Mary Jane (Holloway) Westfall (1851 - bef. 1900)

Ancestors

Wagon Train Details

"Wagon Trains", large groups of covered wagons that travelled together for safety and protection, were a common way for pioneers to travel as they migrated west. These are the known details of the wagon train this person travelled on:

Wagon Trail:	Oregon Trail
Departure Date:	1852
Train Name:
Trail Master:
Point of Origin:	Wapello County, Iowa
Point of Muster:	Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie, Iowa
Destination:	Linn County, Oregon

For more information on wagon trains you can also check out the Trails and Wagon Trains sub-project

Biography

Mary Jane Holloway was born on her father's farm in Wapello, Iowa in 1851, the daughter of William Holloway and Eliza Evans.

William and Eliza were married in 9 Dec 1847, and in the 1850 census of Wapello, Iowa, they are living next door to her parents, Richard and Nancy Evans.

Richard Evans and his family took the Oregon Trail to the Willamette Valley, Oregon in 1852. Mary Jane, a baby of about one year, and her father, William H Holloway, were on that wagon train.

Was Mary Jane's mother Eliza on the wagon train? We do not know. We only know that Eliza Jane cannot be found on any records in Oregon, where the wagon train arrived in Sep 1852.

Did Eliza Jane die on the journey? Possibly, and if she did, like thousands of others, her grave is unknown. Perhaps Eliza Jane died in 1851, from birth complications after having Mary Jane. That also happened with distressing frequency in those times, for a mother to not survive the birth of her child. Some of the pioneer cemeteries in Iowa have been plowed under for farm land since those days, including some in Wapello county, so again, we cannot know if Eliza Jane was buried in Iowa, before the family left for Oregon.

In the first record of Mary Jane Holloway in Oregon, she is living with her aunt Mary Ann (Evans) Sherrill and her husband James, and her cousins, their children.

William Holloway married soon after arriving in Oregon, to Sarah ___, and they named their first child, a daughter, Elizabeth Ellen. Elizabeth Ellen Holloway was born in Harrisburg, Linn, Oregon on 25 Dec 1854.

When Richard Evans, Mary Jane Holloway's grandfather, made his will in 1872, he named her his granddaughter and one of four grandchildren to receive an inheritance, the other three being children of his deceased son David Edward, who had remained in Iowa. None of William H Holloway's other children were named in Richard Evan's will, although by then William had at least ten children.

Mary Jane Holloway married B. R. Westfall about 29 Dec 1869, in Linn county, Oregon.

They had four children:

Dora Westfall, born 1871

Elizabeth Westfall, born 1873

Frankie Westfall, born 1877

Herman Westfall, born 1880

She passed away between 1880 and 1900, when her husband was recorded in the census as being a widower.

Sources

• Oregon State Archives • 800 Summer Street NE • Salem, OR 97310. Phone: 503-373-0701 • Fax: 503-373-0953 •

• Year: 1850; Census Place: District 13, Wapello, Iowa; Roll: 189; Page: 447b. Source information: Title: 1850 United States Federal Census. Author: Ancestry.com, Publisher: Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.Original data - Seventh Census of the United States, 1850; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M432, 1009 rolls);

• "United States Census, 1860", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MDQK-42T : 18 February 2021), Mary Holloway in entry for James Sherrill, 1860.

• "Oregon Marriages, 1853-1935", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F8W8-1YT : 13 February 2020), B. R. Westfall, 1869. Citing Marriage of B.R. Westfall and Mary Jane Holloway, 29 Dec 1869, in Linn, Oregon.