AUGUSTUS PALMER RUSSELL

1835-1919

From the writings of Rainous Todd, Wallace Russell, Gertrude McLain Russell Rowlee, compiled, edited and completed by JoAnne Leppo

A.P. Russell (Gus, as he was affectionately called by his friends) was born in 1835 in Brighton, Somerset Co. Maine. His parents were Jesse (Gus) & Lovina Russell.He was the sixth child of thirteen children. His mother, Lovina, died when he was sixteen years old. His little brother, Jesse, was just two years old. Some of the older siblings were already grown and married so some of the siblings moved out and lived together during this difficult time. His father remarried two years later and had one more child. At the age of eighteen years old, A. P. moved to the State of New Hampshire, living there for about two years with his sister.

 

In 1849, there was news of gold in California. There were many people interested and they began moving West to try to strike it rich. In 1856, A. P. is listed on the Ship Caduceus, going from London to New South Wales, Australia. He never arrived to Australia. What he did, was to catch the ship in America, and got off at the Isthmus of Panama. He was listed as a breakfast cook, so probably used that position to pay for his transport. Then after getting off the ship, with a group, he hiked across the Isthmus to the Pacific side and took a ship to San Francisco. 

 

A. P. first worked for General Bidwell who owned much of the land holdings in what is now Chico. “He hired out to him and worked with his horses for he was known as a horseman and could do horse shoeing, plus he could handle a twenty-horse team. He also worked for John Sutter on the Hock Farm and as a blacksmith/horse trainer at his mill. John Sutter owned much of the land in which eventually became Sutter County.” Sutter gave him the Buttes as reward for his work with the horses. During his employment at the Sutter Mill, the horses under his care were seized by the Yankee army for use in the war.

 

While living in California, A. P. developed a freighting business with the head of navigation on the rivers such as Marysville.  He was mostly hauling supplies to the mines and sawmills and on the return trips bringing sawed lumber back to the valley.

 

Like  many other freighters, Augustus needed land, so he used his land in the Buttes to winter his stock. He homesteaded 220 acres on the south side of the Buttes (which is the smallest mountain range in the world). Part of it laid in the Buttes and part on the flat land. Their house bordered on the Feather and the Yuba Rivers. This eventually became a swampy part of the county. It is now called the Lon Summy Place.

Photo from Wallace Russell

 

Marysville had developed mills, and was a full-fledged town. The population was almost 10,000. By 1857, Marysville had become one of the largest cities in California because it was so close to the gold mining. Over $10 million in gold was shipped from the banks in Marysville to the U.S. Mint in San Francisco.

 

Map of the Gold Region of California taken from a recent survey By Robert H. Ellis 1850 (with early manuscript annotation)

 

Soon debris was loosened by hydraulic mining above Marysville which raised the riverbeds of both the Feather and the Yuba Rivers which made the city vulnerable to flooding during winter storms and spring run-offs. The city built a levee system there that is still maintained today.

The hydraulic mining debris choked the Feather River and soon the riverboats could not make the trip to Marysville.

 

A.P. must have met his first wife, Sarah Etta, in the mining country of the Sierra foothills while he was delivering freight. When Sarah was seven years old, she lived in Ohio with her father and mother, John & Clarissa (White) Rarrick, and little sister, Ann (re: 1850 Federal Census). When the gold bug struck, John went to California across the plains to California by wagon train sometime around 1850.  After running the store by herself, Clarissa sold out lock, stock and barrel, put all her possessions including the piano on a sailing ship and came around the Horn to San Francisco to join her husband. Harriet Ellen, A.P.’s second wife, was born soon after that in 1854 to John and Clarissa, in a location called Jack Ass Bar which no longer exists. Harriet has the distinction of being the first white woman to be born in Northern California. The newspaper records that she was the first in Shasta County, California.

​

 

When A.P. and Sarah married on Sept 20, 1860, he was twenty-seven years old and she was sixteen years old. They had three children. A.P. had a pet name for Sarah. It was Saretta. That is what is engraved on her tombstone. It has always been said that Sarah had three children, but in the 1870 Federal Census, the year after Sarah died, there were four children listed. They were: Ella; nine, Sarahetta; seven, Amelia; six and Edward; four. Sarahetta was listed as seven years old at the time. We have no more record of this little girl, Sarahetta. The next Federal Census in 1880, she wasn’t in his home, but she would’ve been seventeen years old, so she possibly married, or died during that time. Or possibly, they were just trying to record that Sarah Etta lived there in the previous year, and died. Sarah died of Tuberculosis on March 30, 1869.

                     

Sarah’s younger sister, Harriet, came to help with the children when Sarah was sick. Sarah made Harriet promise to take care of her children when she was gone, which Harriet swore to and never wavered. She was not fifteen years old yet.

