Jesse VanBibber Boone

     Jesse VanBibber Boone was born on 25 January 1824 at Montgomery County, Missouri.¹ He was the son of Alphonso Boone and Nancy Linville Boone. Jesse VanBibber Boone married, at age 27, Elizabeth Fudge on Tuesday, 23 September 1851 at Polk County, Oregon Territory, USA.¹ Jesse VanBibber Boone died on 24 March 1872 at Boones Ferry, Clackamas County, Oregon, at age 48 years, 1 month and 28 days.¹
     From Gary R. Hawpe, ed. and Arlene Curry Buschert, comp., 'Jesse VanBibber Boone,' Van Bibber Pioneers E-Newsletter, Vol. 4 No. 6 (April 2001), p. 10.

JESSE VAN BIBBER BOONE

Jesse Van Bibber Boone left Missouri in May 1846 with his father Alphonso and three brothers and three sisters ages twenty-two through nine. After many hardships they arrived in the Willamette Valley at Christmas time in 1846. Alphonso acquired land on both sides of the Willamette River and decided with the help of his sons to establish ferry service. This plan was interrupted when the Boones heard that gold had been discovered in California. Jesse, his father and three brothers left for the gold fields in 1849. Alphonso died in 1850 of fever and the four sons returned to Oregon.

Jesse Van Bibber Boone and his brother Alphonso Jr. resumed the operation of the ferry from their brother-in-law George Law Curry who had temporarily taken over in their absence. However Alphonso Jr. sold his interest within a year to Jesse and went steam boating on the Willamette, Snake, Columbia, Yaquina and Coquille Rivers. Jesse had steady business for it was the only direct route in the transportation system at that time between Portland and Salem. In 1872 he was murdered by a neighbor, farmer Jacob Engle over a dispute of shore and water rights.

On May 2, 1870, for the sum of five dollars, he deeded land to School District 23 in Clackamas County, Oregon to be held in trust for public use. Jump ahead 131 years. The Wilsonville primary school in Oregon situated on Boone's Ferry Road is being closed. A new elementary school will open in September 2001. How appropriate that it is to be named Boone's Ferry Elementary School because after intensive investigation at the County Land Office, Surveyor and Title Company we have discovered that the original school was actually built on the land that Jesse Van Bibber Boone 'bargained and sold and conveyed' to School District 23 in 1870.