Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 26/Samuel Kimbrough Barlow: A Pioneer Road Builder of Oregon
THE QUARTERLY
of the
Oregon Historical Society
Copyright, 1923, by the Oregon Historical Society
The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors to its pages.
SAMUEL KIMBROUGH BARLOW
A Pioneer Road Builder of Oregon
By Mary Barlow Wilkins
A biographical sketch of Samuel Kimbrough Barlow seems timely, following the dedication of the memorial tablets erected by the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers and the Susannah Lee Barlow and Multnomah Chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution at Government Camp, July 27, 1925.
The family history of Samuel Kimbrough Barlow is not known further back than seven generations from the present. Many of the family claim that the blood of Bruce and Wallace is in their veins. By marriage, the descendants became Scotch-Irish and Welsh.
Samuel Barlow, the earliest known in America, came from Scotland long before the American Revolution and settled in Virgina. It is related that he became a captain in the American Revolution and from the records in the War Department, that contention can now be substantiated. The Barlows were known to be Quakers and that fact rather contradicts the claim but Samuel Barlow evidently was a heretic to his faith.
They certainly were loyal Americans and hated George the Third and his royalists as the following incidents will affirm:—Samuel Barlow's eldest son, William Henry Harris, was one day accosted by an English red-coat for
not giving up the entire road to his royal highness. The command was promptly disregarded and the result was disastrous—the red-coat, horse, cutter and all going over into the snow. Courtesy prompted the American to set the Englishman on his way, which he accepted without further parley or demands. Soon after, another son, failing to salute an English officer, was summarily ordered to do so. The salute took the form of a blow which laid the officer low in the dust of the road. He was assisted to arise and told to give orders in future to members of his own command if he wished them to be obeyed. After these affairs, it was thought the better part of valor for that generation of Barlows to follow Daniel Boone into Kentucky.
William Henry Harris Barlow married Elizabeth Kimbrough, of Welsh descent. Their children were: Samuel Kimbrough, the subject of this sketch, William, James, Thomas Harris, John, Harrison, Elizabeth and Sarah. Many in this generation of Barlows were inventors and pioneers in many first efforts of frontier life and investigation. Thomas Harris Barlow was a noted gunsmith and manufactured not only many of the best Kentucky rifles and breech loading cannons, but was the inventor of a planitarium which was used in teaching astronomy in many of the universities and schools throughout the Atlantic coast. He also built the first locomotive west of the Alleghany mountains, which was demonstrated on a circular railroad with marked success. A replica of this steam locomotive was one of the principal features of a pageant held in Lexington, Kentucky, in June of this year (1925). William Barlow, another son of the Barlow-Kimbrough family, invented the "Billy Barlow" knife, the first that could be closed with a hinge. Two other sons were with General Jackson at New Orleans as master armorers. (For further details of their part in the War of 1812, see "Oregon Quarterly" of September, 1912). Milton Kirtley Barlow, a nephew of S. K. Barlow, was an inventor of many mechanical devices now in use in Kentucky.
Samuel Kimbrough Barlow took no active part in the War of 1812, but faithfully paid his war taxes and that of many other Quakers, who in some mysterious way, never let Mr. Barlow lose a cent, but left money, corn or tobacco in Mr. Barlow's store and never referred to war taxes or their payments of the same.
Samuel Kimbrough Barlow was born January 24, 1792, in Nicholas county, Kentucky. He made good use of his liberal education and supplemented it by constant reading in esoteric subjects as well as in travel and politics. He stumped the state for Henry Clay, and being disgusted that his efforts did not elect Clay to the presidency, he moved to Indiana to try his fortune in a free state, as he was bitterly opposed to slavery. His father offered him a stout, healthy slave boy as a parting gift, but Samuel refused to own a slave or receive money made by their labor. His father's will provided for this son's inheritance in real estate instead of human property.
