User Home Page Book: Hannan, Hereford & Withers Families of Mason County, WV: NGS Quarterly Report of Daniel Matheny
Prev Page | Prev Item | Contents | Index | Go to Page | Home Page | Next Item | Next Page |
Page 46 of 256
Descendants of Daniel Matheny
84.Henry Younger25 Matheny (Isaiah24, John23, William Wentworth22, Daniel21, William20 Metteneye, Charles19, Jean18, Richard17, Jean16 De Metteneye, Pierre15 Metteneye, Pierre14, Phillipe13, Jean12 De Metteneye, Jacques11, Paul10, Jean9, Roland8, Paul7 De Mathenay, Jean6, Julien Signuer5, Guy4 De Vaudrey, Aimon3 De Thoire, Guillaume "Chevalier De Vaudrey"2 Hugues, Prince1)236 was born Bet. 1800 - 1804 in Kentucky, and died September 1849 in Goldfields of CA236.He married (1) Rachel Cooper.She was born March 26, 1803 in Clark Co., IN.He married (2) Rachel Cooper236 July 04, 1822 in Owen Co., IN236.She was born March 28, 1803 in Clark Co., IN236, and died July 23, 1877 in Hopewell, Yamhill, OR236.
Notes for Henry Younger Matheny:
[Brøderbund WFT Vol. 31 (Disk #2), Ed. 1, Tree #0085, Date of Import: Oct 3, 1999]
After a late start from Independence, MO, Henry Matheny, along with brothers and families, left for Oregon, arriving in the winter of 1843 in Yamhill Co., OR.Henry, along with his brother, Daniel, built and operated a ferry across the Willamette River near Wheatland, OR; seeing the need for wheat farmers and settlers wanting to cross to find land to settle.He went to California seeking gold in 1849, where he died.
Henry was affected with narcolepsy.At any time he might fall asleep, later awakening confused and disoriented.Perhaps due to this malady, Henry never quite became the commanding figure that Daniel became.
Henry apparently accompanied his wife's brothers to the California gold fields in 1849, and most of the women went, too, including Rachel and her daughter Sarah Jane Layson.It was in what is now called Cooper Canyon a mile or two west of Pilot Hill, CA, were the Mathenys and Coopers worked the gravel.It was there in the autumn that "camp fever" ravaged the canyon.One by one Rachel saw her husband, her daughter, her brother John, and her father die there and be carried to the graveyard at Sutter's Mill (Coloma).
[From The Cooper-Hewitt-Matheny History, by Don Rivara]
Henry and Rachel did not leave Owen County, Indiana, when the rest of the family did, and there is no evidence that they ever lived in Schuyler County, IL, where Daniel and Mary lived. Yet the siblings reunited in Platte County, MO, in the late I 830's. Daniel and Mary were there in 1837; we don't know for sure what year Henry and Rachel first moved there, but Henry was already prominent enough by March of 1839 to be selected for the grand jury of Platte County.
Notes for Rachel Cooper:
[Brøderbund WFT Vol. 31 (Disk #2), Ed. 1, Tree #0085, Date of Import: Oct 3, 1999]
In 1817, Rachel Cooper moved with her parents to Owen Co., IN, near what is now the town of Spencer, where she married her second cousin, Henry Matheny.Henry's older brother, Daniel, had married Rachel's older sister, Mary, in 1819, thus uniting the Matheny, Cooper and Younger families even closer.
Rachel and Henry stayed in Owen Co. several years after her parents and other relatives had left.They later moved to Schuyler Co., IL to be near Mary and Daniel Matheny, and in 1837, both Matheny families moved to Platte Co., Mo.In 1843, the two families joined the first large wagon train to leave for Oregon, arriving there in November 1843.
Rachel and Henry did not stay in the Tualatin Plains area (present-day Beaverston/Hillsboro).They immediately moved about 40 miles south to what is now called the Hopewell area of Yamhill Co., OR.They selected land on the side of a gently sloping hill about two miles west of the Willamette River.A year later, Daniel Matheny and his family moved nearby, purchasing some partially cleared land and a ferry operation on the banks of the Willamette.This area was later known as Wheatland.
In her book, Into the Eye of the Setting Sun, Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood described Rachel as "wide awake and splendidly animated."Rachel seems to have been a person at the center of everything in her family.A bit eccentric, she smoked a pipe, and loved to gossip and talk, much to her sister Mary's disapproval.Rachel kept a diary of the journey west which was jokingly known in the family as the "History of Grease," since the book had survived a fall into a vat of buffalo fat.Unfortunately, Rachel's diary burned in a house fire before it could be published.
We know only a little about Henry Y. Matheny.Charlotte mentions that he suffered from amnesia and would sometimes wander away from home.Most likely Henry's strange malady was the result of small strokes affecting his brain.Like almost all the other males in the family, Henry went to California in 1849 to search for gold.He unfortunately never returned, catching "camp fever."He is buried near Sutter's monument near his brother-in-law, John M. Cooper, his daughter, Sarah Jane Layson, and his father-in-law, Isaiah Cooper.
Rachel and Henry Matheny had two daughter who survived infancy: Sarah Jane and Louisiana.Probate records list the daughters and Rachel as heirs to an Isaiah Matheny in the early 1850s.This could be a son of Henry and Rachel's, or just a mistaken naming of Isaiah for Henry.
Rachel raised her daughter's three children.Her son-in-law, Aaron Layson, appears to have helped her farm for many years after Henry's death.Part of Rachel's farm is now the Hopewell Cemetery, which Rachel donated to the community.(Source: Our Cooper Cousins, by Gary Burlingame.)
[From the Matheny-Hewitt-Cooper History, by Don Rivara]:
Rachel Cooper Matheny was quite a contrasting figure to her sister Mary, according to the images created in Into the Eye of the Setting Sun. Whereas Mary was bold, tidy, prone to tears, disciplinary, and aspiring to be lady-like; her sister was wise, patient, close-mouthed, pipe-smoking, and understanding.
Rachel was the second child of Isaiah and Elizabeth Montier Cooper. Born March 26, 1803 in Clark County, Indiana, a time when President Jefferson was negotiating the purchase of Louisiana, she lived for fourteen years in Springville Township and passed the difficult times of the War of 1812 there. Besides her several brothers and sisters, Rachel had as a companion a girl of her own age, Esther Cowan, whom the Coopers informally adopted about 1813.The Cooper children all appear to have been well-educated by the standards of the time. They probably attended a school in the Springville area or at nearby Charlestown. Her mother was illiterate, but Isaiah could read and write.
She was fourteen when the Coopers moved to Owen County, Indiana, in 1817. It was soon thereafter that the Matheny brothers, Daniel and Henry, also moved up to Owen County from Hardin County, Kentucky. Her sister Mary married Daniel in 1819, and Rachel, nineteen, married Henry, who was about Rachel's own age, three years later, July 4, 1822.
If Charlotte Matheny Kirkwood's daughter, Lenore Rogers, was correct in a letter she wrote to a relative, Daniel and Mary had been second cousins; that would have made Rachel and Henry second cousins also. Whatever their status, the couple had only three children who lived to adulthood, although they may have had others who died young. The three surviving children were Sarah Jane Matheny, born c. 1825, Owen County, IN, married Aaron Layson (c. 1820-1886), May 3, 1843, Platte County, MO, died autumn 1849, El Dorado County, CA, buried Coloma, CA; Isaiah Matheny c. 1828-1853; and Louisiana Catherine Matheny, born March 8, 1829, Owen County, IN, married (1) James Cave 1844 (2) Joseph Kirkwood 1847, Yamhill County, OR, died January 6, 1908, Yamhill County, OR. That Rachel and Henry had other children is evidenced by the early censuses. The 1830 U.S. Census of Owen County, Indiana, listed three sons: 2 aged 0-5, I aged 5-10, and another male age 10-15 who was too old to have been a son of Henry and Rachel. The 1840 U.S. Census shows only a son aged 10-15 (Isaiah) and the two daughters: 1 aged I 015 (Louisiana), and 1 aged 15-20 (Sarah Jane).
Henry and Rachel were members of the "Great Migration of 1843," like Daniel and Mary. Charlotte Kirkwood mentions her aunt quite often in Into the Eye of the Setting Sun.Rachel kept a diary during the epic journey. It accidentally fell into a kettle of hot buffalo fat but was retrieved quickly by Rachel, but the outsides of the pages and the cover were damaged.The diary, thereafter dubbed "Rachel Matheny's History of Grease," was later destroyed when Rachel's home bumed.
Rachel's daughter Sarah Jane had married Aaron Layson unexpectedly while witnessing the elopement wedding of Aaron's sister, also named Sarah Jane, with Adam Matheny. At first upset by the unplanned wedding, Rachel learned to have a very close relationship with this son-in-law, rearing his motherless children and housekeeping for him while he farmed her land. But that was to be in the fliture, During the 1843 migration, they were learning how to be kin. When the Oregon company met to organize at the grove West of Fizhugh's Mill on May 18, 1843, Aaron Layson was called upon to act as chairman, quite an honor for the twenty-three- year- old newlywed. Peter H. Burnett, later to become California's first governor was elected secretary. (James W. Nesmith diary, Oregon Historical Quarterly Vol.7, p.329)At the end of the Oregon trip, Henry and Rachel wintered at the Methodist Mission at The Dalles, not entering the Willamette Valley until spring (unlike Mary and Daniel Matheny, who crossed over Mt. Hood and wintered in the Tualatin Valley).
