Clatsop County OR Archives Biographies.....Warren, Daniel K. March 2, 1836 - 1903
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Source: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. III, Published 1928, Pages 526 - 532
Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company

   DANIEL K. WARREN.  None of the old families of Warrenton, Clatsop county, 
has held a higher place in public esteem than has the Warren family, which has 
been worthily represented by the late Daniel Knight Warren and his son, George 
W. Warren, the latter today recognized as one of his community's most 
successful and influential citizens. Daniel K. Warren was for many years one 
of the most important factors in the development and progress of his section 
of Clatsop county and is well deserving of specific mention among the 
representative men, dead and living, of the Columbia River valley. Some years 
prior to his death, Mr. Warren wrote an extremely interesting and historically 
valuable account of his life, incorporating pertinent facts relative to the 
family history, and it is deemed entirely consonant to reproduce the same 
verbatim in this sketch, as follows:
 
     "My great-grandfather, Phineas Warren, who was first cousin to General 
Joseph Warren, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, about the year 1745. My 
grandfather, Phineas Warren, was born October 12, 1776, in Marlborough, 
Windham county, Vermont. On December 22, 1799, he married Mary Knight, of the 
same place, who was born on May 12, 1777. The fruit of this marriage was ten 
children, who grew to manhood and womanhood, seven boys and three girls. My 
father, Danforth Warren, who was the fourth child of Grandfather Warren, was 
born September 22, 1806, in Edinburg, Saratoga county, New York. My mother, 
Amanda Pike, was born April 9, 1809, in Springfield, Massachusetts, and they 
were married in Bath, Steuben county, New York, December 16, 1830. From this 
union four boys were born, of whom the writer was the youngest.
 
     "I was born March 12, 1836, in Bath, New York. My father died August 23, 
1837, with brain fever, at the age of thirty-one years. Thus my mother was 
left on a small and unproductive farm in western New York, to battle for 
herself and her four little boys, the eldest of whom was scarcely six years 
old; and the heroic struggle which she made in the discharge of this sacred 
duty, and the hardships she was compelled to endure, is fully attested by the 
following facts. Our little farm contained only one hundred and ten acres, two-
thirds of which was covered with timber and brush, and but a few acres was 
susceptible of cultivation, the rent of which would little more than pay the 
taxes. Therefore my mother was compelled to support her little brood in some 
other way. This she did for four years after the death of my father by 
spinning the wool and flax, weaving the cloth and making the clothes, not only 
for her family, but burning the midnight oil (or tallow candle) in making 
clothes for others, or for the trade, with which to buy the food for her 
little children.
 
     "On March 1, 1841, my mother married Gardner Baxter, of Plattsburg, New 
York, and then her real troubles began. The commendable traits of this man's 
character were that he was temperate and industrious, and in later years 
accumulated considerable property in Illinois. His brutality to our family, 
however, cannot be fully portrayed by feeble powers of description. Therefore 
I will not attempt it here; suffice to say, however, that his conduct was so 
brutal that the neighbors interfered and drove him from the community, and he 
went to southern Illinois, where one of my mother's brothers resided. He 
remained there for five years; joined the church, which he continued to do on 
divers and sundry occasions, quite frequently in later years. While in 
southern Illinois he seems to have behaved himself for a time and won the 
friendship of my uncle, who recommended him to my mother as a reformed man. He 
returned to New York in the winter of 1847-48 and induced my mother to give 
him another trial, which she did, and we started for the west with a team in 
January, 1848, and arrived in Princeton, Illinois, in March of that year. But 
the leopard could not change his spots for any considerable time, and our home 
soon became a leading branch of Dante's 'Inferno,' and the four Warren boys 
soon left home, and mother struggled on as best she could until death relieved 
her in September, 1881.
 
     "The writer, at the age of thirteen years, went to work for E. P. Judd, 
of Princeton. I worked for him in summer for three years, or until the spring 
of 1852. I hired out to work for Mr. Judd on his farm at eleven dollars per 
month. This was the price he paid his men by the year; and on settlement he 
paid me twelve dollars a month, or one dollar more than his full-grown men. I 
worked for my board and attended school in the winter, and by economy and a 
judicious investment of my limited earnings — in colts and young horses — I 
found at the end of three years that I had a good span of horses and two 
hundred and fifty dollars in cash; and I cannot remember to have done any 
better financiering since.
 
