Multnomah-Umatilla-Clatsop County OR Archives Biographies.....Wingard, Mrs. Henrietta Elizabeeth November 1, 1837 - May 9, 1925
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/or/orfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Ila L. Wakley iwakley@msn.com April 22, 2006, 8:31 pm

Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company

History of the Columbia River Valley from The Dalles to the Sea, Volume II, 
Pages 94-97

	MRS. HENRIETTA ELIZABETH WINGARD.  While the records of the men of a 
community are apt to figure most largely upon the pages of history because of 
their more active connection with public affairs, every generation recognizes 
the fact that much is due to the women whose work, although more that of 
influence than of active effort, has been none the less potent, especially in 
sustaining the intellectual, moral and social status of a locality.  Mrs. 
Henrietta Elizabeth Wingard was of this type of woman and her memory is 
enshrined in the hearts of all who knew her.  As one of the early settlers of 
Oregon she endured many hardships and privations but possessed that valiant 
spirit and courageous nature which rises superior to adversity, never yielding 
to defeat.  For the record of her interesting career we are indebted to Fred 
Lockley, who wrote the following article for the Oregon Daily Journal in 1925.
	“A day or so ago I called at the Portland home of Mrs. Henrietta A. 
Cole to see her mother, Mrs. Henrietta Elizabeth Wingard, who told me of her 
pioneer experiences as a homesteader and also of her experiences before coming 
to the west.  ‘I was born at Roseland, Pennsylvania, November 1, 1837,’ said 
Mrs. Wingard.  ‘I am a descendant of Samuel Shoemaker, who in 1759 became 
Philadelphia’s first mayor, and my great-grandfather was an aide-de-camp to 
General Washington.
	“’I was the fourth child in a family of eleven children.  My father’s 
name was Edward Shoemaker.  He was a widower when he married my mother, whose 
maiden name was Mary Hanson.  His first wife was a Catholic.  Father had no 
use for the Catholic church.  He would take his wife to church and call for 
her with the buggy at the end of the service but he would not enter the 
church.  He promised his wife that if they had children he would allow them to 
join the Catholic church, but he had to make this promise or he would not have 
won her consent to be married.  His wife died within a year.  Four years later 
father married my mother, who was a strong Methodist.  Father kept regretting 
that he had opposed his first wife in her religion, so after much thought he 
joined the Catholic church.  As I have just told you, mother was a devout 
Methodist but she promised father that if they had children they could join 
the Catholic church.  Shortly after the birth of her first child she took it 
to the Catholic church to be baptized and she told father she did want a 
difference in religious opinion to interfere with their happiness, so she also 
was baptized and joined the Catholic church.  Those who join the Catholic 
church from other churches are usually more strict in the observances of the 
forms of the church than if they were born and brought up as Catholics.  It 
was so in the case of my mother.  All of us children joined the Catholic 
church and of course all of us children are Catholics.  It is rather strange, 
when you think of it, that my father, who was so bitterly opposed to the 
Catholic church, and my mother, who was a strong Methodist, should both have 
joined the Catholic church and brought up a family of eleven children to be 
such strict Catholics.  I married a Methodist but all of my children have been 
educated in Catholic schools and are communicants of that church.  My husband 
promised me before we were married that our children should follow me in my 
religious affiliations.
	“’I was married September 28, 1854, when I was seventeen.  My husband, 
Charles Wesley Wingard, was at that time a law student.  He had gone to 
Dickinson College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, prior to taking up the study of 
law and was admitted to the bar not long after our marriage.  When President 
Lincoln issued his first call for three-months men my husband enlisted.  He 
received an appointment as major and later became lieutenant colonel of the 
One Hundred and Thirty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers.  He took part in the 
battles of Antietam, Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville.  He was detached from 
his regiment and assigned to the paymaster’s department.  We were stationed at 
Washington D. C., during the closing years of the Civil war and were there 
when President Lincoln was assassinated.  My husband and I were on very 
friendly terms with President Lincoln and his wife, Mrs. Lincoln could be very 
cold and unfriendly to those she did not care for, but to those whom she liked 
she was more than cordial.  I visited her frequently and she always made me 
welcome.  Mrs. Hayes, the wife of President Hayes, was in later years a 
frequent visitor at our home.  My oldest daughter had married an army officer, 
Major T. F. Tobey.  Mrs. Hayes fell in love with their little boy, Harry.  She 
used to run in informally at frequent intervals to see him.
	“’My husband told me that President Lincoln and his wife were to 
attend the performance at Ford’s Theater on Friday night, April 14, 1865, and 
he asked me if I cared to go.  I said, “No I cannot go, as Friday is Good 
Friday, but I do not mind your going.”  He and my nephew, John Bingham, who 
was my husband’s clerk, went and they saw John Wilkes Booth kill President 
Lincoln.
	“’On the morning that President Lincoln was assassinated John Wilkes 
Booth took a carpenter to Ford’s Theater and had him fix a bar on the door to 
