"Illustrated History of Lane County, Oregon." Portland, Oregon: A. G. Walling,
publisher, 1884.  pg. 482.
 
GEORGE SOVERNS
     Was born in Coshocton county, Ohio, December 4, 1826, and is the son of
Jesse and Eliza Bailey Soverns.  When he was five years of age he was taken by
his parents to Wabash county, Indiana, and five years later, he accompanied them
to Tazewell county, Illinois, where he remained until 1852.  In the month of
February of that year, with his father, mother, two brothers and two sisters,
our subject and his wife and child set out from their home with ox-teams to
cross the plains to Oregon.  And now commenced a series of disasters under which
the stoutest heart might have quailed.  When a short distance to the west of
Fort Hall Mr. Soverns lost his child, and two weeks later, when fifteen miles
west of Fort Boise, the mother followed her infant son; they both found lonely
graves amid a deep solitude, far from kindly attention and with no one near to
drop a loving tear upon the new-made mounds.  But these misfortunes ended not
here.  On their journey down the Blue mountains Mr. Sovern's mother, in jumping
from her wagon, suffered the fracture of a limb, which, two weeks after arrival
in Portland, caused her death.  Thus in the journey to Oregon did this one
family lose three loving relatives, and one, a wife, son and mother.  On arrival
in the state Mr. Soverns, Senior, took up a donation claim, situated three miles
north from where Junction City now stands, at present the property of Mr. Orton,
and there settled; while, in 1857, our subject purchased the homestead, a view
of which appears in this work, located two miles and a half south of Junction
City, and comprising four hundred and twelve acres.  He is also owner of four
hundred and eighty acres situated on the Coast Fork of the Willamette river.  In
1879, Mr. Soverns practically abandoned agricultural pursuits and leasing his
two estates took up his residence in Eugene City in a recently purchased
dwelling situated at the corner of Fifth and Olive streets.  He married,
firstly, in Tazewell county, Illinois, February 20, 1850, Miss Fannie Holton,
whose death and that of her infant boy we have already noticed; and, secondly ,
in Lane county, Oregon, May 26, 1856, Mrs. Elizabeth Tyler, a native of Ohio,
who with her husband started for Oregon in the spring of 1854, but for some
reason changed their minds, and went to California.  But she too was doomed to
misfortune, disease and death.  Her husband, Hiram Tyler, after a brief sickness
of only three days died on Truckee river, Nevada.  She reached the Sacramento
valley in October of that year, and as soon as circumstances would permit, made
her way from San Francisco by water, to Oregon, where she married as above
stated, and has three children, viz:  Jessie Hulda (later Mrs. Thomas Cheshire,
who died July 20, 1883), Fannie E. (now Mrs. A. L. Jackson), and a step-daughter
Adelia J. Tyler, (now Mrs. B. S. Hyland).

 
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Submitted to the Oregon Bios. Project in May 2005 by Diana Smith.  Submitter
has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned above.