Gaston, Joseph.  "The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811-1912."  Vol. 3. 
Chicago, Clarke Publishing Co., 1912. p. 157.
 
JUDGE W. H. PACKWOOD

     The last surviving member of the state constitutional convention, Judge W.
H. Packwood, came to the Pacific coast in 1849 and there is no notable
experience of any kind connected with the upbuilding of the northwest with which
he has not been actively associated, from the subjugation of the Indians to the
reclamation of the and lands through the conservation of the water supplies. No
history of the state would be complete without extended reference to him and his
life work. Tradition gives the origin of the family name of Packwood as follows:
In Colonial days there was a flood in the Potomac river valley in Virginia, on
which occasion a small boy too young to know or tell his name was taken by some
boatmen from an immense drift tree. They reared the little lad and called him
Billy. He was, a strong, vigorous boy and would carry big loads of wood to the
boat. Because of this it was proposed that he should be called Packwood, which
name was adopted. He became a large stockman, married, settled on the James
river and reared a family, from whom all of the Packwoods known to the judge
have been descended. This story of his ancestry came to him from his father's
first cousin, "Uncle" Elisha Packwood, whom he met in 1864 and who died some
years ago in Washington. In 1854 he had visited his old grandmother, then more
than one hundred years of age, well cared for by two negro slaves, there being
about three hundred on the plantation. His grandfather had willed that the
negroes should have all they made on the plantation from his to her death and
that all that would emigrate to Texas should be free. This will was undoubtedly
made before the admission of Texas to the Union. An old Scotchman, Archie
Downey, in Baker county said his people joined the Packwoods in Virginia and
that the name of the subject of this review should be Duncan, for he claimed
that at the time of the flood when a boy was found on a tree it was known that
four families had settled well up the river and that all were drowned save
perhaps this one boy, for it was known that a family of the name of Duncan had a
boy of about the age of the one picked up and it was believed that he was the
Duncan boy.
     Larkin Packwood, the grandfather of Judge Packwood, was born in Virginia
and afterward went to Kentucky and to Tennessee. He married, had ten sons and
two daughters, including Larkin Canada Packwood, who was one of the youngest and
was born in Tennessee. The grandfather removed to Illinois and, owning slaves,
at the admission of the state to the Union, removed into the Ozark country of
Missouri. Larkin C. Packwood did not go with him but remained in Illinois and on
October 31, 1831, married Elizabeth Cathcart Stormont, who was born in South
Carolina, a descendant of the Cathcart family of Scotland, and came to Illinois
about 1826.
     The son of this marriage, William Henderson Packwood, was born on Jordans
Prairie, north of Mount Vernon, Illinois, October 23, 1832. His middle name was
in honor of his grandmother's family, the Hendersons of Kentucky. The father,
Larkin C. Packwood, first followed farming and was afterward foreman for R. G.
Shannon, a prominent merchant of Sparta, Randolph county, Illinois, for seven
years or more. His son William was there sent to school for about eighteen
months or two years, acquainting himself with the "three R's," which was all the
schooling he ever had. His father then removed about four miles east of St.
Louis and conducted a dairy. Early in 1844 he went to Collinsville, where his
wife died on September 8th of that year. She had become the mother of two sons
and four daughters, of whom one son and two daughters died in very early life.
Mary became the wife of a physician of Quincy, Illinois, and died in early
womanhood. Agnes, the Other daughter, was married twice and her death occurred
in Coos county, Oregon, about thirty years ago. After losing his first wife
Larkin C. Packwood married again and removed to St. Louis. He hauled wood to the
city and made trips as a peddler to southern. Missouri, usually accompanied by
his son William, who well remembers being frequently called upon to read and
write for groups of old men and women, young men and girls, who regarded it as a
wonderful thing to see a boy of twelve or thirteen years read and write as well
as he did. He spent one summer on the farm of Ed Dews, twenty-five miles east of
St. Louis, and a winter and part of one summer at the home of his grandfather
Stormont in Jefferson county, Illinois. He then joined his father, who had
removed to Springfield, and in the winter clerked in a grocery store, while in
the summer he worked on a farm, being thus employed until September, 1848. He
frequently met Abraham Lincoln, for they both followed the same road in going to
the business section of Springfield÷Lincoln on his way to his law office and
Judge Packwood to his place as clerk in the store.