the president’s box that overlooked the stage.  In telling me of the tragedy 
he had witnessed my husband said that Booth, after shooting President Lincoln, 
jumped from the box to the stage and, turning to the audience, shouted, “Sic 
semper tyrannis.”  He then stumbled off the stage and through the stage 
entrance to where he had a saddle horse in waiting in the alley.  The audience 
was dazed and appalled.  President Lincoln was carried to a house across the 
street from the theater, Mrs. Lincoln going with her husband.  Booth went to 
the home of Dr. Mudd, who cut the boot from his injured foot, dressed it and 
put his leg in splints.  Booth continued his flight and took refuge in 
Garrett’s barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, where he was discovered and, 
after a siege, was shot by Sergeant Boston Corbett.
	“’My husband’s sister had married a brother of John A. Bingham, the 
special judge advocate who conducted the trial of the conspirators concerned 
in the assassination of President Lincoln.  Because of this relationship we 
were given tickets admitting us to the trial.  My husband I were assigned 
seats about ten feet from the prisoners, so we had a good opportunity to see 
and hear everything that went on at the trial.  It was brought out in the 
trial by Judge Advocate Bingham that the conspirators had plotted to 
assassinate President Lincoln, Vice President Johnson, Secretary of State 
William H. Seward, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, and General U. S. Grant, 
in command of the army.  He also brought out the fact that a man named Kennedy 
was to set fire to a large number of buildings in New York city in the hope of 
destroying it.  Much of the plotting was done by the conspirators in secret 
meetings in Canada.  It was also planned to destroy as much shipping and as 
many wharves as possible.  He also brought out the fact that the plot was 
first hatched in the fall of 1864.  It was brought out that the choice of the 
man to kill the president lay between John Wilkes Booth, Harper, Caldwell, 
Randall, Harrison and Surratt.  It was also shown that Dr. Merritt, who was 
familiar with the plans, did not countenance the killing of President Lincoln 
and on April 10, four days before the assassination, he filed information of 
the proposed plot to kill the president with Judge Davidson, a justice of the 
peace in Canada, who did not attach much importance to the statement.
	“’It would be too long a story to tell you all the evidence brought 
out in the trial, so I will make it short by saying that George A. Atzerodt, 
David E. Herrold and Lewis Payne were executed and their bodies buried in the 
arsenal at Washington, D. C.  Mrs. Mary E. Surratt was also executed.  She was 
buried about a mile outside of Washington and I have often seen her 
gravestone, which bears an inscription containing her name and the date of her 
death.  Dr. Mudd was sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary at Dry 
Tortugas.  Lieutenant Colonel Rath was in charge of the execution of the 
conspirators.  It was supposed that the body of Booth was sunk in the Potomac, 
but Lieutenant Colonel Rath had the body secretly buried in the arsenal at 
Washington, D. C.’
	“One of the interesting exhibits at the trial of the conspirators was 
a letter dropped by Booth, which was found and delivered to Major General Dix 
and by him turned over to the war department on November 17, 1864.  The letter 
was written by Charles Selby and was as follows:  ‘The time has at last come 
that we have all so wished for, and upon you everything depends.  As it was 
decided before you left that we were to case lots, we accordingly did so and 
you are to be the Charlotte Corday of the nineteenth century.  When you 
remember the fearful, solemn vow that was taken by us, you will feel there is 
no drawback.  Abe must die, and now.  You can choose your weapons – the cup, 
the knife, the bullet.  The cup failed us once and might again.  Johnson, who 
will give this, has been like an enraged demon since the meeting because it 
has not fallen upon him to rid the world of the monster. . . .You know where 
to find your friends. . . . Strike for your home; strike for your country; 
bide your time, but strike sure.  Get introduced; congratulate him; listed to 
his stories (not many more will the brute tell to earthly friends); do 
anything but fail, and meet us at the appointed place within the fortnight.  
You will probably hear from me in Washington.  Sanders is doing us no good in 
Canada.’
	“President Lincoln was shot at ten minutes past ten o’clock on the 
night of April 14.  At the same time Lewis Payne entered the sick room of the 
Secretary of State Seward, whose son, Major Seward, he struck with his knife 
and in the struggle stabbed him repeatedly.  He wounded Hansell and Robinson, 
the attendants, and stabbed Secretary of State Seward in the throat and face, 
but was again seized by Robinson.  Then, dropping his bloody knife to the 
floor, he broke away and fled.  George A. Atzerold was interrupted in his 
attempt to kill Vice President Johnson at the Kirkwood House.  General Grant 
had taken the evening train from Washington and the man assigned to kill him 
did not learn of Grant’s change of plans in time to take the train with him 
and kill him.
	“’Shortly after President Lincoln was killed,’ continued Mrs. 
Wingard, ‘my husband was sent to Charleston to adjust accounts there and in 
the fall of 1865 he was assigned to the department of the Pacific, with 
headquarters in San Francisco.  We went to California by way of the isthmus of 
Panama.  Our daughter Mary was twelve years old at that time.  The only person 
I knew in San Francisco when I arrived there was a Catholic priest who had 
