Hello and Goodbye

Hello to Ross (on the left), our new Museum Assistant. With a background in art and historic preservation, Ross comes to us most recently from the Benton County Historical Society. We are glad to have him here.

Goodbye to Pablo (on the right), who leaves us to attend graduate school in Boston. Doesn't he look happy?! We will miss him.

Best wishes to both of these gentlemen in their new adventures!

160 Years Ago, on the Oregon Trail...

Eugenia Zieber, pictured above ca. 1850, was born in Princess Anne, MD in 1833. She was educated at the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies in Bethlehem, PA. She left school to join her family as they moved to Oregon Territory in search of a more healthy climate.

As the eldest daughter of the family, 18-year-old Eugenia's responsibilities included caring for her younger siblings, helping her mother with meals, and washing laundry. In her limited free time she collected plant specimens and wrote in her diary. The pressed-flower album that she compiled on this trip across the plains can be found in the Bush House Museum archive, along with her handwritten journal.

Sunday June 22nd, 1851
On another Sabbath do I attempt to write a few lines in my journal, which has been long neglected. There is scarcely time, upon such a journey, for those who have aught that is essentially necessary to do, to keep a diary. It must be done by snatches or at any moment, or not at all. That does not suit everyone.

...We are traveling today. I regret doing so, but the company generally are not willing to lie by, and we of course who would like to, being the smaller number, must comply with the others' wishes. It is very warm, but little air stirring today.

This evening is cool and rather windy again. I can scarcely make myself believe that this is Sunday, because we are traveling, it does not seem right. A watch was lost by one of the company today, a very valuable one I believe. Camped on a small branch of the Platte. We are to remain here tomorrow the women are to wash, the men to search for the watch, and go hunting.

The Zieber family arrived in Oregon City in October 1851, where Eugenia's father, a printer by trade, went to work for Asahel Bush II at the Oregon Statesman. Three years later, Eugenia married Asahel Bush and moved with him to Salem. They were married for nine years and had four children together before she died of tuberculosis at the age of 30. Mr. Bush never remarried.

Happy Birthday, Asahel Bush!

We are celebrating the 186th birthday of Asahel Bush II this weekend, with an Open House on Saturday from 1:00 to 4:00 pm at the Bush House Museum. There will be birthday cake, balloons for the kids, and stories about Mr. Bush. Please join us!

Asahel Bush II was born in Westfield, Massachusetts on June 4, 1826. In 1850, at the age of 26, he left Westfield for Oregon. He settled in Salem in 1853 and lived here for the next 60 years. He passed away in Salem on December 23, 1913.

When Mr. Bush was about to leave Westfield to come to Oregon he published the following poem as a farewell to his boyhood home and friends:

We do not know how much we love,
Until we come to leave;
An aged tree, a common flower
Are things o'er which we grieve;
There is a pleasure in the pain
That brings us back the past again.

We linger while we turn away,
We cling while we depart;
And memories, unmarked till then,
Come crowding round the heart.
Let what will lure our onward way,
Farewell's a bitter word to say.