Early Oregon Cousins - Sarah (Bond) Coffenberry

She probably was my first relative to be born in Oregon Territory. Sarah Bond was the third daughter of James and Laura (Jewett) Bond. Her two older sisters were born in Iowa before the family traveled to Oregon in 1847. Her father came as a missionary licentiate and settled on the Oregon coast in Clatsop County. Sadly, 3 months before Sarah was born, 29 May 1849, her father was accidentally shot and killed, so she never knew her father.

With frontier conditions, her mother remarried on 13 Aug 1850 to Carlos Shane and Sarah was enumerated as S. Shane, age 2, on the 1850 census which was actually taken in Mar 1851. Before 1859 Laura and Carlos were divorced and on 4 Jul 1859 Laura married Ferdinand Ferrell. Twelve days later Sarah's oldest sister, Minerva, married John McMullen. However the 1860 census is a little confusing. The 2 younger Bond girls were listed in the 1860 census in June in Marion County in the household of their aunt Susan and her husband Harmon Davis, along with the girls grandparents, John and Sarah (Chastain) Bond. Many of the family was listed with initials and Sarah was S.S. Bond, age 11. But in July in Clatsop County, the Ferdinand Ferrell household included Ferdinand and Laura, Laura's six children, 3 Bonds and 3 Shanes, all listed as Ferrell. The ages for Sarah and her sister Caroline were reversed. Minerva's husband, John McMullen was shown living next door.

It was 2 years later in June 1862 when Sarah's sister Caroline married Wm. Lovett. I have been unable to find more information about her. Then it was almost 5 years later when Sarah was married to Nathan L. Coffenberry on her 18th birthday, 29 May 1867, at the home of her sister Minerva McMullen. Nathan was a Civil War veteran, as he had served 11 months as a private in the 1st Oregon Infantry.

The 1870 census showed Sarah and Nathan in Astoria with children: Sarah age 2 and George age 5/12. Sarah's mother Laura was also in Astoria with her husband Ferdinand, 5 Ferrell children, 3 Shane children (all half-siblings to Sarah) and Laura's father, John Jewett. Sarah's sister Minerva was still in Astoria with her husband and 5 children ages 10 to 3. So it looks like Sarah's children would have had other children who were relatives to play with.

However, before 1880, the Coffenberrys moved to the Willamette Valley and were on the 1880 census in the lower Molalla precinct in Clackamas County Oregon. Nathan was listed in the 1890 Union Veterans Census with the post office as Hubbard Oregon. By 1900 Nathan and Sarah's children have left home and they are listed as a couple on the 1900 and 1910 censuses for Hubbard. In 1920 their daughter Lillian and her husband Robert France were living with them. Nathan died 3 Jan 1925. Then on the 1930 census in Hubbard, Lillian was the head of household, listed as Lily Smith a 61 year old widow, and her mother Sarah now age 80 was living with her. Sarah lived 9 more years before her death in Feb 1939. Her obituary claimed that she was "believed to be the oldest native-born Oregonian."