     "In the spring of 1852 the four Warren boys (the eldest of whom was not 
yet twenty-one years old, while I was only sixteen) fitted out a four-horse 
team for a trip to Oregon. We joined a company which was then organizing in 
Princeton, and sold our team to the captain of the company, Mr. Thomas Mercer, 
at one hundred dollars per head for the horses, reserving the option to redeem 
them at that figure upon their arrival in Oregon. We also agreed to pay Mr. 
Mercer one hundred dollars each and do our share of the work, which included 
standing on guard every fourth night. The company was not fully organized 
until we reached the Missouri river at Council Bluffs. We left Princeton, 
Illinois, about the first of April, and crossed the Mississippi river near the 
mouth of the Iowa at New Boston. Thence via Pella, Oskaloosa and Winterset in 
Iowa, and from Winterset to Council Bluffs (or Kanesville, as the town was 
called), which was then a wild and uninhabited country. We rested at 
Kanesville for two weeks or more, resting our horses and awaiting the arrival 
of some of the parties who were to form a part of our company, and on the 24th 
of May we crossed the Missouri river into a wild Indian country and camped 
where Omaha now stands. Our company was then fully organized and consisted of 
the following: Capt. Thomas Mercer, wife and four children; Aaron Mercer and 
wife; Dexter Horton and wife; Rev. Daniel Bagley, wife and child; Rev. W. F. 
West and wife; Ashbey West, James Rossnagel, William Shondy; George Gould, 
wife and two children; John Pike, Daniel Drake and four Warren boys; also a 
few others who did not travel with us throughout the entire trip. We had but 
fourteen wagons and forty horses. Sixteen men of our company constituted the 
guard. Thus we had each to stand guard half the night, every fourth night, two 
men at a time, who were relieved at midnight. As above stated, we left the 
Missouri river on the 24th of May, and reached The Dalles of the Columbia on 
the 2d day of September, where we found the first white men who had 
established homes at this then the eastern outpost of the few hardy pioneers 
who had previously settled in Oregon. The Dalles is now a flourishing little 
city on the banks of the Columbia, two hundred miles from the Pacific ocean.
 
     "It would be too long a story to tell at this time to give any adequate 
description of this long and tedious journey over desert and plain, mountain 
and forest, with their bands and tribes of savages, herds of buffalo and 
howling wolves along the track of more than one hundred campfires which dotted 
the line for more than two thousand miles of this long and toilsome journey. 
This simply outlines a broad field for a thrilling story, but I must hurry 
along, as we were not yet to the end of our journey. At The Dalles we embarked 
our wagons, baggage, women and children and an escort of men on barges which 
we had to row with sweeps and oars for forty miles down the Columbia to the 
Cascade rapids on this great river, then make a portage of six miles around 
the rapids, where we met a small steamboat, which transferred us to Portland, 
some sixty miles distant. In the meantime our horses were taken over the 
Cascade mountains into the Willamette valley by a number of men of our company.
 
