fight. One man struck Gray under the arm with a knife, and Gray’s brother, aroused by the ruckus, would have shot the culprit, but the Irishman wrested the revolver from him.
John heard the noise and started to leave, but his wife clung to him and wouldn’t let him go. Their toddler awakened. When he heard someone say Gray had been stabbed, the book says, “he wrenched free of his wife, grabbed his rifle and ran out of the tent. Some distance away, but plainly visible against the low moon, was the man who had done the stabbing, pounding across the prairie on a dead run. Fry raised his rifle, took sight and pulled the trigger. But the hammer merely clicked, for there was no cap on the gun. By the time Fry was handed a cap the assailant was gone.”
The next day the man was spotted and arrested. A jury in the company tried him, found him guilty, and sentenced him to $40 or 40 lashes. “Somehow he rustled up the money,” the book states. The company voted out the man and his companions, except for one innocent man.
John, Gray, and another man ventured out along to see Devil’s Gate where the turbulent Sweetwater flowed through a narrow canyon with sheer walls. While gazing at the natural wonder, the men saw a dozen Native Americans riding abreast who raised in their stirrups and gave a shrill whoop that sent chills down their spines, according to the book. They were armed with bows and full quivers of arrows. The three emigrants, each armed with a rifle, waited, taking aim at men on each end and one in the center, waiting. But the natives never drew their bows, so they lowered their guns but waited until the Indians advanced. When they were 30 feet away, John motioned for them to stop. They asked about their wagon train and indicated they wanted to trade for ammunition. As the wagons approached, they stepped aside, watching the caravan rumble past.
The emigrants crossed the Rocky Mountains through South Pass, marveled at what they called the “ice springs,” and rumbled down to the Sublette cutoff in present-day Wyoming, avoiding the longer trail to Fort Bridger. They grazed their animals at Big Sandy Creek, a fork of the Green River, where they rested for 1½ days and filled kegs with water. They encountered hills “so steep the wagons seemed to stand on end, but the sand was so deep that, locking the wheels, the descent was made without difficulty,” the book says.
Mormons from Salt Lake established a ferry for emigrants to cross the Green River, but it cost five dollars a wagon. They paid the toll to avoid a time delay in seeking a place to ford the river. They stopped at Fort Hall on the Snake River, where John bought a set of bows from 20 large prairie schooners abandoned by a government train at the fort the previous year. The proprietor at the fort said he had no authority to sell government property, but the emigrants helped themselves. They crossed the Snake to the north side where islands divided the river into deep and swift channels, likely Three Island Crossing near present-day Glenns Ferry, Idaho. “It was a troublesome crossing but was made without loss,” the book says.
They recrossed the Snake River at Fort Boise, where John bought five yards of tobacco from a Hudson’s Bay trader who cut it from a coil twisted like rope. They ferried the women and children across in a large dugout canoe loaned by the trader. Despite their best efforts, many wagons swung downstream while crossing the deep river. The teams had to swim, but nobody died in the crossing.
Near Burnt River, they passed through partially burned trees where echoes resounded as people shouted or sang.
Two Grande Ronde natives approached and warned them about Snake River tribal members following trains to steal their stock and blaming the Grand Ronde. So the well-armed Grand Ronde guarded trains as they passed through. They sat beside a fire all night and kept watch, even refusing pay or presents for their help.
When the emigrants camped at the summit of the Blue Mountains, they didn’t set up a corral for the animals and 11 wandered off, costing the company a day rounding them up.
After descending into the Umatilla Valley, the emigrants tasted their first fresh vegetables in almost six months. They bought small potatoes from a native for a dollar. Traders visited the company to sell supplies. A small steamer ran from The Dalles to the Cascades, circumventing the mountains, but it was disabled when they arrived with work being done at a foundry in Oregon City.
Instead, they hired two flatboats to carry the emigrants down the Columbia River as well as their wagons. The boatmen provided a guide to lead those herding cattle and horses along the trail around the mountains. But the guide knew little about the trail, and after losing time, they finally paid an Indian $20 to lead them. But they still missed connecting with their wagons and found themselves caught in an afternoon rain. At night they built a shelter using fir boughs and huddled around a fire under saddle blankets. After traveling all the next day, they still didn’t connect with their company and slept in a 20-foot cave.
Their weary cattle scarcely made it to the Cascades and then reached a trail where men building a tramway stoned their animals, saying they had to follow a different trail. John Fry asked why they hadn’t posted such information earlier on the trail, then told them the government had cut a road across the portage for emigrants and their footsore cattle. They carefully moved emigrants’ freight but tossed a pair of scales belonging to the stone throwers over the bank onto the rocks below.
Four or five men rushed up to the emigrants with revolvers. One pressed a gun against John’s chest, but one of Fry’s companions swaggered up carrying a double-barreled shotgun and asked him what’s wrong.
“Oh, we’re having a little row,” John said, the gun still pressed against his ribs. He told the man to cock both barrels and shoot the first person he pointed to. The others backed away one by one. John didn’t dare move a finger in the tense situation, fearing someone would take it as a sign to shoot. The tramway builders kept them covered with guns and issued threats, but they passed with their cattle.
At the Cascades, they paid the freight bill owed to the boatman, minus the $20 they paid to the Indian guide. Then most of the people and freight traveled to Portland, while others herded cattle to the mouth of the Sandy River and ferried them across.
When John and Amherst arrived between Sandy and Portland, they were greeted by their brother, Jason Fry.
I’ll share more of their life in Oregon Territory next week.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
