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Salem Pioneer Cemetery ~ Virgil K. Pringle ~ part of the Marion County Pioneer Cemeteries of Oregon
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Virgil K. Pringle
LAST NAME: Pringle FIRST NAME: Virgil MIDDLE NAME: K. NICKNAME: 
MAIDEN NAME:  AKA 1:  AKA 2:  AKA 3: 
TITLE:  GENDER: M MILITARY: 
BORN: 29 Jul 1804 DIED: 24 Mar 1887 BURIED: 26 Mar 1887
ETHNICITY:   OCCUPATION:  Merchant
BIRTH PLACE:  Harrington, Connecticut
DEATH PLACE: Salem, Marion Co., Oregon
NOTES: 
IOOF - Virgil K. Pringle, age 83 years, died in Salem of asthma.
BIOGRAPHICAL: 
1846 immigrant, married Pherne Brown, daughter of Clark & Tabitha Moffatt Brown.
BIOGRAPHICAL: 
"Virgil K. Pringle was the son of Norman Pringle and his wife, Sarah Kellogg, of Connecticut, where Virgil was born in 1804 at Harrington. The family moved to Missouri in 1826, where they engaged in mercantile business, established a library and started a literary society at the town of St. Charles, Missouri. Virgil K. married Phernie Tabitha Brown, a daughter of Rev. Clark Brown, in 1827. Their children were Virgilia, who married F. R. Smith of Salem, Oregon; Albro, who married Mary Owens; Sarelia, who married Rev. C. H. Northup; Ella, who married Judge C. D. Young; Emma, who married John Hughes of Salem, Oregon, and Octavius, who married Ernaline Craft. 
In the year 1843 a brother of Mrs. Pringle, O. Brown, came out to Oregon and was so pleased with the prospects that he went back to Missouri to persuade the rest of the family to go west. He had settled near the present town of Forest Grove. The mission of his visit was so successful that on Wednesday, April 15, 1846, they left the hickory groves of Missouri to start on the long, tedious journey. 
With the above family of father, mother, and six children were grandmother Tabitha Brown and a nephew, Charles Fullerton, and grandmother's brother-in-law, Captain John Brown, quite an aged man. This train, coming early in this great exodus, did not have very much trouble with the Indians. At this time they were fairly friendly, but even then their natural thieving tendencies were just as manifest as in later years. The greatest hardship, that very nearly ended fatally for them, was almost at the end of the trip while still they were almost three hundred miles from their destination. The train divided just before this, with the Pringles choosing, very unfortunately, the Applegate Cut-off. This band of immigrants were among the first to try this route and their sufferings were terrible, especially in going through the Cow Creek canyon, where they had to cross this creek by fording (swollen to the brink with icy snow water) thirty-nine times and this in November. Many of them had to wade up to their shoulders in the water. Mrs. Pringle carried her most precious household stuff on her head to keep it out of the water as she waded through the creek. Mr. Pringle's wagon was in the lead and he said he got over the trail even better than those that followed, as there was not yet the broken road to get so muddy and slippery as for the other wagons that came after him. The following item was copied from a diary left by Mr. Pringle: 
"Sunday, November 22. Helped finish the road and complete pass through the mountains into the Willamette Valley, my team and one other first to get through." Three days later he wrote: "Camped on the Willamette, handsomest valley I have ever beheld. All are charmed and think we will be repaid for all our suffering." During their hard trip through the Cow Creek country, starvation stared them iu the face. A consultation resulted in deciding to send the boy Octavius, then but fourteen, on ahead, by horseback, to try to reach the Willamette Valley settlements and bring back provisions to stave off starvation. The story of this lad's lonely trip appears in this book, under the title of Octavius Pringle, "Experiences of An Immigrant Boy, 1846-47." 
