What's in a [ROAD] NAME?

George Law Curry was born in Pennsylvania and worked as a newspaper editor in Boston and

Philadelphia. In 1846, he joined a wagon train headed west joining the Boones Family and the ill-fated Donner party. At Fort Hall Idaho, he took the northern route while the Boone & Donner families headed south through California. After arriving in Oregon City he took the position of editor at Oregon’s first newspaper, The Oregon Spectator.

He met Chloe Boone (great granddaughter of Daniel Boone) on the Oregon Trail from Missouri and they were married in 1848. They first lived in Oregon City and two years after being married moved to Polk County where Chloe started a public school. Chloe was the first female teacher in the Oregon Territory. Later they applied for a 640 acre donation land claim next to the Boone family land, that is now the Charbonneau community.

In 1851 George Law was elected to the Territorial House Representatives where he served two years. He was appointed Oregon Territorial Secretary in 1853. He assumed the post of acting governor and was appointed Territorial Governor in 1854 by President Franklin Pierce. Curry was popular with Oregon residents because he was a local man. During his administration he worked to organize the government, create roads & public works. He served in the position until 1859 when Oregon was voted in as the 33rd state of the Union, dissolving the territorial government. Curry County in Southern Oregon is named in his honor.

George Law & Chloe remained on the farm until 1874 when they sold the property to Jonathan Wagner. The Curry family then moved to Portland. George Law died in 1878 from complication to a common cold. Chloe died in 1898 and they are both buried at Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery in Portland.

John Wallace Graham was born in Drymen, Scotland where he trained as a mechanic and civil engineer. He emigrated to America in 1854 and worked in New York for a few years. With the Civil War imminent he hired on with the government to drive a mule team of supplies to Fort Douglas near Salt Lake City. He came to Oregon with another pack train. In Oregon he hired on at John Hancock Zumwalt’s sawmill on Corral Creek  and lived with the Zumwalt family (see the 1860 census below).

John was a striking individual, a tall 6’3” Scotsman with red hair and blue eyes, who at 25 years old found himself living amongst a frontier household with three teenage daughters. He married the eldest daughter, Matilda Clementine, in 1861, when she turned 17. He owned & operated Grahams Ferry (west of Wilsonville) on part of the Zumwalt Donation Land Claim, and engineering and built much of Grahams Ferry Road.

He left the operation of Grahams Ferry in Clementine’s charge when he went to work for Oregon Electric Railway to engineer the new railroad line through Wilsonville.

Clementine and John, as well as many of their nine children are buried at Pleasant Hill Cemetery.

Graham Oaks Natural Area is named for this family.

Dorothy Jean (Young) Lehan (1918 - 1999)

A short cul-de-sac off Camelot St. named for Dorothy (Young) Lehan who was born and raised in Wilsonville. She managed the offices of the Ross B. Hammond Company for three years during their construction of Dammasch State Hospital. After the Hospital opened, she worked in a variety of administrative positions there including Director of Volunteer Services and Director of Activity Therapies.

She was the first woman and the first Wilsonville representative on the West Linn School Board and eventually convinced the rest of the (West Linn) school board to purchase the Cumberland Property for our future Wilsonville High School site. She also served on the first Budget Committee for the newly incorporated City of Wilsonville. Her daughter, Charlotte, became the city’s first woman mayor.

Dorothy and her husband James B. Lehan are buried at Pleasant View Cemetery.

The Lowrie family has a long history in Wilsonville, starting in 1959 when Bill and Lois Lowrie opened their first grocery store on Wilsonville Road.

His sons, Wayne and Terry, as well as other family members worked in the business through multiple expansions of the Lowrie shopping center.

Bill Lowrie was appointed to City Council after the death of councilor Marguerite Thomason. He served another four-year term on City Council and then three terms as Mayor of Wilsonville.

The Lowrie family was an integral part of the volunteer fire department, the Wilsonville Jaycees, Kiwanis, and many other civic organizations. Lowrie Primary School is named for them.

Walter Nelson Morey was born in 1907 in Hoquiam, Washington.  He started school in Oregon.  He did not enjoy reading until he was a teenager and did not try writing until he graduated from high school.

