[or-roots] Fendal Sutherlin

[BarbHg1221 at aol.com]

This is a transcription of an item that I have had for some time.  My tie in 
is with Fendal Sutherlin's wife, Lucy Richardson.
Barbara Herring - BarbHg1221 at aol.com

Minter, Harold A., Umpqua Valley, Oregon and Its Pioneers, "Sutherlin", p 134:

John Franklin Sutherlin and his family, pioneers of 1850, were from 
Greencastle, Indiana, and claimed a relationship to Benjamin Franklin.  
Sutherlin and his wife, the former Sarah Carmichael, were the parents of ten 
children, and the clan has done much toward populating the valley that bears 
its name.

Fendal, the oldest son, graduated from Depauw University at Greencastle, 
Indiana, in 1845.  He paid his way through school doing janitorial work at 
the college during the school year, and conducting an itinerant clock and 
watch repair service during vacation.  He crossed the plains to Oregon with 
three other young men and arrived at Portland in the fall of 1847--three 
years before the rest of the family came west.  It is reported that when the 
young men were at the Snake River, their stock stampeded and swam the stream. 
 Fendal followed them on foot and drove them back to camp.  Being too 
exhausted to swim back across the river, he solved the problem by grabbing 
the tail of the last ox to take to the water and was towed safely across.

In 1849, Fendal went to California, but returned to Amity, Oregon in 1850, to 
teach a term of school.  While at Amity he received word that his father and 
family were on their way to the Oregon Territory.  Fendal met the party in 
the Blue Mountains and escorted them to the Willamette Valley over the Barlow 
Pass.  They spent the winter at Max Porter's place at Rickreall, came to 
Umpqua Valley in the spring of 1851, and settled about three miles southeast 
of Reason Reed.

In the fall of 1851, Fendal bought squatter's right to James T. Cooper's 
claim, southeast of the present town of Sutherlin.  Cooper adds a bit of 
interesting information concerning his acquaintance with Fendal Sutherlin.  
In his memoirs he wrote:  "I took my first claim where Fendal Sutherlin now 
lives in 1850.  Fen took up the Bushby place in 1850 where Roseburg now is, 
and I went from my place on the swale (local identification of Sutherlin 
Valley in the early days), on foot to help him build a cabin.  Fen didn't put 
in an appearance.  I had my tramp without any dinner and I made my way back 
to Aiken's house (at Winchester) and found them all in bed."

Fendal married Lucy Richardson who had arrived in Oregon with her parents in 
1849.  It is reported that she rode her favorite mare, "Kentucky Belle", most 
of the way across the plains.  The mare later became famous as the dam of 
several outstanding race horses in the Umpqua and Willamette valleys.

Like his father, Fendal raised a large family, and many of his descendants 
still reside in Douglas County and throughout the state.  The house he built 
on the south side of the valley is still standing.  Fendal, his wife, and a 
number of their children are buried in the family cemetery situated about two 
miles east of their home on the south side of the valley that had been their 
home for fifty years.
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