Carl Frances Coons Juris (1917-2018)

Carl Frances Coons Juris (1917-2018)

I found an interesting cousin this week.  Unfortunately, she passed away a month ago yesterday.  She lived 100 years, 7 months and 16 days.  She is a 3rd cousin once removed.  Actually, she is a double 3rd cousin once removed.  She was a great granddaughter of Eugenia Sherburne Inslee and Elias Brown Inslee, the Missionaries to China that I've spent considerable time researching.  So through her maternal grandmother, she is a descendant of Eugene Amedee Sherburne and Margaret Newton Lindsay.  We are double cousins because Frances was also the great great granddaughter of Phoebe Carl and Isaac Townsend through her maternal grandfather.  She wrote that she spent most of her life not knowing where her name Carl came from.

Frances as she appears in my tree

Frances was an historian at heart.  She wrote several books mainly about the history of her home in Prineville, Oregon.  Her father brought the family to Oregon in the 20's when the lumber industry was drying up in Louisiana.  He had been an accountant for the lumber mill at Glenmora.

She wrote an autobiography a couple years ago.  I just got a copy and found where she had also written a book about her Inslee great grandparents.  The good folks at the Bowman Museum (she helped found) are making a copy of that for me also.

Here is her obit from the local paper...

http://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/5950512-151/beloved-prineville-historian-passes-at-age-100

Obit from "The Bulletin."  Story was published Jan 27, 2018 written by Allie Colosky

original web location here:  

http://www.bendbulletin.com/newsroomstafflist/5950512-151/beloved-prineville-historian-dies-at-age-100

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Frances Juris, Prineville’s beloved historian and the last living founder of the Crook County Historical Society, died Jan. 21 at her home. She was 100.

Juris continued to tell stories about history until her death, said Steve Lent, a close friend and coworker at the Bowman Museum in Prineville.

Juris worked as Prineville’s first female city recorder in 1951. She was the first and only woman hired to the position until 2008.

Juris’ passion for history became her focus after she retired from local government in 1968, and she helped establish the historical society and was the vice president of the Crook County Genealogical Society.

An avid historian, Juris was credited with the majority of the history that is curated at the Bowman Museum. When the museum was donated in 1971 by the Bowman family, she worked behind the scenes to preserve the local history in Prineville.

“She was a great friend of the museum,” said Gordan Gillespie, museum director. “You could always ask her, ‘Do you remember?’ She always did.”

Juris had plenty of stories to tell, and even in the last few weeks of her life, she remained interested in people and their stories, he said.

“I saw her a few weeks ago, and the whole time, it was a back and forth conversation,” Gillespie said. “All the way along through the history of the museum and society and the community, she has been a great asset and a great source of info. She was still writing until the last few months on various topics of history.”

Gillespie, 64, of Prineville, remembers Juris as his first friend when he moved to Prineville in 1992 and took a part-time position at the museum. The kind and inquiring nature that Juris was known for endeared her to the community, he said.

“It was the neatest thing: She really was interested in other people,” Gillespie said. “She was interested in history, too, but every time I was with her, she seemed more interested in me. Rather than me always questioning her.”

Though she was the most well-known historian in Prineville, by birth Juris was not considered a true local.

Born June 5, 1917, in Sugarland, Texas, Juris lived with her parents, Charles and Edna, and her twin sisters in Glenmora, Louisiana, until 1925 when they made the trek across the Rocky Mountains and settled near Klamath Falls.

In 1940, Juris moved to Prineville, where she took a job as a secretary at the Ochoco Lumber Mill. She was hired as the first female city recorder for the City of Prineville in 1951 when the position was similar to a city manager, Lent said.

Lent, 68, of Powell Butte, is the museum’s historian and a columnist for the Central Oregonian. He continued to visit Juris frequently until her death, and she was still giving him more and more to write about, he said.

“She was always bombarding me with stories to write,” he said. “She could hardly see, but she’d sit and write down names for me to write about and giving me good ideas. Even to the last, she was sending me things to write about.”

Juris and Lent became good friends during their time researching pioneer families for the Crook County Historical Society and the Genealogical Society, he said. The pair would interview families in regard to their lineage and history in Prineville and copy pictures of the families as a way to preserve every trace of local history.

“She was thrilled as heck whenever we found someone new to interview or to copy pictures for,” Lent said. “She was really into trying to preserve the history of the local area.”

Juris was one of the leading role players for the city’s centennial celebration in 1968, Lent said, and was key the establishment of the major event. She also published multiple books based on the early history of Crook County, most notably “Rails to the Ochoco Country” in 1968 and “Old Crook County — The Heart of Oregon” in 1975.

“She had a significant impact, that’s for sure,” he said.

Juris completed her autobiography, “Looking Back from 99 Years,” in 2016.

“She just wanted to get things out,” Lent said. “Right to the end, she had something else to go on. When she was having a difficult time, she had people help her write some of her own story.”

She is survived by her son and daughter-in-law, Jeff L. and Margaret Juris, her granddaughter, Kristina Juris, grandsons, James Juris and Charles Juris, granddaughter, Lisa-Marie Juris, and niece Sandy Drace, nephews, Chuck Michel, Carl Sheehy, many great nieces and nephews and one great-granddaughter.

She was preceded in death by her parents; sisters, Camille Northcutt and Elaine Thompson, and great-nephew Kenneth Tate Smith.

Memorials may be made to the Crook County Historical Society.

— Reporter: 541-617-7829, acolosky@bendbulletin.com

Here is an interview done when her autobiography came out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqiP0yXWz0I

I found where Frances Juris is a DNA cousin match to me, Beth, Annie and Bud at Ancestry.  The amount of shared DNA between Frances and me is 39cM across 3 DNA segments.