been transferred from Pennsylvania to California.  I hunted him up at once and 
he advised me to send Mary to the convent at San Jose.  For six years she was 
a student there and when she graduated at the age of eighteen my husband 
chartered several cars, in which he took most of his fellow army officers at 
the presidio to San Jose to attend the graduating exercises.  My husband was 
very proud of our six children and of their progress in school
	“’When General O. O. Howard took charge of the department of the 
Columbia in he ‘70s my husband was transferred from San Francisco to 
Portland.  In 1876 he was transferred to Washington, D. C., and a year or so 
later he was sent to Fort Douglas, near Salt Lake City, Utah.  Brigham Young 
went out of his way to be accommodating to us.  One day he called for my 
husband with his team and asked him to take a drive.  While on this drive he 
asked my husband if he had sufficient influence to secure the appointment of 
two of his sons to West Point, as he wanted them to become army officers.  
Colonel Sharp and his family had been close friends of ours while we were 
stationed at Washington, D. C.  Colonel Sharp had married one of the Dent 
girls and Ulysses S. Grant had also married a Dent girl.  So my husband wrote 
to Colonel Sharp, who saw his brother-in-law, President U. S. Grant, and one 
of Brigham Young’s sons was given an appointment at the United States Military 
Academy at West Point, while another was given an appointment to the Annapolis 
Naval Academy.  Nellie Grant, one of the children of General Grant, and also a 
daughter of General Sherman were schoolmates at Georgetown of my daughter 
Henrietta.
	“’My husband died at Fort Douglas, August 30, 1880, and after his 
death I went back to our former home in San Francisco.  I found my widow’s 
pension was insufficient to live on in the city, so I decided to go where I 
would have no rent, no bills for water or fuel or light, or other expenses 
involved in living in a city.  I came up to Portland with the idea of finding 
something to do to earn my living or of locating a homestead.  I went up to 
eastern Oregon, where I met Mr. Bingham, the proprietor of Bingham’s Springs, 
situated in the Blue mountains near Gibbon, on the road between Pendleton and 
La Grande.  He employed me as manager of this resort.  I am a good manager, 
and if I do say it who shouldn’t, my cooking proved popular.  I served as 
manager of Bingham’s Springs from 1881 to 1888.  The patronage of the springs 
kept up well and it was quite profitable to Mr. Bingham.  Ask Ben Selling or 
Mrs. Selling some day about what they thought of Bingham’s Springs when I was 
in charge.  They used to come up every summer.  So did Harvey Scott and his 
family, and Levi Ankeny and his family from Walla Walla, Washington, as well 
as Major Sharpstein.  Mrs. C. S. Jackson will tell you, or you could ask Major 
Lee Moorhouse.  In fact, you can ask any of the old-timers and they will tell 
you that in the early ‘80s Bingham’s Springs was one of Oregon’s popular 
mountain resorts.  When Mr. Bingham married his wife decided that they should 
have a man as manager.  Mr. Bingham didn’t want to make the change and asked 
me to stay as assistant at an advanced salary, but after having had full 
charge for seven years I didn’t feel like playing second fiddle, so I quit and 
came to Portland.
	“’From here I went to Cannon Beach and took up a homestead one and a 
half miles back from the ocean.  There were only one or two homesteaders in 
that section when I took up my place.  I lived on my homestead for five years 
and the government issued me a deed to it.  In those days, and that was more 
than thirty-five years ago, there were no roads to Cannon Beach.  We managed 
to get along with trails through the woods.  Seaside was a small village to 
which some of the well-to-do families from Portland came down each summer.  
Long Beach was the popular resort in those days, I have lived at Cannon Beach 
off and on for the past thirty-seven years.  For the past fifteen years or 
more I have made my home there constantly.  Yes, I can qualify as a pioneer of 
the Cannon Beach country.’”
	Mrs. Wingard had a strong, self-reliant nature and was also the 
possessor of tender, womanly qualities which made her greatly beloved.  She 
was devoted to her family and friends and on May 9, 1925, her long and useful 
life was brought to a close.  Her surviving children are Mrs. Henrietta Cole, 
of Portland; C. L. Wingard, a resident of Portland; and Mrs. T. F. Tobey, who 
lives in Washington, D. C.
	Mrs. Cole’s first husband, Dr. W. M. Hendrickson, was a surgeon in the 
United States Army and was stationed in various parts of this country but his 
demise occurred in Coupeville, Washington.  His widow subsequently became the 
wife of Edward Cole, a native of Ogdensburg, New York.  He was prominently 
identified with mining operations in the west and passed away in 1900.  Mrs. 
Cole became the mother of six children, two of whom died in infancy.  Her son, 
Jerome Tredway Hendrickson, was graduated from Stanford University.  His 
sister, Augusta Hendrickson, is the wife of Charles Grant MacAvoy, of New York 
city, and has three sons.  The second son, Grant Hendrickson, was graduated 
from Mount Angel College and is closely associated with building activities in 
Portland.  Charles Edward Cole, a son of the second marriage, a graduate of 
the Christian Brothers College, married Miss Jane Eaton and they have become 
the parents of one child.


Additional Comments:
History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Volume II, 
Chicago, The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1928

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/or/multnomah/bios/wingard35gbs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/orfiles/

File size: 17.4 Kb