Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/100

84 the little valley so as to adjoin the railroad track when this was laid. This mill was also built by the colony.

Besides the family of Dr. Keil, Mr. Rapps recalls the following as members of the first settlement: Henry Allen, George Rauch, David Fischer, Henry Barkholger, Henry Schneider and his son Charles, Daniel Snyder, Moses Miller, Jacob Engel, Herman Bonser, George Lingg, —— Metzger.

Life during the first period of settlement here seems to have passed pleasantly, but very industriously. The sawmill and gristmill were operated and from the avails of the business the notes given for the place were paid. Mr. Rapps recalls quaintly some of the rules of work that were enforced; one of which was that every gang of four who worked together should cut down a tree before breakfast, unless there happened to be no meat on hand, in which case they should kill a deer.

Mr. Rapps has lived in the community ever since the first settlement, and now at the age of seventy-one is a hale, hearty man, of ruddy face and abundant snow-white hair. He measures five feet eleven inches in height, and weighs two hundred and one pounds, with a chest measurement of about forty-four inches. He has a comfortable little home, where he resides with his wife, Mary Schuele, to whom he was married in 1879.

Jacob Miller, who was a member of Doctor Keil's colony at Bethel, Missouri, was born in Ohio in 1837. His parents were from Pennsylvania, and on his mother's side the ancestry was from Hesse Darmstadt. He joined the Bethel colony at an early age in 1845, where he remained until manhood, but in 1863, having ob-