Dempsey, Alice Irene LAST: Dempsey FIRST: Alice MID: Irene GENDER: F MAIDEN NAME: Embree TITLE:  BORN: 9 July 1844 DIED: 20 Apr 1928 BURIED:  (Embree Cemetery) OCCUPATION:   BIRTH PLACE:  On the Plains (Nebraska) DEATH PLACE: Dallas, Polk Co., Oregon NOTES:  Name of father Carey Duncan Embree Maiden name of mother Lucinda Fowler OBITUARY:  Mrs Alice Irene Dempsey, one of the last surviving Oregon pioneers of the ‘40’s, died at her home in Dallas Friday night, April 20, following an illness of several days.  Funeral services were held Sunday at the Methodist church with Rev. Louis Kirby officiating. Burial was in the old family cemetery on the Holt Crowley place near Rickreall. Hundreds of friends were present to pay a last tribute to her memory.  Mrs. Dempsey was the fifth child and the last survivor of the family of Carey Duncan Embree and Lucinda (Fowler) Embree, natives of Kentucky, later residents of Missouri and Oregon pioneers of 1844. She was born on the banks of the Little Blue river in what is now the state of Nebraska July 9, 1844, while her parents were enroute on the long overland journey to Oregon. October 6, 1864, at her father’s home near the present village of Rickreall, swhe was married to James A. Dempsey, a native of Illinois, who died on the 7th of December 1893. To this union ten children were born: Mary, wife of Willis Simonton of Dallas; Ella, wife of A. H. Boyd, Auburn, Washington; Irene, wife of J. N. Hart of Portland; Cora, married W. B. Cobb of Portland, and is now a widow; Ida, who died at the age of 18 months; Frances, who resided with her mother in Dallas; Emma, wife of John R. Allgood of Dallas; Eugenia, wife of Ralph Y. Morrison of Dallas; Claude of Portland, and Lulu, wife of John R. Sibley of Dallas. Besides her nine living children Mrs. Dempsey left 16 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.  At the age of 13 she united with the Methodist Episcopal church South, and remained a member of the Methodist church and a devout Christian throughout her life. She was one of the first pupils at LaCreole Academy, founded at Dallas in 1855, and was later a student at Lafayette Seminary. At her death she was a member of the First Methodist Episcopal church of Dallas.  This, briefly, is the history of the life of Alice Irene Dempsey, who first saw the light of day in a covered wagon at an immigrant camp in a then unnamed territory, and who spent the first six months of her life in that same ox-drawn wagon on the Old Oregon Trail. Due to her mother’s loving care, she survived the hardships of the long journey and with her parents settled in Polk county, where she spent to remaining days of her life. The hardships which the Embree family endured through the year of 1844 take much of the romance out of the present-day conception of “crossing the plains.” Leaving Booneville, Missouri, in April the wagon train did not reach Oregon City until the day before Christmas. When the mission at The Dalles was reached Mr. Embree had just one dollar left. That he spent for potatoes, sugar and coffee for his wife and little children. A flat boat carried the impoverished family and their scant belongings to the Cascades, and there the father, ragged and almost barefooted, drove the cattle over the Indian trail higher up the mountain and down the Columbia.  Mrs. Embree carried her baby and the four little children trudged along at her skirts for six miles through the blinding snow. At the Hudson Bay Companys post at Vancouver Dr. John McLoughlin, the compassionate friend of the pioneers, gave the family flour and salmon, depending upon their honor for future payment – a debt, needless to say, which was repaid most gratefully.  The finest ideals of the Christian character were implanted in the very soul and fibre of Alice Irene Dempsey by her loving and devoted parents. These were exemplified in every act of her life, and her old age was rewarded with that peace and serene contentment which comes to those who have kept the faith and who have been blessed with honorable, devoted and loving children. Itemizer Observer (Thursday) 26 Apr 1928, 1:3-4 1928, 1:3-4 INSCRIPTION:  Dempsey Alice Irene  1844 - 1928 SOURCES:  Branigar Survey Saucy Survey & Marker Photographs OSBH DC (Polk County 1928) #34 IO 26 Apr 1928, 1:3-4 CONTACTS:  ROW:    IMAGES: