When the Magruder House, located at 455 E. California Street in Jacksonville, was constructed in 1871, Catharine Fleming Magruder was 60 and her husband Edmund, a retired farmer, was 70. He had previously owned and farmed about 1,000 acres along the Rogue River between what is now Gold Hill and Rogue River. Catharine was the widowed mother of Clara Birdseye, a formidable pioneer woman.
One source reports Edmund building the house. A brief note in the April 1st edition of The Oregon Sentinel noted that the house was almost complete even though Catherine had purchased the land from the town’s founder, James Cluggage, only the previous month.
Fleming and Magruder had been married in 1856, second marriages for both, and both families were associated with prominent figures in Oregon history, boasting a U.S. Senator, U.S District Attorney, judges, an official lighthouse keeper, a postmaster, merchants, land barons, and more. Edmund died in 1875; Catharine in 1882. The house has passed through numerous hands in the interim but continues to be a private residence.