I

This is my memory of our trip across the plains to Oregon in the year 1852.

In 1850, my brother Abraham and his friend, James Bingham, who was engaged to my sister Abbie, decided to go West, after having heard stories of praise for the new country from a friend who had left McConnelsville, Ohio, the year before. Father and Mother in turn received such glowing accounts from Abraham that they decided to go to Oregon in the spring.

All winter was spent getting ready for the trip. Father sold his woolen factory and grist mill. He and Mother shipped some of our bedding and clothing around the Horn and loaded the rest of what we were to take with us in the wagons. One of the three large wagons was made like an omnibus, with a door and steps at the back and seats along the side. This was where we were to sit by day.

At night extra boards could make it into a bed for Mother and Father and the younger children. Our friends were very kind and helped us in many ways, and on the first day of April, 1852, we were ready to start.

The small stern-wheel steamer on the Muskingum River took us from McConnelsville to the Ohio River, where we took a large side-wheel steamer up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. As we came near Lexington, the Captain, a big, black-bearded man, came through the crowd of passengers with a pistol in his hand. He told us that a short time before, a boat going up the river had blown up and many people had been killed, because they had all run to one side to see the town. He threatened to shoot any of us who went over on the other side. We weren't going to go over, but pretty soon the people on the other side changed places with us so that we could see the town and the boat that had blown up in the river. It seems that in those double boiler steamboats, if there is too much weight on one side the water all runs in the boiler on that side. And when it goes back in the other one again, that boiler explodes.

When we arrived at St. Joe, Missouri, Father rented a house, where we remained six weeks until we were equipped with everything we would need, including horses, cows, and oxen. Our wagons, made in Ohio, had been shipped to St. Joe, and we filled them with bedding, tents, and groceries. There were barrels of sugar, molasses, vinegar, flour, and meats. Mother slipped in a little jam to use if we were sick, or to give to sick people we should meet on the way.

II

Sometime in May our preparations were completed, and we left St. Joe for Savannah to cross the Missouri at that point.

At Savannah we had to cross the river by way of one small ferry boat, which was pulled across by a hand-operated pulley. Father had dreamt three nights in succession that the family would attempt to cross in that boat and that the oxen being rather wild, would run to one side, causing the boat to sink. In his dream he was told that none of his family would drown. Though Father didn't believe in such things, after dreaming the same dream three nights in a row, he tried to get the boatman to take the family over alone and make another trip for the oxen. But the boatman refused, as so many other people were waiting to be ferried over; so we had to go with our wagon. When we reached the middle of the river, the oxen ran to one side and the boat began to fill with water, until just a tiny bit of the wagon cover was above the water. The oxen swam off; the boatman held my baby brother above the water, Father held Mother up on a wheel of the wagon while my sister Abbie and brother Jacob kept Nicholas and me from drowning by holding on to us and to the wagon. My oldest sister held to the wagon on a wheel. My brothers Isaac and Charles, one on each side of the river were crazy to come to us, but that was impossible as the river was too full of sand and eddies to swim in. There was not even a skiff to come to our rescue, and my brothers had to run a mile to get a boat. Archie Rusk, a friend of ours who was going with us to Oregon, jumped off the boat to try to get help, though I pleaded with him not to. He was drowned.

At last the boys got to us with a boat and we were pulled out. Mother looked around and called out, "Where are Maria and Henry?" A voice from the wagon said, "Here we are!" and the wagon cover was pulled off and they were dragged out. As the water had risen in the wagon, Maria had put the big family Bible on the beds which happened to be left in that wagon that morning, along with the dishpan and every other thing she could find to pile up. That left her just room enough to stand and hold their heads above water, with a few inches between the top of the water and the cover of the wagon to breathe in.

We stayed at Savannah a week trying to find the body of our young friend and to replace the clothing that we had lost. The people of the town told Father there was no use trying to get Archie's body, for it would have been buried in the sand in a few hours. But they tried for a week, and when we left, Father left word that if his body could be found and sent home, the finder could keep the remainder of the five hundred dollars in gold that had been in the young man's belt.

III

Along the trail, we saw buffaloes wallowing in their mudholes, and many antelope. Once in a while the boys would kill an antelope, which made delicious meat. We found that buffalo meat was too coarse, and bear meat too greasy to eat much, but that prairie hens were a real delicacy.

Father always rode ahead to hunt good camping grounds with plenty of water, grass, and wood -- at least water and grass for the cattle. Often we had to cook with grease wood or sagebrush. We had iron pots and teakettles for cooking, and did our baking in a Dutch oven with coals under it and over it. It was difficult for my Mother and sisters to work and cook this way, as we had been used to a large house, a cook stove and brick oven, and maid to do the hard work. When our cow gave plenty of milk, we put the milk in a large, tin can and hung this can on the wagon, where the jolting would churn the milk to butter. But most of the time, since the cow didn't get the right kind of food, it took all her milk for my little brother Tommy. Besides, a number of the cattle died before we reached Oregon, and we had to be frugal with the milk we could get.

