Site founded Sept. 1, 2000. We passed 1.5 million page views on March 3, 2007
These 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
Free Home Page Stories & Photos
The most in-depth, 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., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284
Home of the Tarheel Stomp

Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug

This feature is from our original domain of the period from 2000-2002. Most of the links below this panel will lead to dead-ends. This story is due to be updated in 2007; we have received a lot of information from descendants plus our research. The links above to the new Skagit River Journal domain-homepage will work, however, as will the Email link. And the search box and the guestbook link at the bottom will work. If you have any questions about the story or if you can help us with corrections or copies of documents or photos, please email us. We never ask for your originals. Our homepage link is always free of charge. If you are not currently a subscriber to our online magazine, you can see a full list of stories back to Issue 1 at this link for the Subscribers-Paid Journal magazine online. Thank you for your patience.

The saga of the Cornelius,
Wallace and Rudene families

Part 1 of 3:

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 thirty-six and Ruthinda was twenty-nine. It was her third marriage and, under the circumstances, it was a good match.

—My Ruthinda , Christopher Barnes

Pioneers Nellie Canavan and Mabel Meins, who moved here with their families while Washington was still a territory, rode the Territorial Daughters covered wagon in the 1939 Sedro-Woolley Fourth of July parade. This is similar to the wagon that the Cornelius family would have taken across the Oregon Trail in 1845.

The Northwest history of Ruthinda Mounts Browning Cornelius Wallace and her daughter 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. 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 hand-in-hand 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 life-long 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 the two adults. Ruthinda and Isaac married on Nov. 15, 1842, just before John's third birthday. She wanted to have a baby immediately but her wishes were put on hold as Isaac organized a wagon train to take his parents and family friends across the plains to the Northwest corner of the United States. Letters from people who had moved there appeared weekly in the local press and the U.S. Congress was fashioning what would be called the Donation Land Claim Act, under which 320-acre parcels of government land out there could be claimed. Wagon trains started traveling west in 1843, but only lately had women started emigrating with them. Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding were among the small handful of women who traveled west before 1843; they went with their husbands to establish religious missions. In 1843, nearly 800 people left in wagon trains; 1,500 in 1844 and 3,000 would travel in 1845. Many who departed had tearful farewells with family who feared that their loved ones would move so far away that they would never see them again — or even worse, that they would die on the trail. But Ruthinda, 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 and her baby brother Eli was born in the past year after his father married again following the death of Ruthinda's mother, Sarah.
The Absalom Cornelius family embarked on the first leg of their journey to St. Joseph, Missouri, in late April of 1845. There they joined an ox-team 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. Five-year-old 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 two-month 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. As the caravan progressed, they began looking for landmarks described in letters: Ft. Kearney, Platte river, Chimney Rock in Nebraska. Continuing northwest into Wyoming, they reached Fort John — now called Fort Laramie, and Casper. They were halfway now and turning west, southwest. The dust storms had subsided as they climbed in elevation. The only celebration they had on that part of the trip was when Rebecca Cornelius, Isaac's younger sister, married John Scott as they camped one night while descending the western slope of the Rockies. We learned about that and the trip in general from the notes of Nancy Osborne, who kept a diary that was published in a 1930s book, Told by the Pioneers. She recalled the wedding as one of the few truly happy moments on the trip.

