Site founded Sept. 1, 2000. We passed 3 million page views on Feb. 10, 2009 The home pages remain free of any charge. We need donations or subscriptions to continue. Please pass on this website link to your family, relatives, friends and clients. Skagit River Journal of History & Folklore Subscribers Edition The most in­depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit Covers from British Columbia to Puget Sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan, Snohomish & BC. An evolving history dedicated to committing random acts of historical kindness Noel V. Bourasaw, editor 810 Central Ave., Sedro­Woolley, Washington, 98284 Home of the Tarheel Stomp Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug The saga of the Cornelius, Wallace and Rudene families By Noel V. Bourasaw, Skagit River Journal of History & Folklore, copyright 2002 Part 1 of 2: Funerals and plans for moving west Ruthinda was introduced to a new bachelor in town. He was of even temper and she was willing to see more of him. William Wallace was a gentleman who worked fast. He had to, for women were scarce in those parts and Ruthinda was a pretty little thing. She already had two sons and was a good catch. That most horrible year of 1847 ended well for Ruthinda Mounts Browning Cornelius. On Christmas Day she became Mrs. William Wallace in Clackamas county, [in what would soon be] Oregon Territory. William was thirty­six and Ruthinda was twenty­nine. It was her third marriage and, under the circumstances, it was a good match. Pioneers Nellie Canavan and Mabel Meins, who moved here with their —My Ruthinda , Christopher Barnes families while Washington was still a territory, rode the Territorial Daughters covered wagon in the 1939 Sedro­Woolley Fourth of July parade. This is similar to the wagon that the Cornelius family would The Northwest history of Ruthinda Mounts Browning Cornelius Wallace and her daughter have taken across the Oregon Trail in 1845. Bessie Jane Cornelius Rudene goes back more than 150 years. Together they suffered heart­ wrenching hardships, disappointments and family tragedies, but bounced right back, moving their grief to the back of the wagon as they carried on their responsibilities to their frontier families and communities. Consider that the scene above happened just months after Ruthinda buried her second husband and after she heard the news that her dear friend, Narcissa Whitman, had been brutally murdered in a massacre at the Whitman mission. But her life had barely begun. In the years ahead, Ruthinda would be the first white settler woman on Whidbey island and Bessie would be the first settler woman on mainland Skagit county. They are two of the most important women in Northwest Washington history. This whole chain of events started back in 1842 in Iowa when a widow and a widower met when they were both grieving. Ruthinda Mounts Browning's husband died in his 20s before she could have children, which she dearly wanted. Meanwhile, Isaac C. Cornelius married Elizabeth I. McDonald on Valentine's Day, 1839, near Des Moines and lost her after she delivered a baby boy, John Absalom, on Nov. 26, 1839. She never recovered from the rigors of childbirth. Young John's first memory was walking hand­in­hand with his father up to her gravesite on a hill. Father needed a wife and the son badly needed a mother. Early in 1842, Isaac visited the Mounts family and Eli Mounts suggested that his widowed daughter, Ruthinda, could care for the boy while his father traveled on business. A life­long love story started that day, but it was between the boy and Ruthinda. She was short of stature, described as having a round face with a complexion of peaches and cream. Her radiant smile captivated the boy and he soon played cupid for This is a "place­holder story." It the two adults. Ruthinda and Isaac married on Nov. 15, 1842, just before John's third birthday. She wanted to have a baby was originally posted back in 2002 immediately but her wishes were put on hold as Isaac organized a wagon train to take his parents and family friends across the on our original domain, and since plains to the Northwest corner of the United States. Letters from people who had moved there appeared weekly in the local then we have discovered many more press and the U.S. Congress was fashioning what would be called the Donation Land Claim Act, under which 320­acre parcels details about the families whose of government land out there could be claimed. Wagon trains started traveling west in 1843, but only lately had women started stories are interwoven. We plan to emigrating with them. Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding were among the small handful of women who traveled west before completely update and extend the 1843; they went with their husbands to establish religious missions. In 1843, nearly 800 people left in wagon trains; 1,500 in story by 2010. For now, we leave it 1844 and 3,000 would travel in 1845. Many who departed had tearful farewells with family who feared that their loved ones in its original state. We hope that would move so far away that they would never see them again — or even worse, that they would die on the trail. But Ruthinda, readers and descendants of the who was born in Ohio in on March 8, 1818, looked forward to a better life. She was the second eldest in a family of six children family will suggest ideas and and her baby brother Eli was born in the past year after his father married again following the death of Ruthinda's mother, Sarah. provide copies of photos and documents that will illuminate the The Absalom Cornelius family embarked on the first leg of their journey to St. Joseph, Missouri, in late April of 1845. There story when we update it. they joined an ox­team caravan of 50 wagons of emigrants from Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. They chose oxen in favor of horses because — even though horses were faster, oxen were both less expensive and could haul heavier loads. Isaac's wagon was furnished sparsely, carrying Isaac's tools and a bedstead and a wagon box that contained a bare minimum of items to make the trip less onerous. They heard the stories of how some families before them packed treasured furniture and bulky items that now littered the plains after they were forced to dump them to ford rivers or cross mountain passes. Ruthinda noticed that the Cornelius family was the largest of the family groups with 25 and seemed to be the nucleus of the train. The 13 surviving children of the 15 they had together accompanied Absalom and Elizabeth Cornelius, Isaac's parents. Many of the family had children with them and some of those were infants, two of whom would die on the way. Isaac was the oldest surviving son of the family, having been born in North Carolina in 1820. Absalom's relatives, the Benjamin Cornelius family, added to their numbers. Ben's son Thomas R. would eventually found the town of Cornelius, Oregon. They soon fell in with another family headed by Josiah Osborne from Illinois; the two families would be bonded by common experience over the next three years. The Cornelius family embarks on the Oregon Trail The train left St. Joseph on May 24, 1845, and immediately crossed the Missouri river into Indian country. Soon afterwards the Indians made their presence felt. While the emigrants camped on the Big Blue river, a severe hail storm struck, during which Indians stampeded the livestock and killed a cow, which had 14 arrows in her when she was found; some of the horses were never recovered. Five­year­old John A. Cornelius was fascinated with all aspects of the trip and the Indians were fascinated with him. Isaac was constantly working, helping wagons ford every stream and river from the Missouri west to the Columbia, so Ruthinda's main responsibility was to keep her family fed and to try to keep an eye on John. The first specter of the possible horrors of such a voyage came into view soon after the train crossed the Green river and they saw the remains of the Sager family. Mr. and Mrs. Sager were on a train the year before and both died on the trail. Indians desecrated the father's grave and Ruthinda learned that seven children were orphaned until Dr. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman took them in at their mission near the Columbia river. By this point, Ruthinda was grateful that she was not pregnant. The wives who were in a family way suffered greatly for the rest of the trip. She learned, as all the women did, that the wagon trains were a constant test of your endurance. Women and children often walked beside the wagons for a thousand miles, and every day was monotonous, either hot or cold or wet, and everyone was dirty the whole time except for rare breaks when they were able to bathe in streams. Every night they fell into bed exhausted and sometimes in pain. There was no celebration on the Fourth of July because the two­month old son of George and Elizabeth Cornelius died. Soon thereafter they drove into the middle of a buffalo stampede, and then days followed when the only trail they followed was sets of ruts where hundreds of wagon wheels cut into the hard pan or rocks. They passed rusting bedsteads that earlier travelers discarded, along with furniture and keepsake chests.