In Indiana, he married Susannah Lee, a daughter of Captain William Lee of the True Blue Company of Revolutionary soldiers of South Carolina. A homemade battery exploded and Captain Lee lost a leg and was disabled for the rest of the war. The Oregon City Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution was named for Susannah Lee Barlow, who was a "Real Daughter" of a Revolutionary War officer. She and her sister, Mrs. Sarah Matlock Thompson, are buried in a dedicated cemetery at Barlow, Oregon.
In 1836, Samuel K. Barlow was proprietor of Bridgeport, a town ten miles west of Indianapolis, situated in a dense forest of white oak. Prospects for his three sons and two daughters were not pleasing under those circumstances, so the Barlows sold their 60 acres of land at ten dollars an acre and moved.to Illinois, where they hoped to secure a farm naturally cleared. Before leaving Barlow wrote the following unique notice and posted it in different parts of the country:
"Gentlemen, I will say to you
That I will sell at a vendue
Horses, hogs, sheep and cattle,
Plows, hoes and other things that rattle;
Also, some fine honey bees
And other things as good as these."
It is needless to say that he sold everything very readily, taking his pay in all kinds of legal tender— which included state paper money, hides and Mexican silver dollars, which were the best specie in those days. He bought a box of friction matches to take the place of his flint, steel and punk, and paid for them with a coon skin.
In Illinois, he reconnoitered for six weeks, looking for a good location. He visited the present site of Chicago and soon discarded the idea of settling there, "where a man could not keep his hat from blowing off his head." He finally settled near Farmington, Illinois, on a 320 acre farm. The family was quite prosperous there, raising diversified crops in abundance, but found there was little demand for grain as their market was mostly local and prices were poor for other farm products; oats and corn brought only ten and twelve cents a bushel, pork was worth from a dollar and a half to two and a half a hundred pounds. By working hard, the family came out about even for nine years. By selling their acreage, a good log house, including one of the first iron stoves in that part of the state, they would have ample money to take them to their final goal—Oregon. Barlow determined to carry out his original intention made when Henry Clay was defeated, and start for the Pacific Northwest. A great deal of Oregon literature had been distributed throughout the East, and the Barlow library contained almost every book and pamphlet published. One of the first things prepared for the journey was a reading lamp, now in the Oregon Historical Society Museum in Portland. It is a neatly made iron receptacle about five inches long and two high. It has a grooved tongue leading from lard fuel. Its handle has a hole in it so it could be hung on a nail anywhere.
On March 30,1845, the start was made for the Oregon country. The family had seven wagons with thirteen cows and oxen, besides several draft and saddle horses. They were well equipped with provisions, camp comforts and a liberal allowance of money. People came from far and near to bid them farewell. Independence, Missouri, was the general rendezvous for all western immigrants. Here, Barlow bought more cows at five dollars a head and several horses at ten dollars each; one of them sold for $300.00 cash when they reached Oregon, and another was exchanged for a half section of land.
The entire company, recruited from all sections, which left Independence, Missouri, in 1845, was 5,000 strong. A head captain, Presley Welch, and several assistant captains took command of different divisions. Samuel K. Barlow was entrusted with one division which he guided all the way to The Dalles. He was unusually successful in dealing with Indians; his trust in them was fully reciprocated, largely secured by conferences with the head chiefs and by generous gifts of tobacco to each one of the tribe. Thus, his company was not molested in the least.
Incidents along the Great American Desert were of no unusual interest, as weather conditions, ample supplies, friendly Indians, good health of the party, and the great expectations that the Oregon country would bring to all, made the trip, according to William Barlow, S. K. Barlow's eldest son, "one of the most pleasant, cheerful and happy summers in my whole life." Our captain remonstrated with the young men hunters against killing buffaloes except for meat, as their wanton destruction would arouse the wrath of the Indians, who claimed them as their natural food and clothing.
