After last week’s column on the pioneer Fry family, I enjoyed hearing from Jay Myhre, a descendant of Jason Fry who was born in Aberdeen and lives in the Adna area.
His ancestor Jason Fry, who crossed the Oregon Trail in 1849, staked a claim along the Columbia River near Coffin Rock, a 225-foot mound of black basalt on the north bank of the river near present-day Longview. The rock had served as burial grounds for the Cowlitz Tribe.
After greeting his brothers, John and Amherst, he led them to St. Helens in Oregon, where they left their goods with a friend of Jason’s, then traveled to Rainier, arriving on Oct. 15, 1851. The journey across the Oregon Trail had taken them six-and-a-half months, according to the book, “Our People: A Story of the Fry Family,” written by Edwin Van Syckle and published in 1949. Myhre’s mother Lola helped edit the revised edition released in 1978.
Supplies shipped from San Francisco were sold to emigrants at reasonable prices. Wages were three to five dollars a day. A round-trip steamer ticket from Rainier to Portland cost $14 while meals and lodging were each one dollar. Apple seedlings sold for 20 cents a pound.
“When apples got down to five dollars a box, John Fry told his children they could have all they wanted for apples were cheap,” the book states.
The region didn’t have honeybees until they were shipped from other parts of the country. Cats were scarce, too. John bought one for three dollars from a Native American. Someone later offered him $45 for it, but he refused to sell.
Early settlers earned a living from the land. Seth Catlin, who crossed the trail in 1848 at 56 with his wife and seven sons and settled along the Cowlitz River near present-day Longview, sold 750 bushels in 1853, when each brought in about $7.50.
Onley Fry, uncle to John, Jason, and Amherst Fry, invested in plow irons he had shipped around Cape Horn and sold for $50 each.
John earned money by raising a hundred chickens and selling them for a dollar each. He bought a hog in Oregon for $25.
Native Americans regularly fished the Columbia River, so emigrants who provided a barrel and salt could pay $10 to have them fill it with salmon.
“The tribesmen were considerable help when the country was first settled, for they supplied fish, wild game and all kinds of berries at a reasonable price,” the book states. “And they were great passenger carriers in their canoes, taking emigrants around to explore the country.”
In the fall of 1852, Jason and John Fry purchased a team to start logging. John bought supplies from the Hudson’s Bay store, but his family primarily lived on potatoes and occasionally venison when Jason shot a deer.
“The Columbia had frozen shortly after Christmas that winter,” the book says. “When the ice broke up two weeks later, Jason took $300 and started for Portland for supplies. He stopped to collect $500 a merchant at St. Helens owed him and fortunately was able to take part of the debt in provisions.”
In 1855 and 1856, unrest broke out in the Pacific Northwest with Native American tribes, including the Yakama, and emigrants joined a call for volunteer militia fighters. Amherst fought to the east, where he grew weak from tuberculosis and exposure and died at 30. John and Jason helped build a blockhouse at Rainier and guarded it nightly.
Jason, who had settled at Rainier by 1851, became a preacher. In 1858, in front of a justice of the peace, he married Annette Huntington, the daughter of William and Eliza Jane (Koontz) Huntington. After making money in California gold mines in 1849, William Huntington returned to Indiana for his wife, Eliza Jane, daughter Annette and two sons — Jacob and Frank — then crossed the Oregon Trail in 1852 accompanied by his brothers, Jim and Jacob. They settled first at Monticello (present-day Longview) at the mouth of the Cowlitz and then on 640 acres near Castle Rock, according to a “Pioneer History of Churches of Christ & Christian Churches in the Pacific Northwest.” William, a New York native, served as U.S. marshal for Oregon Territory.
Although Jason and his brother John had planned to log at Rainier, near where the Trojan Nuclear Plant was later erected, they opted instead to supply beef to a market at Oak Point Mill across the Columbia River. They sold beef at 22 cents a pound in 1854.
In 1861, Jason and Annette Fry moved to Beaver Valley, only miles from the present-day Lewis and Clark Bridge, where Jason and John ran a sawmill for several years.
That winter John described as the coldest he ever recalled in the Northwest with snow falling Christmas Day and hitting 32 inches before it stopped. He said the Columbia River froze so hard that teams and wagons could cross with ease. By April 1862, many settlers had lost their stock. Only three of John and Jason’s 63 cattle survived.
Jason, disgusted with the loss of cattle to haul logs to the mill, left Rainier that spring for Castle Rock, where his father-in-law, U.S. Marshal William Huntington, helped him gain appointment to teach farming and blacksmithing on the Quinault Indian Reservation. His family traveled to present-day Centralia and then by canoe to Montesano where two hired men in a sailboat carried them to James Rock. Annette and her two children then settled at the Anderson house at present-day Moclips. Jason worked on the reservation for three years, then traveled to other parts of the territory before settling at Grays Harbor.
Meanwhile, John moved from Rainier to Linn County in Oregon, where he leased a farm, but after Jason wrote to him about the assets of Grays Harbor country, he traveled there in 1870. That’s how the Frys settled in Grays Harbor County near present-day Cosmopolis, where John again logged the nearby woods with his brother Jason.
After retiring from running a mill at Cosmopolis in 1884, John homesteaded near Mox Chuck Slough, on land where the Grays Harbor Country Club was later built. Siblings of the Fry brothers — John and Jason — included Amherst, Harvey, Mary, Waity, Julia, Elmira, and Jasper.
Jason, a self-educated man who served as a preacher, lawyer, judge, and surveyor, died in his late 50s on May 3, 1888, at his Johns River claim near Markham. He left Annette and seven children — Orren, Albert, Annette, Arthur, Edith, Mary, and Ida.
John died in May 1915 at Cosmopolis, and his wife passed away the following year. They had more than a dozen children — Charles, Jason, Amanda, John, Mary, Lucy, Jasper, Oscar, Martha, Nathan, Nicholas, Lillie, Laura, Lena, and Anna. Several died young.
Although they settled nearby Grays Harbor County, the Fry family’s journey to the Pacific Northwest makes for an interesting read.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
