By Ken Munford | Posted: Saturday, June 30, 2007 12:00 am
Editor's note: Over a period of 12 years beginning in 1983, local historian Ken Munford wrote 561 columns for the Gazette-Times. As part of the city's 150th anniversary, the newspaper will publish a selection of these columns each Saturday. This one was originally printed on May 19, 1986.
The Little Red Schoolhouse at Wren was the oldest one in use in Oregon when it was replaced in 1927. So says Marlene McDonald in "When School Bells Rang in Benton County," published in 1983.
Built about 1860 to replace an earlier structure, it had become, Marlene says, "a doughty, weather-beaten old lady with ragged skirts." Its replacement lasted another 25 years before century-old District No. 11 was split between Kings Valley and Philomath schools. Marlene describes the locality:
"Wren (originally Wrenn), a small community six miles west of Philomath on Highway 20, was settled before 1850 by members of the Price and King families from Kings Valley, eight miles to the north. Always a farming and lumbering community, it had a general store, post office, boarding house, church and school. After the railroad was built, it gained a depot and lumber dock, as well as a sawmill and planing mill."
Nahum and Serepta King and George P. and Mary E.F. Wrenn staked out their donation land claims spanning loops in the Marys River. The dividing line between their 640-acre tracts runs along the north-south road through Wren, the Kings' on the west and the Wrenns' on the east.
King had led his family up the Luckiamute River into Kings Valley in early 1846. He and Serepta and youngest son Solomon went to Portland briefly with son Amos Nahum, who settled there. When the parents returned, they found that other sons and daughters with families and other pioneers had settled most of Kings Valley. They went south to the Marys River to stake their claim.
Son Sol married Anna Maria, widow of his brother Stephen. They lived with his parents until Nahum died. Serepta went to live with one of her daughters. Sol and Anna Maria and their children moved to Corvallis, where he operated livery stables and for 10 years was county sheriff.
George P. Wrenn was born in the District of Columbia on May 9, 1825. He moved with his family to Ohio, where he married Mary E.F. Caldwell in 1847. He came to Oregon by sea but soon returned east to bring his family. A carpenter by trade, he divided his time between the claim and Marysville (Corvallis), blacksmithing and building.
With the backing of Johnson Mulkey, Haman C. Lewis, William Caldwell and John Philips, Wrenn signed a contract in June 1854 to build the frame courthouse with a tall steeple that preceded the present structure. It was on the north side of Courthouse Square.
Among those who settled east of the Wrenn donation land claim were William Caldwell, B.P. Cardwell and W.B. Carter. They hacked out the Cardwell Hill road to Oak Creek and on over Witham Hill to Marysville. This "Wrenn's to Corvallis" road was surveyed and recorded as a county road in May 1855.
The census of 1860 shows that in the Wren area Sol King had five children and Wrenn, four. Sol's sister Rhoda Ann and her husband, Eli Summers, have five. No wonder there was need for a school at Wren. After Mrs. Wrenn's death, George married Elizabeth Freel and had a large family.
Wrenn undertook many activities. He helped organize the Masonic Lodge in 1857. He was county sheriff, 1859-60. He worked in the Senate of the state Legislature in two sessions, as sergeant-at-arms in 1876 and as door-keeper in 1878. He also opened a real estate and insurance office.
In 1872, he helped organize the volunteer firefighting company and served as its first foreman and chief engineer. It took the name "Young America Engine Company No. 1." The hose cart with a hand-powered pump, which they obtained from California, had been used in Virginia City, Nev., and had "Young America" painted on the side.
Ten years later, on Feb. 25, 1882, a warehouse near the depot on South Sixth Street caught fire. Assisting in the removal of the contents, Wrenn was struck on the head by a falling beam and was crushed to death.
Nearing his 57th birthday at the time, he was a justice of the peace and senior warden in the Masonic Lodge. Historian D.D. Fagan wrote in 1885 that "he was one of the few men who always performed whatever he undertook to do, without fear or favor and with the utmost energy of purpose."