Salem Lifelines

“Lifelines” turns history into her-story. Often neglected in stories of the past are pioneer Salem women who struggled to nurture families and keep the primitive home-fires alight while serving as teachers and nurses. In later generations, women became our city’s cultural advocates or took up the challenge of careers outside the home. Lucy Anna Lee Grubbs, who died in 1881 at the age of 39, is only one example of personal and professional triumph. She is among the Salem heroines profiled here.

Tap any image below to see a list of the profiles included in this album.

category: lifelines

Lifelines Introduction

Just consider the word History: his story. That’s true, isn’t it? The heroes, adventurers and destiny-changers are most often the men of the past. But women have played the same dramatic roles. In nineteenth century Oregon, women transplanted to this western wilderness from comfortable homes in the civilization of the eastern “States”, lived in considerable physical hardship: death in childbirth being frequent. ..

The Willamette Mission

Undated drawing shows front of mission. Almost thirty years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition, four desperate Northwest Indians trekked half way across the continent to ask General Clark for his “Book of Heaven”, hoping to save their people from disease and poverty...

A Triple Wedding ~ Susan, Anna Maria, Nancy

On July 16, 1837 a triple wedding took place in a grove of fir trees, perhaps like this one, near the mission settlement. Two of these couples are well-known in Oregon history, the other largely ignored. Jason Lee conducted the first ceremony uniting Susan Downing and Cyrus Shepherd, the most gifted of the mission teachers...

Mission Mothers ~ Rachel Beers & Mary Leslie

Two of the first five women who came to the mission in 1837 brought three small children. We know little of Rachel Beardsley Beers. She married on November 17, 1830 and came to Oregon with her husband Anson and their three young children. A description of the couple was made by Dr...

The Lady Said No ~ Margaret Smith

Most of us have had an acquaintance (or member of the family) like Margaret Jewitt Smith. She was, to put it in more a modern-day term, “ahead of her time”. Even today, when a woman in America has more choices in her future than Margaret could have imagined, there are those who seek unconventional paths...

A Fatal Rescue ~ Elvira Perkins & Serepta White

Elvira Johnson had been engaged to Rev. Henry Kirk Perkins before she sailed to Oregon. In November of 1837, they were married by Rev. Leslie. She was described as “a willing worker, amiable, well-thought-of, and a person who made every effort to be useful”...

Lucy and Maria ~ Two Lee Family Brides

Maria Ware and Lucy Thompson met and became friends when they both attended Newbury Seminary in Newbury, Vermont, the oldest theological seminary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1834, and one of the first to offer education to both men and women...

Overland to Oregon ~ Pherne Brown Pringle

On November 25, 1846, 14 year-old Octavius Pringle wrote, “Camped on the Willamette, the handsomest valley I have ever beheld. All are charmed and we think we will be repaid for all our suffering.” Having left Missouri April 15th, the Brown and Pringle families had borne months of an almost fatal overland journey by ox teams, especially difficult were the last 300 miles as they traversed the Applegate Cut-off enduring axel-deep muddy roads, fording icy creeks, searching for a coyote carcass to forestall starvation and the death of an 18 year-old girl...

A Life of Adventure ~ Lydia Hines

Traveling by sailing ship on the world’s oceans and by the “Prairie Schooner” across our continent, Lydia Bryant Hines had a life of adventure. The following profile of this exceptional Salem woman is condensed from an article in the Pacific Christian Advocate of April, 1870...

The Shadow of Scandal ~ Orpha Carter, Nancy Judson, Almira Raymond

Three of the pioneer women who came to Oregon on the Lausanne in 1840 had lives touched with scandal. Divorce and suicide were rare in those days, but when they happened in a family, community criticism focused on the woman.

The first incidence befell Orpha Lankton Carter in 1850...

At Home on Court Street ~ Almira Holman & Chloe Willson

In 1867, the imposing brick Waller Hall, facing State Street, joined the 1844 Oregon Institute as representing the Willamette University campus ~ the cultural beginning of Salem. To the north, between State and Court streets, the imposing classic Oregon State House was the center of the city’s political life...

Women of Property ~ Elepha Waller, Adelia Leslie and Elizabeth Parrish

In the distribution of Salem land ~ either by the mission or by donation land claims ~ several missionaries and their Lausanne wives, obtained considerable property.

Waller-Chamberlain House as it appears today In 1833 Elepha White married Alvan Waller, a circuit riding preacher of the Genessee Conference in NY. ..