MRS. JULIA A. McCARVER. – Julia A. McCoy was born November 19, 1825, in St. Charles county, Missouri. Her parents died before she was three years old; and she was brought up by her grandfather and grandmother. At an early age she was married to Garrett Buckalew, and thereafter lived in the State of Illinois until the spring of 1847, when, with her husband and two children, and the families of eighteen neighbors, she started across the plains for Oregon. At St. Joseph, Missouri, they joined a host of other emigrants, the combined party including ninety families, who continued their journey to its destination under the guidance and command of Captain Joel Palmer, who had already twice crossed the continent, and was then after his family. Mrs. Buckalew lost her youngest child on the plains; and, while crossing the Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon, her husband contracted a cold from which he died in a few days at Philip Foster’s place on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains.
In 1848 she married general M.M. McCarver, who had crossed the plains in 1843, and whose letters to other friends in Illinois induced the Buckalews to come to Oregon. They took a Donation claim near Oregon City, the then chief town of the North Pacific region, where they made their home for eleven years. In the spring of 1849, Mrs. McCarver followed her husband to California, going by sailing vessel from the Columbia river, and returning by sailing vessel in the fall, by way of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts of Fort Victoria, Fort Nisqually, and the Cowlitz valley. In 1859 General McCarver’s family settled in Portland. In 1864 they moved to Idaho, and then returned to Portland, where they remained until 1868, when they came to Puget Sound, locating on the site of the present city of Tacoma, Washington, where her husband died five years later.
Mrs. McCarver was the mother of nine children, – all daughters. At the publication of this volume she continues in good health, and seems likely to round off, many years hence, a long life of peace and good works.
