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Donation Land Claim Survey Maps

The Oregon Territory’s first Congressional representative, Samuel Royal Thurston authored the Donation Land

Claim Act of 1850. It established a Federal Court, land office at Oregon City, and a Surveyor General to define the

boundaries of land grants made to settlers. Effective September 27, 1850, the legislation granted 320 acres of

federal land to white male citizens 18 years of age or older who resided on property on or before December 1,

1850. If married before December 1, 1851, a couple would receive an additional 320 acres in the wife’s name.

Claimants who occupied their property between December 1, 1850 and December 1, 1853, (later extended to

1855) could obtain 160 acres of land or 320 acres for a married couple. Claimants were required to live on and

cultivate their allotment for four consecutive years, which could be retroactive.

In April 1851, the US General Land Office dispatched Robert Preston, Oregon’s first Surveyor General and five

deputy surveyors. Preston drove a “starting stake” on June 7, 1851. Known as the Willamette Stone, it established

an east-west Willamette Base Line and north-south Willamette Meridian, used to survey and describe real

property in Oregon and Washington states. Primary meridian and base lines, surveyed at $18 a mile in cardinal

directions, formed townships of 36 miles square.

Government requirements mandated rectangular surveys for new claims registered after December 1, 1850 to be

numbered sequentially and laid out on or parallel to national survey lines with each grid or section, of 640 acres, to

measure one mile in length on each side. Irregular-shaped claims up to the maximum acreage, settled before

December 1, 1850, or new claims adjacent to transportation lines and future town were also authorized. Using

manual tools--a compass and Gunter’s chain--670 square miles were surveyed from 1852-54.

1852 Survey Map Description, Township 1 South Range 2 West

The 1852 survey map of Township 1 South, Range 2 West of the Willamette Meridian, recorded by surveyors

William and Butler Ives, was examined and approved by the Surveyor General’s Office in Oregon City on November

12, 1852. It recorded the surnames and locations of land claims, fields under cultivation, road, ferries, and other

topographical features including the Tualatin River and its tributaries, and what is now Cooper Mountain. At the

time, settlement was aggregated in the vicinity of two early pioneer wagon roads; the 1844 Plains-Falls Road, one

of the first public works projects authorized by the Provisional Government of Oregon that linked Oregon City to

Tuality Plains, and the 1850s-era road from Portland to Lafayette.

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1852 T1S R2W survey map detail of the Plains-Falls Road from Tuality Plains to Oregon City:

Euro-American settlement along the Plains-Falls Road, recorded on the 1852 survey map of Township 1 South

Range 2 West of the Willamette Meridian included, from left to right:

Born in 1826 in Jackson County, Missouri, Henry Noland married Sarah Doney on May 13, 1847 in Washington

County, Oregon where they registered donation land claim OC 3665.

Samuel C. Ritchey (Ritchie) was born in 1807 in Garrett County, Kentucky. He married Elizabeth Gibson in Hancock,

Illinois on May 10, 1846. They arrived in Oregon on October 6, 1853 and registered Donation Land Claim #3933 in

Washington County. Horace Lindsay was one of three affiants. The Ritchey children were Mary, born in 1850 and

George, born in 1852 in Illinois; Jasper, born in 1855; Jane, born in 1858; Esther, born in 1861 and Sherman, born in

1865, all in Oregon.

Blacksmith Charles Stewart, born in St. Charles County, Missouri on April 9, 1818, migrated across the Oregon Trail

in 1846, lived briefly in Polk County then relocated to the Hazelwitch farm in the Tualatin Valley in 1849. The

Stewart children were Sarah, Mary Adeline, Martha Jane, Susan, John, Benjamin, Charles and Effie. Martha Jane

married Andrew Jack.

Born December 29, 1810 in Muskingum County, Ohio, Nathan Robinson married Mary Elizabeth “Polly” Dorland,

on June 1, 1834 in Richland, Ohio. Emigrants of 1847, their children were Rebecca, born 1843 in Missouri; Mary

born 1848, and James, born in 1851 in Oregon.

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Among the roughly 1,500 immigrants to Oregon in 1844 were Richard Allen White and the former Caroline

Matilda Rider from Devonshire, England. White emigrated from England to Canada in 1836, to Missouri in 1843

then to Oregon. They registered a claim, bisected by the Plains-Falls road, north of the Robinson farm or what is

now SW Johnson Street and south of Baseline Road, between SW 198th

and 219th

Avenues.

After traveling the Oregon Trail in 1843 with Jesse Applegate’s “Cow Column” of the Oregon Emigrating Company,

Kentucky natives, Andrew Jackson and Sarah Jane Masters drifted down the Columbia River to Linnton during the

spring of 1844, following the death of their six-month old son Marcus White, born October 2, 1845 at The Dalles.

