#19 Nurture. A Rose came west!
Nurturing a rose for 216 years. A legend or a family story!
When visiting the city in Waitsburg where ancestors are buried, my mother always told the story of the rose bush. That it was carried west on the Oregon Trail by my 3rd great grandmother and her family in 1854. The story began with her father William Heath who “slipped” the rose in the Carolina's and brought the rose to Kentucky in the between 1803-1807. Kentucky is where Mary (Polly) Heath married John Jasper in 1828. They moved to Missouri in 1841 where John died in 1845. In 1845 Mary and her family went west to Oregon carrying the rose. Her daughter, Lois married Albert Gallatin Lloyd in 1858 moving to Waitsburg, Washington in 1859. And rose came too! After losing her twins in 1877, the rose was planted besides their graves at the City Cemetery.
I used the year I believe William Heath moved to Kentucky (1803) making the rose 219 years old. (Give or take a few years!)
My mother “slipped” the rose and brought it to Dillon, Montana after her marriage. It flourished there and the story repeated again as we weeded the flower beds. A few years after I married, I received a “slip”. The rose now flourishes in Huntley, Montana. It has survived numerous human attacks in Huntley, notably burned when an irrigation ditch was burned. It is known as the “family rose” and “Do Not Touch”.
The first story on the left was written by Norman Olsen and was in the Walla Walla Union Bulletin, 21 August 1968, page 22
The story on the right was written by Eric N. Aldrich, grandson of A. G. and Lois Lloyd.
It was published The Times, Waitsburg, WA, 30 September 1965
Morgan & Jace Kuntz standing beside the rose in Waitsburg.
They are great great great great grandchildren of Lois Jasper Lloyd
The blooms on the rose are beautiful.
The rose in Huntley, Montana
In the story written by Norman Olsen about the rosebush he wrote:
"The rosebush shows a continuity of things to the people who care to look at it. It has outlived the people who planted it more than a century ago. It is a line with the past.
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