The Fanno Family

Augustus & Rebecca Jane (Denney) Fanno

Augustus Fanno was of French descent. In 1789 his grandfather had fled from France to escape the French Revolution, and consequently came to America and settled in Maine. Augustus Fanno was born there on March 26, 1804.

At the age of 20, Augustus Fanno began a 3 1/2-year career as a seaman. Afterwards, he was a teacher in Mississippi, and subsequently Missouri, where he met and married Martha Ferguson in 1833. One son, Eugene, was born in 1841. Martha was pregnant when they left Missouri in 1845 for their overland trek to the Oregon country.

When Fanno arrived at The Dalles, he helped fell trees and whip-sawed the logs to build rafts. Pitch was used as a caulking material. Wagons were dismantled and loaded on the rafts.

These conveyances floated the pioneers to the upper Cascades. There they unloaded their goods and walked around the Cascades, sending the rafts down the wild rapids to be caught at the lower Cascades. Once the rafts were patched-up, they reloaded their supplies and went down the Columbia. They poled and landed their rafts up the Willamette River to Oregon City.

After a six-month trip, the wagon train disbanded at Oregon City. Fanno, who arrived with only 50 cents in his pocket, settled at Linn City across the river from Oregon City. Shortly after their arrival, Martha died in childbirth. She and the baby were buried at Linn City.

Fanno searched the valley for land on which to settle. Following the Tualatin Plains Indian trail that ran from Willamette Falls to Tillamook, he found his way by locating the blazes that had been cut in the trees by the natives. He settled his claim twelve miles northwest of Oregon City.

It was on a creek surrounded by beaver dam land. The early trail that passed within ten feet of the future Fanno home eventually became known as the Astoria-Military Road. Fanno picked this location because he planned to grow vegetables that he could trade to the trappers as they passed by on their way to Oregon City.

With "five dollars in his pocket," (accordingly to family records), Fanno and his young son, Eugene, settled on their 640-acre land claim on September 22, 1847. His was the 12th claim documented by the territorial recorder at the Oregon City Land Office and the first to be filed in what is now Washington County.

Fanno hired Indians to transport his supplies, pigs, calves, chickens, and nursery stock from Oregon City to his claim. Once there, he recruited the local Indians to help build a log structure. Fanno and his son led a cold and lonely existence that winter as the only settlers in the area.

At Willsburg, Augustus Fanno met Thomas Denney and his relatives. They had arrived in 1849. Denney wanted to locate a place to settle which had great trees, no underbrush and a lake. Fanno told him of land near his that met that description. The Denney's settled land adjoining Fanno's in 1850.

At the age of 47, Augustus Fanno married Rebecca Jane Denney, a "spinster" of 31 years. They were married on April 17, 1851. The first of their six children was born later that year.

At some point in those early years, Augustus Fanno taught school in Washington County. He used textbooks that had been ordered from the missionaries in the Sandwich Islands, which is the present-day Hawaiian Islands.

The first home on the Fanno land claim was built of logs. Fanno's brother-in-law, Thomas Denney, built a sawmill in 1851.

In 1859, Fanno's agricultural success allowed him to build a fashionable, rural style home for his growing family.

Recalling the severe winds and gales of this youth in Maine, Fanno reinforced his house "double-strength" so that if the winds blew it over, it would remain intact.

The house rested on log pins. Peeled logs about 14 inches in diameter were the main supports. Large ten by ten inch rough-cut fir timbers acted as joists supporting all the outside walls of the house. Peeled logs with six-inch diameters were used as cross-supporting beams.

The Fanno family pioneered the growing of onions in Oregon by developing a breed of onion that adapted to the damp climate and soil of the area. Fanno soon gained a local and regional reputation for producing large, fine-texture succulent onions.

In 1883, his sons, Augustus J. and Alonzo R., formed a business partnership with Augustus handling the management and Alonzo the farming. By the 1890s, the Fanno's were the largest producers and distributors of onions in Oregon and in 1898 they were the first producers to ship onions to Alaska by rail.

So rich and fertile was the Beaverton land that an acre was reported to produce as much as 1,000 bushels of onion. At the Lewis and Clark Exposition, Fanno was claimed the "Onion King." Also in 1905, Augustus J. became president of the Confederated Onion Growers Association and served many years.

