Roseburg, Oregon and Vicinity: Some Settlers Circa 1850 - 1900
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Roseburg, Oregon and Vicinity: Some Settlers circa 1850 - 1900 by Michael and Dennis Weber This document has been self published by the authors on Lulu.com. You may purchase additional copies of it at www.lulu.com . To do that, go to the site, then enter words from the above title in Lulu’s search routine. This title should come up and it will instruct you on how to order. The cost is around seven dollars per copy and postage is generally around four dollars. It would be a nice idea to pass it on to other family members who someday may wonder about our family and want to learn more about it. Table of Contents Acknowledgments ................................................... Page 4 Foreword ................................................... ............ Page 5 Introduction ................................................... ......... Page 7 Aaron Rose: Founder of Roseburg . .................. Page 7 Prune Growing in Douglas County . .................. Page 8 Roseburg and Vicinity Maps ......................... ................. Page 8 Chapter 1: Moritz Julian Weber arrives in Roseburg ........................ Page 11 Adam Fisher, Melissa Jones and Moritz Weber connections ................ Page 11 Roseburg Area Maps ................................. .............. Page 13 Chapter 2: Moritz Weber marries Emma Fisher in Roseburg .................. Page 15 Moritz the Road Builder ............................ ................ Page 16 Riversdale School .................................. ............... Page 16 Final days in the old country! . .................... Page 19 Chapter 3: Wives and Husbands of Moritz’s and Emma’s Children ............ Page 20 Emily Elizabeth Weber (February 10, 1895 - October 27, 1991) ............. Page 20 Johanna (Josie) Jane Weber. (May 02, 1896 - April 25, 1995) ............... Page 25 Oscar Felix Weber (October 22, 1904 - April 10, 2003) .................... Page 25 Henry Leopold Weber (July 19, 1900 - July 10, 1927) ..................... Page 28 Chapter 4: Moritz Weber and Marussia ................................... Page 29 Andrew Weber ....................................... ............. Page 30 George (a.k.a., Georgi) Weber ...................... .................. Page 30 Chapter 5: Georg Ernst Weber Settles in Roseburg .......................... Page 32 Effie Stephens’ Ancestors: The Stephens, Harveys, Thurlows, & Moshers . Page 35 The Children of Georg Ernst and Effie Nina (Stephens) Weber .............. Page 41 Chapter 6: Wives and Husbands of Georg and Effie’s Children ................ Page 44 Ernest George Weber, born 1897, died 1992. ................... Page 44 Cora Emily, born 1899, died 2001. ................... Page 46 The ancestors of Ray Livingston Ward. ............. Page 47 Maurice Fritz Weber, born 1902, died 1970 . ................... Page 49 Elza Flora Weber, born 1904, died 2001 . ................... Page 50 Henry Milo Victor Weber, born 1909, died 1999 . ................... Page 51 Chapter 7: Stephens’ Connection to Fame .................................. Page 52 Lafayette F. Mosher (1824-1890) . .................. Page 53 Joseph Lane (December 14, 1801 - April 19, 1881: . .................... Page 53 Appendix I: Early Days in Roseburg by Henry Weber . .......................... Page 55 Appendix II: The Flournoy Family and Ray Livingston Ward ..................... Page 60 Appendix III: John Livingston's account of his life and family .................... Page 70 Appendix IV: Ancestors of Kathleen (Bonebrake) Weber ........................ Page 71 Appendix V: Moritz Weber: Roseburg Road Builder . ......................... Page 74 Appendix VI: The Lester Neil Ferguson Family . .......................... Page 81 Appendix VII: The Last Weber Bakers: Henry and Maurice...................... Page 85 Appendix VIII: Cora and Ray Ward . ....................... Page 92 Appendix IX: The Ferguson Ancestry . ....................... Page 95 Appendix X: Descendants of the Moritz and Georg Weber Children ................ Page 99 Descendants of Emily Elizabeth Weber . .................. Page 99 Descendants of Johanna Jane Weber . ................. Page 99 Descendants of Henry Leopold Weber . ................ Page 100 Descendants of Oscar Felix Weber . ................. Page 100 Descendants of Cora Emily Weber .................... ............... Page 101 Descendants of Ernest George Weber . ................ Page 102 Descendants of Wanda Lee Weber ..................... .............. Page 103 Descendants of Joyce Effie Weber . ................. Page 104 Descendants of William Allen Weber . ................ Page 104 Descendants of Maurice Fritz Weber . ................. Page 105 Descendants of Elza Flora Weber .................... ................ Page 105 Descendants of Henry Milo Victor Weber . ................. Page 106 Acknowledgments Several people have contributed significantly to the information contained in this document, and without their contributions, we wouldn’t have learned as much about the families involved and probably wouldn’t have attempted to put it together. As anyone knows who has dabbled with genealogy, a pretty small percentage of people are interested enough to respond to queries from those of us who are interested. Such is the plight of the genealogist, but those who help, really help, so we gratefully include some of them here. Although we, the authors, used to think of our father’s efforts at being a local Roseburg historian and story teller with some dismissiveness, we have changed our minds. Henry wrote volumes about his experiences growing up in Garden Valley, about camping along the North Umpqua River and other locations, and about the City of Roseburg. He contributed to “The Umpqua Trapper” and to “The News Review” at times and self-published his more esoteric works. We include a sample of his writing as Appendix I: Early Days in Roseburg . What remains may be one of the most comprehensive descriptions of those topics that exists now that he and most of his generation are gone. For that, we thank him, posthumously. Henry’s sister, Cora (Weber), who lived to be 102 years old accumulated a lot of pictures that she passed on to her daughter, Jeanne (Ward) Palmer. Jeanne passed many of them on to her daughter, Sally (Crawford) Levi, who generously gave them to us, along with a book on the genealogy of her father’s ancestry, which turns out to be very interesting and significant to Roseburg history. Jeanne also passed on some very nice photos directly to us. We wish to express our appreciation to them, and we hope that they will find this document worthy of their generosity. Then, just when we thought we had run out of new information, we decided to try to find Lester Ferguson, a grandson of Moritz Weber and a son of Emily and Archie Ferguson, to answer some questions about the “Ferguson Delivery Service” that Henry had briefly mentioned in his writing. That being successful, Lester, who has done genealogy for decades, became a wealth of information and photos about a wide range of family members. At any query or request, he immediately responded with documents, photos, and e-mails. So, he filled in a large gap in our knowledge about our family and enhanced this document significantly. You will see his contribution in many places in this document, which we’ve respectfully attempted to cite. We can’t thank him enough! We hope to update and to fill in the many gaps, so there may be more contributors later. It never ends! Page 4 Foreword This book is the work of two brothers, Michael and Dennis Weber, who became curious about our immediate family and our relationships to other families in the Roseburg, Oregon area. We both grew up on a farm in Round Prairie, an area between Myrtle Creek and Roseburg, knowing mostly only close family members on our father’s (Henry Weber’s) side. Our mother, Grace Duncan, was born and raised in South Dakota, so we only knew her family from infrequent visits. On Henry’s side, we knew our grandfather, Georg Ernst Weber, his other children, (our aunts and uncles) and some our first cousins. What surprised us later in our lives was our ignorance of the plethora of other relatives in the Roseburg area who also were closely related to us, namely the family of our paternal grandmother, Effie Nina (Stephens) Weber, who married Georg Ernst Weber. She was also a descendant of the Harvey family, which arrived in the Roseburg area the same year as the Stephens family in 1888. We had heard some of the names of family members during our years at Round Prairie, but had no understanding of our relationship to them and of their roles in our existence. Then, as we dug into these connections and relationships, we discovered that our grandfather’s brother, Moritz Julian Weber, who preceded Georg Ernst to Roseburg from Germany, also married into an early-settler family, the Fishers, hence further merging the Webers with the early-Roseburg community. Moritz Julian settled in Roseburg in 1892 and Georg Ernst in 1895. Moritz, who had studied agriculture in Dresden, Germany, immigrated from Germany to Roseburg to make his fortune in the prune business. He had first stopped in Iowa to learn American agricultural methods where he saw a pamphlet extolling the promise of wealth by raising prunes in Roseburg, Oregon. He was on his way shortly. Georg Ernst visited him in 1893, but returned to Europe unconvinced of the virtues of Roseburg. Finally, after working for six months in St. Petersburg, Russia, (both men had been raised the first part of their lives in