     On the 23d of September, 1848, having secure the reluctant consent of his
father for his enlistment in the Mexican war, he attempted to join the army as
one of Captain J. B. Backenstos' Mounted Rifles, the captain agreeing to accept
him on the promise that he would "never desert." He was then in his fifteenth
year and by hard stretching could reach the standard of five feet three inches.
The recruits were sent to Jefferson barracks in December, 1848, and were then
examined as to their physical fitness to become soldiers. They stripped and the
examining physician, thumping Judge Packwood on the breast, said he would not
live to be twenty-two. That this was a death blow to his hopes must have shown
in his face, for as he went out Colonel W. W. Loring, commanding the United
States Mounted Rifles, approached him and in a low tone asked: "Do you want to
go?" He said that he did and the next day when the rejected were reexamined by a
board of doctors Colonel Loring, again standing near the door, came up to him
with one of the examiners. He was not asked to undress but was sent out, passed.
He was assigned to Company B, United States Mounted Rifles, under Captain Noah
Newton, and marched overland to Forth Leavenworth, Colonel Loring establishing
Camp Sumner about five miles west of the fort, where he drilled the regiment. On
the 10th of May they broke camp and began the long march to Oregon with General
Wilson, commissioner of Indian affairs for the Pacific coast, Captain R. M.
Morris of. the Rifles, Lieutenant Haynes of the Artillery and twenty-five men of
Company D acting as an escort. On the 5th of June they broke camp and marched
across the plains to Sacramento, spending five months on the trip, and proceeded
to Fort Kearney, thence to Fort Laramie, on to Fort Bridger, to Salt Lake City,
and to Haughton, now Placerville, California. They frequently saw Indians and
many herds of buffalo, one herd being estimated at five thousand head. Cholera
was prevalent along the route and there were many desecrated graves. All of the
privations and the hardships of campaigning across the plains in 1849 were
experienced. The winter was spent at Sonoma, during which time Colonel Joe
Hooker was tried by a general court martial. Judge Packwood was detailed as
orderly for the court, which lasted ten or more days, during which he met many
men who afterward won distinction in the Civil war. By April only three or four
of the original escort remained, the others having gone to the mines. These were
put on board the revenue cutter Ewing bound for Astoria, Oregon, and they were
in a heavy storm lasting about ten days. As they approached the Columbia river
night drew on but there was no wind and Captain McArthur secured a whaling boat,
put in a crew and towed it over the bar. From Astoria they pulled up the river
to Fort Vancouver and joined the regiment. At Astoria Judge Packwood saw the
timber that was gotten out by D. M. Frost for the keel of the first steamboat
ever built on the Columbia river. It was named the Columbia and came up to Fort
Vancouver in July, I850.
     In 1851 the command to which Judge Packwood belonged was sent to
California. Their steamer, the Massachusetts, stuck on the bar and had to put
back into Bakers bay but the next day was more successful in making the ocean
and proceeded to San Francisco and thence to Benicia, where the troops remained
on attached service with the infantry then at the post. Judge Packwood served
with Major Wessels as escort for Colonel Roderick McKee, commissioner, making
treaties with all the California Indians from Clear Lake to Scotts valley and
from the Trinity and Klamath rivers down the Sacramento valley by Reddings and
on to Benicia, where he served until transferred to Company C, First United
States Dragoons. In 1851 there was trouble with the Coquille and Coast Indians
and Judge Pack-wood's command was put on the schooner Lincoln at San Francisco
with First Lieutenant Stanton in command, bound for Port Orford. A heavy
December storm wrecked the boat, which was driven ashore opposite to the present
site of Empire City on Coos bay, January 3, 1852. The wind and tide drove them
high on the beach. No lives were lost but the vessel was a total wreck. With the
help of the Indians, however, they saved their supplies and made a camp near the
beach, whence they went overland to Port Orford in May. Judge Packwood was soon
afterward promoted to corporal and later to sergeant and quartermaster sergeant
of the post. He was out with scouting parties and was with Lieutenant Stanton in
July, 1852, in a fight with the Indians at Big Bend, on the Rogue river.  His
headquarters were at Port Orford until he was discharged, September 23, 1853,
having served the full five years. Mines had been found along the seaside and he
and a partner, George H. Abbott, purchased horses and followed packing. They
also took up mining claims which they later sold and went up the Coquille river,
securing a ranch. The Indians causing trouble, a company was formed of which Mr.
