[or-roots] Melvin Butte / Keizer

[Leslie Chapman]

Barbara; I suspect that the story must have come from contemporary accounts,
how the Butte came to be named for him may have been wrapped up in the
story. I am not familiar with how the "Geographic names People" keep track
of the origin of the names. The only naming I know of is "Chapman Butte"
near Cottage Grove Lake, which is a little pillow basalt pimple on the
plateau that makes up most of the area bounded by Cedar Creek, my home ranch
the lake and buck or bear creek over on the Analauf side of the mountain.
The guys asked my grandpa a lot of geographic questions while they were out
doing their research sometime around when I was born and said they'd name
something for him in gratitude. As I recall the story they were near the
Butte and Grandpa had never heard of a name for it so they named it for him.

I just checked and it isn't in the book. I looked in 1900 and 1910 and found
no Melvins in Deschutes County, I should look him up in the patent office
stuff to see if i can get a clue there.


Sue, I hadn't seen the one world tree stuff since I don't have a
subscription to Ancestry at all except for the free stuff which I went to
the trouble to get so I could get the tree that Terry sent me, I had to
completely open myself up to cookies and pop-ups to get it but it was worth
it. I had the 1900  census, though I am missing a lot of folks in the census
info, they just don't come up on any index, even 1880 LDS i am missing about
half the family.

With Laura's work though I can pretty well put the clan to rest for my
purposes, uless I find some things she is missing I can pursue for her.

Thank you again everybody, these two quests have been fascinating, here's
hopine the historical society will know more about the Melvin, who knows
maybe I can claim kinship to a murderer on both sides of the family!

Les C