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Susan Jane Applegate's great grandfather was one of the Applegate brothers who blazed the famous Applegate Trail to Oregon, but her book "Road Home," is not about the Applegates but the Sheperds, her maternal family, a story told through letters, diaries and essays about the family's journey to Oregon.
The Sheperds saga, she wrote, "...doesn't feature in Oregon's early history like the Applegates."
Perhaps not, but the collection of excerpts from the letters, diaries and the accompanying photographs are very much a part of Oregon's early history.
"I am not a writer like my cousin," she said speaking of Shannon Applegate the author of "Skookum," the story of the Applegate pioneer family, and a later volume, "Living Among Headstones," the story of the pioneer family cemetery in Yoncalla.
Both the Applegate cousins make Yoncalla and environs their home. Susan may be better known for her art work, particularly for her murals on the sides of buildings in Roseburg. She says this particular book began when she came into possession of the letters and diaries of her forebearers and decided to catalog what she felt was a family heirloom.
"In the beginning I started cataloging the material on 3 x 5 cards with the plan to perhaps print them in a small family volume just to share with the Sheperd branch of my family tree," she said. "I realized I had inherited a treasure. The more I organized the collection it just took on the look and feel of a book."
Susan will share that "feeling" at a book signing and reading scheduled for Saturday at the Douglas County Museum. She will give two readings, at 1 p.m. and at 6 p.m. in the museum's auditorium.
The book becomes an interesting narrative, as Susan writes in depth about the story behind all the collection of letters and diary entries assisting the reader to understand the significance of each contribution. The book begins on a balmy autumn day in 1886 when 16-year-old Ben Shepherd travels on horseback to St. Louis, Mo., to reunite with his sister, Lila. Both had been separated at the death of their mother. From that beginning, Susan weaves the Shepherd story of how Ben's descendants, herself among them, eventually end up in Yoncalla and Scotts Valley.
As a teenage boy, young Ben had become an indentured servant to a family in the Ozarks, working for his room and board. The matriarch of the family treated him cruelly, so badly that the woman's husband helped Ben, whose name then was Charles, run away.
The reunion with his sister led him to understand he was now on his own and had to make his own way. Susan paints her grandfather as a self-reliant giant of a man who worked through the hardships of life to become the patriarch of a large family that eventually settled in Yoncalla. Ben married Mary Jane (Jennie) Pease on Sept. 10, 1896, in Farmington, Mo. They had 12 children, although only nine lived past infancy.
Ben was a restless soul and moved his family to Eastern Oregon and from there into Idaho where he farmed successfully.
The accounts of all the intervening adventures of the family were captured in the letters and diaries of Susan's ancestors, the documentation that Susan stitched together with a narrative thread which takes the reader through the family's transient life until they settled in Douglas County at the beginning of the Great Depression.
"The narrative contains conversations and incidental scenes which were created," Susan said to assist the reader in understanding the verbatim letters. "I interviewed my elderly aunts, Mary, Ethel and Nina from 1998 to 2001 when they lived in Roseburg. Their recollection became a very important contribution to the story."
She also noted that an interview with her Uncle Fran a few months before his death provided her with details covering his life as a sheepherder in eastern Oregon and Nevada.
"Toward the end of her life, my mother, Jane Applegate, worked on a history of both the Sheperd and Pease families," Susan said. She incorporated those writings in the book as well as essays from her Uncle Fran and diary entries from her Aunt Ethel and letters that were exchanged by family members.
The book is an easy read because Susan has told the story chronologically, but in a narrative form and to her credit carefully identified various family members so as not to confuse the reader with her own familiarity of the names.
"Although my descriptions cannot capture the kindness that flowed through the family in so many simple ways, their words seem almost audible to me as expressed in their letters, poetry and other personal accounts, which I hope will provide the reader with some sense of this humble family bond so rare in our own time," she wrote.
It did for me and I believe it will do the same for the reader.