Abbott became captain and Judge Packwood lieutenant. After some of the Indians
were killed peace was declared. The partners then followed mining, packing and
merchandising until December, 1854, when Mr. Abbott went on a prospecting trip
to California, Judge Packwood remaining on the Coquille river. In 1855, on the
outbreak of the Indian war, a company was formed of which he was elected
captain, afterward receiving a commission as captain of the Coquille Guards from
George L. Curry, governor of Oregon. By making an active and aggressive campaign
in which two Indians were killed he brought about the surrender of all three
tribes, turning them over to Ben Wright, Indian agent. He then discharged his
company after fifty-three days' service. He next went to Coos bay, joined
Captain W. H. Harris of the Volunteers, and was elected sergeant. They had been
in the service over one hundred days when the war closed. Judge Packwood then
made up reports for S. S. Mann, quartermaster, and B. F. White, acting assistant
commissary, receiving sixteen dollars per day in war script for eighty days'
work. He then went to the Sixes river mines and in 1857, when an election was
held to choose members to form a state constitution, Judge Packwood, who was
then not twenty-five years of age and had not voted up to that time, was
unanimously chosen to represent Curry county. He had previously taken part in
making laws in mining camps and even presided as chairman at miners' meetings
but had no other experience qualifying him for the position. Stating this fact
to his old partner, the latter gave him the advice: "Be yourself." He took his
place as a member of as distinguished a body of men as ever met in Oregon, two
becoming governors, four United States senators, two congressmen, one a federal
judge, six judges of the state courts, one attorney general and one of the
United States and mayor of Portland and still another mayor of Portland, while
another enjoyed the distinction of being successively congressman, governor and
United States senator. At the beginning Judge Packwood knew only two members,
Judge Deady and David Logan. He was instrumental in having the elk placed on the
seal of the state, where it can be seen now, and for over fifty years past has
appeared on the first page of "Every Oregonian." Judge Packwood is now the only
living member of that convention.
     After its adjournment he visited his old friend Abbott at Siletz and
Yaquina bay, where he was subagent for the Indians. That winter Judge Packwood
clerked for Metcalf, the Indian agent, and in the spring resumed the raising of
cattle and horses at Coquille. He was elected assessor of Coos county, not
knowing that he was a candidate until the day of election. In 1862 he lost his
ranch, cattle and horses and started for the mines of eastern Oregon, discovered
in the fall of 1861, arriving at Blue Canyon on June 12 and helping lay out the
town of Auburn the following day. There he began merchandising, freighting and
packing, becoming a member of the firm of Knight, Abbott & Packwood, and in
connection with Ira Ward and others he organized the Auburn Water Company and
located the water rights about August 30, 1862. They built some miles of ditches
and sold out in November at twenty-five per cent profit. The work was completed
at a cost of about two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars and the water
rights are now owned by Baker as the water supply for the city. He was one of
three men selected to act as judges for the miners in September to try a
Frenchman who was later hung for poisoning his partners. The other judges were a
Mr. Able and James R. McBride, afterward appointed consul to the Hawaiian
islands by President Lincoln. The trial was by jury.