One night, my oldest sister and I were going from one wagon to another one and a big wolf came up. We didn't stay to see what he wanted!

We saw Indians often. Once when we were in Nez Perce country, a chief came and offered my brother a lot of horses in trade for my sister Maria, a beautiful girl with black hair and snapping black eyes. My brother jokingly agreed, and the next day the chief came with his ponies, looking for Maria. Father hid my sister in one of the wagons, and after several days managed to persuade the chief that my brother had been in fun.

There was a great deal of cholera that year. So many people had started without any tools to do anything with, and without enough food to eat. The night before we came to Old Fort Kearney, my sister Abbie was taken sick. Father went to the Fort when we got near to get help. As he was a Presbyterian and a Mason, they allowed him within the grounds, but not in the Fort itself. The doctor and his wife came down and sat up that night with Father and Mother caring for Abbie, but she died. They gave us the best coffin they had -- a plain board one -- and they allowed us to bury her in their cemetery. The doctor and his wife promised to care for her grave as long as they were there, but it was heart-breaking for Father and Mother to have to leave her.

While we were traveling along the South Platte, Father also contracted cholera. That night we had a terrible hail and rainstorm, and to keep Father from getting wet, Mother put the feather bed and boards over him. Thanks to this sweating, and the medicine, Father recovered. During the hail storm, the cattle became frightened and ran off and swam over to an island. The next day, when it had cleared, the boys had to swim over and drive them back so that we could travel on.

Maria got the cholera, too, but Mother cared for her as she had cared for Father, and she too recovered.

As we traveled, we met a great many people who were sick and dying. Often there was nothing to dig a grave with, and the dead had to be wrapped in quilts and blankets, and laid on the ground with stones piled over them. In spite of these precautions we saw many graves that had been invaded by wolves.

IV

We passed Fort Laramie, Fort Hall, and Fort Boise. At the Malheur River, my brother Abraham and Mr. Bingham met us with some provisions, thinking rightly that we might have run short. When James Bingham, who was to have been married to Abbie upon our arrival in Oregon, heard of her death, he was so shocked that he became sick, and had to be cared for all the rest of the way in to Oregon City.

We were camped one Saturday night at a good place for both the cattle and the family. My brothers were watching the cattle when they came upon two young men camped nearby. One was quite sick, so when the boys told Mother and Father, they took food and medicine and helped them get ready for their journey again. The young men were from Indiana, and had no wagon -- they had packed all their food and supplies on horses. One of these young men, Walter McFarland, was to become my husband seven years later.

We crossed the Green River at a very steep place where the banks sloped sharply to the river's edge. The boys unloaded two of our wagons and fastened the two wooden beds together, fastening a rope to them, and swam across the river and anchored the rope to a tree on the other side. The beds were loaded with food and the dismantled wagons were pulled across the river, where the wagons were put together again. The cattle swam to the other side.

When we reached The Dalles, the party separated. Some of the brothers took the big wagon over the Cascade Mountains. The rest of us took a flat boat to the Cascades, from where we went around the cascades in the wagon to the lower Columbia River. There we took a flat boat again to Sandy River, quite a way below Oregon City. At that point our brothers met us with the big wagon and we started together for Oregon City.

On our way down the Columbia, the wind started to blow so hard that we had to put ashore. It happened to be on a pretty steep place, but we had to stay there all night nevertheless. How we managed to sleep and eat our food without slipping is more than I can tell.

V

We arrived in Oregon City on October 26, 1852. My brother had found a house for us; it had only four rooms and no plaster, and was not very comfortable, but it did have a cookstove, and was the best that we could get at the time. At that time, four sold at $5.00 a sack, butter at $1.00 a pound, apples 25 cents apiece, cabbage 25 cents for a little head, and potatoes about the size of walnuts were all prices. All the big potatoes were sent to California.

One day a man came and begged Mother to care for his three little girls, as his wife had died on the plains. He wanted to get work and would come for them in a couple of weeks, he said. They were awfully dirty, but Mother and my sisters took care of them for about two months without pay of any kind from their father.

While in Oregon City we met again Walter McFarland, his father who had crossed the plains in 1849, and his stepmother and sister and brother. We met also Captain Cochran who, with my brother, was running the hotel named Oregon House. And we met Judge Waite, who became much in love with my sister Mary Ann, as Captain Cochran was with my sister Maria.

My sisters sewed to help along until my Father and the boys could get a farm. It was in Linn county on the Calapooia River, eleven miles south of Albany. The family stayed in Oregon City until the first of February, when we moved to the farm.