During this time some one killed a coyote and afterward they tried in vain to find its carcass so they could satisfy their hunger. The grandmother, Tabitha Brown, and her brother-in-law, Captain Brown, also started on ahead to get relief. The journey would take them many days and all she could take from the last of their provisions was three thin slices of bacon. "The Pioneer Camp Fire," by Kennedy, tells of her experiences and of what mettle those pioneer women were made. The immigrants stopped at an Indian camp, about where Eugene is now, to rest their worn-out teams and to bury a young eighteen-year-old girl who had died. Mr. Pringle and his son Octavius were both good shoemakers and had a supply of leather and a kit of cobbler tools in their wagons. While resting here and waiting for the roads to harden up a little, they made a pair of shoes for an Indian, in exchange for the carcasses of three large deer. When help came to meet them, the result of Octavius' safe journey to the settlements and return, they were only seventy-five miles from the mission at Salem, Oregon, near the present city of Eugene, but the Willamette, the Long Tom, Mary's, the Luckiamute and the Rickreal rivers were yet to be crossed. These streams were all badly swollen and the waters icy cold. The pioneers saw they could not take what stock they had any further, so they built a shed for their protection and left some one in charge. In the crowd was a man by the name of Mansfield, who was an expert boatman. They had heard that the Willamette river was free from rapids or water falls, between there and the Methodist mission at Salem, so they set about building a boat large enough to load most of the human freight and what goods they had left and go the rest of the way by river. The big fir trees looked good to these weary men as a means to make these boats, in order to get to their journey's end. Just as they were about ready to board the boat, Mrs. Pringle's brother from the valley arrived with supplies. 
They found they could hire some halfbreed Frenchmen that happened along with a number of pack-horses to help them down to the settlement by the west side of the Willamette. The Mansfield and Lebo families, consisting of nine folk, with their worldly possessions, went on board this rude craft, to navigate this river, that no white man had yet explored. All reached their destination, and when the Pringle family reached the top of the last hill, overlooking the present city of Salem, and saw the three-story Willamette Institute and the parsonage, both painted gleaming white, surrounded by the lovely valley, they really felt as if they had a view of paradise. This was Christmas day, 1846. During all their hardships and the long, terrible journey, it was their hope and trust in God that gave them the courage to struggle on. They were Methodist folk and full of faith. The Pringle family first took up land near Stayton, then finally settled just south of Salem, on the creek that bears his name. The family prospered and in time were of the most prominent and worthy citizens of the new country. One son, Clark Pringle, joined the volunteers to put down the Indian uprising, resulting in the massacre at the Whitman mission, and afterward married one of the girls rescued from the Indians, Catherine Sager. Mr. and Mrs. Pringle lived to a ripe old age and died at their home near Salem where shortly before they had celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary, surrounded by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This was a happy reunion". 
From: Steeves, Sarah Hunt, BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE OF MARION COUNTY, OREGON, PIONEERS 1840 - 1860, Portland, Oregon, The Berncliff Press, pg. 77-79 (Source: Ella Pringle Young, Portland, Oregon 1926).
See Also: OVER the APPLEGATE TRAIL to OREGON in 1846 by Bert Webber, pub. 1996 which contains the edited version of the Virgil K. Pringle diary of 1846.
DEATH CERTIFICATE: 
OBITUARY: 
In South Salem, at 10:30 p.m., March 24th, 1887, in his 83d year, Virgil K. Pringle. The funeral will take place today at 2 o'clock, from the family residence in South Salem, Rev. M C. Wire officiating. 
Oregon Statesman, March 26, 1887, 3:3.
INSCRIPTION: 
Virgil K. Pringle 
Born 
July 29, 1804 
Died 
March 24, 1887 
Father
SOURCES: 
IOOF Register of Burials 
DAR pg 28 
Steeves, BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE, pg. 77-79 
OS 26 Mar 1887 3:3 
OS 6 Jan 1888 (Necrological listing) 
See Also: OVER the APPLEGATE TRAIL to OREGON in 1846 by Bert Webber, pub. 1996
CONTACTS: 
LOT: 044 SPACE:  LONGITUDE:  LATITUDE: 
 
 

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