In the spring of 1844, Rachel and Henry settled at what is now Hopewell, Yamhill County, Oregon, against the Eola Hills. When the first death occurred in the area, because their claim lay on high ground, Rachel and Henry donated a portion of their land as the local cemetery, where Rachel herself would one day be buried. At the Hopewell Cemetery there is a monument dedicated to Rachel.
Henry apparently accompanied Rachel's brothers to the California gold fields in 1849, and most of the women went too, including Rachel and her daughter Sarah Jane Layson. It was in what is now called Cooper Canyon a mile or two west of Pilot Hill, CA, where the Mathenys and Coopers worked the gravel. It was there in the autumn that "camp fever" ravaged the canyon. One by one Rachel saw her husband, her daughter, her brother John, and her father die there and be carried to the graveyard at Sutter's Mill (Coloma). She couldn't have helped wishing the family had remained in Oregon on their land, but now she had too much to do to spend too much time reflecting. There in the epidemic-plagued Mother Lode, she took over the care of Sarah Jane's motherless children, the youngest a newborn baby.
With Henry alive, the Mathenys had qualified for 640 acres of Oregon land, but alone, she could only qualify for 320. Her son-in-law Aaron Layson was now in the same situation; so he took over half of her land claim. She cooked, cared for the children (Ann, born c1844; James Benjamin, born c 846; and Cena Abigale, born 1849), and took care of the house; he farmed the land.Only twenty-nine when his wife died,
Aaron never remarried until after Rachel's death many years later.
The 1850 census shows that Rachel was living alone with grandchildren Ann E., 6; James R.; 4, and Abby, 1; Aaron must have still been in the California gold country.But by 1860 Rachel was living with Aaron and two unmarried grandchildren.The 1865 person property tax list shows that Rachel owned or produced that year 2 tons of hay, 40 bushels of apples, 2 hogs, 7 horses, 16 cattle, 10 bushels of potatoes, 100 pounds of butter, 70 bushels of wheat, and 100 bushels of oats.She had twenty acres under cultivation.
It appears that there was bad blood between the Laysons and the Kirkwoods. As early as January 186$, Joseph Kirkwood had foreclosed on a loan to his brother-in-law Aaron Layson. In March of 1874, Aaron Layson is on record as having sued Joseph Kirkwood, but no resolution of the case is listed the Circuit Court Journal. In I 876 Rachel sold her farm for $5,000 to her three Layson grandchildren. This sale may have provoked litigation. In March of 1877, Aaron Layson again sued Joseph Kirkwood. Records also show that in June of 1877, Joseph Kirkwood filed a suit against M.E.Bailey, husband of Cena Layson Bailey, the daughter of Aaron and Sarah Jane Matheny Layson. At the height this lawsuit, Rachel Cooper Matheny died on June 25, 1877, at the age of seventy-four. The friction among her family no doubt caused Rachel considerable stress.
Rachel had been the last of her generation of the family left in the Willamette Valley. Her brothers Enoch and Bill had moved to eastern Washington and her brother Isaiah to the Midwest; the rest were dead. She was buried in the cemetery on her own land, next to Mary and Daniel Matheny. In 1932 a monument honoring Rachel as the donor of the cemetery at Hopewell was erected at the cemetery.Her grandnephew, Dr.Jasper Hewitt, read her biography at the dedication.
More About Rachel Cooper:
Fact 1: June 25, 1877, Died in Hopewell, Yamhill Co., OR.236
Children of Henry Matheny and Rachel Cooper are:
164 | i. | Sarah Jane26 Matheny236, born 1825236; died WFT Est. 1826-1919236. | ||
+ | 165 | ii. | Louisiana Matheny, born March 08, 1829 in IN; died January 06, 1903 in Yamhill Co., OR. |
94.Michael25 Matheny (Michael24, John23, William Wentworth22, Daniel21, William20 Metteneye, Charles19, Jean18, Richard17, Jean16 De Metteneye, Pierre15 Metteneye, Pierre14, Phillipe13, Jean12 De Metteneye, Jacques11, Paul10, Jean9, Roland8, Paul7 De Mathenay, Jean6, Julien Signuer5, Guy4 De Vaudrey, Aimon3 De Thoire, Guillaume "Chevalier De Vaudrey"2 Hugues, Prince1) was born 1809 in Hardin Co., KY.He married Mahala Pennington.She was born December 14, 1810 in Barren Co., KY.
Child of Michael Matheny and Mahala Pennington is:
+ | 166 | i. | Joel26 Matheny. |
Page 46 of 256
Prev Page | Prev Item | Contents | Index | Go to Page | Home Page | Next Item | Next Page |