They resided in several locations in the Tualatin Valley then registered a Provisional Land Grant on May 16, 1848 in

Tuality County, later Donation Land Claim OC 4903 in Washington County. The Masters children were John Willis,

born on March 5, 1845; Mary E, born on March 3, 1847. Thurston Lane, born on May 9, 1851; William Edward,

born on June 9, 1854 and Elizabeth Andrew, born on December 18, 1856

While serving as a member of the Oregon Territorial Legislature and Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court 1845-48,

Peter Burnett resigned to lead an overland company to the California gold fields where he was the attorney and

general agent to John A. Sutter, a judge for the Superior Tribunal of California and the first American governor of

California 1849-51. The Masters may have been members of Burnett’s 1848 expedition. They earned $10,000 while

managing a hotel in Sutterville, then survived a shipwreck of the Aurora in the Pacific Ocean near Astoria in 1849.

Virginia native Isaac Walter Smith, an immigrant of 1843, claimed land in T1S, R2W along the Plains-Falls Road.

Born in 1815 in Virginia, and Mary Northrop Smith, born 1830 in New York registered their land claim on July 20,

1851, located from modern-day SW Blanton to Johnson Streets, between 178th and 198th Avenues. Their children

were Richmond, born in 1847; Walter, born in 1849; William, born in 1851; Nancy, born in 1853 and John, born in

1856.

A millwright by trade, James Harvey McMillan settled in Oregon City where he built the first railroad and bridge

west of the Rocky Mountains in 1847--a 150-feet long log boom--made of 2 x 4 scantlings and 1/2x 2 inch bar iron,

and volunteered with the Oregon Rifles, a military unit dispatched by Governor George Abernethy to The Dalles

following the Whitman Incident.

After returning from the California in 1849 where he mined gold, valued as much as at $700 in a single day on the

American River and its tributaries, McMillen purchased a Tualatin Valley land claim from Richard K. Torney, a

former coworker at the Abernethy sawmill in Oregon City, for $5,000. A.L. Lovejoy and F.W. Pettygrove witnessed

the quit claim deed on February 19, 1850.

For the next 11 months, McMillen leased the acreage, located south of what is now modern-day Tualatin Valley

Highway south to Rosa Road, and between SW 178th

and 198th

Avenues, to John M. and G.W. Ritchie and H.

Lindsay, with “seed wheat, oats and potatoes together with one plough and one harrow” in exchange for one-third

of all crops stored in his barns.

McMillen married Tirzah Barton, the daughter of Edward and Hanna Barton, in 1851. Quakers from New Jersey,

they registered a 321-acre claim adjacent to McMillen’s farm on the Plains-Falls road on February 25, 1852. The

extended McMillen family emigrated to Forest Gove from Genesee County, New York in 185; Shis father Joseph, a

well-known millwright; brother Frank, who operated a Tualatin River sawmill; twin sisters Cecilia and Parthena;

their husbands Stephen Blank, a blacksmith and carpenter and Henry H.C. Raymond a teacher, writer and clerk.

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1852 T1S R2W survey map detail of the Harris’ Ferry Road from Portland to Lafayette:

Euro-American settlement along the Harris’ Ferry road (the road from Portland to Lafayette), recorded on the 1852

survey map of Township 1 South Range 2 West of the Willamette Meridian included, from left to right:

Born in 1812 in Upper Canada; James E. Rice married Nancy in May 1836 in La Porte, Indiana. They registered

claim No. 880 on May 13, 1850, Affirmed by William M. Doughty, Arthur Burns, Chas. Lewis, Stephen Bean.

Charles Lewis, born in 1819, married Mary Ann Burrows, the daughter of Arthur Burrows on June 13, 1844 in Holt

County, Missouri. Donation Land Claim OC 3996.

Born 1818 in Orange County, Virginia, Horace Lindsay migrated to Oregon in 1850. He registered land claim No.

630, affirmed by John M. Richey, Felix Landess and James E. Rice.

In addition to Nathan and Polly Robinson who registered a claim along the Plains-Falls Road, members of the 1847

migrant group that set out from Pittsfield, Illinois arrived at The Dalles on September 4th

and included Abraham

Landess, Felix Landess and John M. Richey.

John M. Richey (Ritchey) was born in 1819 in Monroe County, Indiana. He registered land claim No. 631 on May

15, 1852, affirmed by Horace Lindsay, Felix Landess and James E. Rice.

Kentucky native Felix Landess, born in 1820, married Elizabeth Jane on November 8, 1840 in Adams County Ill.

