2024 52 Ancestors: Heirlooms - An Oregon Trail Oil Lamp

Westward migration along the Oregon Trail was booming throughout the mid 1800s. The initial footpath had been carved and planned out by fur traders and trappers, but was eventually widened to accommodate wagons, in which families, settlers, miners, and all sorts of wanderers could traverse with all their belongings in tow across nearly 2,000 miles of land, creeks, and mountain terrain. Stretching from Independence, Missouri all the way to Olympia, Washington, the trail and its many offshoots became the thoroughfare to the west coast, and even today, is utilized by car on major interstate highways built right through some of the same towns.

"Line Of Original Emigration To The Pacific Northwest Commonly Known As The Old Oregon Trail," map, 1907; Ezra Meeker, The Ox Team or the Old Oregon Trail 1852-1906 (1907); database with images, Wikimedia (https://commons.wikimedia.org : accessed 10 Feb 2024); courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

In 1869, with the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, the Oregon Trail saw a decline in travelers. However, around the year 1906, my great grandparents, the Foltz's, were among the few who still opted to make the journey by wagon. If they did choose to take the rails at any point in their crossing, that piece of the story has gone untold. However, knowing that my great grandfather George LeeRoy Foltz was a freighter and teamster by trade, it would seem highly unusual that he would abandon any of his carts, horses, or oxen and leave them behind, when he'd need them to carry on his profession once they'd finally resettled.

Ezra Meeker, The Ox Team or the Old Oregon Trail 1852-1906 (1907).

That same year, pioneer Ezra Meeker, set out along the trail (but eastward from the coast and working his way inland) with an initiative to plant monuments alongside the route for fear of it being forgotten. He chronicled his many trips back and forth along the trail in authored works. It would be fascinating to learn if my family had ever crossed paths with him.

Myrtle Mills and George LeeRoy Foltz, newlyweds portrait, 1903, Vliets, Kansas.

George and Myrtle Foltz, my great grandparents, left their home in Vliets, Kansas, where they had first begun their married life, and started for a new adventure in the west. Myrtle had just given birth to their second child in October of 1905. And their eldest was still only a toddler. Imagine making that trek as a nursing mother looking after two young children; and Myrtle being only 23 years old herself. George was 25.

From start to finish, the trail had typically taken upwards of 4-5 months to travel by conestoga wagon back during its heyday in the 1860s. In comparison, the trip only clocked about 1 week by railroad. I've yet to find an estimate of how long it may have taken someone in the early 20th century, as improvements surely would have cut down that timeframe significantly over the decades. Based on the distance and current estimate by foot, I would guesstimate they were still in for at least a 2 month sojourn.

George LeeRoy Foltz, 1912, Oregon.

Unfortunately, no family diaries or journals exist to chronicle their emigration experiences, so I also am not aware if they took on this feat alone or with a wagon train, or what hazards they may have encountered along the way, but one relic of their trip survives: an oil lamp. My father keeps it above his fireplace mantel as a treasured heirloom.

Oil lamp (on right), 2024, Thousand Oaks, California.

Video Captions:

GARY FOLTZ: “So the story about the lantern was a wedding gift from, I guess, his parents, um, was this uh, kerosene lantern. And I still have possession of that. That was given to me from my grandmother, um, and she said that that is still the original chimney on it.

It still hasn’t broken after all that wagon trip from Washington to Oregon – I mean, from Kansas to Oregon to Washington. That has stayed intact. 

And…I guess that’s all I know about that migration.”

The draw for families to the west was typically for the free, fertile land with lots of access to timber, water, and disease-free climates. That would appear to be the Foltz's motivation as well. George and Myrtle's final stop on the Oregon Trail planted them in Rainier, Columbia County, Oregon. 

Myrtle gave birth to their third child there in July of 1907. But by the following year, George had submitted a land application to homestead in the central region of the state in Fort Rock, Oregon. 

U.S. Land Office, George LeeRoy Foltz homestead application, series no. 0938, 1908, Lakeview, Oregon; National Archives.

And by the summer of 1909, they were dry farming 4 lots in Lake County. The kerosene lantern came with them and lit their path for several more moves in the Pacific Northwest.