Elbert Downs Foudray, while a young man left Charleston, West Virginia, where he had been merchandising, and went to San Francisco, California, to continue his business during the gold excitement there. Fortune smiled and ere long he bid farewell to the Golden shores of the newly discovered Eldorado, and set sail for other lands, intending to travel over the world. But on the voyage to Southern Africa the vessel on which he took passage was wrecked, off the barren coast of South America, in doubling Cape Horn. The few survivors of the ill-fated steamer were picked up by a vessel bound for New York. Having lost everything excepting his life, Elbert D. Foudray returned to the Pacific coast, and when last heard from was sheriff of a county in Oregon.
4 Elbert Downs Foudray I appeared on the census of 1880 in Jacksonville, Jackson County, Oregon.
5 The following account is an excerpt from "Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon," published by Chapman Publishing Company, Chicago, in 1904 and was forwarded to Elbertie Foudray by Maude Foudray in January, 1951. It reads:
Elbert D. FoudrayWhen he had reached the advanced age of nearly 83 years, Elbert D. Foudray passed from the scenes of earth at his home in Phoenix [Jackson County, Oregon] on November 5, 1903. He was one of the early pioneers whose brave shouldering of responsibility on the frontier will always inspire gratitude and admiration, and many incidents in his life might serve as the foundation of an interesting and historically correct story. As a young and energetic man, he left his home in Hillsboro, Kentucky, where he was born on January 6, 1821, and went to Charleston, Virginia [now West Virginia] where he clerked in a store for a couple of years. For six years he kept a hotel in the southern city and afterwards engaged in a merchandise business until 1848. He reached New Orleans when the gold excitement, was disturbing the peace of the majority of the inhabitants too, and in March, 1849 he set sail on the schooner, St. Mary, a merchant vessel. Various adventures befell the staunch craft in the Gulf of Mexico, and it barely escaped total wreckage. . But the damage was not considered serious enough to return to port and soon the gold seekers were adrift in the great ocean, dependent on the will of the wind, tide and calm. Cape Horn presented many obstacles to their progress, and for 74 days they were driven back and forth by the unruly elements, always in danger and always uncertain of their fate. It was a happy day when ,the vessel turned its bow toward the north, but many days were passed before it pulled into the port of San Francisco in January, 1850.
Mr. Foudray's first business experience in the west was as a clerk in a grocery store in San Francisco. Afterwards he engaged in mining on the Feather River in Trinity County, and in the summer of 1851 he and Benjamin T. Davis purchased 30 mules and started a pack train to the mines of Yreka. In the fall of 1851 he became .a clerk in a hotel at Marysville [California] and his partner in the pack train business went on to the Willamette Valley [in Oregon] for a load of flour. This expedition proved disastrous in the extreme, for 25 of the mules were drowned in the Umpqua River and the freighting business was practically destroyed. In the fall of 1852, Mr. Foudray went to Jacksonville [Jackson County, Oregon], but subsequently mined at Yreka [California] for a few months. After returning to Jacksonville, he had charge of the soldiers' pack train until the capture of the famous Indian John and his tribe. Afterward he was employed as a bookkeeper until 1854 when he filled a clerkship in Jacksonville until 1860. During the latter year Mr. Foudray, Mr. Anderson and Jonas T. Glynn leased the flourmill at Phoenix [Jackson County, Oregon], and 3 years later Mr. Foudray became sole owner of the mill, operating it independently until disposing of it in 1869.
Upon again locating in Jacksonville, he was made deputy sheriff, serving 2 years, and during that time he encountered many of the rough characters which terrorized the county at that time. Almost the last official act of his life was a journey to Salt Lake City for the purpose of arresting Sam May, former Secretary of State [of Oregon].
His term of deputy sheriff having expired, Mr. Foudray engaged in the mercantile business in Jacksonville until the outbreak of the Modoc War in 1873 when the Governor appointed him aide to General Ross. When the war ended, he returned to the store, but left the same in June 1874, after his election as county clerk. He served in this capacity two terms, or four years, afterwards serving as Justice of the Peace for six years.
In partnership with Thomas Mckenzie he built and operated the flouring mills at Jacksonville, and in 1890 came to Phoenix where he was living retired at the time of his death. Many improvement in county affairs were traceable to the support and assistance of Mr. Foudray, and it was principally through his influence in the legislature in 1866 that the bill was introduced advocating the building of the railroad through Phoenix.
Mrs. Foudray, who was formerly Sarah. A Colver, was born in Marion County, Ohio. Her father, Hiram Colver, was born in Ohio in 1821 and was a legal practitioner, having graduated from the law department of Plymouth College in Indiana. He married Marie Ward, a native daughter of Ohio, and in the spring of 1850 started across the plains with ox teams, and at the end of six months located on a claim of 160 acres near Eugene, Oregon. In the spring of 1852 he removed to a section of land in Jackson County, his brother Samuel [Colver] locating a claim where Phoenix has since been built. The Indians were very troublesome soon after his arrival, and the [Colver] brothers had their share of fighting and for six months were obliged to live at the fort at Talent [Jackson County, Oregon] for safety. Upon returning to their farms, they protected themselves with stockades, and when the red men had been brought under subjection, the work of clearing the land and putting in crops was begun in earnest.
Mr. Colver did not long survive the rigors of pioneership, for his death occurred in 1858; his wife, however, survived him until 1891 at the age of 70 years. Mrs. [Susan Colver] Foudray is the second in the family of 7 children. The others are Martha, who married Lewis Sisley, Donna M., Hiram, Mary, who married E. J. Farlow of Ashland, and two deceased sons, Solon and Quincy.