Buoy, Laban

Born: 1802-10-14 Bourbon County, Kentucky

Died: 1876-07-31 Oregon

Flourished: Vermilion County, Illinois

Laban Buoy was a farmer, landowner, soldier, and pioneer settler in Oregon. He remained on the family farm until 1820, when he married Jane Blackburn. Shortly thereafter, Buoy and his wife moved to Indiana, where he engaged in farming and carpentry. Buoy left Indiana in 1823 for Illinois, settling in Vermilion County. During the Black Hawk War, Buoy served as a private in Captain John B. Thomas' company. Between 1831 and 1851, he acquired 200 acres of public land west and southwest of Danville. Buoy remained in Vermilion County until April 1853, when he and his family moved to Oregon, where he acquired squatter's rights to 640 acres in Lane County, one half mile south of Creswell. When conflict erupted between American settlers and Native American groups in the Rogue River Valley in 1855, Buoy raised a company, of which he became its captain. Buoy's company became Company B of the Oregon Mounted Volunteers. Buoy led his company in several engagements between February and July 1856, when the company mustered out of service. Buoy played a role in organizing the Republican Party in Lane County, and he served as a Lane County commissioner from 1862 to 1864. Buoy was a life-long Presbyterian.

Isaac H. Elliott, Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 128; Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Vermilion County, 231:3, 815:155, 817:1, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Illiustrated History of Lane County Oregon (Portland, OR: A. G. Walling, 1884), 378, 379; Francis Fuller Victor, The Early Indian Wars of Oregon (Salem, OR: Frank C. Baker, 1891), 361, 588; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette Valley Oregon (Chicago: Chapman, 1903), 2:1513; Gravestone, Creswell Pioneer Cemetery, Creswell, OR.