The Hedricks Come to Oregon With The Drain Party, 1852

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.