Norman, grandson of Alonzo, said that his grandfather "made enough money off onions to retire at the age of 55." Later "the Depression wiped him out."

Alonzo continued to farm the property at Errol Station until he retired for the second time at age 77 in 1938.

Frank Fanno raised onions until about 1940 when onion maggots forced him to quit. "There were no chemicals in those days," Frank noted.
In the winter, heavy rains would flood the Fanno fields. If there were a hard freeze, the pond would be frozen solid. Young people would come from miles around to enjoy ice-skating.

The family recalled that on clear, cool, quiet mornings, you could hear the Willamette Falls at Oregon City from their farm.

+The Augustus Fanno farmhouse is located off Hall Boulevard on Creekside Place, just east of the Hall-Greenway intersection.

The farmhouse has been placed on the national register of historic places.

The Hall Family

Captain Lawrence Hall came across the Oregon Trail in 1845. In 1850 he claimed acreage near Walker and Butner Roads through the Donation Land Claim procedure.

Lawrence and his family first came to Oregon, as the story goes, along with over 400,000 other settlers, traveling from Independence, Missouri with oxen along the 2,000-mile Oregon Trail to the Stephen Meek cutoff route. Their group suffered from thirst and scarce provisions and many of the group died of Mountain Fever. They arrived at “John Day's River” and traveled up to The Dalles. There, sighting the Columbia River, they built a raft and traveled down through the upper Cascades with three other families. That leg of the trip took them three weeks in the rain, after which they portaged all of their provisions and household goods on their backs to the lower Cascades.

Lucy Hall Bennett, one of Hall’s daughters, wrote in the 1895 “Annals of the Oregon Pioneer Association,” “My father [Lawrence Hall] gave Dan Clark (who had preceded us down the river by trail on foot to Vancouver, and got a bateau of Dr. McLoughlin’s and came to the Cascades to help the immigrants down the river) an ax to bring his family to Linnton, as Portland was a thing in the distant future. We went from Linnton to Hillsboro, Washington County.

Upon arriving in Washington County, Lawrence, his wife Lucy and their nine children set up a primitive log cabin comprised of logs hewn from the abundant trees in the Cedar Mill area. They cleared land for a garden while surviving on the many deer, grouse and pheasants that inhabited the forest.

Shortly after they built their cabin, in December 1847, George Abernathy, then provisional governor of Oregon, called for volunteers to muster into the service of the Territory. Lawrence answered that call and earned the title of "Captain Hall" when he led a troop of Oregon Mounted Volunteers to fight against the Cayuse Indians. His company was formed to chastise the Cayuse Indians for the massacre of Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa, along with eleven others. The Cayuse blamed Dr. Whitman, a physician, for failing to stop the spread of measles among the Native Americans. Members of the John Quincy Adams Young family, who also subsequently settled in Cedar Mill, were amongst those taken prisoner by the Cayuse and freed by Captain Hall's Company.

After serving in the Cayuse War, Captain Hall returned to Cedar Mill so that he could provide a life for his wife and nine children. One more child, Joseph, was born, making a total of ten children to their credit. One can only imagine what it was like for that family with ten children—ranging from newborn Joseph to 22 year old John—living together in a one-room cabin with only the basic essentials.

Like many settlers, Lawrence no doubt planted a small orchard, and continued to improve the land for farming, not an easy task when large old growth trees stood abundantly throughout the area.

By 1850 Lawrence and his brother Josiah had purchased a total of 640 acres in Beaverdam (now Beaverton) and built a grist mill near present-day Walker Road.

Their son John B. Hall lived with his parents until he married his wife Mary and established their 327-acre claim along NW 143rd and Thompson Road, beginning just across the road from the Union Cemetery. It is not now known where the other children lived and died. Josiah Hall, Lawrence's brother, established a 319-acre claim within the boundaries of what is now Butner, Murray and Cornell Roads.

Proud pioneers Lawrence and Lucy Hall cleared the way for generations to live and prosper here in Cedar Mill. Lucy died at the age of 62 in 1865, and Lawrence died at 67 in 1867. They are believed to be buried under that beautiful oak tree in our Union Cemetery.

Thomas & Berilla Denney