from 1903 to 1905, and then owned the Pendleton Tribune from 1905 until 1908. In 1908, Geer moved to Portland, Oregon, where he published Fifty Years in Oregon in 1911. Theodore Thurston Geer then worked in real estate before dying on February 21, 1924, in Portland. Family history and legacy In 1870, Geer married Nancy Batte Duncan, and they had three children together. Geer was married a second time in 1900, to Miss Isabelle Trullinger. There are several places in Marion County named for the Geer family, who settled in the Waldo Hills and on Howell Prairie. The "Geer Branch" off the Southern Pacific railroad's main Willamette Valley line once ran from the Salem station to Geer station on the prairie. The line was later used by the Willamette Valley Railway. The Waldo Hills home of Ralph Carey Geer, an uncle of T. T. Geer and a member of the Oregon Territorial Legislature, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the R. C. Geer Farmhouse. It is located on R. C. Geer's original Donation Land Claim. For 155 years, Geer ancestors have lived on the same farm pioneered by R. C. Geer, who in 1847 was among the first people to travel to the Willamette Valley via the Barlow Road portion of the Oregon Trail. The farm, known today as GeerCrest (formerly Vesper Geer Rose Ranch), is now run as a teaching farm. The farm is also known as the childhood home of Silverton political cartoonist Homer Davenport, whose mother, Florinda, was a member of the Geer family. GeerCrest is the location of a large black cottonwood tree, known as the "Riding Whip Tree", which grew from a stick used as a horseback-riding whip and later pushed into the ground by 15-year-old Florinda Geer in 1854. It is listed as an Oregon Heritage Tree. Geer Community Park in Salem is also named for the Geer family, and is located near a former section of the Geer Branch that was abandoned and later decommissioned. Footnotes Works Fifty Years in Oregon. New York: Neal Publishing Co., 1912. External links Historic images related to the Geer family from Salem Public Library 1911 biography Republican Party governors of Oregon Willamette University alumni 1851 births 1924 deaths Speakers of the Oregon House of Representatives Republican Party members of the Oregon House of Representatives American Unitarians Journalists from Oregon