The journey as far as The Dalles was, therefore, uneventful as far as danger and exciting incidents were concerned. The only excitement was a cattle stampede caused by a stray dog frightening a yoke of oxen, making them swerve and break the wagon tongue. Their fright soon caused a riot among the loose cattle, which were a short distance behind the wagons. They would soon overtake the wagons carrying the women and children and there was great danger of the oxen and horses joining the stampede; so the drivers hurriedly unhitched the horses and oxen and let them go if they would, thus the wagons and occupants would be saved by being left behind. The results of the stampede were several disabled oxen, a few broken wagon wheels and a two days' layover. This delay gave both cattle and our people a much needed rest. They found, however, that the best plan was to move every day, if only for a few miles.
They forded every river from the Big Kaw, where Kansas City now stands, to Oregon City. They had no steep hills to climb till they reached the Blue Mountains and they were not to be compared with Laurel Hill in the Cascades.
When they reached Fort Hall, a decision had to be made between California and Oregon. About half of the company decided to go to California. But, Barlow said he was determined to drive his team into the Willamette valley or "leave his bones on the way." They crossed the Snake river at or near the Great American Falls and again, again, and again at various points; thence, over the Boise river to its mouth at Fort Boise. In some crossings they had to raise the wagon beds a foot higher. The next crossing was on the Malheur. It was here that Steve Meek proposed his famous (?) "cut-off," to The Dalles. Barlow refused to follow and reached The Dalles six weeks ahead of the Meek party without loss of life or time, both of which the Steve Meek party suffered.
Nothing of note happened till they reached the mouth of the Deschutes river, where they had to drive out into the Columbia river and circle around on the sand bar to reach the bank of the Columbia on the opposite side of the Deschutes.
When the Dalles was reached, preparations were made by many in the party to go down the Columbia in the usual way—in French bateaux and on rafts. There were only two boats at hand, so the delay would be long and tedious; the river trip was exceedingly dangerous; the many rapids and cascades did not appeal to Captain Barlow, so he began to prepare his party for the long coveted desire of making the entire trip by land. At Fort Hall, he had been told of the impossibility of going over the so-called insurmountable Cascade mountains. His answer was: "God never made a mountain that had no place to go over or around it and I'm going to hunt that place." Nineteen volunteered to follow him, but their captain, by word of final warning added: "I want no one to go with me, who will be guided by the word 'can't'."
Barlow, having heard of the Indian trail, thought he could easily widen it for wagons, but that was found to be impossible for wagon travel on account of the deep snow, although it was possible for loose cattle as they could walk over the frozen snow.
From a point in the Blue mountains, Captain Barlow had discovered a low sink in the Cascades, just south of Mt. Hood. He made a preliminary survey of this low place after he reached The Dalles, traveling sixty or seventy miles alone, and upon his return reported everything quite favorable for the advance. During his absence Joel Palmer and party arrived. He had induced about twenty-three wagons to join the Barlow party. He and Barlow prospected far into the mountains and concluded that the season was too late and the risk too great to take the wagons over that winter. The Barlow party had left The Dalles, September 24, 1845, determined to conquer the impassable mountains.
In the party that finally came through were S. K. Barlow and wife, Albert Gaines, wife and three children, Jane Ellen Barlow, William Caplinger and wife, John M. Bacon, Gesner, Reuben Gant, who drove the first wagon over the road in 1846, William Berry and William Barlow and possibly others. J . L. (Dock) and James Barlow, Joel Palmer, W. G. Buffum and wife, and one other traveled the Indian trail. William Rector and wife returned to The Dalles after Rector returned from one of the perilous reconnoitering trips with Barlow. They had been out two weeks, while the others waited with misgivings for the intrepid prospectors' return. At last, a rifle shot was heard, and caused great rejoicing in the camps. The scouts reported hardships of big timber, swamps, canyons, steep hills, snow and wild animals.
Provisions were getting low and the question now was, "shall we go forward or return to The Dalles?" The majority voted to "go forward!" This confidence made the old captain's heart glad and happy. He repeated what he had said before, "We will succeed in this undertaking or leave our bones in the mountains. But, never fear, we will succeed."
