[or-roots] Tabitha Moffat Brown

Thu Jun 10 03:22:42 PDT 2004

The Portland Oregonian March 31, 2002 
by JOHN TERRY 

It was a journey that challenged, and in many cases defeated, women half her age, a fourth again her size and lacking her physical disability. 

But Tabitha Brown was a women of great resourcefulness, greater determination and faith sufficient to face down the worst the West had to offer. She not only survived her ordeal but went on to help establish a college and, more than a century later, to be championed as the official "Mother Symbol of Oregon." 

Born Tabitha Moffatt on May 1, 1780, in Brimfield, Mass., the daughter of a doctor and his wife, she was educated as a teacher and married the Rev. Clark Brown on Dec. 1, 1799. He died in 1817, and she resorted to teaching to support their three children. 

"Grandma" Brown was nearly 66 when she left Missouri bound for Oregon in April 1846. With her were son Orus, his wife, Lavina, and their eight children; daughter Pherne Pringle, her husband, Virgil, and their five children; and 77-year-old brother-in-law John Brown. 

Orus had visited Oregon in 1843, returned singing the praises of the new land and was determined to take his family there. But it was not a trip recommended for a woman of Tabitha's age, size (108 pounds) and physical limits -- she had a bad hip and walked with a cane -- and Orus tried mightily to talk her out of the idea. 

John Brown was a former sea captain, and it was under his influence the family had moved to Missouri some years before. "Captain Brown's stories of life on the high seas captivated Tabitha's boys," says biographer Pat Wells. One more adventure to round out his life appealed to him, and both he and Tabitha refused to be left behind. 

"I provided for myself a good ox wagon-team, a good supply of what was requisite for the comfort of myself, Captain Brown and my driver," Tabitha recounted in an 1854 letter to relatives. ". . . Our journey, with little exception, was pleasing and prosperous until after we passed Fort Hall." 

Orus continued along the well-established trail to The Dalles and the Willamette Valley. 

But Tabitha, the captain and her daughter's family took up with "a rascally fellow who came out from the settlement in Oregon assuring us that he had found a new cut-off, that if we would follow him we would be in the settlement long before those who had gone down the Columbia." 

The "rascally fellow" was probably Levi Scott or Jesse Applegate, who were promoting what came to be variously known as the Scott-Applegate Trail, the Applegate Trail or the South Road. Their first attempt to lead a party -- 98 men, 50 women and a number of children -- across the parched deserts of northern Utah and Nevada, and the frigid mountains of Southern Oregon, culminated in disaster and destitution. 

To read the rest of this story, and see a photo of Tabitha, go to:
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~cchouk/brown/Tabitha.htm

Cecil Houk, ET1 USN Ret.
PO Box 530833
San Diego CA 92153
FAX 619-428-6434
mailto:cchouk at cox.net
ANDERSON - BLAKELY - FORD - HOUK - KIMSEY - MOE - RULAFORD - SIMPSON
Searchable GEDCOM: http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/~cchouk
My web page MENU: http://members.cox.net/~cchouk/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/or-roots/attachments/20040610/a3cceb08/attachment.html>