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September 2013
THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW
7
Sandy. It was that year that the family
immigrated to Cape Girardeau, Mo., and
established a our mill there.
Once the railroad bypassed that city, the
Meinig’s, having been passed up by the new
high-speed commercial hubs, abandoned
their mill and in 1876 they came to the
Sandy area.
Given the newly-completed railroad, we
might think the Meinig family would simply
hop a train west, but maybe deep-seated
animosity after the rails passed up their our
mill led Fredrich to take his family to Oregon
via the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast.
From there they boarded a ship and sailed
around Cape Horn at the southern tip of
South America, and then up through the
South and North Paci c to Astoria. From
there they rode a wagon to their destination
in Portland.
That’s a long way to go. It is entirely
possible that, somehow, the trip by sea was
much cheaper, if not very much longer, but
when we consider that a rail line straddled
the Panama isthmus at the time, we have
one more example of the Meinig’s avoiding
travel by train.
Meinig’s Mercantile was a two-level operation carrying the largest variety of general merchandise items at the time. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO: SANDY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
See “Meinig” / Page 12