     "As I rush along with this little narrative, I will stop to mention a few 
facts in regard to our trip across the plains. First, in regard to the general 
health along the line. That dread scourge, the cholera, broke out among the 
emigrants on the Platte river, and for days and weeks we were rarely out of 
sight of a grave along the line, but our company left but one, a Mrs. Gould, 
from Iowa, who died with cholera at Elm creek, on the Platte river; but many 
members of our company were sick along the line from Omaha to the South pass 
of the Rocky mountains. My health was good until we reached the end of our 
journey. The wife of Captain Mercer died at the Cascades of the Columbia, 
leaving four little girls. Second, the Indians. We were very fortunate in 
getting through without serious trouble from them. On one occasion, however, 
on a very dark night, they made a bold attempt to steal our horses, but were 
promptly checked by the guards; and with the knowledge I now have of the 
Indian character it seems remarkable, and we were indeed fortunate, that we 
were not left on those desolate plains without a single horse, as they could 
easily have stampeded our horses, in spite of the guards, almost any day 
between the Rocky mountains and the Snake river, for, on account of the 
scarcity of grass in that desolate region, we were often compelled to send our 
horses from one to three miles from camp for the night, in order to obtain 
sufficient grass to keep them alive, and only the regular guard of four men 
would go with them. We lost only one horse on the route, however, and that one 
was bitten by a rattlesnake. Third, our route. As before stated, we crossed 
the Missouri river at Omaha, thence up the north side of the Platte river and 
up the Sweet Water river to South pass. Thence to Green river, and at Soda 
Springs, on Bear river, we diverged from the California route toward Fort 
Hall, on the Snake river; thence practically down that stream to its junction 
with the Columbia, or substantially over the present line of the Union Pacific 
railroad. We arrived in Portland September 9, 1852. Here one of my brothers, 
P. C. Warren, was taken sick, and we remained with him until he was 
convalescent, when brothers Frank and George hired out to work in a sawmill at 
Astoria and the writer, a boy of sixteen years, started for the southern 
Oregon gold mines, some three hundred miles distant; and after traveling some 
two hundred miles into the Umpqua valley engaged to attend a ferry across 
North Umpqua river, and remained in this occupation until December, when I 
continued my journey to the gold mines on the Rogue river. Here I had a severe 
attack of lung fever for some six weeks, and, upon regaining my health, worked 
in the mines until spring. Then, as I could see no prospect of financial 
success, I left the mines and started for Astoria, some four hundred miles 
distant, with less than two dollars to defray my expenses, and this in a 
country where the rudest fare cost one dollar a meal. I worked my way, 
however, and arrived at Astoria early in June, 1853. My worldly possessions 
then consisted of the clothes that I wore and three dollars in cash, and after 
a time I succeeded in finding employment in a lumbering camp at seventy-five 
dollars a month, where I remained for three months, when my employer broke up 
and ran away. I did not claim all the credit for his failure, however, for 
there were nine or ten other employees in camp during this time. I then 
engaged in the same business on my own account, which I continued until the 
summer of 1855, when I tried the mines once again, this time up the Columbia, 
some six hundred miles nearer the British line. Here I worked only a few 
weeks, when the Indian war broke out and the few miners there were compelled 
to seek safety in flight. I then returned to Astoria and resumed the lumbering 
business, which I followed until the winter of 1859-60. In the meantime, I had 
bought three hundred and sixty acres of land on the banks of the Columbia 
river thirteen miles above Astoria, and upon which there was a small house, a 
good orchard and a few acres under cultivation. Here I lived for one year, 
part of the time keeping 'batch,' and at times boarding with a neighboring 
family. Tiring of this mode of life, however, I, in company with my brother, 
P. C. Warren, returned to Illinois in the winter of 1859-60, via the isthmus 
of Panama and New York, thence by rail to Princeton, where we arrived April 
19, 1860. During the summer we visited the home of our childhood and the 
friends of our youth, and before the golden tints had faded from the autumn 
leaves in that memorable year an alliance had been formed and a pledge given 
which carried me to a higher plane and a better life. In short, it opened up a 
new world to me. That pledge was redeemed, but not until the 24th of February, 
1863, when we were married at eight o'clock A. M., and started for Oregon at 
twelve M. We went to New York, where we visited our friends and relatives for 
a few weeks, and took the steamship 'North Star' for Aspinwall (now Colon), 
where we arrived, after encountering a most terrible storm off Cape Hatteras 
on the 14th, being thirteen and a half days on the trip that was usually made 
in seven days. We crossed the isthmus by rail, and took the 
steamship 'Constitution' and sailed for San Francisco, where we arrived April 
26th, and immediately transferred to the steamship 'Brother Jonathan,' and 
arrived at Astoria on the 2d of May. Here my brother George and family were 
living, and they gave us a most hearty welcome. On the 12th of May, 1863, we 
moved onto my farm, above referred to, thirteen miles above Astoria, and I 
well remember that, after procuring a meager supply of cheap furniture and 
provisions for possibly one month, we had just four dollars in cash; and not a 
cow, horse, or any kind of stock with which to carry on our little farm, which 
by the way was little more than a garden, as my place was all heavily 
timbered. But we were very happy, and I do not think our happiness has at all 
diminished through these thirty-seven years. When I think, however, of the 
confidence that this dear little girl must have had in me to take her life in 
her hand, as it were, and go to a wild and new country more than seven 
thousand miles from anyone she ever knew, I can but feel that I owe her a debt 
of love and gratitude that can never be fully repaid. Well, we remained on 
this farm nearly seven years, where we spent some of the happiest days, and 
certainly the hardest work of our lives up to the present time. I was during 
that time engaged in the lumbering business and rafting logs on the Columbia 
river. In the fall or early winter of 1869, I rented our farm and engaged in 
the market and grocery business in Astoria. We sold our farm the following 
year and continued the business in Astoria for fourteen years, in the meantime 
purchasing the lands where we now live and upon which the town of Warrenton is 
located. We built our home in 1885, intending to retire in a measure from our 
former active business life; but how difficult it is for one whose life has 
been one of great activity and energy to retire at the age of forty-nine, may 
be shown by our own experience. After we had retired, as we thought, and lived 
in our quiet home for five or six years, at the end of which time we had only 
a farm, a town site, a railroad — the little Seaside road, sixteen miles long, 
of which I was president and manager — a store, bank, steamboat, sawmill and a 
few other little things to look after; but now conditions have changed 
somewhat. We have sold our interest in the railroad, steamboat, and our half 
interest in the mill, and sold the store, and are slowly unloading the burden. 
Our daughters, the dear girls, have left the home nest and have assumed the 
duties, the joys and cares incident to homes of their own, and our boys — 
noble and manly fellows that they are — just approaching the threshold of 
early manhood, may in the natural trend of human life soon followed the same 
unwritten law and prepare to take up the burden when the father lays it down. 
While we have been prospered and successful in many ways, and beyond our 
fondest hopes in the ability to provide all the home comforts of life, and, 
above all, in that love and affection without which the word 'home' is a 
misnomer and a mockery, yet as I look back over the past fleeting years I 
cannot say that I desire to travel the same road again, and especially with 
the limited light I then had to guide the steps of a fatherless boy. A few 
short years at most and we shall have finished our work, and whatever mistakes 
we have made, and however little we may have accomplished, we are at least 
proud of our girls and boys, and we trust, and think we know, that the world 
will be better for their having lived in it. In this thought, and with this 
assurance, there is a world of comfort to us in our declining years."
 
