Many of us are familiar with the hardships our ancestors endured while crossing the Oregon Trail. Similarly, we have learned about the hardships of settling in the new Oregon Territory, of establishing homesteads and then the hardscrabble life. It is hard to imagine just how difficult it was, and it took a great deal of self-sufficiency to build a home, feed the family, and face the danger in the wildlands beyond.
Mike Staver said, “…what makes a person stronger is their perspective and their willingness to manage the hardship they face in a way that constantly moves them forward.” From this willingness to manage the challenges of settling a new land came a certain amount of resilience and independence. They strove to endure and focused on overcoming hardship to establish a life for their families.
These lessons of resilience and independence were, in turn, passed on to their children. We still see the strength of those qualities in the hard-working people of eastern Oregon, not only in the men who are still pushing cattle through the mountains of the Imnaha and Wallowa’s, but in the women who raise family and work the farms and ranches.
We find those qualities in Jean McDonald and her dear friend, Grace Carter McKennon.
As stated in the La Grande Observer article of April 6, 2024, “By all accounts, Jean MacDonald Birnie and Grace Carter McKennon were unusual women for their time.
Born in 1885 in Island City, outside of La Grande in Eastern Oregon, they were lifelong friends. As girls, they’d ride their horses in the hills above the Grande Ronde Valley in search of wildflowers and dine on berries they foraged along the way.
“Early on, Jean and Grace would take off on their own and kind of discover who they were as individuals and their relationship with nature and horses,” said Grace’s granddaughter Melissa Reece Over. “It just was so much a part of who they were.”
Melissa said the time spent in the outdoors helped the friends develop resilience.”
Read the full article here or listen to the story on OPB here: Early 20th-century adventurers left a legacy of female empowerment in the wilderness.
Eleanor Gerda Cornell Brownton, 1919-2019, was one of those women who rode with the “Hen Party” and is one of the many remarkable women I’ve found in my own family tree.
Much of the history of a place is stored in the memories of people who have lived there. Their stories may be told to family members, but, unless someone makes a special effort to record these stories, they become lost to future generations.
In the past, each of the historical societies in Union County, Oregon attempted to make that effort. Tape recordings existed in several locations, some of them transcribed in written form, others not. A more ambitious and thorough effort had seemed necessary so that more of the oral history of Union County could be captured and preserved.
Thus, the Union County Oregon History Project began in 2002 to make that more ambitious effort. One of its principal purposes was to collect as many oral histories of older Union County residents as possible and to make them available in both taped and written form.
Much of that collection is available online through the library at Eastern Oregon University. Gerta’s oral history is there as well, and not only tells of her life, but her own stories of the Hen Party (it also includes a biography of her friend, Jean McDonald). You can read it here or there is a download link to a .pdf version below.
I’m proud of the amazing women in my family tree, the stories they tell, and the qualities of resilience and independence they continue to pass on from our early ancestors in Oregon.
