Alonzo Gesner

Alonzo Gesner was born in Coles County, Illinois, to Reuben A. Gesner and his wife Mary V. Bailey on March 2, 1842.[1] His father was a native New Yorker who moved to Illinois in 1834 where he married Bailey of Kentucky.[1] The family took the Oregon Trail in 1845 to the unorganized Oregon Country and settled in the Willamette Valley.[1] Gesner's parents took up a land claim in the Champoeg District (now Marion County) southwest of the now city of Salem.[1] Once Oregon became a U.S. territory in 1848, Congress passed the Donation Land Claim Act in 1850, and the Gesners were able to secure their claim to their farm.[1] The younger Gesner was educated at Willamette University in Salem before a brief teaching career.[1] He taught in Independence in 1865 where he was the first teacher in a new school and the first teacher for that school district.[2]

Gesner left teaching after a single year to pursue manual labor and spent a year chopping firewood to enable him to buy a 30-acre (120,000 m²) farm near his parent's property.[1] In 1872, he started working in the land surveying field, working for Jasper Wilkins, a deputy surveyor for the federal government.[1] The following year he went into the business himself, receiving a contract to survey land in the McKenzie River Valley in the southern portion of the Willamette Valley.[1] Gesner continued in the business until 1908, in the process surveying public lands primarily in western Oregon and some in what became the state of Washington.[1] Gesner married Rhoda E. Neal on October 14, 1875.[3] In 1882, he and Wilkins bought the Oregon Statesman newspaper, though Gesner sold-out his share eight months later.[3]

In 1872, when he started surveying land he was elected as Marion County's surveyor.[3] Gesner won election again and served from 1876 to 1878 as well.[3] On March 2, 1884, he became the Indian agent to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Central Oregon after accepting an appointment from U.S. President Chester A. Arthur.[1] The next year he left the position after 18 months as a new administration was in power in Washington, DC.[1] He was also a member of Oregon's militia for nine years, including nearly three years as a captain.[1]

Gesner was elected as the surveyor of the city of Salem in 1889 and served until 1891.[1][3] In 1894, he was elected to the Oregon State Senate as a Republican.[4] Serving a four-year term, he represented District 4 that included both Clackamas and Marion counties.[5] Gesner was in both the 1895 and 1897 sessions of the legislature, with the 1897 session fruitless as the Oregon House of Representatives failed to organize.[6]

Gesner had three children with his wife Rhoda; Leroy, Rhoda and Stella.[1] He was a member of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, the Masonic Order,[1] and the Sons of the American Revolution.[7] Both a brother and nephew also worked as surveyors.[1] Alonzo Gesner died in Salem on March 6, 1912, at the age of 70 and was buried at Salem Pioneer Cemetery.[8]

• Bill for Relief of Alonzo Gesner
• After the Treaties: Administering Pacific Northwest Indian Reservations – Oregon Historical Quarterly
• History of Marion County Surveyors