Again the little party started with all their household goods, including wheat, corn and apple seeds. Mr. William Barlow had been persuaded to leave his yearling nursery apples at Fort Hall, as he was told that there were plenty of growing orchards in Oregon. Experience afterwards made him regret leaving them there, as there were only a very few nurseries in the Oregon country, owned principally by the Hudson's Bay Company.
The little party pushed on for several days. The men followed and cut the $oad, following the trees that had been blazed by the prospectors. Finally, after due deliberation, it was decided to leave the wagons and heavy plunder in a mountain cache and leave three men to guard if through the winter. The women and children would be taken out on horses and oxen back. As provisions were low, it was decided that only one man would better stay. William Berry volunteered to remain and keep the lonely vigil with the few books the party carried as his only solace.
All went well till they reached the west side of the mountains. Then unexpected hardships began. The animals mired in the huckleberry swamps and the women and children had to be carried out and the horses and oxen which carried them as well as the bedding, and necessary provisions, had to be pried out of the mire. Their progress averaged from three to six miles a day; often the advance was only a half mile in an hour. Provisions were fast diminishing and rather than eat their faithful dog, the flesh of a horse that had died from eating poison laurel was tested, and as it did not kill, they ate and took courage. Indeed, the women were as brave as the men and murmured not. Though all were passive, alarm was in the air and anguish was deep down in the hearts of Captain Barlow and his eldest son, William. The captain was too ill and weak to go on for assistance but looked with mute appeal into his son's anxious face. With one glance at his mother, father, all, William, then nearly twenty-three (October 26th), determined to go forward, even alone. John M. Bacon volunteered to accompany him. With a little coffee and four biscuits, they started out to follow the blazed path to the nearest settlement and bring back food to the weary, half-starved party. They soon began to have hardships of their own. When they came to the Big Sandy river, swollen with winter freshets, despair nearly overtook them. But with thoughts of mother, father, sisters, friends, before them, that river had to be crossed.
Young Barlow cut a long pole and finding a place in the turbulent stream where a few boulders would aid him, he placed the pole firmly in the river and vaulted from boulder to boulder and fortunately reached the opposite shore. The victory was won. He shouted a "good-bye" to his companion and was off like a deer to the nearest habitation, which was but eight miles away.
There he met James and Dock, his brothers, who had arrived a few days before with the cattle over the Indian trail, and who were anxiously awaiting the arrival of their father's company. They were sent immediately to Oregon City, the largest and most important town on the coast at that time. Horses were loaded with bread, meat and groceries. A better crossing was found for fording the Big Sandy, then, great haste was made to reach the well-nigh exhausted party in the wilds of the Cascades.
After resting a few days and eating very frugally to prevent foundering, all pushed on to Philip Foster's farm, where they recruited in strength and cleanliness. They then, cheerfully and thankfully started for the last goal in their long journey—Oregon City, the home of the benevolent chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company—Dr. John McLoughlin. They were greeted and welcomed by the whole town on that momentous day, December 25,1845. The Barlow party had left The Dalles October 19, 1845, had travelled one hundred and ten miles in exactly two months and six days. Mrs. Jacobs, still living, one of the Osborn girls who was spared at the Whitman massacre, was one of the many who greeted the Barlows that day.
Soon after the completion of this remarkable journey, Samuel K. Barlow addressed the legislature of the provisional government and was granted a charter to build the first wagon road over the Cascade mountains. A force of forty men was employed and a passable road was built to the cache in the mountains, near the present site of Government camp. Mr. Barlow superintended the road construction that summer and looked after improvements on the road two months every year it was owned by him. A toll was established to defray expenses, but on account of many not being able to pay the two dollar and a half toll, the road was operated at a financial loss. Albert Gaines, Mr. Barlow's son-in-law, was the first toll-gate keeper. However, its importance to emigrants made it necessary to keep the road open. One hundred and fortyfive wagons, bringing approximately a thousand people and many droves of cattle and horses arrived by this route in 1846, and the number increased year by year.