     On October 16, 1862, Judge Packwood married Miss Johanna A. O'Brien, who
came across the plains with her sister and brother-in-law, Daniel McLaughlin.
She taught the first school in Omaha and with the assistance of the miners had a
schoolhouse built and opened a school in Auburn, the first in eastern Oregon,
remaining as teacher until her marriage. In September the legislature created
Baker county and Judge Packwood was appointed school superintendent, issuing to
Mrs. Stafford the first teacher's certificate in the county. He also signed the
first call for the union republican party in Baker to send delegates to the
convention to nominate a ticket for the ensuing election. The full ticket was
nominated and elected in June and he canvassed and made speeches in favor of
Lincoln in every precinct in the county. In 1863, with Rufus Perkins and others,
Judge Packwood built Clark's creek ditch and put to work the first hydraulic
claims on the creek. He owned a fourteen twenty-fourths interest in this. In
1863 and 1864 he was interested with Knight and, Abbott in merchandising and in
freighting to Idaho City and Booneville but the Owyhee mines failed and Judge
Packwood's loss, for he paid the debts, was fully forty-five thousand dollars.
In 1864 he began the construction of the Burnt river ditch to extend to Clark's
creek and after paying out three thousand dollars afterward sold it for six
hundred dollars. The same year he was the principal in locating the Burnt river
ditch to extend to the Eldorado mines. After building and running water
fifty-seven miles to Eldorado the company sold out. After various changes,
lawsuits and agreements Judge Packwood finally completed the ditch in 1874 and
ran water to Fourth of July gulch, about one hundred and thirty-five miles. The
ditch cost at least five hundred thousand dollars but Judge Packwood was
practically swindled out of his rights and left with a worthless judgment in his
wife's name for purchase money that now with interest amounts to over one
hundred thousand dollars. In 1870 with Alexander Stewart he located the Eagle
creek ditch to run to the Koosta mines, being associated in this enterprise with
Rufus Perkins, I. B. Bowen, Sr., and E. P. Cranston. In 1871 they built the
Eagle canal at a cost of ninety thousand dollars and the following year he and
Mr. Stewart sold out their interests at a net profit of twenty-one thousand six
hundred dollars. They then bought and operated a ten stamp steam mill and a five
stamp water power mill and built the summit and other quartz mines near Sanger,
in Union county. About April, 1865, Judge Packwood purchased a three-quarters
interest in the Washoe ferry and incorporated the Oregon Road, Bridge and Ferry
Company, capitalized at three hundred thousand dollars. They owned the Olds,
Central and Washoe ferries and built and controlled about seventy miles of road.
Judge Packwood was secretary, treasurer and practically general manager. The
ferries in those days were the haunts of bad men÷horse thieves and
highwaymen÷and the Washoe had a bad name, harboring men who afterwards met
justice at the hands of the vigilantes. It was this condition of affairs that
practically governed Judge Packwood's ownership of the ferry, for in February,
1864, ten or twelve men came from Payette, Idaho, and took Stewart and Byron,
owners of the Washoe ferry, some ten miles into Idaho and locked them in a
cabin, intending to hang them the next morning, but they picked the lock, swam
the Snake river in February at Washoe, obtained their canoes and escaped. Later
Judge Packwood met Byron going to Walla Walla and he said he could never go back
and also that Stewart was at Auburn and that he, Packwood, should have the
ferry. On reaching Auburn he learned the true situation; the Washoe was the key
to the ferrying on Snake river for the Boise Basin mines from the fact that it
cut off the ferrying of the Weiser and Payette rivers in Idaho and that the real
cause of the kidnapping of the two men was to obtain control of the ferry. When
Stewart and Byron had come from Washington to Nevada Judge Packwood had
befriended them, had given them food and supplied their needs, so without a
dollar in exchange they made over the ferry to him although some time afterward
he paid them five thousand dollars for their share of the property. When he left
Auburn to go to the ferries bets were freely offered that he would be mobbed,
etc., but he fearlessly faced the situation, Olds and Parton came to his terms,
there was no more mobbing and by July the harboring of horse thieves had become
a thing of the past. He operated the ferries until 1868, when he sold out, for
the building of the Union Pacific railroad had diverted trade to other centers.
