BOOTH WHO? - Washington State Digital Archives

Chapter One: Booth’s roots
He looks more like a Booth than a Gardner, but both branches of the family tree are
substantial. A sixth-generation Northwesterner, Booth Gardner has illustrious ancestors who
arrived a half century before Washington statehood in 1889. It’s often noted that he is an
heir to the Weyerhaeuser fortune through his stepfather, the legendary Norton Clapp. The
fact is, Gardner is descended from a long line of prominent self-made businessmen who
were also pioneer politicians, newspapermen, sportsmen and boosters. His great-uncle was
once part-owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and dubbed Washington “The Evergreen
State.” The women in the family were strong and smart. His great-grandmother walked most
of the way from Missouri to Oregon – 2,000 miles – and his grandmother was a suffragist.
The Booths and Gardners, like the Nortons and Clapps, were of Scottish, Irish and
English stock. They married into the Allen, Bryson, Cathcart, Clark, Crawford, Roe, Knowles,
Manville and Moore families. Members of those clans arrived in the colonies early in
the 17 th Century, settling in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Several served in the
Revolutionary War. Others came first to Canada.
In the spring of 1843, when Oregon settlers gathered on a field near a grain
warehouse in the Willamette Valley at a place called Champoeg (sham-POO-ee), Booth
Gardner’s ancestors cast key votes that led to the creation of the Oregon Territory. Ten
years later, the portion north of the Columbia became Washington Territory.
Robert Moore, the future governor’s great-great-greatgrandfather,
arrived in the Pacific Northwest in 1840
from Peoria, Illinois. He was 59. A corpulent Scotsman,
Moore was “irascible, opinionated and eccentric”
but unwaveringly honest. He had been a major in the
Pennsylvania militia during the War of 1812 and a
legislator in Missouri before catching “Oregon fever.” His
granddaughter, Elizabeth Jane Moore – Booth Gardner’s
great-grandmother – was 10 years old when she came to
Oregon in 1847 with her father, James Marshall Moore.
Gardner’s great-grandfather, Ronald C. Crawford,
then 20, was also among the pioneers who made
the six-month trek from Missouri that year. A skilled
horseman, Crawford was one of the party’s scouts. By
1847, the Oregon Trail – actually a series of routes –
was well traveled. The first “Great Migration” was in
1843 when some 800 men, women and children in 110
wagons left Missouri with thousands of animals – oxen,
Ronald C. Crawford, Booth’s great-grandfather,
who arrived in Oregon in 1847 at the age
of 20, served in Washington’s Territorial
Legislature. The Rise and Progress of an
American State.
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