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Applegate Trail**MIA** LbNA #14245 (ARCHIVED)

Owner:Adoptable
Plant date:Apr 4, 2005
Location:
City:Sunny Valley
County:Josephine
State:Oregon
Boxes:1
Planted by:Erfellie
Found by: pilgrimsinthisland
Last found:May 13, 2006
Status:OFFFFFF
Last edited:Apr 4, 2005
Currently missing, i will recarve and replace the stamp very soon!! sorry for the inconvenience!
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August 27, 1861:
Today I am Eleven years old, almost a full-grown lady, although Ma and Pa still call me “Half Pint” and Grandpappy calls me “Grasshopper”. Because we are still on the Applegate trail Ma couldn’t make any cake for my birthday but I did get a nice piece of cornbread that Ma had saved for a surprise from the last mercantile we passed a few days ago. I am kind of gittin’ a lil bit sad cuz I never had a birthday before where Ma didn’t make a cake for me but I really shouldn’t be sad, we are headed for the Great Blue Ocean on the other side of Oregon and when we get there Pa says he will git me a new pony cuz he had to sell my pony, Sheba, to buy supplies for the journey from Ol’ Mr. Pritchard who owned the mercantile back in Oklahoma. Anyways, I’ve still got snowball, my kitten, here with me. I got her back in the last town where Ma got the cornbread. A nice old lady let me have her when she saw me playing on the steps of the Blacksmith. Ma and Pa were inside talkin’ with the blacksmith and never saw me hide Snowball in the basket in the wagon. Well it weren’t long until she was scratching and meowing to get out of that basket when Ma and Pa discovered her. I got in sum big trouble for that but after awhile Ma convinced Pa that it would be good fer me to have a playmate on such a long journey.

August 28, 1861:
Today the sun is out and shining happily upon us. The wagon train stopped by a creek side to take a break from the bumpy ride. So I ran down to the creek to play, Snowball running behind me, and got a stick and poked around in the water and I found sumthin’ in the water that was really slimy and brown and had funny looking fethery things on the sides of it’s head. Bobby Garrison, a boy I went to school with in Oklahoma, said its called a sallermander and told me that if I put my finger in front of it the little sallermander would bite my whole finger off, I weren’t about to find out if it were true but sometimes Bobby likes to tell tall tales and that’s why I don’t like him much. It would be funny to see Bobby Garrison with a those slimy fethery things on his head.

August 29, 1861:
We have made it to the bottom of Mountain Sexton and now have to make the journey across it. Pa says we might have to lighten up our load and was playin’ fun that we would have to eat Snowball cuz she was weighin’ down the wagon. I didn’t think it was funny at all and neither did Snowball cuz she tried to crawl up inside of my bonnet to hide. Grandpappy told Pa to leave me be or else he would spank him, I’d like to see that!

August 30. 1861:
Ma and Pa says that we have come on the Applegate trail off of the Oregon Trail cuz a lot of people drowned trying to cross a real big river in the north called the Columbia and they say that this is the easy trail! I don’t know about that… it’s been real hard comin’ this way.

August 31, 1861:
We have finally made it over the mountain; it was really hard. We broke a wagon wheel and had to put on the spare wheel which leaves us with no more spares but Pa says we can get another in the town we have reached that was just on the other side of Mountain Sexton. It is called Sunny Valley and I can see why they call it that. Comin’ into town we saw a big white Covered bridge with a name on it that says “Grave Creek”. I asked Ma and Pa why it was called that and they said they didn’t know.

When we passed through it we saw a grave marker on the right side of the road that says “Martha Leland Crowley 1820-1846”. We found out later on from the minister of Sunny Valley that the first Applegate Trail pioneers, on their way to the Willamette Valley, made one of their longest pauses -- two days -- near the creek here to bury a 16-year-old girl. Typhoid fever took Martha Leland Crowley and she was laid to rest near the rushing water, later named Grave Creek. Her husband-to-be, David M. Guthrie, wrote in 1846: "I was a carpenter and made coffins for the members of the party who died. We had no boards left when Martha died, but knocked some boxes to pieces and made her a coffin with 26 boards." The pioneers corralled cattle above her grave, in the hope that the natives would not discover her grave. I sure wouldn’t want a cattle pasture on top of my grave but Ma says that if they didn’t do that the natives would dig ‘er up and then she wouldn’t have eternal peace.

September 1, 1861:
Today tragedy struck. Snowball is no longer part of our wagon train and she will never see the Great Blue Ocean. This morning when we stopped at Togwood and Harkness’s Barn to care for the oxen and get a spare wheel, Togwood’s dog tried to eat snowball. I was screaming and Pa came running with a shotgun and fired off a round into the air to scare off the dog but it was too late for snowball. I was so sad I couldn’t stop crying for a long, long time. Ma has been giving me lots of hugs but its not really making me feel any better. I really miss snowball a lot and we buried her here in Sunny Valley, Oregon and we have to leave tomorrow to head out on the trail again, so I wont be able to visit her grave. But maybe someone else will if I tell ‘em where to find her grave and maybe leave a flower for her memory.

I didn’t want Snowball to be all alone so I thought it might be nice to bury her next to Martha Leland Crowley but I didn’t want to bury my kitty in the cow pasture so I buried her on the left side of the beautiful white covered bridge with the “Grave Creek” sign on it. Some townsfolk put up a real nice informative sign about the first pioneers, Martha’s family included, next to the bridge on the left side. To the right of that sign is a cement wall that supports the covered bridge and I buried Snowball right next to this wall under a big pile of rocks. There is a good-sized area to park your wagon on the left side of the road for anyone who might want to find Snowballs grave.

Ma, Pa, Grandpappy and I said a few prayers for little Snowball before leaving town. We stacked lots of rocks on top of Snowballs grave so the natives don’t come back some day and dig ‘er up, just like the pioneers worried would happen to Martha, so if someone comes to visit Snowball maybe they can add a rock or two to the pile to make sure that she is well covered, and maybe even stick some leaves and debris in between the rocks to help her little grave be a little better hidden. I sure am gonna miss her and am real sad but Ma says that I can get a new kitten (and a pony too) when we finally settle on our land by the ocean.

September 2, 1861:
Our wagon train is leavin’ Sunny valley today. I don’t want to leave Snowball here all alone but Pa is already driving the wagon away. Grandpappy tried to tickle me to make me smile, I don’t think it worked though, well maybe I smiled a little, but I wont tell Grandpappy that cuz then maybe he won’t tickle me no more and I like all of Ma’s hugs too. So as we rode out of town and continued our long journey west, I looked over my shoulder and waved goodbye to my precious little furry friend. I sure do hope sum nice people come to visit her grave.