Tin Pot Valley by Wilfred Brown:
Chapter XIII - From the Tennessee Hills
(The Hedricks)
Tin Pot Valley by Wilfred Brown:
Chapter XIII - From the Tennessee Hills
Benton
Mires, a teacher at 19, was instructing a class on the inspired
virtues of great men in American history, a favorite subject in the
one-room log Tin Pot school house. His 20 or so pupils, ranging from
first graders to young people almost as old as the teacher, listened
intently, for he was an engaging speaker.
A knock on the door interrupted. Benton Mires opened it, and found himself facing a handsome, brown-haired giant of a young man carrying a heavy rifle, his coat and hat dripping rain. It was Benton's first meeting with Horace Putnam, who was to become his brother-in-law.
"My
first thought," said Benton, in a speech more than half a century
later, "was that this was an Absolom, a man without a blemish."
("In
all Israel there was non to be so much praised as Absolom for his
beauty; from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there
was no blemish in him." -- II Samuel, 14:25)
Horace
had been hiking in the hills near the school, casually looking for
game. "I'd like to leave my gun inside," he said, "so it won't get
wet."
"You'd better come in yourself," Benton told him. "It's really pouring. And you might learn something."
So
Horace sat on a rough-hewn bench beside two 6-year-olds, his clothes
dripping on the floor, while the interrupted history lesson continued.
The real reason that brought Horace to the school was not concern for
his rifle. It was his hope for a recess visit with a pupil only a year
younger than the teacher, a tall, slender, black-haired girl named
Aurilla Hedrick.
John
Hedrick was born in 1826 at a place called locally Hardscrabble in the
hill country of Eastern Tennessee. The supposed basis for the name
was that making a living off the land was about as hard scrabble as
could be found. John had many brothers and sisters, but knew nothing
of his family, back of his own parents. The name Hedrick appears to be
of probable German origin.
None
of the Hedrick children ever went to school. Boys and girls alike,
until about into their teens, each wore most of the year a single item
of apparel - a home spun garment reaching to the knees and called a
"tow-shirt".
Decades
after he left Tennessee, John Hedrick told his grandchildren of being
saved from disaster from his tow-shirt. When he lost his grip while
climbing a tree, his shirt-tail caught on a projecting limb and held him
suspended head down until he was able to regain his hold, disentangle
himself and descent to safety.
Though
the Hedrick children of his generation were un-schooled and
poorly-clad, the family managed to scrabble for enough food so that John
grew into a powerful, broad-shouldered man, six feet, two inches
tall. He left home at 13, nearly grown, and for years worked as a
boatman on Tennessee and Mississippi river-craft.
A
fellow crewman named Jackson invited John to visit his home in Van
Buren Country, Iowa. There he met his friend's sister, Louisa, the
eldest of seven children of the Rev. Augustus Jackson, a United Brethren
Church preacher. Louisa had as much education as girls (and boys)
usually received in those days. She and John were married in 1850, and
there-after she taught her husband to read and write.
A
relative of the Jacksons, Charles Drain, a man of some substance, was
restless and dissatisfied with Iowa. A native of Pennsylvania, he had
lived in Indiana and Iowa, sought gold in California without notable
success and returned to Iowa. Then he heard that Oregon was a land of
promise.
Drain
was organizing a party to travel the Oregon Trail with an 1852 wagon
train. If young Hedrick would help with the loose livestock and other
chores, Drain offered, he would furnish the where-withal for John and
his bride to join the party. They were happy to accept.
The
Drain party headed west in April. The Missouri River was rolling wide
in the Spring flood when they reached its bank. Drain worried that
the loose cattle would scatter in the wooded river bottom, after
swimming to the far shore. John Hedrick told him it was no big
problem. Removing his coat, hat and boots, he handed them to Louisa,
waded into the muddy river and took off swimming. He was there to head
the loose animals onto the trail west when they reached land.
Those
who traveled the Oregon trail with the Drain party remembered John
Hedrick for his energy, his feats of strength and for his quiet good
humor. When the emigrants reached the Columbia River in the early fall,
the question arose as to which side would be better for driving the
loose cattle down the gorge, where the river cuts through the Cascade
Mountains in a roaring torrent.
John
found the way of determining simple, for him. He swam this bigger and
wilder river than the Missouri, studied the outlook, then swam back to
report that while the way west was bad, on the south side of the
river, it was much worse on the north.
The
Drain party reached Oregon City in September, 1852. There Henry,
first of the nine Hedrick children (7 sons, 2 daughters) was born. The
Drains first settled near Lebanon, in the Willamette Valley, and the
Hedricks near Halsey, not far away.
Like
many new-comers, John was restless. The Hedricks moved south to take a
320-acre Donation Land Claim at the site of the present town of
Drain. There their second child, Aurilla, was born in 1854. Then the
Hedrick and Drain families traded places. The town was established
when Charles Drain gave land for the railroad station and
right-of-way. John Hedrick, remembering the area of his birth, gave
the name Hardscrabble to a hill near Lebanon.
After
several years, the Hedricks moved south again, to Merlin, in the Rouge
River Valley. But John couldn't forget a charming, unnamed little
valley near Drain. When a farm there he had admired was offered for
sale, John bought it, and the family traveled back to Drain in its last
move. And John bestowed on the valley a name -- Hardscrabble.
Neighbors
who weren't pleased later succeeded in getting the now-vanished school
re-named Eureka. The name Hardscrabble remains as that of a small
stream which drains the valley an flows into Elk Creek about three miles
west of Drain.
The
nine Hedrick children were tall and dark, like their father. They
grew up with an easy going good nature, like his, and most with a droll
sense of humor. They received as much education as was readily
available in early Oregon, and further learning from a custom once
common. Louisa Hedrick read aloud to her husband and children for an
hour or so each evening between the doing of the supper dishes and
bed-time.
The
Hedrick family of Hardscrabble and the Putnam family of Tin Pot were
linked four ways by weddings: Henry Hedrick married Gertrude Putnam,
Horace Putnam married Aurilla Hedrick and George Hedrick married Susan
Putnam. Their 13 children in three sets of double cousins were brought
up almost as brothers and sisters. Roger DeLaunay, from an early
Oregon French-Canadian family, was the fourth link. He fathered two
daughters in his marriage to Lucinda Putnam, who died at 23. Later, he
married Jessie Hedrick, who bore a second DeLaunay family.
Louisa
Hedrick's brother, Marion Jackson, came later to Oregon and settled
near Riverton in Coos County. Two of his daughters and their husbands
were for many years partners in the large Randleman & Bean store in
the coastal town of Bandon, until it was destroyed in the great Bandon
fire of 1936.
The
Rev. Augustus Jackson, his second wife, Melinda Jane, and their two
children, crossed the plains to Oregon in the 1870's. They settled at
Drain.
John
and Louisa Hedrick remembered the United Brethren Church when
Philomath College was founded near Corvallis in 1865. Their gift of
$400, though they had but little money, was quite substantial for those
days. Their daughter, Aurilla later attended Philomath and became the
first Drain teacher.
Their
son, Will also became a teacher, as did many descendants of later
generations. Ercel Hedrick, a grandson, was for a third of a century
the Superintendent of the Southern Oregon city of Medford. There, the
Hedrick Junior High School, honoring his service, bears the name first
brought west by an unschooled young giant from Hardscrabble in the
Tennessee Hills.
