Archives West Finding Aid

John Spencer was born at Clove Creek, Huntingdon County (later Blair County) on April 17, 1802. In his journal, Spencer wrote of a conversion experience that he had in February 1823, in which he decided to become a Methodist minister. He began to preach in 1826. On February 8, 1832, Spencer married. He and his wife, Julia Ann, lived in western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and eastern Ohio. John Spencer became Presiding Elder of the Ohio District of the Pittsburgh Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1840s. John and Julia began their family of nine children while living in the Upper Midwest. By the early 1850s Spencer yearned to cross the continent to Oregon Territory and work in his church's missionary district there. Elders, though, denied his request because of his obligations to his wife and children. Spencer eventually resigned his post in Beallsville, Ohio. He and his family and others travelled cross country to Oregon, arriving in Portland on Novmber 10, 1852. John Spencer took up his claim to land in Yamhill County, thirty miles southwest of Portland, in January 1853. There, near Lafayette, he and his boys constructed a log cabin. They sowed and harvested red and white wheat, and oats. They also planted an orchard of apple and peach trees. Spencer built a new home on his claim in 1865. He served a two- year term as superintendent of schools for Yamhill County, beginning in July 1866.

In 1872, after their children had reached adulthood, the Spencers sold their claim to their son-in-law Stephen A. Young. They moved to a new home that they built in nearby McMinnville. There, John Spencer served as postmaster from 1874 to 1880. While John Spencer was not a paid minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church's missionary district of California and Oregon, he did serve the church by occasionally conducting worship services, and performing weddings and baptisms. He was also a regular contributor to the periodical entitled "The Pacific Christian Advocate." In May 1871, John and Julia Spencer travelled by train to Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania to visit friends they had not seen in nearly twenty years. They financed the trip from donations collected during lectures that John gave about life in Oregon. He and his wife returned to the Pacific Northwest in October. It appears that John and Julia Spencer lived into the 1880s. Their dates of death are unknown. Below is a list a vital statistics of the Spencer family as assembled from the daily journals.