     The pioneers or first settlers on the land covered by the town of 
Warrenton were J. G. Tuller, J. W. Wallace, D. E. Pease, N. A. Eberman and G. 
W. Coffinberry, who located here during the period from 1845 to the 
early '50s. Very little improvement was made on the land, however, until the 
early '70s, when D. K. Warren bought out some of the first settlers and, with 
the help of Chinese labor, reclaimed a large tract of the land by constructing 
a dike about two and a half miles in length, which was completed in 1878. Mr. 
Warren laid out the town of Warrenton about 1891, and in the following year 
built the first schoolhouse, at a cost of eleven hundred dollars, and gave it 
to the school district.
 
     The lady, to whom Mr. Warren was married on February 24, 1863, was Miss 
Sarah Eaton, who was born in Meriden, New Hampshire, in 1840, and died in 
1922.  Mr. Warren passed away in 1903. To them were born four children, 
namely: Mrs. Lulu Thompson, of Portland, Oregon; Mrs. Maude W. Higgins, also 
of Portland; George W. and Frederick L., who is now at Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mrs. 
Warren was by nature sympathetic and philanthropic and gave largely of her 
time and means to all worthy or deserving subjects. Among her philanthropies 
was the presentation to the Astoria Y. M. C. A. of the site on which their 
building is erected.
 
     George W. Warren received his education in the public schools of Astoria 
and the Portland Academy. Returning to his home city, he took a position in 
the Astoria National Bank, of which his father had been one of the organizers 
and was at that time president and the largest stockholder. He remained in the 
bank several years, serving in various capacities, and was president of the 
institution seven years, resigning in 1920. Mr. Warren erected a modern 
residence, containing fifteen rooms, which is surrounded by well kept and 
attractive grounds, ornamented with trees, shrubbery and flowers, and which is 
regarded as one of the most beautiful country homes in the state.
 
     In 1906 Mr. Warren was united in marriage to Miss Florence Elizabeth 
Baker, of Sacramento, California. Mr. and Mrs. Warren are the parents of a 
son, Daniel Knight Warren, born on the old homestead at Warrenton, November 
16, 1913, and is now attending high school. Mr. Warren has been interested in 
local public affairs, giving his earnest support to all measures for the 
promotion of the best interests of the community. He served for eight years as 
port commissioner at Astoria and has gained wide recognition as a man of 
sterling character and substantial qualities, dependable in his citizenship 
and reliable and constant as a neighbor and friend, and therefore commands the 
uniform respect and confidence of his fellowmen.

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