To the Editor:       
     Being a granddaughter of Col. John E. Ross and a great granddaughter of Thomas Hopwood, I deem it my privilege to sent this notice, taken from the Medford Mail of several years back:
     "There has been some dispute as to the first white child born in Jacksonville, Ore. Some old timer signing himself or herself 'Pioneer' in [the] Medford Mail sets the matter straight.  The statement, made at the pioneer reunion as Basil Dairy being the first white boy born in Jackson County is all a mistake.  He was not born in Jackson County, but his parents came to Jacksonville in 1852 when he was a baby.
     "Neither can Walter Gore claim the honor. Bruce Evans was the first white boy born in Jackson county. He was born in Jacksonville, August, 1852.  All real pioneers know this to be a fact, and Mary Ross Stanley was the first white girl born in Jacksonville."
    Respectfully, WINIFRED S. CANTRALL, Jacksonville, Ore., Oct. 15.
Medford Mail Tribune, October 17, 1926   Click here for more claimants to the title.


    "I was born September 14, 1853, in Jacksonville, while my folks were forted up there on account of the Indians being on the warpath. The wife of Colonel John E. Ross gave me the first clothes I ever wore. Her daughter, Molly, was the first white girl born in Jackson County; at least, I have always been told so. Some time ago I received a letter from Mrs. Velma Moulton of Montreal, Canada. She is a daughter of Senator Nesmith. She told me that Cully Miller, daughter of General John F. Miller, was in Jacksonville in 1851. In her letter she said that little Cully Miller was the first white baby the Indians had ever seen and they called her Kula-Kula, meaning a bird. She lives in Portland now; her married name is Cook. I have always supposed that I was the third white boy born in Jackson County. This was the conclusion arrived at by the old pioneers when the Pioneer Society of Southern Oregon was formed many years ago. Now by some hook or crook the society has reversed itself and they say Basil Dairy was the first. This would put me back a notch, to fourth place. I want to tell you right now that I went to school with Basil and was an intimate friend of his as long as he lived, and he never claimed to be born in Jackson County. I have often heard my mother say that they fell in with the Dairy family while going to the Rogue River Valley and Mrs. Dairy was carrying Basil in her arms. That goes to prove that he wasn't born in Jacksonville. Jim McCully was the second child born in Jacksonville."
John Bell Griffin, quoted by Fred Lockley, "Impressions and Observations of the Journal Man," Oregon Journal, Portland, December 12, 1930, page 12