Mark V. Weatherford Papers, 1851-1951

Mark V. Weatherford graduated from Oregon Agricultural College in 1907 with a B.S. in Commerce and subsequently earned a law degree from the University of Michigan.  Weatherford was an attorney in Albany, Oregon, beginning in the early 1910s and lived in Albany until his death.

During the 1950s, Weatherford wrote several self-published histories of armed conflicts between the U.S. Army and Native Americans in Oregon, including Rogue River Indian War.  Mark Vern Weatherford was born in Arlington, Oregon on March 5, 1886 and died in Albany, Oregon on 11 September, 1962.

While there had been previous skirmishes between European-American settlers and Native Americans in the Rogue River Valley area, of southern Oregon, the primary conflict known as the Rogue River War of 1855-1856 is described this way by E.A. Shwartz in the Oregon Encyclopedia entry: “The final Rogue River War began early on the morning of October 8, 1855, when self-styled volunteers attacked Native people in the Rogue Valley. It ended in June 1856 with the removal of most of the Natives in southwestern Oregon to the Coast Reservation, which later became the Siletz Reservation. From 235 to 267 Indian people are thought to have been killed in the war, together with fifty soldiers, among them thirty-three volunteers and seventeen regular troops. .”