Archives West Finding Aid

Cyrus T. Locey, often called "the Father of Malheur County," was a rancher and farmer in eastern Oregon. He was born in Mineral Point, Wisconsin on 18 September 1835. In 1846 his widowed father took young Cyrus and his three siblings west over the Oregon Trail. Three years later the family moved to the California gold mines where Cyrus's father, a physician, established a clinic for miners. In 1850 the family returned east but did not remain for long. In 1852, Cyrus, age seventeen, his father and two siblings, made their second trip across the Oregon Trail and settled permanently in Oregon City.

Cyrus attended Pacific University in Forest Grove but left after two years in order to finance his sister Addie's education at Willamette University. During the 1850s and 1860s he worked for the Oregon Transportation Company, becoming its superintendent. Accepting an offer from Maria's father to help him farm and raise cattle, he moved near Willow Creek, south of Baker City. Here Cyrus held various jobs including growing produce for the Chinese grocers, cutting and hauling timber, freighting, and producing cheese and dairy products. In 1877, he bought his own ranch. His numerous civic activities included starting the first Sunday School in Malheur County, taking the 1880 and 1890 Baker/Malheur county census, Justice of the Peace, Notary Public, school teacher, secretary of the Grange, election clerk, Malheur County commissioner, and weather recorder for the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Maria (pronounced ma-RYE-uh) Morfitt Locey, born 14 September 1840 in Yorkshire, England, emigrated to the United States in 1843 to Galena, Illinois where she and her mother joined her father, an iron molder, who had emigrated the previous year. In 1847, the Morfitt family, bound for California, changed direction and arrived in Oregon City. Between 1848 and 1854, James Morfitt and his family made two trips to the California gold fields, but each time, they returned to Oregon City.

Besides the traditional duties of a rancher's wife, Maria taught school and Sunday School, was the local midwife and unofficial nurse practitioner, provided free food and lodging to travelers, wrote short stories and poems of which some were published in The Oregonian, made pencil drawings and oil paintings, and learned taxidermy. Cyrus and Maria were married 1 January 1860 in Oregon City. In addition to having nine children, three of whom died as infants, they raised an orphaned girl. They were devout Christians and well respected members of their community.