The Whitman mission at Waiilatpu The Whitman mission at Waiilatpu Isaac and the other men had learned to corral the cattle by leading them inside the circle of wagons every night and attaching the tongue of each wagon to the hind axle tree of the wagon ahead. Meat was plentiful by now, as buffalo appeared daily. But as the train continued west through Wyoming and Idaho, they lost time due to various calamities. As with almost all the trains, some argued about taking short cuts. Benjamin Cornelius, for instance, split off with his family, taking the Meek cutoff, and they almost died. In September, as they camped near Salmon creek, a Dr. Elijah White rode by, heading east, and expressed concern that they were far behind the other trains. Soon, the Cornelius family and the Tom Summers family and some others broke off from the main group. They sent two scouts ahead to obtain provisions from the Whitman mission. They returned with word from Marcus Whitman that Indians had burned his sawmill and that he needed millwrights to rebuild it. Ruthinda was pleased because she wanted very much to meet Narcissa Whitman. She was also concerned because Isaac's strength was failing. Marcus Whitman never turned away white settlers who were either sick or destitute and Isaac's health was failing more every day.
Their small train reached the mission at Waiilatpu [Cayuse for "place of rye grass"] late in the fall. Isaac and some of the other Cornelius family decided to stay for the winter while Absalom and the main group decided to push on for Oregon. Isaac was finally able to rest and restore his strength while Tom Summers was welcomed for his blacksmith talents. Jacob Ryearson taught the Indian school that winter and Andrew Rogers from Illinois taught the school for the settler children. John attended along with Nancy Osborne and the seven orphaned Sager children. Quarters at the mission were cramped with all these extra people and provisions were low, but the Whitmans never let on about it to the emigrants, nor did Marcus share his increasing concern about the unrest in the nearby Cayuse Indian Tribe. The American Board of Missions were concerned for some time that the mission should be closed and the Catholic missions in the area wanted to take over the Indian work, but the Whitmans were determined to carry out their goals and jealously guarded the mission from the Catholics' grasp. Meanwhile, the Cayuse tribe saw how many emigrants were settling in and became even angrier with the Whitmans since emigrants were encroaching on land the Cayuse considered theirs. Marcus Whitman decided the gamble was worth it, partly because he needed volunteer labor to build the badly needed sawmill and a grist mill.
Ruthinda was thrilled to stay for the winter because she and Narcissa Whitman bonded immediately. One Whitman child was near John's age so they compared notes about child-rearing, and Ruthinda helped Narcissa with the Sunday school. Narcissa confided in Ruthinda about her worries concerning the Cayuse and told her that Marcus's life had been threatened once before. Later she told her about the time that Marcus had traveled and a Cayuse snuck into the house and made it into her bedroom before her Hawaiian bodyguard chased him away. Narcissa also told her about losing her child, Alice Clarissa, who accidentally drowned at age two, and her sadness at not being able to bear more children. Ruthinda remembered Narcissa's kindness and wisdom the rest of her life.

The families settle in Oregon Nancy Osborne recalled that the families started on the trail again for Oregon in March 1846. They had four wagons between them and they stopped long enough at The Dalles on the Columbia to whipsaw enough lumber for a flatboat to send the wagons downstream. Her father built the boat with the tools he brought along from Illinois. She described how settlers proceeded from there:

We drove the stock along the trails and swam the cattle across the river just above the Cascade Falls. There we unloaded the boats and made a five mile portage. So far, father had steered the boat and Cornelius and Summers had done the rowing, but they did not fancy the undertaking of shooting the Cascade Falls in that unwieldy vessel so hired some Indains to take it out and turn it loose in midstream above the falls. Other Indians caught it when it came to the eddy below the rapids. Here we loaded and resumed our journey to Oregon City, which was then the headquarters of the American settlers.

By the time that the band of settlers reached Oregon City, they resembled beggars, some without shoes or hats, and they were ready to celebrate the end of their journey by sinking down roots. Absalom Cornelius took a donation claim just east of Oregon City during the winter, so he was already working with his family to set up a farm for the 50 Durham cattle that survived the trip. The Osbornes moved down to Salem, south of Oregon City to take their own claim. Isaac Cornelius hurried to file a claim of his own and build a cabin because Ruthinda was pregnant. She was overjoyed at the prospect of a child in their new home and the future looked very promising.
Her whole world was thrown into upheaval again, however, on Oct. 13, 1846, when Isaac Cornelius died after catching a chill one night while clearing his land. His strength had never fully recovered. Now Ruthinda was really in a pickle. She had no real home; she could not return to Iowa even if she wanted to; she was dependent on her dead husband's family; the Cornelius family was discussing the prospect of sending John to live with one of his uncles since Ruthinda had never actually adopted him — and even worse; Isaac died without a will. She immediately started an inventory of their property, which consisted of: a wagon, three ox yokes, two heifers, two cows, an ox, a sow, two axes, two beds, furniture and their land claim.
The next year went by in a blur. She considered returning to the Whitman mission to draw strength from her friend Narcissa, but that was not practical and might bring to a head the disagreement about what to do with seven-year-old John. She was committed to keeping him. Marcus Whitman came to Salem in the fall of 1847 to purchase the Dalles mission for the Presbyterian Board of Missions. While there he contracted with Josiah Osborne to move back to the mission and take charge of construction there and presumably at The Dalles. The Osbornes did not realize that they were stepping into a hornet's nest. When they arrived at the mouth of the Walla Walla river, they discovered that a measles epidemic had swept through the Indian villages. This was a death knell not only for the Indian children but for Marcus Whitman, who was a doctor after all and had weathered Indian hospitality because he did so much to try to keep them healthy. Nancy Osborne describes in her journal how two children in her family died after they reached the mission and how an emigrant family taken in by the Whitmans had unknowingly brought the measles with them. On Nov. 29, 1847, the mission school started up again, but that day a band of Cayuse swept down onto the village, inflamed by claims that the doctor was poisoning them. The Osbornes somehow survived the ensuing massacre by hiding under the floorboards of the Whitman home. They heard the gunshots above them, the sounds of bodies being hacked to pieces and the rape of Lorinda Brawley in front of the other settlers.
All this was reported back to Ruthinda eventually. The Oregon newspapers filled daily and weekly with reports and Ruthinda went back to grieving again, this time for her friend. The Osbornes came back to Oregon City with the miraculous story of their survival and how they were saved when a Walla Walla Indian helped them escape across the river. Now that even the mission was no longer a viable option, Ruthinda realized that she had to get back to the business of living and that she needed a husband to father her two boys.

