Mark Goddard, author and genealogist, will be the featured speaker at the Thursday, March 13, meeting of the Malheur Country Historical Society.
The lunch meeting is at the Vale Senior Citizens Center, 100 Longfellow St. in Vale, starting at 11:30 a.m. A lunch of stew, cornbread or biscuits, fruit and cookies is available for $15.
Goddard, whose grandparents traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852, has researched his own family and many other pioneering families extensively. He is the author of a new book, “Pioneering in Ironside and the Malheur Basin – The Annotated Diaries of Cyrus T. Locey.”
According to the historical society, the program will focus in part on Locey, a farmer and rancher considered “the father of Malheur County.” The society newsletter, drawing from the book “The History of Malheur Country, Oregon,” tells how, as a child, Locey traveled the Oregon Trail twice with his family, settling in Oregon City. In the late 1800s he moved east and settled in the Ironside area with his wife and children.
Members of the family were respected and involved in the growing community. With the establishment of Malheur County, Locey became a county commissioner and rode to and from Vale on horseback for meetings, according to the newsletter. Son Julian later became the fifth sheriff of Malheur County.
Locey died at age 86 in 1922 at Ironside.
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