Author of over 17 children's books, many of them written while he lived on a 60-acre filbert orchard on Morey Lane, in west Wilsonville. Morey dominated the children’s literary market between the 1980s to 1990s.

As a young man he worked in a paintbrush factory, a veneer plant, and worked in the woods. He married his wife Rosalind (Ogden) in 1934. In 1950 Morey took up a friend’s invitation to go to Alaska and become a hard-hat deep sea diver. He learned to dive and inspect underwater sections of the salmon traps. He said in an interview once “ I am, without a doubt, the only person in the world who sang Home on the Range, two hundred feet down on the bottom of the Alaskan Sea”.

A natural storyteller since a young age, on his return from Alaska, Rosalind suggested he write children’s books, something he put off for 10 years. In his early writing career he published short pulp fiction stories and his first book, Gentle Ben, was published in 1965, inspired by the world’s largest Kodiak Bear he had met in Alaska. It won an international book prize and was turned into a noted television series and later a movie.

Other children's books followed, including “Sandy and the Rock Star” about an enormous trained cougar, Home is the North, and Runaway Stallion. He won many literary awards for his books,

After his wife Rosalind’s death in 1977, Morey finished writing The Year of the Black Pony and then quit writing. He later married Peggy Kilburn and began to write again. At the time of his death in 1992 Morey was working on a sequel to Gentle Ben.

Morey visited many schools and libraries in his life.  He would always encourage young minds to write about what they know best— their own experiences.

He is remembered today in his many stories, novels, awards, and memorials (including Wilsonville Public Library).

Fred Ridder came to Oregon from Germany in 1892, via Baltimore, to the Aurora Station and then by Ferry to Wilsonville. Fred married Frieda Schlickeiser and they bought 40 acres of timbered land in 1893 on Wilsonville Road and cleared it by hand to build their house, and raise their seven children. Two of those daughters ended up marrying Boeckman brothers. The farm was known for growing hops, one of the largest crops in raised in the area. One of the sons, Charlie Ridder, worked at the old Aden Grocery store on main street Wilsonville for many years. He eventually opened his own grocery store called “Ridders” in the town of Willamette, the building is now the Lil’ Copperstown Bar & Grill.

The original Ridder house is still standing on Wilsonville Road and is now home to Wilsonville Sand and Gravel. In 1905, Fred Ridder built a new farmhouse, on what is now Ridder Road by the Holiday Inn.

Fred & Freida, as well as many of their children, are buried at the Meredian Cemetery.

Lucius & Sophia (Buckman) Seely traveled over the Oregon Trail from Illinois on a wagon train in 1851 with children Jira, George Hattie & Joseph Bem. Son Franklin Flint was born on the steamer James P Flint coming up the Columbia River. The six month overland journey landed them in Baker’s Prairie (now Canby) on a 640 acre donation land claim along the river. Sons Judson and Bishop were born during the six years they lived on this farm before they sold it and moved to Linn City (present day West Linn). After the great flood of 1862 wiped out Linn City the family purchased 320 acres from JK Bolton in Wilsonville and started farming there.

The family erected one of Oregon’s early “famous” log cabins where they lived for 18 years and where son’s Robert & Edward were born. Later they built a one and a half story, plastered house that Lucius lived in for the remainder of his life.

About 100 acres of the new farm was under water when they acquired it, an area now known as Coffee Creek Wetlands. In 1858, Lucius Seely and his sons are credited with digging a mile-and-a-half long drainage ditch leading to the Willamette River which drained the wetlands and created farmable land.

Lucius, Sophia, and many of their children are buried at Pleasant View Cemetery.

Brothers, Frank and Charles Tooze immigrated from England in 1855. They came west to Oregon with Frank’s wife, Mena (Bauchman) where they settled west of Wilsonville to farm.

Tooze Road was known as the “hogsback road” to Sherwood from Wilsonville, climbing up the top ridge of the hill adjacent to the Tooze property.

Charles married Lettie Short, daughter of R.V. & Mary (Greer) Short and granddaughter of the Zumwalts. They had four children.