AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE SECOND ANNUAL REUNION OF THE BOND FAMILY, BY ITS PRESIDENT, H.S. BOND, AT TURNER, OREGON, SUNDAY, AUGUST 21, 1938.
The remaining son was known to some of you who are here this afternoon as “Uncle Solomon,” to others as grandfather Bond. He was my father. We don’t have much to say about the selection of our parents. If such privilege had been mine, I am sure I could not have chosen better parents than those which God gave me.
My father and mother with their five children, three daughters and two sons, soon after arriving in Oregon, made their home near Scio in that part of the country known as “The forks of the Santiam.” There they united by letter with the historic Providence Baptist church which had been organized the previous year and of which the pastor was the Rev. Joab Powell. He was a very eccentric individual, uneducated, yet not ignorant. He knew much of his Bible by heart, was full of the Spirit and of zeal for the Master. It is said that with his own hand he baptized 3000 persons. This was the man who when asked to open a session of the Oregon legislature responded by praying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
My father did not reside long in the “Forks of the Santiam,” but moved to a donation land claim the right to which he had purchased, adjoining the little town of Halsey on the north. He lived there until his death on February 18, 1900 at the age of 80 years.
I think I never saw my father angry. I know I never heard him utter an obscene or profane word. He was rather a strict disciplinarian. He did not always spare the rod, but he never applied it in anger. More than once after cutting lumber switch, he pulled up my trousers leg; then, after saying, “Harvey, I hate to do this,” he put that switch into action, and believe me before he had finished, I hated it too.
Every one of his children believed in him and in his religion. They trusted him, they admired him, they loved him.
I remember one day when I was a little fellow, father and I were out in the old orchard gathering apples. A deputy sheriff came and served my father with a subpoena as a juryman. As he handed father the paper he said, “Mr. Bond, when my boss gave me this paper to serve on you, he said, if all men were like Solomon Bond there would be no need for jurymen or for courts of law.[“] And that was true. My father never sued any man nor was he ever sued. He lived at peace with all men. His only connection with a court of law was as a juryman or possibly as a witness.
A few years ago, after several years absence from my old home town, I returned and was talking to a man who was a boy when my father died. He said to me, “Harvey, I never knew a man whom I admired more than your father. I regarded him as a model Christian. His life has ever been an inspiration to me.”
My father was the father of eleven children, the first born, a daughter, died in infancy. All the others lived to maturity, some to a ripe age. I alone am left to tell you of him.
His last words were, “I love Jesus.” And truly he did love him. He expressed his love not only with his lips but also by his life.