This month, we are honoring a true pioneer, who settled and broke barriers here in Oregon: Letitia Carson. In the mid-1800s, Carson was one of many hundreds of people journeying along the Oregon Trail to find a better life. She traveled with David Carson (a white man), with whom she eventually had 2 children (little is known about their relationship, and there is speculation that she may have been enslaved by Carson at some point in their relationship. They also did not seem to be married). Only about 3% of people heading west during westward pioneering days in 1800s were Black, and Letitia was among that 3%.
They settled in Benton County, Oregon, and built a homestead on a land claim in Soap Creek Valley. Oregon was not what one would call friendly to Black people: among the state’s first acts of governance, a law was passed barring Black people from residing within its borders or claiming land (the exclusion law stated that any Black person who attempted to settle in Oregon would be publicly lashed 39 times every six months). When David died suddenly, leaving no will, an estate executor ruled that Letitia shouldn’t inherit the homestead, so she took the case to court. The gist of her complaint was that if she wasn’t recognized as David Carson’s legal heir, then she was due back wages, damages, and compensation for the unlawful sale of her cattle. She won the case, although her homestead had already been portioned off and sold. Sidenote: even the family’s bedding and cooking supplies were sold at auction, and Letitia had to spend $104.87 to buy back these basic possessions in order to survive.
She and her children moved to Douglas County, Oregon, with scant possessions and a few cows. She lived and worked on the land of another family, and served as the community midwife. By this point in time, Oregon had passed the second of its three Black-exclusion laws, and the third was written into the Oregon Constitution in 1857, where it remained until 1926.
When the Homestead Act passed in Congress, granting virtually free land to settlers (up to 160 acres) and not excluding Black folks from applying, Letitia filed a claim. It was certified in 1869 (hers was among the first 71 claims to be certified), and she became the only Black woman in the entire state of Oregon to get land through the Act. She built a ranch that included a two-story house, barn, smokehouse, cattle, pigs, and an orchard of over 100 fruit trees. She lived the remainder of her life on the ranch, prospering in a place that still had laws specifically designed to disenfranchise Black people.
Letitia’s daughter married an Indigenous man, who was Walla Walla and Metis, and they made their home on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Their descendants have rediscovered their family history, and their Black matriarch, and have worked at honoring Letitia’s legacy, through education and advocacy.
We chose the Camus flower to represent Letitia Carson due to its ubiquitousness in the place she first settled in Oregon: the Willamette Valley. Her Soap Creek Valley claim is now a part of Oregon State University’s holdings and an important piece of the Letitia Carson Legacy Project the university is sponsoring. This project pays homage to Black farmers in Oregon, and the project hopes for it to become both a historical center for the history of Black farming in Oregon and a resource for Black farmers of today. If you’d like to see more from the Legacy Project, here is a link to their digital home: https://letitiacarson.omeka.net/.
