Pioneer Profiles – March 2018
With women today finding their voices and power by sharing their experiences, organizing, marching, demonstrating, and seeking political office, a look at some powerful pioneer women seems in order.
A woman’s role was considerably different in the 19th Century. It was a “man’s world.” But while subject to male dominance, women usually ruled the home, considered by society as their “natural sphere.” Some prevailed in both worlds. Women like suffragette Josephine Martin Plymale (Jacksonville Review, October 2016) were natural born leaders. Some like hotelier Madame Jeanne DeRoboam Holt parlayed their “talents” into survival and success (Jacksonville Review, March 2017). Some like teacher Jane McCully (Jacksonville Review, July and August 2016) found their strength by rising to an occasion and addressing life head on.
Mary Ann Harris Chambers falls in the latter category, responding to challenging circumstances with courage, bravery, and endurance.
She was born Mary Ann Young on Christmas Day in 1820 in Knox County, Tennessee. She grew up near Lafayette, Missouri, where her family moved when she was small. We know little about her heritage, however, both Tennessee and Missouri were still frontier at that time, so most likely she came from a family of farmers. In 1843 she married farmer George Washington Harris. A year later a daughter, Ann Sophia, was born, followed two years later by their son David.
Learning of the free land to be had in the Oregon Territory, the family crossed the Oregon-California Trail in 1853, settling the following spring on a homestead on Louse Creek (now known as Harris Creek) about eight miles north of Grants Pass. The site provided open land which Harris proposed to use in the production of grain and vegetables. Its proximity to the Trail afforded a ready market for all kinds of produce. There the Harris family proposed to carve their fortunes.
However, this was not to be.
Where the native Indians had initially been helpful, even welcoming to early settlers, they became increasingly hostile as more and more settlers poured into the region, usurping Indian lands and treating the natives as subservient. There were also those who believed “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Such was the setting for the Rogue Indian Wars of 1852 to 1856.
On the morning of October 9, 1855, George Harris was engaged in splitting logs for fencing, and Mary Ann was preparing to do the family washing. Sophie was busy inside, and David had spent the night at a neighbor’s house. When Harris became aware of a band of Indians in war paint, he hurriedly left his task and walked rapidly to the house.
Although Harris was unaware of the fact, braves returning from a hunting trip had discovered the wanton massacre by settlers of some 80 old men, women, and children at their encampment on the Rogue River two days before. Infuriated, they had embarked on a bloody trail of reprisal killing pioneer families and burning their homes. Harris purportedly became a target because he had helped a muleskinner steal a young Takelma Indian woman.
Harris managed to seize his rifle but was mortally wounded while closing the door of the cabin. Sophie, in the excitement of the moment rushed out the front door, where she was shot through the right arm between the shoulder and elbow. She rapidly retreated. Harris, while clinging to life, told Mary Ann to bar the doors and load the guns—a rifle, a shotgun and two pistols. She replied that she never loaded a gun in her life! As he lay dying, Harris described how to do so.
With her husband dead and her daughter severely wounded, Mary Ann now was entirely dependent upon her own efforts. The Indians had already burned the outbuildings. As they now attempted to burn the house, Mary Ann began firing at them. She frequently changed positions within the house to give the impression that several people were shooting. Sophie helped load and reload the guns as best she could. Mary Ann continued to defend herself and daughter for the next eight hours. At one point she supposedly counted 21 Indians—some hiding in the bush, some displaying the scalps of neighbors murdered a few hours earlier. Late in the afternoon, firing on the flats about a mile below the house attracted the Indians attention and they left to discover its source.
Mary Ann used the opportunity to flee, carrying Sophie and a pistol to a thicket of chaparral near the house. When returning members of the war party found the house abandoned, they began scouring the property. As they approached the thicket, Mary Ann fired her pistol, causing a general scattering of the Indians. This scenario was repeated several times until the Indians adopted a strategy of surrounding the thicket and settling in for a siege. Unbeknownst to them, Mary Ann was now out of ammunition and had been firing only powder. The Indians had been armed with rifles, and later reports indicated the Indians did not want to kill the women, only to capture them.
At any rate, the standoff continued until dawn.
Shortly after sunrise a volunteer militia arrived and the Indians fled. When Mary Ann recognized their uniforms, she carried Sophie to meet them. The two were worn, haggard, covered with blood, and blackened with powder—scarcely recognizable. Major Fitzgerald, the head of the militia, is purported to have exclaimed, “My God! Are you white women?”
The militia carried the two to Jacksonville. John Love, a prominent Jacksonville businessman and town trustee took them in. A returning band of Indians had burned their cabin, so Mary Ann and Sophie no longer had a home. Despite several searches, David was never seen nor heard from again and was presumed dead. So in exchange for room and board for herself and Sophie, Mary Ann cared for Love’s frail and ailing mother until her death in 1859. Margaret Love became the first person buried in the Jacksonville cemetery—by special dispensation of the town’s trustees since the cemetery had not officially opened.
The following year, one week after her sixteenth birthday, Sophie Harris married John Love.
When the babies started coming 10 months later, Mary Ann appears to have moved kitty-cornered across North 3rd Street to her own house. And, Mary Ann had met Aaron Chambers—a farmer and a widower. On Valentine’s Day in 1863, they were married.
But happiness was short lived. In 1867, with three children and another on the way, Love died from tuberculosis. Two years later, Sophie and the youngest Love child, Maggie, died in the small pox epidemic of 1869. Six months later, Aaron Chambers died.
Mary Ann was undoubtedly reeling emotionally. John Love had been her “savior.” Small pox was so contagious that she had been forbidden to see or even bury her daughter and granddaughter. And now she was a widow again.
She took in her grandchildren and moved to Aaron Chambers’ acreage on what we now know as Hanley Road. Together they managed the farm. Mary Ann Harris Chambers picked up the pieces and went on with her life. After all, that’s what she had learned to do—she was a survivor.