By Gus Frederick
The cover of Homer Davenport’s most enduring book, The Country Boy, features an illustration by the author/artist of himself, as a youth, sitting next to his father. This was more than just homage to family. Homer was fully aware that without the lifelong support of his father, he would not have been nearly as successful as he was.
This year’s Homer Davenport Community Festival also pays tribute to Timothy Woodbridge “T.W.” Davenport. This remarkable man was born July 30, 1826, in Columbia, N.Y. Decades later Silverton locals would consider Davenport “The Sage of Silverton” for his incredible intellect and humanity. He passed away 100 years ago this spring.
T.W. was a medical doctor, pioneer farmer, surveyor, Indian agent, storeowner, state legislator and more. His family left New York and settled in Ohio for several years, where he completed his medical education and taught at Wilson’s Academy in 1846 and 1847.
After receiving his medical degree and practicing for a year, T.W. and his family headed west to Oregon Territory in 1850 by covered wagon, taking an overland route for the first leg of the journey, as opposed to the quicker river route via the Missouri River. As a result, the Davenport train was weeks behind schedule and decided to wait out the winter in Missouri and strike out the following spring. It proved to be a wise choice indeed; littering the 1850 emigrant trail were the graves of cholera victims, who succumbed during an epidemic that travelled like wildfire through the pioneer wagon trains.
While in Missouri, T.W.’s father, Dr. Benjamin Davenport, quickly established a temporary medical practice, and T.W. took up teaching again to build up additional capital for equipment and supplies. They resumed their journey the following spring, arriving in “the Silverton Country” in the fall of 1851.
The initial Davenport farm was located in the Waldo Hills south of town, less than a mile from GeerCrest Farm, where Timothy’s future wife Florinda lived with her parents, Ralph and Mary Geer.
The limited number of settlers – mostly hale and hearty – occasioned the Davenport doctors to resort to farming. T.W., seeing the great demand for surveyors, answered the call and soon became an excellent one, laying out on paper much of the Silverton Country. An elected Marion County Surveyor, T.W. expanded his work to other parts of the state and led the survey team that established the Santiam Pass, still in use as Oregon Highway 22.
As the story goes, in 1854 a young Florinda Geer returned from a horse ride and stuck the riding whip she had snapped from a cottonwood tree into the ground. It took root, growing into the now-famous Riding Whip Tree at GeerCrest Farm. Not long after, she and T.W. married.
After the heartbreak of their first two children dying in infancy, the couple briefly cared for Charlie Davenport, an adopted Modoc Indian child of 5 rescued from slavery by T.W.’s brother John. T.W. related Charlie’s sad story in his longest published work, Recollections of an Indian Agent. His accounts of his experience as the temporary head of the Umatilla Agency offer a raw and sometimes horrifying picture of U.S. policy toward Native Americans.
Prior to the Civil War, T.W. was active in the newly formed Oregon Republican party. Staunchly anti-slavery in tone and tenure, T.W. and his fellows were effective in defeating the majority Southern sympathizers, so that Oregon joined the Union as a Free State, albeit with some nasty compromises such as the “negro exclusionary laws.”
After the Civil War, he was a Marion County surveyor and served two terms in the Oregon House of Representatives. He later served as a state senator. During this time tragedy struck the family when Florinda came down with smallpox. Her death left T.W. a single father to 3-year-old Homer and daughter Orla.
T.W. began writing his memoirs during his subsequent time under quarantine on the farm in Waldo Hills. Years later, Ann Davenport Vasconi and her daughter, descendants of T.W.’s other brother Ben, transcribed this work, making it available to the world.
In 1873, T.W. married Nancy Gilmour, sold the farm, and moved into town. Together, they raised what would eventually become one of the world’s most famous political cartoonists, along with four other exceptionally talented offspring.
In his later years, the Sage of Silverton took to writing down more of his life experiences, mainly through the Oregon Historical Society’s quarterly publication. Many of T.W. Davenport’s writings are available at homerdavenport.com.
He passed away April 26, 1911, while visiting his daughters in Pasadena. He was 84. His grave is located in Silverton Cemetery, next to those of his sons Homer and Clyde.
