Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/199

Mrs. Jesse Applegate. 181 added to the bill of fare, for she was an expert butter and cheese maker. For a numbei' of years after gold was discovered in South- ern Oregon and California, Mrs. Applegate sold butter and cheese to the miners and received many dollars in return. The amount of labor accomplished by the pioneer mothers is a lasting reproach to their idle and incompetent descendants. Mrs. Applegate made all the every-day clothing for her hus- band and sons: coats, shirts, pants, underclothing, socks- spinning the yarn for these last. Made all the clothing of herself and daughters. And for many years did the work by hand. Sometime in the fifties a cook-stove and a sewing machine were brought into the house, greatly lightening her labor. Besides the sewing and cooking, milking and tending the milk, she found time for some work in the garden tending some special plants. She had besides a little flower garden where were planted some old time favorities: Hollyhocks, SAveet William, and Sweet Peas, Wall Flowers, Pinks and Bean Catchers. How carefully she guarded the first rose bush— a slip of the pungent old Mission rose, always a favor- ite with her. She brought with her from Missouri a little pinch of seeds that were raised first in old Kentuck where the meadow grass is blue." This little pinch of seed was carefully planted and watched and the first little yellow heads of seed gathered as if they were gold. Now there are patches of Kentucky blue grass scattered all over Yoncalla Valley, the offspring, I candidly believe, of that little pinch of seeds. The Applegates moved to Umpqua in 1849. Yoncalla Val- ley was a wilderness, only the Cowan's lived in it. And the Scott's in the valley adjoining. There was an old Hxidson's Bay Company station at the mouth of Elk Creek called Ft. Umpqua. Some apple trees had been planted there and the first apples the writer of this ever tasted were plucked from these trees and sent as a present to Mrs. Applegate by the agent at the fort, an old Canadian, Old Garnier. Never in the forty years since then have apples tasted so good. The