In July 2024, Diane Anderson presented the Oneida Pioneer Museum with a pioneer-era crayon portrait of her great-great-great-grandfather, John Price.  The large portrait had hung in Diane’s grandmother’s house for as long as Diane could remember before being moved from the Mary Daniels home to Deon Daniels Jones’s home. After consulting with her Daniels cousins, Diane decided the portrait should go to the Museum where future generations will see it.

John Price was one of the first settlers in Malad Valley, arriving in 1868. He served as the 1st Counselor to Daniel Daniels, the first bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Malad. The Oneida Pioneer Museum will have the portrait of this prominent pioneer professionally conserved with the gold gilt frame refurbished.  The large portrait will eventually hang in the Museum along with dozens of other crayon portraits.

Today when the word “crayon” is used, most people think of colored wax pencil-shaped toys used by children to color pictures. However, from the 1840s through the early 1920s, crayon portraits were weak photographic images that provided the base for extensive, detailed handwork by an artist using charcoal or pastel paints. The portraits were often nearly life sized and were prized possessions of families as they were usually the only way ancestors were remembered.

A representative of the Idaho Heritage Trust told Fay Cottle, retired Director of the Oneida Pioneer Museum, that the Museum has the best collection of pioneer-era crayon portraits in the State of Idaho.  Funded by grants from the Idaho Heritage Trust, the Idaho State Historical Society, and the Idaho Community Foundation, restoration and preservation has been done on almost all crayon portraits in the Museum. Professional preservationist, DiAnne Iverglynne, has done most of the work on the portraits to ensure that they survive another
100 years. 

Everyone is invited to visit the Oneida Pioneer Museum to see if crayon portraits of their ancestors are looking down at them from the Museum’s walls. Anyone who has a crayon portrait of a pioneer connected to Oneida County is welcome to donate it to the Museum so that it can memorialize the earliest history of Malad Valley and
Oneida County.