I’ve traveled Hwy. 97 in Oregon, from Biggs Jct. on the Columbia River to Central Oregon, countless times over the years. Rarely a trip occurs, whether traveling north or south, without a stop at DeMoss Memorial Park. Besides it’s convenience as a rest stop, the history of the place has always been the attraction, for somehow I’ve felt connected to the whispers of the past, the smell of the poplar trees, and the rolling sagebrush land beyond.
DeMoss Park was another layer of history I held on to as I spent years following my ancestors around Oregon, traveling all the backroads I could find searching for ghost towns, getting sidetracked pursuing obscure pieces of history that weren’t even attached to my ancestors. It was another piece of the tapestry of Oregon I had created in my mind over the years.
This fascination with my home State, and people of my blood who walked it before me, is a driving force in the creation of my family tree. Over the years the branches I built grew and grew, from a single family who had endured the Oregon Trail to be here, to now thousands of people in the twisting branches of my extended family. And then one day, while exploring a branch I hadn’t visited in awhile, I saw a name I’d forgotten I’d put there – Josie DeMoss.
Josie DeMoss (1869-1909), married to William W. Starr (1868-1931) who was the son of Mary Jane Fisk, the sister of my 2nd great-grandfather, John Moffit Fisk, who at age 10 had traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852. DeMoss? As in the DeMoss’s of Sherman Co. and the Memorial Park?
“The DeMoss family—James and Elizabeth Bonebrake DeMoss and their five children—formed a musical group in 1872, the DeMoss Concertists of Oregon, later known as the DeMoss Family Bards. For over sixty years, until 1933, the DeMoss Family Bards traveled extensively, performing and preaching a Christian message in every state in the United States., in the Canadian provinces, and in Europe.” (Kaseberg, Sherry. DeMoss Canyon, DeMoss Springs, DeMoss Springs Memorial Park. Sherman County Place Names, 3rd Edition. 2009) In 1862 they had traveled the Oregon Trail. By 1883 they were camping at the springs and decided it would be home, secured 840 acres, and eventually the town of DeMoss Springs, Oregon was platted.
One indicator of their fame was that the song “Sweet Oregon,” written by James’s son Henry in 1882, was considered the State Anthem of Oregon before being replaced by “Oregon, My Oregon” in 1927:
If you wanted to learn more, it goes without saying that the DeMoss family history is richly documented in book, song, and through the Internet. But back to the story…
I had the name Josie DeMoss, and I made the leap that family researchers often make, especially when encountering a relatively uncommon name twice in the same time period and geographic area: I assumed I must be related to these bards of yesteryear. The key question: was there documented proof of that assumption? Josie’s birth date fit perfectly with the ages of Rev. James and Elizabeth as a potential daughter. So next to my mighty tree I started growing a new tree, a DeMoss family tree. I researched James McElroy DeMoss, worked in his parents and his children, and quickly saw that Josie was not his child.
This is where researchers dig in their heels, convinced that two people can be linked. So I built the DeMoss tree further, first exploring James’s brothers, then his father and his uncles. Stepping back in time to his grandfather and his great uncles, I tried to find a line from one of them that led to someone who had named their daughter “Josie.”
I continued this process, generation by generation, examining every line that might carry the DeMoss name forward. I methodically worked my way back to the early 1700’s, and then, with William DeMoss (1716-1811), found a path forward in time that led to… Laura Elizabeth Fisk (1885-1956), a distant cousin of mine, who had married David Wilber DeMoss (1885-1961). The assumption that Josie DeMoss, marrying the son of Mary Jane Fisk, would connect me to the DeMoss Family Bards seemed suddenly blown out of the water, yet I’d accomplished a connection to my family I could not have imagined, along a totally different family line. The DeMoss tree I’d propagated was now grafted to mine and the strains of “Sweet Oregon,” which once drifted from the stage that still stands beneath the poplar trees in the DeMoss Memorial Park, was now my song too.
And what of Josie DeMoss? She remains an enigma. Married to the son of a Fisk at age 21, a life cut short at age 40 I know not how, two children that left none of their own, no record of her parents, no photographs, a small line in an 1888 Grant Co. newspaper listing her as a member of the Ladies Coronet Band (a musician not connected to the musicians sharing her name!), and nothing more except a stone in the Prairie City Cemetery. The genealogist doesn’t just build trees, but instead, strives to bring our ancestors, in a sense, to life. We add texture and meaning to their lives, and through them we understand more about the times in which they lived and by extension, what they gave to the lives we have today. My hope is to one day bring some life to Josie.