In 1846 Mr. Barlow donated his right, title and interest to the government, and it was then leased to various companies for several years. It was said that the principal business of many of the lessees was to collect toll and do very little repairing. The road, being the nearest and shortest route to Eastern Oregon, which was fast coming into importance, it was imperative to keep it open and improved. Walter Bailey, in The Oregon Historical Quarterly, Volume XIII, September, 1912, said: "The diaries and letters written by travelers over this road express a mixture of happiness and sorrow, contentment and dejection, hope and despair, ecstasy and misery."
The gradient and condition of Laurel Hill in those days was something terrible; ropes and tree-drags supplemented wagon brakes; ruts were worn down by the iron tire from one to three feet, and the slippery condition of the grade made the descent of Laurel Hill one long to be remembered. The gradient of this hill is now six per cent and can easily be negotiated by a good automobile. From 1848 to 1862 the Barlow toll road was operated by various companies. In 1882 the Mount Hood and Barlow Company was organized by Richard Gerdes, S. D. Coleman, Harvey E. Cross and J. T. Apperson, with a capital stock of $24,000.00.
One of the first measures under the initiative law was to abolish tolls on the old Barlow road, but the measure was lost by a small majority.
Utility, however, was not the main incentive for this road to come into its own; its grandeur and beauty became the motives for its final improvement. A true naturelover of the picturesque and grand rescued it from indifferent toll managers by buying it outright from this company for $5,400.00 in 1912. To Mr. Henry E. Wemme the state owes a debt of gratitude, appreciation and a bronze tablet. After spending a small fortune in improvements, building bridges, lessening gradients and improving its condition generally, very unfortunately Mr. Wemme died. The road was bequeathed to his attorney, Mr. George W. Joseph, who held it in trust till some commission with a vision for its beauty would take an interest in it and bring it to a nearer perfection.
In accordance with this trust, Mr. Joseph turned it over to the State Highway Commission and the federal government, as a gift from its greatest champion, Mr. Henry E. Wemme. The language of the deed is as picturesque as the land it describes. To quote: "To have and to hold unto the said State of Oregon, with all of its mountains and hills, its forests and vines, its flowers and shrubs, its valleys and dells, its rivers and streams, its animals and birds, its tempests and storms, its lights and shadows, its trails and paths, and the beauty and grandeur of Mount Hood, for the use, benefit and pleasure of all forever."
The road is now incorporated in the Mount Hood loop and it will be one of the most beautiful roads in the United States if not in the world. The old Barlow road began near the present town of Wampanitia and ended a few miles south of the town of Sandy, where it then joined the old Foster road. It was originally about ninety miles long.
Multnomah Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, placed a bronze marker at Rhododendron Inn on this historic road in 1916.
The Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers unveiled a bronze tablet to the pioneer builder of this road on the 14th of February, 1923, the sixty-fourth anniversary of the admission of Oregon into the Union. The tablet was not placed till 1924, on account of the difficulty of securing a title to the small tract of land upon which it stands. But on July 27, 1925, the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers and two Chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution united in a joint dedication. The inscriptions on the two tablets placed on the same large boulder at Government Camp are as follows:
Samuel Kimbrough Barlow, Oregon Pioneer from Kentucky, built the first wagon road over the Cascade Mountains, passing this spot, 1845-1846.
The building of railroads since has been of less importance to the community than the opening of this road which enabled the settlers to bring their wagons and teams directly into the Willamette Valley.
Erected and dedicated by the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers, 1923. This estimate of the Barlow road was spoken by Judge Matthew P. Deady of the Federal Bench in an address before the Oregon Pioneer Association.
The wording on the other tablet completes the epigrammatic story in bronze:
Susannah Lee Barlow, wife of S. K. Barlow. A real daughter of the American Revolution and the Real Madonna of the Barlow Trail. Arrived in Oregon City December 25, 1845. Placed by Susannah Lee Barlow and Multnomah Chapters, D. A.R., 1923.
