Ora Adkins Barnett, from her 1921 passport

    Barnett Road was named after Ora La Follette Adkins Barnett.
    Ora was born November 22, 1871, in Doth, Indiana, the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Franklin Adkins and the former Matilda J. La Follette, and moved with her parents when she was thirteen to the infant town of Medford. Two older brothers apparently remained in Indiana; three-year-old Ada also made the move.
    Dr. Adkins had retired from medicine by the time of his arrival in Medford and here became what was then referred to as a "capitalist." Today we'd call him an investor. Once here he wasted no time, within months building a house on North Central (on the current site of the Red Lion) and partnering with B. S. Webb to start a hardware business at the corner of Main and Central. Four years later, in 1888, the partners built Medford's first three-story building on the site; the building's upper floors were devoted to professional offices and Medford's first opera house. In the 1930s the Adkins Building became part of the Fluhrer Building, which burned in 1969. The site is now occupied by Vogel Plaza.
    Dr. Adkins was for over 20 years first vice president of Jackson County Bank, located across the street from his store. He also dabbled in contracting, forming a partnership that built Medford's first waterworks. In 1892 he was an incorporator of the Medford Business College. Dr. Adkins died in 1919 and was buried in Medford's Eastwood Cemetery under the auspices of the Medford chapter of the I.O.O.F., of which he was a charter member.
    The Adkins family was apparently well connected; when Ora applied for a passport in 1911 a note was scrawled over the "Identification" section of the form reading "Reference to Mr. Jesse Adkins, Dept. of Justice, and Sen. [Robert M. 'Fighting Bob'] La Follette"--in lieu of an affidavit of identity. It seems the senator was a close relative of Ora's mother.
    Ora attended Medford public schools and consistently performed near the head of her class. After leaving school she taught for a while, but seems to have spent the majority of her time managing her own and her parents' real estate investments. Ora was plagued with poor health, possibly tuberculosis. Her attendance at the University of Oregon ended in 1891 when she was brought home to convalesce from a life-threatening bout with pneumonia. She spent the winters of 1898 and 1899 in southern California "for the benefit of her health." In her mid-twenties she attended Stanford University for a term.
    It isn't known how Ora met her future husband, Austin Furney Barnett, one of the many salesmen attracted by the Rogue Valley's Orchard Boom. He was listed as a travel agent in the 1898 Portland directory, and as a real estate salesman in San Francisco in 1904 and 1905. He arrived in Medford in 1910, at the height of the boom, set up business and was prominent in the real estate trade--and left just as the boom went bust, in the spring of 1912.
    Ora was Austin Barnett's fourth wife, though she was probably unaware of that fact—on at least one document Austin claimed Ora was his first. Barnett was born March 12, 1868 in Indiana, marrying Elmira "Myra" Gilpin in 1888 in Glenwood, Iowa, where they had six children. He abandoned his Iowa family in 1898, running away with a Mrs. Beulah Welch. Three years later, on October 31, 1901, he married cafe singer Alfreda Jamrasch in San Jose, California. Alfreda was granted a divorce on May 31, 1904 on the ground of "failure to provide." On July 26, 1905 Austin married Martha J. Parsons; she filed for divorce in 1907, accusing him of "cruelly battering her in San Francisco two months after their marriage . . . , of punching her with his fists in Oakland in March, 1906, and of mauling her into insensibility on February 2 in Pacific Junction, Iowa." At the time the couple had a 10-month-old daughter. The divorce suit seems to have been withdrawn; Martha again sued for divorce the next year on the ground of "habitual intemperance." She reported that Austin "was once a highly paid circus manager and afterwards canvassed for advertisements, but strong drink ruined him."
    Barnett's marriage with Ora seems to have been equally rocky. Though they married on December 24, 1914 in Tacoma, the couple don't appear in city directories under the same roof in 1915. Moreover, the 1915 Portland directory lists her as "Mrs. Ora L. Adkins"--instead of Mrs. Barnett. Though I've been unable to find any reference to a divorce, Ora married Austin again two years later in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on August 31, 1916, and used the Barnett surname for the rest of her life. The 1916 remarriage certificate reflects some ambivalence on Ora's part; she listed her father's first name as "John" and her mother's as "Jane."
    The second ceremony seems not to have helped; the Barnetts appear together in the historical record only once, in the 1916 Portland city directory, living in her house at 1600 Division Street.
    The reconciliation of Ora and Austin Barnett lasted less than two years. In 1918 he was living with a Clara Grassen (nearly thirty years his junior) and their new daughter Virginia. Finally, in December of 1919 he signed over to Ora his power of attorney in dealing with the Oregon real estate they held jointly. Austin and Clara were married in Ohio six years later, on December 18, 1924, but Ora may never have known about the wedding. When she deeded the property for the construction of Barnett Road to Jackson County in 1928 she referred to Austin as her "husband."
    Ora L. Barnett signed that deed, signing Austin's name as well with her power of attorney, on April 5, 1928. She gave the right-of-way for Barnett Road to the county for ten dollars. The other landowner, future disgraced Jackson County Sheriff Gordon L. Schermerhorn, charged the county $450 for an equal amount of property.
    Ora moved in the late 1930s from Medford to Los Angeles, where she died December 22, 1953. Her death passed unnoticed in Rogue Valley newspapers.