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According to many references,
Marys River and Marys Peak were named for Mary Lloyd by Wayman St. Clair,
who described her as the first white woman to cross the stream in 1846.
But a close look at records of that time show that the Marys name was
already in use before the Lloyds and St. Clair reached this point in the
Willamette Valley.
Mary Ann Lloyd, 20, was the eldest daughter of a family that came west by covered wagon on the Oregon Trail in 1845. Her father, John Lloyd, 49, and her mother, Nancy Walker Lloyd, 47, were from North Carolina, where they had married and where Mary Ann was born. They moved west to Clay County, MO., where four sons and four daughters were born. These children ranged in ages from 4 to 18 at the time they started for the far West.
The family of Andrew Foster, 56, originally from Virginia, included his wife, Elizabeth, 45, and their sons John, 23, James, 17, and Isaac, 16; and their daughter, Mariah, 11. They traveled with the Lloyds in a wagon train that was first led by Solomon Thetherow. On the meek Cut-off crossing, central Oregon leadership of their small group of wagons was shared by John Lloyd and the single man, Wayman St. Clair, 29.
As was true of most of the immigrants with families, the Lloyds spent the winter of 1845-46 in the northern part of the valley. Early the next year they came south, apparently following the old trapper's trail along the west side of the Willamette Valley. After crossing the Yamhill and Luckiamute rivers they came to a third one in February 1846. According to the story published in the Portland Oregonian in 1908 and repeated in McArthur's "Oregon Geographic Names" and Harvey W. Scott's "History of the Oregon Country" and elsewhere, Wayman St. Clair took it upon himself to name the stream Marys River in honor of Mary Ann Lloyd. He declared that she was the first white woman to make that crossing.
It could be that Mary Lloyd was the first white woman to cross the Marys River; let's give her that much credit. But by the she got there the river was already documented as the Marys River. Months earlier in November 1845 J.C. Avery had staked his claim and had gone to Oregon City to register it with the Provisional Government. He identified his land claim as being a mile square around the mouth of what was already known as the Marys River.
The Lloyds and the Fosters became prominent settlers in southern Benton County. As they were starting their new homes in 1846 they had a June wedding. Mary Ann Lloyd married John Foster. The 1850 census shows that this couple had two children. Mary Ann died in 1854. In the meantime in 1851 St. Clair married Mahalla Jane Johnson. St. Clair went into business with Eldridge Hartless. The store they built close to the Willamette river ferry, near the foot of present Jackson Avenue, is said to have been the fourth frame building erected in Marysville. It was in a good position to load and unload cargo from the steamboats when they began calling at Marysville in the 1850's.
The Hartless & St. Clair's store became the center of the Lower Town, in competition with J.C. Avery's Upper Town around this store at second and Adams streets. Upper town had the advantage of being on a bluff well above high water in flood times, but it did not have easy access to the riverfront.
St. Clair represented Benton County in the Territorial Legislature in 1850-51 and in 1854. Along with Avery, B.R. Biddle, Joel Palmer, J.C. Alexander and others, he was one of the organizers of the Pacific Telegraph Co. in 1855. With the discrediting of the myth that Marys River was named for Mary Lloyd, we still need to look for the original Mary.
Other namesake historical links
on this site:
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