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Transcribed from "An Illustrated History of The Big Bend Country, embracing
Lincoln, Douglas, Adams and Franklin counties, State of Washington",
published by Western Historical Publishing Co., 1904.
LUKE HINSHAW was a native of
Ross county, Ohio, born September 9, 1819. During his early childhood
he was taken by his parents to Indiana and at the age of fifteen he went
to Henry county, Iowa. In the spring of 1845 he started across the
plains with a yoke of oxen, being a member of a party of sixty wagons bound
for the Willamette valley, and arrived at his destination in the month
of November. Mr. Hinshaw lived at various places in the Willamette
valley, and for a time conducted a ferry across the river at Oregon city.
He was married on November 23, 1851, in Washington
county, Oregon, to Isabella McKinney, a native of Tippecanoe county, Indiana,
born March 31, 1831. Mrs. Hinshaw was the daughter of William and
Anna (Walter) McKinney, natives, respectively, of Ross county, Ohio, and
Washington county, Pennsylvania. The paternal ancestors of Mrs. Hinshaw
were of Irish stock, some of whom served in the Revolutionary war in America.
The father was a pioneer of Oregon of 1845, and at the age of eighty-seven,
died in Washington county of that state in the year 1886. The mother
was closely related to Reverend Phillip Dodgridge, a celebrated minister,
and died in Portland, Oregon, in 1898, aged ninety-two years. Mrs.
Hinshaw's family removed to Henry county, Iowa, from the state of her birth,
and in 1844 started across the plains to Oregon, but owing to misfortunes
the family was compelled to remain on the Platte river until the following
spring, when they joined the party of which Mr. Hinshaw was a member, and
with it came on to Oregon. Mrs. Hinshaw's parents made their home
in Washington county until their death.
After the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Hinshaw
they removed to Linn county, Oregon, near Albany, where Mr. Hinshaw had
a donation claim of land. In the autumn of 1859 they came to Walla
Walla, Washington, and soon afterward started a merchandise store near
the present location of the city of Waitsburg, on the Walla Walla-Lewiston
trails. Theirs was the first store between these two points.
After remaining in that business a few years, Mr. and Mrs. Hinshaw sold
out, returned to Oregon and for a short space of time conducted a store
at Centerville. Later they sold this business, came to the Big Bend
and filed on a homestead in 1880. Their claim lay one-half mile south
of the present site of Mohler. They were the first settlers in that
vicinity and their nearest neighbor lived ten miles distant. The
health of Mr. Hinshaw soon began to give way, and, returning to Oregon
with the hope of being benefited, he died in that state in 1883.
However, he never disposed of his Big Bend homestead.
Mrs. Hinshaw has three brothers and one sister:
James M., William, Jasper N. and Mrs. Rachel Cornelius, the first two residents
of Washington and the others of Oregon. She makes her home a portion
of the time with her children and the remainder of the time with her sister,
whose home is in Portland.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Hinshaw have been life-long
members of the Presbyterian church.
They reared a family of five children, whose
names and present addresses follow: Dora, married to F. W. Morgan, Mohler;
Walter E. and Rachel, now deceased; John D. married to Bertha Lacey, Mohler,
and Wilbur M., also of Mohler. John D. Hinshaw is a prominent farmer,
owning three hundred and twenty acres of land. He has two children,
Herbert B. and Cecil.
All of the children were born in Linn county,
Oregon, with the exception of the last named, who is a native of Washington.
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