Canby Pioneer Tales from the Graveside

Canby has a lot to offer for a small town surrounded by farms, and it retains the small town feel even after so much recent growth. The farms offer a lot to the people who live in Canby, from my favorite pumpkin patch at Fir Point Farms to the Dahlia Festival. Our town also has a great deal of history that engages residents and visitors alike. Take a ride on the quaint historic Canby Ferry. Visit the Canby Depot Museum to learn about the history of the railroads. While you’re there, discover the important historic families and people that influenced Canby. Another great way to learn about Canby history is to visit its many cemeteries.

Within the city of Canby is the historic Baker Prairie Cemetery. The cemetery is so named because Canby was once named Baker Prairie after Jim Baker, the famous frontiersman, trapper, hunter, Army scout, interpreter and rancher. Jim farmed in North Canby in the early 1830s and stayed until at least 1838. He eventually grew tired of farming life and returned to his roots as a frontiersman. While fascinating, Baker Prairie Cemetery is not the only historic cemetery in the Canby area.

If you drive 3.9 miles south of Canby on the Canby-Marquam Highway, you will soon reach Gribble Prairie and the historic Gribble Cemetery. This cemetery, born of the Gribble family laying loved ones to rest on their own land, shows that their first gravesite was laid in 1847. It is still an active cemetery.

The Gribble family can be traced all the way back to 1770, where, in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, John Gribble was born. Gribble had 11 children, and the third child, also named John, came over the Oregon Trail in 1846 from Johnson County, Missouri, with three wagons in a 49-wagon train. When Gribble arrived in The Dalles, he elected to go over Mount Hood via the newly built Barlow Trail Road: On September 28, 1846, they paid their toll to Sam Barlow at Gate Creek, and stayed at the Philip Foster Farm in Eagle Creek, Oregon, before settling on their own claim at Gribble Prairie.

After so much frontier history, each cemetery has a story to tell because of the people buried there. One of the headstones at Gribble Prairie is that of Robert Lee Ohmart. Ohmart is connected to the Gribbles through his wife Shirley Ohmart, granddaughter of Albert Gribble. Tracing back six generations from Robert Ohmart to Lee V. Ohmart, Roy Virgil Ohmart, and Adam Ohmart, then on to Virgillia Eliza Pringle Smith and Pherne Tabitha Brown Pringle, you’ll finally find Tabitha Moffatt Brown.

Who is Tabitha Moffat Brown? Her son Orus Brown was the leader of that wagon train that brought the Gribbles over the Barlow Road and into the Willamette Valley in 1846. Tabitha did not go over the Barlow Road — she instead left Fort Hall and went down toward Southern Oregon to cross the Applegate Trail. A man who Tabitha called “a rascally fellow,” (from “The Brown Family History”) left her and several other wagon families stranded in August. Eventually winter set in and Tabitha had only a horse left. Forced to fight off cold and hunger for the remainder of her journey, she nearly perished on many occasions. By some miracle she lived and made it to Salem, spending the winter in a cabin there. Tabitha eventually went on to be a founding member of Pacific University in Forest Grove and is now called the Mother of Oregon. She is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Salem, Oregon.

Looking around the Gribble Cemetery you will see a grove of trees with older headstones beneath them. John Gribble, of the first generation of Gribbles in Oregon, is there. You will also find Andrew Gribble and his wife Nancy. Nancy has some pretty cool ties to Canby. In 1908, Nancy purchased a five dollar share (her last name as recorded is Kesselring, after her remarriage) in the newly founded Clackamas County Fair. Now, 116 years later, that fair is a thriving testament to pioneer history. Nancy also spoke the Chinook language well and was an interpreter for the Cayuse Five trial in Oregon City — a famous and controversial trial in 1850 where five Indigenous men were hanged for murder following a claimed attack on a mission settlement.

These are just a couple of the amazing stories to be found in the Gribble Cemetery. I would like to thank Dawn Coleman for her support in research of local Canby history and Julie Burnett for her help in my research on Tabith Brown. Thank you to the Oregon Historical Society for digitizing my Great Great Uncle Aleen Gribbles’ interview at digitalcollections.ohs.org/sr9669-t01s1. Finally, thank you to my Gribble family for all the hard work recording the amazing accomplishments of the family.