Ruthinda marries a third time and they pull up stakes again While sorting out the problems left by Isaac dying without a will, Ruthinda was introduced in the fall of 1847 to William Wallace, a dashing young bachelor who emigrated from Missouri to Oregon City sometime in early 1847. Wallace was born in Vermont on June 27, 1811. His parents were both Scots with an English grandmother thrown into the mix. William's older brother Victor left for Missouri while William was still in school and did well out there, marrying a woman named Isabel Roy and opening a shop in 1835 to repair guns, along with patenting the first breech-loading pistol. William was restless tending the family store back home in Vermont and he and his younger brother Leander joined Victor in St. Louis in 1845. William and Leander emigrated to Oregon first, probably in 1846, and Victor followed in May 1847, saying that his family was forever getting sick in Missouri. On the way, they stopped at the Whitman mission and missed the massacre by only a few days. They brought with them Lorinda Brawley, who had been raped by the Indian Five Crows. They also brought first-hand news about the mission and Narcissa's fate to Ruthinda when they arrived that winter and that might be what led to her meeting William. The family story was that William worked very fast; they married on Christmas Day, 1847. Their joy did not last for long because Absalom Cornelius soon demanded that Ruthinda give up John to the Cornelius family. Although Ruthinda hoped that William would argue against them, he explained that she had no right to John and she would have to transfer her love and caring to baby Isaac. After all, one child in the house was enough for him, especially when neither boy was his. On May 15, 1848, Absalom Cornelius was bonded as John's legal guardian.
Victor Wallace settled down quickly in Oregon City and soon had the first threshing machine in Oregon as well as the first printing press. But William vacillated, one day tending to the farm and the next day, talking about donation claims in the land north of the Columbia, which would become the separate Territory of Washington in 1853. Victor actually moved there first, settling in Cowlitz county, where he would be one of the founders of Kelso. On June 14, 1849, Ruthinda gave birth to her first baby with William, a girl they named Betsy Jane after his mother (known when an adult as Bessie). William was starting to feel the bite of the gold bug, but Ruthinda absolutely refused to move there. Then that summer, William's brother Leander was killed during a fracas with Indians at Fort Nisqually up north. Betsy still hated Indians after the Whitman massacre, so she could not understand why William wanted now even more to move them up to that desolate land, but he was committed. Regardless, she relented and sent for John, now ten, to see him one last time before they moved and for him to see his baby sister for the first time. That would be the last time they would see each other for 12 years and Isaac's brother George would soon become his guardian. As if Ruthinda had not grieved enough over the past ten years, this last time with John just added more.