From the files of the old Oregonian is taken the following: "Quite a coincidence in name and purpose is evident from the fact that Dr. S. K. Barlow of Massachusetts was the first to conceive the idea of a trans-continental railroad across the rocky mountains and that S. K. Barlow, a generation later, proposed and executed the first wagon road over the Cascade mountains, thus completing the circuit of one-half of the land of the globe." The life action of the one realized the thought of the other.
A railroad over the Cascade mountains remains to be accomplished. To paraphrase the language of the pioneer road-builder—"It will be done, for God never made a mountain that some man cannot master, mechanically, some day."
Samuel K. Barlow was an investigator in religion, ethics and politics as well as in frontier movements. Up to within five years of his death, he made annual trips into the forests of Oregon, bringing back accounts of their future advantages to the state.
September 17, 1850, he bought the donation land claim of Thomas McKay, where now the small town of Barlow is located. Neither Mr. Barlow nor any of his sons ever took up any government land. Afterwards, .this place was sold to his son, William Barlow, and the old gentleman moved to Canemah, which he and his oldest son had previously laid out as a town.
Though he was not a wealthy man, he always had a competence for every necessity. He had no patience with dishonesty, especially with political dishonesty. He was an ardent advocate of prohibition and thought that if a man could not refrain from drinking, the best thing for himself, the community and his country, was to let him drink and die as soon as possible. He answered every call of conscience and country, enlisting in the Cayuse Indian war, furnishing his own horse and entire equipment, and with others, who called themselves "Lord High Privates" held back the Indians until the arrival of the militia.
He died in Canemah, Oregon, July 14, 1867, and was buried by the side of his wife, Susannah Lee Barlow, in the dedicated cemetery at Barlow, Oregon. On their tall, white marble shaft is inscribed the words of an epitaph he composed a short time before his death:
Oh, do not disturb the repose of the dead;
Behold, the bright spirit has risen and fled!
Nor linger in sadness around the dark tomb,
But go where flowers forever doth bloom.
He died as he had lived, entering fearlessly upon his final journey into the Great Unknown.
***
The very last word in the history of S. K. Barlow and the Old Barlow Trail was spoken in the dedication of the monument to his memory at Government Camp on the Mount Hood Loop on July 27, 1925. There were present many old time pioneers who came in automobiles, who previously had plodded over ruts, swamps and steep hills and who now, with many others, witnessed the ceremony that closed the final chapter of the Barlow road.
Mr. George H. Himes, Secretary of the Oregon Pioneer Association, was chairman of the day. Incidentally, he presented Mrs. Daisy Stott Bullock, president of the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers, with a historic mosaic gavel made of Oregon wood. Hon. Harvey G. Starkweather, chairman of the monument committee of the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers, gave the address, entitled "Samuel Kimbrough Barlow, Pioneer Road Builder," and presented the deed of the small triangular piece of land to Governor Walter M. Pierce, who accepted it graciously for the State of Oregon; the flags encircling the two tablets were unveiled by Frank A. Gaines, of Mississippi, a grandson, and by Vernice Barlow, a great granddaughter, and Madelon Brodie, Virginia and Susannah Harding, great-great grandaughters of S. K . Barlow and wife; Mrs. Seymour Jones, state regent of the Oregon Daughters of the American Revolution, led in the salute to the flag which was unfurled to the breeze from the top of the monument; Mrs. Neita Barlow Lawrence, granddaughter, and Mrs. Imogen Harding Brodie, a great granddaughter, led in singing "America" and "The Star Spangled Banner;" Mrs. Octave J. Goffin, regent of Multnomah Chapter, D. A. R., of Portland, spoke on "A real Daughter of an American Soldier;" Mr. William Williamson, of the Forest Bureau Service, spoke of the plan to perpetuate the Barlow road, by marking every place where the old road intersected the now famous Mt. Hood Loop Highway; and Mrs. Jennie Barlow Harding and Mary Barlow Wilkins gave a sketch of Susannah Lee Barlow and expressed the appreciation of the eighty living descendants of the original family, to the great organizations and to all present, whose interest had led to this testimonial to the name and service of Samuel Kibrough Barlow and Susannah Lee Barlow.