Our home on the farm had three rooms at first, the center room of logs, and on each side a room of shakes, with puncheon floors. Our fireplace was made of sticks and mud, as there were no bricks available there at that time. There were little sternwheel steamboats running up the Willamette River to Albany and Corvallis in winter, and as long as they could in the summer. As soon as possible, Father added two more rooms, and an attic where we could sleep. One of the new rooms was a good sized kitchen where we cooked and ate, and the other was part storeroom and part curtained off for sleeping.

When spring came, the prairies were covered with lovely flowers and delicious wild strawberries. We would go out with wash tubs and buckets and fill them with these delicious strawberries, as large as most cultivated berries and much sweeter. We ate all we could and Mother made jam of the rest. We also had many blackberries in their season, and in a few years plenty of fruit of all kinds that our family had planted.

My sisters were a wonder to some people who had been in the wilds for several years. One day a woman came to our house and asked Mother if the girls could cook and wash and make soap and such things. Mother told her that the girls were proficient in all home making, as even when they had had plenty of help, she had insisted that her daughters learn how to do everything. The woman said that her son John thought if they could keep house and sew he would like to marry one of them. Mother told her that it would not be necessary for John to come and see them as they both were to be married in May.

The boxes that Father had shipped around the horn arrived in April. When they came, it made a great stir, as we had carpets, and many such things to make us more comfortable.

My sisters were both married the 25th of May, Maria to Capt. Cochran, and Mary Ann to Judge Waite. They were married at the same ceremony and looked very sweet. The gentlemen came in a two seated carriage with two fine horses. They were married in the morning, and left for Oregon City, going as far as Salem the first day. So, when I was not quite eleven, I was left as Mother's only help.

We went to school three months of the year, except for times when Mother would spare me for the winter to go to the Seminary in Oregon City. At these times, I met many of my sisters' friends and had a good time. There was a Dr. McLaughlin, an English gentleman who in early days had married an Indian Squaw. They had several daughters who were highly educated and married fine men. They were Catholics, and when Dr. McLaughlin died they wanted him made a Saint, but the priests charged so much that the McLaughlin family left the Church and became Episcopalians.

A couple of years after we were on the farm, Walter McFarland and his family came and took a farm about three miles from us. Walter had lost a sister Sarah about my age shortly before his folks left Indiana, so he was very kind to ma and often would come over Sundays, put me on his horse, and walk alongside of me to church.

About a year later, some other neighbors moved in, and I had some girl friends to go to school with. One of our teachers, a Mr. Story, who stayed at Father's a good deal of the time when he was teaching, became engaged to Miss Frank Hogue, a friend of mine. When the Indian war broke out in Eastern Oregon, Mr. Story went with many other young men to fight. He sent Frank an Indian pony, cream colored, with a white mane and tail, and he sent me a white pony. So I had my own pony to ride to school.

One morning, Nicholas, who had been minding the calves over by the Lake, came running home all out of breath. At last we got out of him that a lot of Indians had come along. At this time the Indians in the Rogue River Valley were killing the whites in such diabolical ways, that we were always fearful of them. So we decided to get away from the house; Nicholas said he could load the gun and I said I could put out the fires while Mother got the little children a little way from the house. We went out, stopping to lie down in the tall grass from which we could peek to see if there were any Indians coming. Pretty soon a boy of about seventeen came along whom we knew. He said he hadn't seen any Indians, but that he had been hunting and had his gun and would go home with us. When we were near home, the young boy thought he saw an Indian head sticking up from behind a stump, and fired his gun. It turned out to be a red head of cabbage.

We worked hard, but once in a while we would have a party of a quilting bee. Once we girls went to a quilting about three miles from home, and the boys came for us afterward in the evening. They took us home in a big wagon filled with hay. At one point the wagon stuck in the mud, and the boys had to get out, carry the girls over the mud, and then push the wagon out of the mud. We didn't get home until the early morning hours.

According to the Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette Valley, Oregon, published by Chapman Publishing in 1903, "In Oregon, Mr. Sprenger devoted his entire time to farming, his useful trade being relegated to the past in the middle west. As time went on he prospered exceedingly, taking a prominent part in the affairs of his township, and exerting his influence for progress and good government. He was prominent in Masonic Order, having become a Mason before he came west, and as long as he lived took an active in Corinthian Lodge A.F. and A.M. of Albany of which he was one of the organizers. He also assisted in the organization of the pioneer Masonic Lodge at Oregon City. He was always prominent in church and Sunday School work and for many years was a class leader, expounding on the scriptures with intelligence and enthusiasm. He was equally interested in educational matters. He was a Republican in politics, but never sought official recognition."

Nicholas Sprenger passed away November 8, 1871, in the main room of the log cabin he built in the winter of 1852. He was 69 years old. His wife, Maria Bird Sprenger, survived him by almost fourteen years, passing away on July 21, 1885, at the age of 81.