So many immigrant ancestors, so many westward movements—where do I even start when the topic for the week is travel? Should I talk about ocean crossings to the New World? Already covered that. Possible Mayflower connections? Still unconfirmed. The Wilderness Road to Kentucky? Done. Even wrote about our family’s move back east.
But while combing through the family tree for another travel story, I came across an ancestor who made not one but multiple big moves: first from New England to Ohio and Illinois, and then all the way to Oregon Territory. This is the story of my 4th-great-grandfather, Jairus Abijah Bonney Jr., who, fittingly, had not just one but two Biblical names.
Jairus was born on October 14, 1793, in Litchfield, Connecticut—just 17 years after the founding of the United States—to Jairus Abijah Bonney Sr., a veteran of the American Revolution, and Anna Brown. In 1814, the younger Jairus married Irena Larned in Litchfield. Not long afterward, the couple moved west to Ashtabula, Ohio, part of the Connecticut Western Reserve. Since Ohio had only recently become a state (1803), this move reflected the pioneering spirit that still burned strong.
Jairus and Irena had five children, including Lydia Louisa Bonney, my direct ancestor. Sadly, Irena died in 1827, leaving behind their young children. Jairus remarried, this time to Jane Elkins, and they moved again, this time to Fulton County, Illinois, where they had eleven more children. But Jairus wasn’t finished with big life changes.
A skilled millwright, carpenter, cabinetmaker, and cooper, Jairus was successful in Illinois. Yet when he heard tales of opportunity in Oregon Territory, he was inspired to go west again—this time on the Oregon Trail. He built his own wagon and stocked it with provisions, setting out in the spring of 1845 from Independence, Missouri, along with his second family and his brother, a doctor, Truman Augustus Bonney and his family.
At Fort Hall (in present-day Idaho), they encountered an agent for Captain Sutter of California who warned them that the trail to Oregon was “destitute of grass and wood” and plagued by hostile encounters with Native people. Persuaded, they diverted south to Sutter’s Fort in the Sacramento Valley.
They arrived in fall 1845 to find drought conditions, inflated prices, and land too expensive to afford. And since California was still under Mexican control, settlers were expected to become Mexican citizens. Feeling misled, the families set out again in spring 1846, this time on horseback, heading north to Oregon. With no established roads, the journey was rough, but they finally reached Oregon on June 16, 1846.
At last, Jairus and his family had arrived. His skills were in high demand, and he quickly found work as a cooper and millwright, while Jane worked for Governor Abernathy. In 1847, the family claimed a farm in the Willamette Valley, in what is now Hubbard, Oregon, where Jairus farmed until his death in 1856, three years before Oregon became a state.
This Oregon Trail tale comes from several sources found on FamilySearch under Jairus Abijah Bonney Jr. (LVHD-7FG), including an 1840s article from The Spectator and a set of recollections written by Jairus’s son, Benjamin Franklin Bonney, who was just seven years old when he made the journey.
And what became of my direct line? Lydia Louisa Bonney had already moved with her father to Illinois, where she married William Bolon in 1840. They didn’t go west again, instead staying in Fulton County, Illinois. Their daughter, Louisa Jane, married William Marion Fast and later became part of the Fast family migration to Barton County, Missouri after the Civil War.
Not quite the Oregon Trail, but still another step in the long pattern of westward migrations that mark my family’s story.
Photo Credits:
Oregon Trail meme from Etsy
Trail map from Oregon Trail Center
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