Graduating at the top of his class of 23 in 1896 at the Southern Oregon State Normal School in Ashland, Abraham Lincoln Savage would become over the next 54 years one of the most prominent citizens of Josephine County.
The sixth of 13 children of parents who had migrated from Illinois to a small farm near Grants Pass, Savage walked three miles daily to school and was in the first high school graduating class in Grants Pass.
The Oregon Encyclopedia states, “He spent his entire life in southwest Oregon as a teacher, school superintendent, county treasurer, and amateur botanist in one of the most diverse botanical areas of North America. His botanical interests were useful in his teaching and in aiding the professional botanists at the University of Oregon in their floristic investigations.”
Some of Lincoln Savage’s collections are still on display at the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History. Elected as Josephine County Treasurer in 1924, he served until a year before his death in 1950.
The Three Rivers School District acknowledged his contribution to education by naming the Lincoln Savage Middle School near Murphy in his honor.
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