<i>Bill Duncan is editor of The Senior Times. He also writes a weekly column on the Opinion Page of The News-Review each Thursday.</i>
The Sheperds saga, she wrote, "...doesn't feature in Oregon's early history like the Applegates."
Perhaps not, but the collection of excerpts from the letters, diaries and the accompanying photographs are very much a part of Oregon's early history.
"I am not a writer like my cousin," she said speaking of Shannon Applegate the author of "Skookum," the story of the Applegate pioneer family, and a later volume, "Living Among Headstones," the story of the pioneer family cemetery in Yoncalla.
Both the Applegate cousins make Yoncalla and environs their home. Susan may be better known for her art work, particularly for her murals on the sides of buildings in Roseburg. She says this particular book began when she came into possession of the letters and diaries of her forebearers and decided to catalog what she felt was a family heirloom.
"In the beginning I started cataloging the material on 3 x 5 cards with the plan to perhaps print them in a small family volume just to share with the Sheperd branch of my family tree," she said. "I realized I had inherited a treasure. The more I organized the collection it just took on the look and feel of a book."
Susan will share that "feeling" at a book signing and reading scheduled for Saturday at the Douglas County Museum. She will give two readings, at 1 p.m. and at 6 p.m. in the museum's auditorium.
The book becomes an interesting narrative, as Susan writes in depth about the story behind all the collection of letters and diary entries assisting the reader to understand the significance of each contribution. The book begins on a balmy autumn day in 1886 when 16-year-old Ben Shepherd travels on horseback to St. Louis, Mo., to reunite with his sister, Lila. Both had been separated at the death of their mother. From that beginning, Susan weaves the Shepherd story of how Ben's descendants, herself among them, eventually end up in Yoncalla and Scotts Valley.
As a teenage boy, young Ben had become an indentured servant to a family in the Ozarks, working for his room and board. The matriarch of the family treated him cruelly, so badly that the woman's husband helped Ben, whose name then was Charles, run away.
The reunion with his sister led him to understand he was now on his own and had to make his own way. Susan paints her grandfather as a self-reliant giant of a man who worked through the hardships of life to become the patriarch of a large family that eventually settled in Yoncalla. Ben married Mary Jane (Jennie) Pease on Sept. 10, 1896, in Farmington, Mo. They had 12 children, although only nine lived past infancy.
Ben was a restless soul and moved his family to Eastern Oregon and from there into Idaho where he farmed successfully.
The accounts of all the intervening adventures of the family were captured in the letters and diaries of Susan's ancestors, the documentation that Susan stitched together with a narrative thread which takes the reader through the family's transient life until they settled in Douglas County at the beginning of the Great Depression.
"The narrative contains conversations and incidental scenes which were created," Susan said to assist the reader in understanding the verbatim letters. "I interviewed my elderly aunts, Mary, Ethel and Nina from 1998 to 2001 when they lived in Roseburg. Their recollection became a very important contribution to the story."
She also noted that an interview with her Uncle Fran a few months before his death provided her with details covering his life as a sheepherder in eastern Oregon and Nevada.
"Toward the end of her life, my mother, Jane Applegate, worked on a history of both the Sheperd and Pease families," Susan said. She incorporated those writings in the book as well as essays from her Uncle Fran and diary entries from her Aunt Ethel and letters that were exchanged by family members.
The book is an easy read because Susan has told the story chronologically, but in a narrative form and to her credit carefully identified various family members so as not to confuse the reader with her own familiarity of the names.
"Although my descriptions cannot capture the kindness that flowed through the family in so many simple ways, their words seem almost audible to me as expressed in their letters, poetry and other personal accounts, which I hope will provide the reader with some sense of this humble family bond so rare in our own time," she wrote.
It did for me and I believe it will do the same for the reader.
<i>Bill Duncan is editor of The Senior Times. He also writes a weekly column on the Opinion Page of The News-Review each Thursday.</i>
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