 

Harriet and A.P. were married on November 20, 1870 in the Washington School on the south side of Franklin Road near or on the old W.N. Wadsworth Ranch, between Clemente Rd. and Wadsworth canal, Sutter County (Acacia Road). It is land that is owned by Frye.                                

​

Harriet raised her sister’s children with her own fourteen children (seventeen in all) as her own. Children from these marriages were very close and never thought of themselves as half siblings. (Actually, Ella always referred to them as her three/fourths siblings)

Gertrude McLain Russell Rowlee: “Daily Bible reading and prayer were practiced in their home. Harriet was a seeker of knowledge and had completely read the Bible by the time she was eleven years old. Her one regret was that she didn’t receive formal schooling. After the deaths of her mother and sister, a kindly friend and neighbor offered her the opportunity to go on to college, but she had promised the sister to care for her children and never broke that promise.”

 

The Russells stayed in Sutter for fourteen years and raised prunes, apples, hogs and cows. Harriet’s second daughter, Francis Ann “Frankie” died of Diphtheria at five years old. She was the only child that didn’t live to adulthood of their children.  Harriet had seven more children in California, twelve children in all at that location.

 

 

As was previously noted, A.P. had land just south of the Buttes in a swampy part of the area.

By Louis Russell: “The family lived near the Feather and the Yuba rivers. Apparently, the family home was on the bank or levy of one of the rivers that frequently was flooded out. To cope with this, a corner post of the house was chained to a large tree, thereby keeping the house from floating away. As the flood waters subsided, the house was resettled on its foundation.”

​

About 1883, A.P. had suffered from repeated malarial attacks, brought on by the swarms of mosquitoes in the area. Also, the land near Buttes was so poor and he could get land cheap in the Willamette Valley. So he sold the ranch to Mr. Peterson in 1888. A. P. auctioned his farm equipment and some animals off and moved with their eight children to Oregon. A.P. and the family moved via horse-drawn wagons from Sutter City, California. They had traded a fine farm for property they hadn’t seen, located in a narrow valley of the Cascade Range. They brought all their livestock with them. A.P.’s oldest daughter, Ella, had married Oscar Lybecker and they owned what is known as the Platter Place, just south of South Butte Road. The Lybeckers and Russells teamed together and moved to Oregon. Rainous Todd: “When I say teamed, I mean by wagon and horses. What we used to call spring wagons were used for the women and children. Heavy wagons were used to transport household goods and farming tools, horses and other stock were simply driven in loose bunches by men on saddle horses. A.P. stopped in Douglas County, the Lybeckers continued on and settled in the State of Washington in the Pullman area.”

Amelia, A.P.’s daughter, and Clara, Harriet’s half-sister, had married in California also. They were next seen living in Washington close to Ella’s home, so they may have been part of that caravan.

 

From Gertrude McLain Russell Rowlee: “He took all his cattle and putting what he could in wagons. They brought all their livestock with them. The journey was long, rough and tiring as they could travel but a few miles each day. The older boys herded the cattle along, the father drove and, of course, the mother, with the youngest, rode. Arch was the baby at that time. It was a long and hard journey. They arrived in the fall of the year and because of a severe winter that followed, he lost most of the cattle.

                                                                                    

“They had been quite rich in California, but he never discussed his losses. He never fully regained what he had lost financially but lived to raise the family and became well and strong. He lived to be eighty-five-years old and was able to plow with horses and walking plow at the age of eighty-four. They were very religious and members of the Methodist Church. Daily Bible reading and prayer were practiced.”

 

From Rainous Todd: “There is no sign of any buildings of the Russell occupancy of this land (in California) now, although there is an olive orchard planted by a later owner that I use for location identity.  My mother, Etta May Russell (Todd) was born at this place.  To the best of my knowledge over the hill, to the West lived the Erks Family, and to the East of the Russell Homestead lived a family by the name of Varnumn.”  (Varnumn married Harriet’s mother)

 

Three more children were born there in a community called Elkhead:  Verda (1891), Theron (1893), and Homer (1895). After coming to Oregon, A. P. was a farmer.  The land that they had bought was 300 acres.

 

About 1896 or 1897, he moved farther North to Shelburn which is Northeast of Albany 15 - 20 miles to a farm on the Santiam River where his last two children were born: Alma Iris in 1898 and Inis Esther in 1901. There they raised apples and made vinegar.

 

A.P. and Harriet were members of the Methodist Church until moving to Shelburn. They were very religious and members of the Methodist Church. Daily Bible reading and prayer were practiced. But when in Shelburn, there was only a Catholic church. There was such a need for a church, that they helped finance the building of the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian missionary organization reported that there hadn’t been any church erected before 1900 because of the local’s attitude and being “skeptical”, but that since a few new Christian families moved there, it was possible to start a Sunday School, and it was up and running well by 1902.