He had cleared about thirty-six thousand dollars in thirty-two months.
     Judge Packwood next went to Eldorado, devoting his time to the building of
the Burnt river ditch from 1874 until 1887. The following year he was elected
police judge and clerk for Baker City and for five successive years, although he
is a republican and the council is democratic, he held the office. He then went
to the coast, near Port Orford, to try beach mining and a year later began
survey work on the Daly creek ditch to Snake river. He afterward worked on the
Northwestern railroad down Snake river, keeping accounts for Taylor, a
subcontractor. When the work was closed there he went to the Pacific & Idaho
Northern railway and secured a position as leveler on Friends division under
Colonel Moore, chief engineer, but found the cross-sectioning on the Weiser
river canyons below Salubria was too hard on him. He next became an accountant
for Taylor, the contractor, until the work closed in December, when he returned
to Baker. In a few days he became bookkeeper for the Columbia Gold Mining
Company, acting in that capacity for seven or more years. But the snow was deep
and the winters long at the mines, forcing him to change his position. Returning
to Baker, he became assistant postmaster and remained in the office until
between seventy-seven and seventy-eight years of age, when he resigned.  He has
surveyed many ditches all over the country, has worked at leveling and cross-
sectioning the railroad from Cove to Union in Union county and has been closely
connected with much of the pioneer work in the northwest. His last military
survey was under Major General O. O. Howard, who appointed him chief of scouts
for the Malheur country in the Bannock Indian war of 1877-78. His ranch and
cattle interests for various reasons that no one could foresee proved almost a
total loss. At the time of the Civil war he was a member of the Union League,
which is the only order to which he ever belonged.
     Judge and Mrs. Packwood have two sons and three daughters. Mary Elizabeth,
born in August, 1863, became the wife of Charles F. Hyde, and died about three
years ago, leaving two sons and five daughters, the eldest daughter being now
the wife of Dr. F. C. Vaughan, of Portland. William H. Packwood, Jr., a lawyer,
has been married and has a son and daughter. Jefferson Carter, the third of the
family, is an accountant. Edith Gonzaga is the wife of ex-State Senator John L.
Rand, a lawyer of Baker, and has two sons. Martha Amelia is the wife of Dr. L.
G. Wheeler, a mining promoter, now at Winnemucca, Nevada, and has a daughter.
There are four living children and twelve grandchildren. Mrs. Packwood and
children are of the Catholic faith. The Judge's people were Covenantors and he
joined the Christian church long years ago. While not an active church worker he
has tried to be a practical Christian, attempting to live rather than to preach
Christianity. Honorable principles and worthy purposes have guided him
throughout his entire life. He has always endeavored to upbuild the state and he
was instrumental in inducing Dr. Hennan, now deceased, to bring a colony of
Germans from Baltimore to settle on the Coquille river in Coos county. His
entire life has been full of interesting events. In nearly every enterprise in
which he has engaged he has been the controlling spirit and on most occasions
success has attended him. If he has experienced failure it was because he had
too much confidence in his fellow men. While he has had hundreds of men in his
employ he has never missed a pay day nor had a strike. He is, as previously
stated, the last surviving member of the state constitutional convention and
with one exception the last survivor of the Mounted Rifles that came to Oregon
in 1859. He belongs to the Oregon Pioneer Association, has for several years
been a member of the Oregon Historical Society, is an Indian war veteran and may
well claim to be one of those pioneers who have blazed the way for the march of
civilization and who
 "Belonged to the legion that never were listed,
They carried no banner nor crest;
But, split in a thousand detachments,
Were breaking the ground for the rest."


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Submitted to the Oregon Bios. Project in August 2007 by Diana Smith.  Submitter
has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned above.