Month: July 2023

Oregon Reunion a Success

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The 2023 Oregon Robbins Reunion was a resounding success! We had between 50 and 60 attendees, about the same as last year’s reunion in Decatur County, Indiana. There were representatives from several Oregon pioneer ancestors: Nathaniel and Nancy Robbins, John and Theodoshia (Robbins) Herren, John Hudson Robbins, and Jacob and Sarah (Spilman) Robbins. There were also several other long-time Robbins family researchers who connect much further back through our pre-Indiana ancestors, as well as others who have Robbins ancestors but weren’t sure if they were connected to our specific family or not (it’s hard to say – our ancestors being on this continent for four hundred years – there are a lot of branches of the Robbins family!).

The four Oregon cousins who attended last year’s reunion in Indiana were all present: Sherrill, Nancy, Kathy, and myself.

Many of us at this reunion hadn’t seen each other since the Oregon reunions back in the 1990s or early 2000s so it was nice to get reacquainted. There were several actual Robbins’s in attendance too: James (“Jim”) DeSpain Robbins, a descendant of Jacob through son Harvey, and John Robbins and family, descendants of Jacob through son Levi.

I had originally planned this reunion as a one-off, a follow-up to last year’s bicentennial family reunion in Indiana, but the folks who came to this reunion want to keep it going, so we will plan for a 2024 reunion! What’s good about that is if you weren’t able to come to this reunion, you can always come next year, or the year after (?). And anybody interested in Robbins family history are welcome.

Below are several photos, a couple by me and a couple by cousin Brenda Pudwill.

The Huckleberrys

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Ella Elmira (or Elmyra) Robbins was born in 1871 in Decatur County, Indiana, a daughter of James Gilman and Elmira (Stout) Robbins.  She was married to the Rev. John Fielding Huckleberry in 1893 and they had five children:  Evermont Robbins, William Carey, Mary Elmyra, Helen Rebecca, and Florence Naomi.

The Huckleberrys moved to Oregon in about 1921 (another interesting Decatur County to Oregon connection), though daughters Mary Elmyra (who had married George Vandiver) and Helen Rebecca seemed to have remained in Indiana.

The Rev. John Fielding Huckleberry, born in 1864, had graduated from Franklin College in Franklin, Johnson County, Indiana.  He served five years as pastor of the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Decatur County and well as other pastorates in Indiana before moving to Oregon.  The Rev. Huckleberry died in McMinnville, Oregon, in 1950.  At the time his wife was staying with their daughter Mary Vandiver back in Indiana.  She flew out to be with him at the time of his death.  Ella lived only five more years, dying in 1955, in Oregon.

Two of their children who came to Oregon, William Carey Huckleberry and Florence Naomi Huckleberry, appear to have never married.  They died in 1967 and 1972, respectively.

The older son, Evermont Robbins Huckleberry, however, led a storied life that he wrote about in his book The Adventures of Dr. Huckleberry, Tillamook County, Oregon.  Dr. E. R. Huckleberry received his MD from Rush Medical College in Chicago and then served an internship at Los Angeles County Hospital.  He spent the next thirty years practicing medicine in Tillamook County on the Oregon Coast, McMinnville, and Umatilla, Oregon.  After a stint in Texas, he moved to Utah where he retired as a physician.  Dr. Huckleberry died in 1996 in Salt Lake City at the age of 102!

Tillamook County established the Tillamook County Huckleberry Health Fair in his honor, which ran annually from 1983 to 2017.  The fair was an event to help local residents understand their health resources, as well as providing needed low-cost screenings and other services.

Dr. Huckleberry, in his very long life, was also a military veteran, missionary, teacher, author, and family man.  At the time of his death Dr. Huckleberry had three great-great-grandchildren.  Another long lived Robbins family member!

[Jacob Robbins-William Robbins-William Robbins Jr.-James Gilman Robbins-Ella (Robbins) Huckleberry]

Oregon Reunions in the Past

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There have been many years of Robbins and allied family reunions in Oregon.  Originally they were large reunions, with the original Oregon Trail pioneers in attendance, but as families grew and married into other families and moved away from the home place, over time the reunions sometimes fractured into separate parts or died way altogether.

While most families hold reunions at some point, the Oregon reunions might have originally been driven by the shared experience of coming across the Oregon Trail and an early organization that helped bring pioneers together.

The Oregon Pioneer Association was established in 1867, with one of the leading founders being William Jackson Herren, son of Theodoshia (Robbins) Herren.  He was elected president of the organization in 1877, the same year he returned to Decatur County, Indiana, to visit his Robbins cousins that he hadn’t seen in decades.

The Association was made up of members who had come to Oregon prior to January 1, 1854, and each year they held meetings of members, many of whom were members of the Robbins and Herren families.  As the original pioneers died out, the organization dwindled, eventually being subsumed into the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers.  The Oregon Pioneer Associations’ annually published Transactions listed those members and other pioneers who had passed away over the years.

By the time the pioneer group was dwindling away around the turn of the last century, family reunions started being held.  Original pioneers were dying off, families were spreading out, many moving off the farm to look for jobs in urban areas both near and far.  For the Robbins family, 1922 was the banner year, with large reunions in Decatur County, Indiana, and in Oregon.  As families grew and locations changed, the various reunion groups separated, then rejoined, then died away, only to be replaced by something new.

I have collected articles over the years about some of these reunions and I include a few of them here.

I started attending Robbins reunions in 1977, and they continued on until the early 2000s before petering out.  In those years the reunions were held in Camas, Washington; Champoeg State Park; Willamette Mission State Park; and finally Silver Falls State Park.  The 2023 Robbins Reunion is being held at Feyrer Park in Molalla, a long-time location of reunions of the Jacob Robbins family.  For more information on the upcoming reunion click on the 2023 Oregon Robbins Reunion above.