 

A. P. and Mr. Miller built the only church in Shelburn and it is the only original building still standing in Shelburn today that could be considered as a remnant of the original town site. It has been modified so one would not know of its beginnings. A second floor has been installed and the bell tower is no longer present.

 

Wally Russell: “Mr. Miller, who donated land for the cemetery was the one who with our Grandpa Russell built a church there. Grandpa said his kids weren't going to be raised like heathens and that is why he built the church.” A.P. is buried in Miller Cemetery there in Shelburn.

 

In those days Shelburn was a big rail center and a very thriving pioneer town.  The Russells lived on a farm bordering the banks of the Santiam River 4 miles out of town.

 

 

There were organized youth meetings which were in many newspaper clippings, you can read that they would be held at Theron’s house or in Mrs. A. P. Russell’s house. Harriet was always in attendance helping out. Her children, Verda, Theron and Homer was very involved also as young persons.

 

Photo at right-- Youth gathering in A. P.’ living Room: back corner, Theron, middle-left is Verda, middle-right maybe Anna, front is Homer, 20 years old, photo from Harriet Russell Douglass Hughes

 

In 1910, when A. P. and Harriet were older, they sold the farm at Shelburn to Mr. Hogan & Mr. O’Brien for $35 an acre. A. P. had bought it a few years before that for $15 an acre, so they made a good profit. They then moved to McClay, Oregon, where they had a smaller farm and raised corn, grain and apples. These apples were Bellflower variety, and sold them to shipping vessels for their store.

 

 

They sold their seven- acre farm and rented a larger one, it was one mile east—from Mr. Arthur Fellows. It had fine, more modern buildings. The house had running water but still no electricity. A gas engine was used to pump the water up to the water tower. Homer now had taken over the care of the parents and running of the farm. Inis and Alma were still at home.                                                                                                                                   

 

The Russell family were a close-knit family. Even though there were seventeen children, Harriet loved every one of them. She wrote letters to each one and kept everyone informed how the others were doing. The children all would visit often as much as their jobs would allow. Their children also worked with each other as well, helping each as the need was.

 

​

The year of 1915 was exceptionally hard for both of them emotionally which affected them physically as well.  A.P. and Harriet had already lost two sons, Edward to typhoid fever and Avery to a tree accident, but this next tragedy was so hard for them. Their son, Jesse was thrown (or jumped) from a runaway train, he hit the bank, and rolled under the train which decapitated him. It sent a shock through the whole family and community. He was so well-liked and respected.

 

Here are portions from a letter to her daughter, Etta, from Harriet:

Macleay, Oct 31, 1915

“Papa suffers a great deal with his knees, but works very hard for him. Homer is and has been very busy all the time. He has just got his wood hauled home and his foder cut and he is building and moving the fence today so he can turn the cows in the field and out of the orchard.

 

“Alma hasn’t been to school any this fall” (note: Alma was 17 years old). “She had been kept very busy with the house and does fine. But oh, how she wishes she was in school. She has got so far behind that she thinks she just can’t go and be behind her class with the smaller children when she is so large for her age. I beg her to get up grit enough to get in and not care, but it just seems like the thought breaks her heart. But of course, she could not go this first month and leave me, but perhaps from now on she might be spared. It worries me awfully. But there are many things to worry about. All the worry doesn’t get us anywhere.

 

“I hoped that the change and lack of hard work would keep me up, But, my dear one, a mother can’t pass through in what I have had to in the past year and not go to pieces….they may keep up …. for the children’s sake, but the hurt goes deeper and the heart breaks deeper until something …. gives out. Better the body than the mind. Thank God for the comfort He sent me, ‘but Rachel mourned for her children, and would not be comforted’, and so on down through the ages. We grieve when our children grieve and each grave is in our heart. Oh, I did not mean to make you sad, I never intended to write anything like this, for I am blessed above because of my children…”

 

WW1 was declared in the spring of 1917. Homer was drafted, so that left the parents with no one to depend upon. The house was large having 6 bedrooms, sitting room, parlor, large kitchen and dining area, pantry and bath. So it was decided that Theron and Gertrude would move in with them. A. P. was now eighty-four years old and Harriet very ill with heart trouble and dropsy so both required care. A. P. still could get around so he cared for the chickens. He and Jesse, his grandson, were inseparable that summer---always together.

Grandpa and Grandma were moved into Salem in time for Inis to start school in the fall of 1918. Both parents passed away before Homer returned home.

 

Harriet died on December 10, 1918 at sixty-four years old of heart congestion. A.P. was so lonely without her. He died a few months later on March 10, 1919. He was eighty-five years old. Everyone remarked what a good marriage they had. A.P. had the distinction of being the father of one of the largest families in the State of Oregon.