| Notes |
- John Corse Trullinger was probably named in honor of John Corse who was the first elected sheriff of Fountain County, Indiana, elected in 1826 and served until 1830. (Ref a copy of the newspaper article titled, "First Fountain Sheriff's Grave" attached to the record of John Corse (abt 1782-1848) in this database.)
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Re: John Trullinger from Astoria
timgdixon
Posted: 16 Jul 2005 6:21AM
Classification: Query
John Corse Trullinger was my great, great, great grand-father. I have in my possession his Bible that was presented to him by Archibald Johnson on Feb. 23, 1848. It contains many interesting birthdates, marriages, etc. He carried this Bible on the trail west and it has been handed down over the years and ended up with my mother whose maiden name was Mary Jane Trullinger.
So the generations are:
John Corse Trullinger (her great grand-father
Thaddeus Stevens Trullinger (her grand father)
Clyde Badollett Trullinger (her father)
Mary Jane Trullinger (my mother)
Here is an interesting letter copied from within John Corse Trullinger's Bible dated Jan. 26, 1899 on West Shore Mills letter head:
"This is a correct statement the best of my memory. I was born in Fountain County, State of Indiana, July 29th 1828. My father was born in Ross County, State of Ohio, Feb. 12th, 1801. His german name was Daniel Drollinger but his first school teacher told him to write his name Daniel Trullinger. His Father came over from Germany to America in 1775 and settled in Pennsylvania. Afterwards moved into Ohio when it was a territory. My mothers maiden name was Elizabeth Johnston, her fathers name was Archibald Johnston and was born in old Virginia and was 16 years old when the Revolutionary War began and went in the Army at 18 years old and fought through the war. He had six brothers older than he and all fought through the war and lived through it. President Andrew Johnston was my mothers first cousin being the son of the next older brother of my grand father Archibald Johnston. My mother after Andrew Johnston's election to the Presedency began here in Oregon a correspondence with him and kept it up until her death. My grandmother Johnston's maiden name was Booth, was born in the State of Meriland. Afterward her family moved to the State of Virginia, where my grand father and grand mother were married. My great grand mother Booth died at the age of 104 years in the State of Indiana, Fountain County. I remember her the same as if I saw her yesterday."
Any direct descendants of this line of Trullingers out there interested in exchanging history please e-mail me.
Tim Dixon
OUR PROUD PAST, Gail J. McCormick
Gold Rush Foretold on Oregon Trail page 65
In 1848, the Trullinger family of thirteen travelled 2,000 miles on a journey that took six months to reach the Oregon Territory. Along the way, the discovery of gold in California was miraculously announced. John Corse Trullinger, then 20, related the story to the editor of the Oregonian in 1890: "I crossed the plains from Iowa to Oregon in the summer of 1848 with my father's family. The company that we travelled with from St. Joseph on the Missouri River, to Fort Hall was called Wambo's company. Captain Wambo had been in Oregon and California some years before and was a very competent man to take charge of an emigrant train. Nothing of importance transpired with us from the Missouri River to Fort Hall, with the exception of meeting Joe Meek on his mission to Washington, and the old mountain men, Eberts and Lebo."
"What we saw at the time, and with me ever since, has been a great phenomenon I shall now describe. We were camped on the Sweetwater River about twenty miles east of Independence Rock; our corral made, teams out to grass, supper over and all gathered in little groups about the corral talking the things of the day that had just passed. As usual on such occasions upon a beautiful sunset in that lovely country of blue skies in the month of June, everyone was enjoying the beautiful weather and balmy evening. This was the 20th of June 1848. It was perhaps thirty minutes after sunset when at the horizon in the southwest there began to rise up as it were a gold bronze ball. It looked about the size of a full moon. It very gently arose until it stood at what you would call the eight o'clock mark in the afternoon. There it stood still for a few minutes, then commenced to elongate each way across the horizon until it was in appearance about an inch wide. Then it commenced to crook up, and when it stopped its movement it made the word "mines". There it stood in the heavens in living letters of gold, and remained so until the darkness of the night faded it out. It stood there over three hours as plain as any sign over any store in the city of Portland, and as easily read. The comments at the time by our old fathers and ministers were varied. Some divided the word said it read mi-nes that is, we would all get out to Oregon "mines" meaning flat broke. At that time no one on the plains knew of the discovery of gold in Califonia. There was various comment on this phenomenon for some weeks, but no one could make it out. Finally when we reached Oregon City, we heard of the gold mines in California, and that solved the problem. From that day to this, I have never doubted the story of the sword that hung over Jerusalem for seven years, and that there was a great and living God that on the eve of great events does communicatee with men."
John Corse would go on to be a great promoter, inventor and politician. For eleven years he operated a flour and sawmill on Fanno Creek, near Tigard. He also engaged in farming and his was the first timothy sown in oregon. When John heard that a place called Oswego might be building an iron foundry he felt that profitable ventures would reside in that area. A donation land claim had already been filed by A.A. Durham. He had laid out a town site and named it in honor of his home town, Oswego New York. In 1865, John Corse bought the town site, improved the Durham Sawmill and renamed it Oswego Milling Company. The first iron produced west of the Rocky Mountains was cast at Oregon Iron Company in Oswego on 24 August 1867. John took the first two pigs cast and planned to use them as street markers at his Oswego town site. He next founded a business called People's Transportation Company with the dream that it would transport the abundant produce grown in the Tualatin Valley and other goods between Portland and Hillsboro. He ran an extensive towing and boating business with his seventy one foot steam scow named "Minnehaha".
