Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/152



Travelers along Ellendale Lane are familiar with the house among spreading old trees at the corner where the road turns away from Salem into Dallas. Few know that belated passersby have been cheered by lights in those tall windows since 1858.

In that summer John Eakin Lyle saw his vision of an Oregon home take dignified and hospitable shape. He planned spacious grounds about the house. In front he placed silver poplars, on the south English walnut trees. From the native woods he brought firs and maples with which he planted a grove on the north.

Three years later, slender, erect, smiling, he walked down the graveled path never to return. It was a long time ago and few remember him but the home, a deed of gift, some yellowed old records still exist and leave no doubt as to John Lyle's way of dealing with the social, spiritual and economic problems of his day.

The Lyles came from Ireland to America. Three brothers, Matthew, John and Daniel, with a nephew Samuel Lyle, came from near Larne on the Irish coast in the County of Antrim, about 1740 and settled in the Colony of Virginia on Timber Ridge in what is now Rockbridge County. At the time of their residence near Larne it was said to be a settlement—"all Presbyterian and Scotch, not one natural Irish in the Parish." The time of the migration of the Lyles from Scotland to Ireland is placed at about 1606. William Robertson, author of "Historical Tales and Legends of Ayrshire," says: "The Lyles are a very old family. Old enough to have a wraith. That is, a duplicate of the head of the house who came to warn some relative that the master, or Lord, was about to die. The ballad 'Lord Lyle' is founded on Ayrshire traditions."