"Portrait & Biographical Record of the Willamette Valley Oregon." Chicago: Chapman Publishing Company, 1903. p. 1503. ISHAM N. HEMBREE A meritorious service during the Civil war, the office of commissioner of Lane county worthily maintained, and agricultural and stock-raising undertakings of a practical and successful nature, have contributed to the broadening and all-around usefulness of the life of Isham N. Hembree. Mr. Hembree owns a farm of three hundred and twenty acres twelve miles northwest of Eugene, where he carries oil extensive stock-raising, his improvements being modern and labor-saving, and his residences and buildings oil a par with the ideas of enterprise and progress. Mr. Hembree is a farmer by inheritance, training and preference, and because of the latter fact especially makes a success of his chosen occupation. He enjoys everything pertaining to the country, the industry, people, fresh air, and healthful living. In Dade county, Mo., where he was born August 24, 1838, his parents owned a goad-sized farm. where he was trained to make himself useful, and attended the public schools during the winter season. His father dying when he was four Years old, at the age of sixteen he started to earn his living on the farms of the surrounding families in Dade county, and was thus employed by the month at the breaking out of the Civil war. It is doubtful if the call to arms received such ardent response from any class of people as it did from the toilers in the fields of the country, the arduous toil from one end of the year to the other bringing in its train a longing for diversion or change, even at the risk of life. In 1861 Mr. Hembree enlisted in the Confederate army in Missouri, and in 1862 re-enlisted in the Missouri Cavalry, as a private in the Trans-Mississippi Department. Participating in the battles of Wilson Creek, Pilot Knob, Little Rock, Springfield, and many others of a momentous nature, he was wounded in his first battle, thus carrying through the remainder of his service a correct idea of the grim and terrible side of warfare. After the surrender at Shreveport, La., he continued to live in Louisiana for a couple of Years, and this ended his experiences in the south, the only bright memory of that time being of the fact that he won the rank of first lieutenant of Company I, Sixth Missouri Cavalry, thus establishing his claim of valor and disinterested devotion to the cause he then deemed just. Returning to Missouri in 1867, Mr. Hembree engaged in farming until 1872, and then came to Oregon, selecting Lane county as a fertile and promising locality. For the first five years he rented land, and with the proceeds of the enterprise saved sufficient to make a trip to Missouri in 1877, and upon his return in 1880 to purchase his present farm. The next year, in 1881, he married Tena Gibson, of which union there have been born four children: Linna S.; Louie; Eugenia and Itha. While not a politician in the generally accepted sense, Mr. Hembree has held a few local offices, and has served as a county commissioner for a year and a half, appointed thereto to fill an unexpired term. He is essentially a religious man, and is a member and active worker in the Fern Ridge Christian Church. ******************* Submitted to the Oregon Bios. Project in December 2009 by Diana Smith. Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned above.