17 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org The Lost Surveyor featured in this column in the May/June 2020 magazine was Jesse Applegate. The column focused on his rich history in Oregon and his settlement in the small community of Rickreall, Oregon. Since that time, I’ve become aware of much more survey history centered in that same small community of Polk County. Polk County is named for James K. Polk, the 11th president of the United States and the son of a land surveyor who was also a slave holder. Slavery figures into our current story of Oregon history, but not in the way you might expect. How does the Oregon town of Rickreall figure into our current knowledge of Oregon history? Question continues Post Office at the intersection of Ford and Church streets. Nathaniel Ford was the first Postmaster of Rickreall. According to the Independence Monitor newspaper from 1913, when Polk County voted on the Oregon Constitution, the results were “231 people voted for slavery and 484 against it; that but 53 people voted for negroes free while 584 voted against.” In 1843, these early settlers included surveyors Jesse Applegate, Samuel Burch, and Nathaniel Ford. The Burch family cemetery in Rickreall holds Burch and Ford, both U.S. Deputy Surveyors, and Henry Carr, who was a U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor. Very little information was found on Henry Carr in the research for this article, but nonetheless the tiny The Lost Surveyor
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