In 1869, he sold his Oswego interests and moved to Forest Grove. An excerpt from "Oregon Native Son" tells us more of John's accomplishments: "Placing his children in school at Forest Grove, he went to Boston, where he built a turbine water-wheel, and going to Lowell, to Emerson's water-wheel testing works, he had his wheel tested, and succeeded in obtaining from it seventy six percent of working power. Having bought the Centerville flouring and saw mills, near Forest Grove, off Ulysses Jackson, he operated them untill 1877, when they were burned. In 1875, he bought property in Astoria, where he subsequently built the West Shore Mills, the property covering twelve acres, and containing, besides the mills, warehouses, wharves, barns and electric light station. During his experience in the lumbering business he built on the Walluskie Creek, three and one-half miles of the standard guage railway track, with fifty six pound rails, and employed about 150 men. In December 1885, he commenced the construction of an electric light plant in Astoria, from which the city is lighted. Mr. Trullinger has held various offices of public trust in Astoria and Clatsop County. He was mayor of Astoria from 1886 to 1888, and previous to that was a member of the city council. In December 1891, he was elected president of the board of police commissioners. In June 1892, he was elected by a large majority to the state legislature. He was one of the organizers of the Republican Party in Oregon in 1856."
History of the Pacific Northwest
Oregon and Washington 1889
Volume II
Page 591-610
Excerpt Page 609:
J.C. TRULLINGER. - There is scarcely a man in Oregon who has been engaged in more various, or, on the whole more successful enterprises than the man whose name appears above. With a tendency, possibly, to push his efforts a little beyond the line of safety, and to overcrowd himself with different schemes, he has nevertheless a substantial grip on property and business which proves his sagacity. If his love of making inventions and introducing improvements incline him to temerity, his career shows that he has a solid judgment which warns him when to put on the brakes. Oregon owes much to his inventiveness and energy.
His business at Astoria, Oregon, is very large. He owns the West Shore sawmills, which are now running at the rate of one million feet per month, besides a large amount of lath. He owns a large body of the finest timber land on the Wyluski, a stream some seven miles, by water, from Astoria. To this he has built and equipped a standard-guage railroad from the head of tide water, a distance of three miles. Thereby he is able to put two hundred thousand feet of logs into the boom per day. To feed the fifty or one hundred men in his mill and at the logging camp, he has bought a tide-land farm of three hundred and twenty acres, which he has diked and stocked with Jersey, Guernsey and Holstein animals, and from which he gets his supply of butter and beef. This is one of the richest farms in the country, and is easily worth twenty-five thousand dollars. Besides this extensive business, he owns, as he first introduced, the electric-light system of Astoria, furnishing the city with fifty arc lights.
In Yamhill county he also owns a farm of seven hundred and thirty-five acres, two miles west of Newburg, in the beautiful valley of the Chehalem. Last year he raised six thousand bushels of grain and a large quantitative of fruit upon that place. That business is not only sufficient for the active brain of Mr. Trullinger himself, but gives employment to his six sons, who are all adults, the youngest being seventeen. His two daughters are married. His ability to engage his own family in his extensive business is as remarkable as it is safe, and insures both his and their profit.
When we inquire into his former life, we find him in 1848 a young man crossing the plains with his father's family to Oregon; and in the following winter he and his brother found it no easy matter to get horses for going to the mines in California. His early enterprises in Oregon have been almost endless. Soon after returning from the mines on the schooner Montague, making a perilous voyage, he engaged in warehousing at Milwaukee. In 1852 he took up a claim nine miles south of Portland on the Tualatin, remaining eleven years, clearing fifty acres of brush and timber land, and putting up a flour and sawmill. He was among the first to plant an orchard and sow timothy. In 1863 he bought property at Oswego, and rebuilt the sawmill there in 1865. He laid a logging railway from the Tualatin to Sucker lake, placed a steam scow on the lake, and made a portage to connect with the Willamette. Joseph Kellogg and the People's Transportation Company co-operated, the former running a small steamer on the Tualatin river into Washington county.
In 1863, with A.A. Durham, of whom he had purchased a half interest in the townsite of Oswego, he sold four acres of land with water privileges to the iron company; and, having bought the Bishop Scott Grammar School tract, he laid off a townsite, settling as the first stake the first pig of iron run from the iron works, or indeed west of the Rocky Mountains. In 1870 he bought the famous old flour-mill at Centerville in Washington county, which was built and owned by John Jackson. He ran this until 1879, when it was burned. In 1875 he bought the forty-acre tract at Astoria owned by Alanson Hinman, and soon erected his sawmill on the splendid water-front thus secured. There he has remained, with a diversion of two years mining in Jackson county, with the results which we have already seen.
Mr. Trullinger has been active in making inventions, having seven which he has covered with patents, among the most notable of which are the "Duplex Ace", and a Turbine water-wheel. He has always been public spirited in support of schools and churches, and is fully up with the times in public maters, taking an active interest in politics, and pushing for railroad connection for Astoria. The partner of his labors and successes, Miss Hanna Boyles, became his wife July 24, 1853, and now shares the name and fame which she has done much to create.
John Corse Trullinger's personal Bible is the possession of Timothy "Tim" Dixon as of 2005. Ref record for Tim Dixon.
John Corse Trullinger helped establish the Republican Party in Oregon in 1856.
Scientific American
A Weekly Journal Of Practical Information, Art, Science, Mechanics, Chemistry, And Manufactures.
Vol. LIV. - No. 1.
New York, January 2, 1886.
June 12, 1886
Page 378
Miscellaneous Inventions
(Excerpt)
"A bucket for steamboat paddle wheels has been patented by Mosses(sp?), John C. Trullinger and Uriah B. S???(sp?), of Astoria, Oregon. The buckets around the wheel arms in the regular manner, are wedge-shaped, and have their front and rear sides so inclined as to act upon the water to slightly raise the vessel, entering and leaving the water with the least possible disturbance to its particles, and reducing the "slip" to a minimum.
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1828 - 1901 (72 years)
