by Kim Sass, ARM member and Kay Burt, Riverside Cemetery Assn. President
“Celebrating Our Agricultural Heritage” is the theme of the annual History Through Headstones Tour at Albany’s Riverside Cemetery on Wednesday, July 19. It is sponsored by the Albany Regional Museum and the Riverside Cemetery Board of Directors.
This is the 13th year for the free event where light refreshments will be served from 7 pm to dusk. Visitors can park on either side of 7th Avenue west of Albany General Hospital and can begin their tour at either cemetery entrance.
Agriculture was Albany’s first industry. In 1850 the white population of Linn County was 994, associated with 172 families. Living on 138 farms. A total of 6,041 acres had been cleared and planted in crops. Wheat was the primary cash crop for more than 40 decades (1845-1885).
Eleven people associated with the area’s agricultural community will be featured, including six members of the Jenks family. The Jenks family represents the traditional farm during those years, as well as the innovations introduced by them due to the unique challenges the valley created because of its clay soils, dry summers, and extremely wet winters.
“My pioneer family included nine boys, so it is no wonder that there are so many of us,” says docent Mary Jacq (Jenks) Burck. There are currently 25 individuals with the Jenks surname buried at Riverside.
Here is a list of those to be honored along with the names of the docents who will talk about each one:
James Benton Jenks (1833-1893) and Mary Callaway Jenks (1838-1919). Mary Jacq (Jenks) Burck will present her great grandfather, the patriarch of the Linn County Jenks clan. The civil war veteran and his wife travelled the Oregon Trail in the spring of 1866 with four of their children, including Mary Jacq’s grandfather James Edward. The family settled in Tangent and added six more children, nine of whom were boys. For multiple generations the Jenks family has been “close to the soil” and involved themselves in various aspects of agriculture.
Enoch Marvin Jenks (1880-1965) and Elizabeth (Bessie) Moser Jenks (1887-1965). Enoch was the youngest of the ten children of James Benton and Mary Callaway Jenks. In 1910 he was a pioneer in the Oregon poultry business and developed the most prominent chicken hatchery in the Pacific Northwest in the 20th century. Enoch and the family also perfected fruit drying and sold it commercially to support the farm. Grandson Timothy Jenks lives in Tangent on the site of the original Jenks homestead. He will give an overview of agricultural practices in Linn County among the earliest settlers who relocated in the west.
Howard Benton Jenks (1893-1963) and Eunice Luper Jenks (1890-1984). Named for his grandfather, Howard Benton Jenks will share the story of the Jenks-White Seed Company. Harley White and Howard Jenks established the company that was instrumental in making Linn County the “Grass Seed Capital of the World.” With offices and warehouses in Salem, Albany and Tangent, the company with its modest beginnings became a world-wide player in the grass seed business needed for grazing animals, playing soccer—or golf—and home lawns. Both the grandson, son, as well as other members of the Jenks family, managed or worked for the company until the late 1970s.
Amos Ben Conrad (1925-1994). Amos Conrad was born in Albany and graduated from Oregon State College in Agriculture. He married Mary Martin (1927-2001) in 1949 and lived on the family homestead where they raised five children and grew tall fescue and other grasses for the burgeoning grass seed industry.
Amos volunteered for many organizations and was noted for his long service and stewardship. He was a member of the Mennonite Health Services Board. He served on the Tangent School District board and was a trustee of Lebanon Community Hospital.
Conrad received two honors posthumously in 1995, naming the Amos B. Conrad Conference Center at Lebanon Community Hospital and the Amos B. Conrad Library at Tangent School.
Family friend Pat Hagerty will serve as docent.
Cyrill Koos (1863-1943) and Adele Koos (1864-1936). As a young couple, Cyrill and Adele Koos escaped war-torn Alsace and immigrated to America in 1886. After living in New York and Montana, they moved their family to Linn County, about 1902. They had homes in Albany, Crabtree, and the Palestine area of Benton County before settling on a farm in Tangent in 1910. Many Koos descendants continue to farm in Linn County. Kathryn Koos-Lee, a family member, will serve as docent.
John Gale Swatzka (1925-2009) was the youngest of four children to Gerhardt and Catherine Swatzka who came to the U.S. from Germany in 1880 and then to Oregon in 1893.
Swatzka graduated from Albany High School in 1943 and attended the University of Oregon but was drafted into the army. In 1944 his father filed a writ of habeas corpus asking for his son’s release to keep the family farm in production. This was the first request of its kind in the U.S. However, the circuit court of appeals upheld the Linn County Selective Service Board and Swatzka received his honorable discharge in 1946.
After receiving his history degree in 1951, Swatzka took over the family farm on Seven Mile Lane. He married Katherine Githens (1911-2006) in 1979. They were honored as the 1985 Linn County Outstanding Farm Family.
Swatzka was a founding member of the Oregon Ryegrass Growers Association and board secretary for 21 years. He served as president of Riverside Cemetery Assn. for 20 years. Docent: Darrel Tedisch, Riverside board member, ARM board president.
Samuel Hill (1804-1854) is the first recorded adult burial here at Riverside Cemetery. He was one of the early Albany settlers arriving in the Emigration of 1843. Hill’s name appears in early territorial news about politics and industry. He was one of the owners of the Magnolia Flour Mill at the end of First Avenue on the Calapooia River and helped build the first iron bridge over the Calapooia River at Brownsville. He was killed aboard the steamer Gazelle when it exploded on the Willamette River at Canemah on April 8, 1854. Docent: Bill Maddy, ARM member.
Mary Juanita Pettibone Buchner 1905-2002) was born in Blackfoot, Idaho, to Clifford and Bertha Pettibone. She grew up on a farm located on Pettibone Lane north of Corvallis, attended Mountain View School, and graduated from Albany High School in 1922. Mary had a competitive nature, winning spelling bees in 1916 and being one of 700 Oregon students who sold $50 worth of war savings bonds in 1918. In high school she received a gold medal for her typing speed.
After graduating from Oregon Normal School in 1924, Mary taught at various Benton County Schools. She married Virgil A. Buchner, a well-known Riverside area farmer, in 1928 and began a full life that often centered around Riverside School.
She was a room mother and substitute teacher in the late 1940s and 50s when
her children John and Janeth attended.
Virgil and Mary were active 4-H leaders, members of the Linn County Extension, and enjoyed life at the Mennonite Village after retirement.
Docent: Kitty Buchner, family member and ARM member