Letitia Carson was one of the first Black women to settle in Oregon. The Letitia Carson Digital History Collection was created by the Letitia Carson Legacy Project to bring together in one online, publicly available place all the current biographical information, primary documents, photographs, and research being done about this remarkable woman and her story. The Collection also includes a “Digital Exhibits” series about different aspects of Letitia Carson’s life and legacy, and ongoing research about her story. 

Bob Zybach, a 2004 Ph.D. graduate of OSU’s College of Forestry, collected many of the documents pertaining to Letitia Carson. Dr. Zybach, along with historian Jan Meranda, is credited with uncovering Letitia Carson’s story during his master's degree program at OSU in the 1990s. The majority of documents in his collection come from the State Archives of Oregon and state and local repositories in Missouri and North Carolina. Dr. Zybach made his collection of documents and transcriptions available to the LCLP for inclusion on this site.

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Who Was Letitia Carson?

Letitia Carson, born between 1814 and 1818 in Kentucky, was a valued community midwife and caretaker who homesteaded in both Benton and Douglas counties in western Oregon until her death in 1888. With the passing of the 1862 Homestead Act, she applied for acreage in South Myrtle Creek. She worked the land for five years, and neighbors testified to improvements; in 1868, she obtained the land and became the first Black woman in Oregon to own property. 

For biographical information on Letitia and David, please visit these pages Who Was Letitia Carson? and Who Was David Carson?   or check out our exhibit, Letitia's Story. 


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How to use this site?

  • Visit our eleven current exhibits, a set of interactive pages that group items together to interpret a historical event, person, place, etc. in a contextualized manner.
  • Explore Collections: groupings of related items such as newspaper clippings, contemporary photographs, historical images, maps, and documents from Oregon, Missouri, and North Carolina. 
  • Jump to Items to see archived documents, photos, maps, etc. 
  • To learn more about the Letitia Carson Legacy Project, please visit About the LCLP and Who Are the Partners?
  • Search the whole site by record (i.e. item, collection, file) using keywords, boolean methods, or exact match searching. 
    • Please note that searching the site may take multiple attempts with different keywords, dates, or other inputs to find what you are looking for. 
    • For example, entering the date into the keyword search will retrieve all items that mention that date, but entering the date into the date search box will retrieve only items that were created on that date. 
    • Don't be afraid to try out different search terms to find your item.
  • Note on hyperlinks: Hyperlinked text is highlighted in bold or underlined to indicate where links will take you to another page, exhibit, or item. When you hover over a hyperlink, your cursor will change, and you will be able to click it to bring you to the new page, exhibit, or item. You may also find hyperlinks that are highlighted in green and underlined. 
  • Lastly, we suggest opening new items, pages, and exhibits in new tabs, allowing you to easily navigate back and keep your original page open for ease of access. 

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