Back in 1852, William A. Leach and family left Iowa in a covered wagon for Oregon. The family settled near Harrisburg in the Willamette Valley. In 1871, the second son, James, took his family to Weston in Umatilla County. John Ray Leach, the author of this readable little book, was born there but is very coy about his birthdate and never reveals it. But there are few secrets on the internet, and a Leach family genealogy page spills the beans. He was born March 26, 1882.
The Leaches settled pretty hard. Eight children were raised in Blackhorse. Leaches appear throughout Lexington area history books. Also their clansmen, the Nichols (John's cousin Ina Bertha married Thomas H Nichols who homesteaded nearby in 1905). The Leaches claim kin to William Penland, the Lexington Sheep King (another sheep king!). Although Penland first appeared with a passel of sheep in the Lexington area in 1863, he didn't lay out the town until close to 1885, intending to vie with Heppner for the county seat. In 1884 Morrow County had been split off from Umatilla County and needed a county seat. John Leach says that Penland opened a store in Lexington shortly after the Leaches arrived. Penland's brother Henry married John's aunt Martha Jane Brown. And so it goes.
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John Leach is first row, left. Note the halo.
John Leach tells a lot of Morrow County Stories. Some brief quotations:"I boarded at her parents' hotel when the budding countess (Claudia Windsor AKA Mme. Gabriel DuVal IV) was then a fine hash slinger". .... "Claudie is now writing her memoirs and I don't mind telling you that if she puts it all down, it'll be good reading".
"To me there will always be a Lexington - beautiful women, strong men, luscious watermelons, and vast wheat fields (Lexington is the greatest wheat shipping point in Oregon)".
"As a small kid I rode up Blackhorse Canyon to a dinky little one-privy school, where the teacher was not selected for his academic knowledge as much as for his ability to handle his dukes against the 18 to 20 year old sons of the sturdy pioneers".
"When I was 13 I took a very short fling ... in the Palace Hotel in Heppner. .... I soon found myself dubbed "Rear Admiral" in command of all the vessels in the 30 rooms".
"I was almost born on a horse, rode the range very young and packed supplies to sheep camps 65 miles from Heppner, back in the Blue Mountains, ran a string of four pack horses and my saddle horse. I also herded sheep a lot and one time had high hopes of specializing in sheep herding".
"Al Windsor was the best fiddler in the country - he could almost make a fiddle talk. Regardless of the amount or quality of grog, he never missed a beat or got off key. He was truly a wonder, a person any drinking man would just have to admire".
Henry Heppner: "Mr. Heppner had made his start peddling in the mining camps along the John Day River - particularly Whisky Gulch - now called Canyon City. He has no education. Few could read his writing. He was never sure just what he had written in a letter when confronted with it later. He ate big thick, juicy steaks which he took up in his hands and attacked them like a lion attacks its prey, and not without noise. He owned the hotel and many other enterprises in the town but the hotel manager gave him a private dining room where he could practice his Bill of Rights in his own way".
"I was a young man clerking in a store when I went through the Heppner Flood of June 14, 1903. In that catastrophe one fourth of the population was wiped out in 20 minutes by a wall of water that came down Willow Creek. It took about half the houses and left the ground looking as though no human has ever walked on it before".
"It was hot weather and we had no embalming facilities. We turned Mike Roberts Saloon into a morgue. Crude coffins were made of rough lumber. Nerves were shattered. Grief and fatigue were great. If we thought a body was that of so and so, we listed it and put the name on a board to be stuck at the head. If that person came walking in later it was scratched off the list but nothing was done about the body in the grave on the hill. We opened one box marked "Geo. Conser" (bank cashier) and found his Chinese cook in it. George was alive".
John Leach died in April, 1972. His fine home in Portland is now the Leach Botanical
Gardens (http://www.leachgarden.org/). I wish I had had the chance to know him when I was young and our years overlaped.
Roger Doherty