The Wallace family heads overland towards Puget Sound

In 1849 the only real settlement on Puget sound was a hundred miles south at the southern end of the sound at Tumwater. When William Wallace packed his young family off overland in July 1845, he was headed in that direction but would keep his options open about where they would wind up. While most emigrants were heading towards California and the gold fields that year, the Wallace family went against the grain and headed in the opposite direction. In Chris Barnes's book, My Ruthinda, she describes how the Wallaces traveled with another family, riding in Indian canoes and bateaux-style boats on Cowlitz river. In a 1932 interview that Bessie gave to the Mount Vernon Herald, she said that the family took an ox team with Ruthinda's brother James Mounts. By the time that the party reached a crude wharf that had been built at Cowlitz landing, Ruthinda and the children were exhausted. She was thrilled to find a crude hotel called the Jackson House where they could fall into an actual bed. The next morning they arrived at a little burg called Smithfield and she was shocked to see that it was really just an Indian village, without even the amenities of Oregon City. Smithfield was on a claim staked by Levi Smith in 1846 and ownership passed on to his partner, Edmund Sylvester, after Smith died and Sylvester returned from the California gold fields. The leader of Tumwater, the small community to the south, was Colonel Mike Simmons, who received his honorary title by leading a wagon train out to Oregon Territory in 1844 after selling his Kentucky mill. In July 1845, Simmons explored Puget sound as far north as Whidbey island, but decided to settle at the south end of the sound on Budd Inlet, near the mouth of the Deschutes river. The natural falls there were perfect for a grist mill and the next year, he built a hydraulically powered sawmill. Although Ruthinda hated the primitive conditions of the Smithfield area, William was soon hired because of his carpenter credentials to help build the first woodframe building, a customs house for the federal government. The border with the British territory to the north was settled in 1846 and of course the tax man was close behind. Bessie said in the 1932 interview that the family lived at Jackson's Prairie that first winter and then moved to Smithfield the next spring. Landmarks in the area were named Jackson for J.R. Jackson, who disputed Collins's claim to be the first settler in the area. Jackson Courthouse, his log cabin, was the site of the famous Monticello Convention in October 1852, which was called to present a petition for a new territory north of the Columbia.
Over the next few months, William helped build several cabins in the area and Ruthinda was pleased that conditions improved. In the summer of 1849, Simmons sold his Tumwater mills to Clanrick Crosby, Bing's grandfather, and Edmund Sylvester offered him free lots and land if he would move two miles north to help build the new town of Olympia. William could have easily stayed there, too, but his original plan to take a donation claim was back in the lead now that he had met Colonel Isaac Ebey, who was in town in the summer of 1850 for provisions on his way back to Whidbey island, where he was to be the U.S. Collector of Customs for Puget sound district. Ebey stayed around long enough to file his own donation claim on Oct. 15, 1850, and to suggest to Sylvester that Olympia was a better name than Smithfield. Ebey returned to Whidbey and the young Wallace family soon followed because Ruthinda decided that a fresh start on that island would be preferable to the muddy town on the inlet. As she stepped into the scow that would be their vehicle, she had no idea that she would be the first settler woman on Whidbey island, that she would give birth to the first settler child there, and that her daughter Bessie would be the first white settler woman in future Skagit county. Nor did she know that her beloved stepson John would come back into her life in a very big way.

Continue on to part two, which includes: The Wallaces visit Chief Sealth at Point Alki, who offered them land on Elliott Bay; become the first white settler family on Whidbey island; homestead without any amenities; raise a family in the wilderness; and Ruthinda is finally united with her long-lost stepson; and they celebrate a wedding.

Please report any broken links or files that do not open. Thank you.

Did you find what you were looking for? If not, please email us and tell us what you seek and we will put it on our list to research. The more details, the better.

Please sign our guestbook so our readers will know where you found out about us, or share something you know about the Skagit River or your memories or those of your family. Share your reactions or suggestions or comment on our Journal. Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to visit our site.

Sign Our Guestbook

View Our Guestbook

Remember, we welcome correction and criticism. Please click on the email slot at the right to report any problems with these pages or to suggest ideas for future stories. Do you have scanned photos to share? Or you can mail us copies. This is a completely free site. We fund it by providing an online magazine for paid subscribers. If you would like to help support our considerable research costs, you can subscribe for just $17.50 per year. As a paid subscriber, you will receive six yearly issues plus many rare treats between times, including scans of photos and documents that illustrate local history, before they are shared with anyone else. You can go here for Subscription details and you can read the preview edition to see examples of our in-depth research. You may also order gift subscriptions for friends, family or clients who are interested in local history or students or military people who are away from home. Or you can email us for more details.

Email us at: skagitjournal@yahoo.com

Use this email for scans and large files
Mail copies/documents to street address: Skagit River Journal, 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, WA, 98284.

Go to main Skagit River Journal free resources home page
If you are not a subscriber, go to story list of the Skagit River Journal subscriber edition, including all archives.

Skagit River Journal

The saga of the Cornelius,Wallace and Rudene families

Part 1 of 3:

The saga of the Cornelius,
Wallace and Rudene families