They registered land claim No. 629 on December 1, 1847, affirmed by Nathaniel C. Richardson, Thomas C. Cololick

(Cornlick-Cowlick).

Phillip Ingersol Harris, born 1808 in New Jersey married Sarah Casto Taylor in Ohio in 1827. She was born in May

19, 1810 in Madison, Ohio, one of eight children of Scottish immigrants. Jane Harris was born in 1830; Eliza in 1832

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and William Melvin in 1835, all in Ohio. Steven Morton, a blacksmith, born in 1841 in Missouri was married to the

former Virginia Shattuck. Ellen was born 1845 on the Oregon Trail.

After surviving guide Stephen Meek’s Oregon Trail shortcut, where Eliza Harris succumbed to camp fever, the

extended Harris family, including daughter Jane and son-in-law Hiram Johnson settled in T1S R2W, west of what is

now Cooper Mountain and the Tualatin River, Victoria was born in 1848, Thomas in 1850 and Clifford in 1853.

Other emigrants of 1845 to settle in the Tualatin Valley were Edwin Comfort, Augustus Fanno, Benjamin Cornelius,

Lawrence Hall and James McMillen.

Hiram Johnson, married Jane Harris, the eldest daughter of Phillip and Sarah Harris, on November 3, 1842 in

Daviess County, Missouri.. Their 640-acre land claim (DLC certificate 4700) was recorded in 1846. The Johnson

children were Franklin, born in 1844. Mary and Charles were born after they settled in the Tualatin Valley.

Abraham Landess, born in 1788, in North Carolina, married Elizabeth in December 1810 in Kentucky. They

registered land claim No. 633 on October 1, 1847, affirmed by Thomas D. Humphreys, Hiram Johnson, James M.

Powell (Rowell) Peter Scholl.

On December 23, 1842, Lewis C. Cooper, born in 1799 in Adairsville, Cass County, Georgia, married Elizabeth Ann

Linebarger, born in Parke County, Indiana in 1825. They crossed the Oregon Trail in 1843 with the extended

Linebarger family and registered a land claim in 1852 near the modern-day intersection of SW Farmington and

Riggs roads. The Coopers migrated to California and were enumerated in the 1860 Fresno County census.

Born July 9, 1826 in Erie County, Pennsylvania, Charles J. Merrell was the son of Charles Giles Merrell, Scottish

immigrant born in 1799, and Margaret DeVoe, a native of Holland, born circa 1818. The Merrell’s navigated the

Atlantic and Pacific coasts and crossed the Isthmus of Panama by pack train in 1847. They registered a 640-acre

claim, certificate 430, in 1850. Modern-day SW Rosa Road was the northern boundary of the claim which was west

of SW Grabhorn Road and site of the Jenkins Estate, built 1917-24. Their children included Charles Jackson, born

1826 in Pennsylvania, married Sarah Helen Scholl, born on March 31, 1851, the daughter of Peter and Elizabeth

Scholl. Josiah M., born in 1830; John D., born in 1831; and Elizabeth D., born in 1833 in New York; and Mary

Angeline, born in 1838, and Dewitt Clinton, born in 1841 in Missouri.

Navigation and Transportation

By the 1840s, Euro-American pioneer wagon roads developed from a network of Tualatin-Kalapuya footpaths and

pack trails between population and trading centers at Wapato Island, Wapato Lake and The Falls, then adapted in

the early 19th

century for fur company brigades that traversed the Tualatin Valley between outposts on the

Willamette and Columbia Rivers, and after 1825, to connect Hudson’s Bay Company farms at Fort Vancouver,

Scappoose and Sauve Island to permanent settlements that emerged at French Prairie and Tuality Plains.

Oregon’s legislative committee, in the 1844 Act on Roads and Highways, declared that the road from the

Willamette Falls to the Tuality Plains, and the road from the Tuality Plains to Linnton “be a public road, opened 12

feet wide, clear of trees, logs and other obstructions, with stumps cut low, sufficient bridges and causeways and

the space of 10 feet on each side of the road” and required, “All male inhabitants over sixteen and under 50 years

of age, who would be entitled to vote if of lawful age, shall be liable to work on roads.”

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A remnant of the 1844 Plains-Falls Road,

now SW Kinnaman in Aloha,

Washington County Cultural Resources

Inventory 213/173.

The legislature appointed viewers to site and mark the road and report

to an overseer that would authorize work and open the road according

to law. In a letter dated June 28, 1844, Secretary of Oregon, J.E. Long,

notified Alvin T. Smith that he, Adam Hewett and James Waters had

been selected to “view out the road leading from the Willamette Falls to

the Tualatin Plains.”

