Longanecker Road off Hwy 238 crosses Poormans Creek to the Hinkle place. Edwin and Polly “Mary” Hinkle and Edwin’s 4 brothers arrived in Jackson County from Missouri in 1853, the same year as the McKees. Despite being illiterate, Edwin was resourceful. He cleared a homestead, raised hay and grain, and ran a licensed saloon and store serving the miners working claims up Forest Creek. Edwin accepted gold dust as payment. He hid that gold … where??
Edwin died in May 1956. He is probably one of the first people buried at Logtown Cemetery. The McKees lived at the opposite end of Longanecker Road. When bodies needed a final resting place, the McKees offered the southern end of their land. Edwin died before formal sexton’s records began, but his likely presence is acknowledged by this brass marker:
After Edwin’s death, Mary stayed in Logtown with their two daughters, operating a store, hotel and boarding house. Edwin’s brothers William and George tended the crops.
The Hinkle home caught fire on the night of June 18, 1861. The three women died. Maryum McKee’s brother Samuel Bowen gave this testimony to the coroner’s jury the next day (Samuel and John McKee both served as jurors):
About midnight … I heard the alarm of fire and ascertained that the residence of Widow Hinkle was in flames. There were men there trying to put the fire out and get the family. When I got there, the building was falling in. Mrs. Hinkle and her two daughters perished in the flames.
The coroner’s jury ruled that the deaths were due to an accidental fire, but rumors immedately circulated that the women had been murdered by robbers looking for the cache of gold; the fire was set to hide the crimes. The Oregon Sentinel newspaper reported on August 31, 1861, that a horse rustler captured in the Rogue River Valley was threatened with lynching. He confessed to murdering the Hinkles and setting the fire along with accomplices Springer and Bullock.
Reverand James Dunlap officiated at the Hinkles’ funeral. James was the husband of Roxy Ann’s sister Rhoda, John McKee’s aunt. John had returned to Missouri and in 1860 brought his parents, siblings and their extended families to Jackson County. Many of them erected homes on John and Maryum’s Logtown farm, creating a family compound.
Reverand Dunlap died in 1862. His is the first officially-documented burial at Logtown Cemetery.