On the T1S R2W map, the Plains-Falls road bisected the White

Robinson, Masters and Torney/McMillen land claims. Northwest of the

White claim, it led to Tuality Plains. East of the McMillen claim, it

followed what are now sections of SW Hart Road, SW Hall Boulevard in

the vicinity of the Augustus Fanno land claim, and further to Boone’s

and the Wheatland ferries.

While the US Congress approved a bill that created the Oregon Territory in August, 1848, news of the discovery of

gold in California arrived in Oregon. A month later, an estimated two-thirds of the male population, about 3,000

residents, left to join the gold rush. The rapid influx of population growth at Yerba Buena-San Francisco and

Sacramento created a booming market for Oregon wheat and lumber and ports at Milwaukie, St. Helens and

Portland.

On the Tualatin River, southwest of the Robinson claim, Abraham Sulger, an immigrant of 1848 from Philadelphia,

operated a ferry and post office on his land claim between Gordon and Butternut creeks. About three miles to the

south, the Harris’ Ferry crossing, post office and church congregation was founded by postmaster Phillip Harris in

1851 near modern-day Oregon Highway 8-SW Farmington Road.

In addition to ports at St. Helens and Linnton, Baker’s Landing, northwest of Portland was established W.H. Baker

in 1851. Farms in the Tualatin, Yamhill, and Chehalem valleys, closer to the lower river, cultivated vegetables that

could be transported to market soon after harvest, while upriver farms produced more wheat and livestock for

export.

Passable roads and navigable waterways that connected farms to market, building and operating ferries, improved

wagon roads to river landings and trade routes, and steamboats introduced to the lower and upper Willamette

River were fundamental to Oregon’s economy. For Tualatin Valley farmers, the most common overland route to

the lower Willamette River was over the steep and rough Tanner Creek canyon trail across the Tualatin Mountains.

The Portland and Valley Plank Road Company was formed in August 1851 to transform a trail through Tanner

Creek canyon that crossed the Tualatin Mountains between Portland and the Tualatin Valley into a wooden,

planked Canyon Road for wagons. Portland merchant, sawmill owner and member of the Portland and Valley

Improvement Company, William M. King, was president and superintendant. Construction contracts called for split

planks or sawed slabs, with cedar preferred over fir. After about 10 miles was built, work was halted.

The April 6, 1853 Washington County Commissioners’ Journal set rates of passage for Sulgar’s and Noland’s; Harris

and Landess; and Peter Scholl’s ferries on the Tualatin River: Foot Passenger - 15 cents; Man and Horse - 25 cents;

Wagon or Yoke of Oxen or span of Horses - 75 cents; Additional Yoke of Oxen or Span of Horses - 25 cents; Head of

loose Cattle or Horses - 12 cents; Head of Sheep or Hogs - 5 cents.

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The effort to improve Canyon Road was reinvigorated in 1855 by the Tualatin Plains Plank Road Company,

organized by Portland’s merchant leaders including William S. Ladd and Josiah Failing, sold public subscriptions and

charged a toll, $1-$5 for a wagon and team and additional cost per head of loose livestock, to collect $75,000 for

additional improvements. When that effort was completed in 1856, the Canyon Road, a seasonal and sometimes

treacherous route that was never fully planked, became the shortest and most direct route for Tualatin Valley

farmers to transport goods to market.

On the 1852 map of T1S R2W, Canyon Road, from Portland to Lafayette, traversed the Tualatin Valley where it

branched to northwest to Tuality Plains, west to Hillsboro and southwest to intersect with the Plains-Falls Road,

and other pioneer roads to the Sulgar (Sulgar-Noland) ferry on the Tualatin River, between Gordon and Butternut

creeks, an estimated three miles north of the Harris (Harris-Landess) ferry on the Tualatin River near what is now

Oregon Highway 10 or Farmington Road. These ferries, often cedar log rafts, connected overland wagon roads

between early commercial centers and shuttled passengers, livestock and cargo across rivers and streams while n

assortment of vessels: keelboats, canoes, rafts, scows, ferries and bateaux transported farm exports to ports and

ocean-going vessels on the Willamette River.

Abraham Sulger was elected assistant clerk of the Seventh Session of the Oregon’s Legislative Assembly in

December, 1855. He was among a group that included John A. Taylor, Peter Scholl, T.I. Humphreys, their associates

and successors, declared body corporate and politic. An Act to Incorporate the Tualatin River Transportation and

Navigation Company was authorized by Oregon’s Legislative Assembly on January 29, 1856, to improve the 83-mile

long waterway for connection to the Willamette River. And by 1858, the 27-ton steamer Hoosier transported

wheat on the Tualatin River.