Oregon History Online 10

A man whose life has been spent largely in the wilds of the West recounts perils of the days when Texas Rangers kept the border of the Lone Star state in order.
George A. Hodges has lived in the Yaquina Bay country for the past 38 years. When I interviewed him recently he said:

I was born in Texas, May 28, 1852. My father, Amos Hodges, was born in Clorset, England. My mother, whose birthname was Nancy Dunlap, was born in Tipperary, Ireland.
My father for many years was a member of the Texas Rangers. The Texas Rangers were not very popular with horse thieves and cattle rustlers. The result was that father was ambushed and got a charge of buckshot in his back. He had followed a bunch of horse thieves, who claimed to be members of William Clarke Quantrill's (1837-1865) band, clear up into southwestern Kansas. This crippled him so he had to resign from the rangers, after 16 years of service.
After father was able to travel, though still weak, we went to Colorado. In the summer of 1864, we crossed the plains to Oregon.
My mother's uncle, Lige Hutchison, had a brick house on Washington Street, in Portland. We stayed with him for a while when we first came here. Later, we lived on the Canyon Road, after which we moved to Milwaukie. Dad went to work for Lish Kellogg in his water power sawmill near Milwaukie, but his back bothered him a good deal, as the doctor had never taken the buckshot out of his lungs. He died the spring we came here.

The George A. Hodges Family: Back Row Left to Right: Jim, Dell, Bill, Mort, Walter, Pat, Giles, Allen, Clyde.
Front Row Left to Right: George A. Hodges, Levina Sager Hodges (holding Alice, who drowned at Coos Bay at the age of 5), Ethel.
Photo taken 1916 at the Dell Hodges homesite. Photo Courtesy of Claudine Hodges

My mother took in washing, sewed, cooked, did nursing, and did anything else she could to support [herself and] her four children.
I went to school at Milwaukie. Some time drop in and see my brother, Will. He lives in a stone house at the end of the Alberta car line. He can tell you about our early days and the hard times we had after Dad's death.
I got a job working in the furniture factory at Willsburg, owned by Bob Donnelly, Tom Beard and Ira Powers. These three men worked at making furniture, and they employed two workmen—Mr. Atchison and myself.
Ira Powers was a big man, physically and mentally. He was jovial, good-natured, a good workman and a good businessman. He came to Portland and started a furniture factory. His son is running it now.
Later I landed a job carrying mail from the depot to the post office at Milwaukie. Jan Ross kept the post office at the time.
While I was working in Milwaukie, I lived in a two-room house on Seth Luelling's place. Uncle Seth was a fine man.
I got married when I was 21. We had two children, both of them dead now.
About two years before I was married, when I was about 19 years old, Mother asked me to go back to Texas to see if I could realize anything from the property we had left at Salado. I couldn't seem to get a line on our property, so I got a job as a "cattle puncher." In those days most of the cattle in Texas were long-horns. I have seen a "cow brute" with a six-foot spread of horns. Those blue-roan, long-horn steers were as wild as deer. They were savage, too. A man couldn't afford to take any chances afoot where they were around. In fact, you had to have a good horse and know how to handle [it] if you worked with the long-horns and expected to get back to the chuck wagon for your next meal.
I lacked a little for being 20 when I ran across a bunch of my father's old friends, who got me to go with them to round up a band of Comanche. I wanted to show them I was a chip off the old black and was not afraid of anything. I spurred my horse through some buffalo wallows, up to the crest of a little land wave, where I showed up against the moonlight. The men warned me that the Indians might be there, but I wanted to see for myself. Just as I showed up against the skyline, plain as day, it seemed as if the whole country was a sheet of fire in front of me, and I sent down and out for the count. That's all I knew till next morning, when my father's old friends came back, after routing the Indians, and pulled me from under my horse. The horse was dead, the horn of the saddle had punched a hole in my groin, my hip was broken, and I looked like I was a total loss. They took me to San Antone, where I spent the next three months in the hospital, drinking whiskey a good deal of the time to deaden the pain.
With two or three other young chaps I bought a bunch of mules at $4.00 a piece and we drove them on up through New Mexico, Arizona and California to Eugene, Oregon, where we sold them for $90 a piece. The two other young chaps with me were "Mustang" Bill and John Younger, a cousin of famous outlaws, Bob and Cole Younger (1844-1916).
John Younger was one of the whitest [sic] men I have met. He had a soft, Southern drawl, a great sense of humor, and he didn’t seem to know what fear was. I remember some years later, here in Oregon, when Egbert Foster shot himself, they wanted someone to fork a horse up [sic] and go in a hurry to Oregon City, to get Doc Applewhite. Younger was on his horse almost as soon as they asked him to go, and he burned the road up to Oregon City, for he could travel, when he wanted to. He routed Do Applewhite out and told him Egbert Foster was badly wounded and needed a doctor right away. Doc Applewhite said he couldn’t come till next morning. He had lost so much sleep that he had to sleep till morning. Younger pulled out his .45, pointed it as Doc Applewhite's head, and said in his slow, soft drawl: "I reckon you're ready to go, aren't you Doc?" Doc Applewhite took a good long look at Younger and then at the .45 and said he guessed, after all, he was ready to go.

After I came back to Oregon, I worked on the [Puget] Sound and at various places in the Willamette Valley, as a carpenter. I could always get work, as I was a good mechanic, and was steady, and by what that I mean I was no boozer. I always turned up for work on Monday morning. After my first wife "quit" me, I married Levina Sager (1884). The last time I heard from my first wife she was living with her fifth spouse.
My wife and I have had a good-sized family of children. Our nine boys are scattered pretty well all over the West. They never were much at going to school, but, like their father, and grandfather, they are outdoorsmen. We also have one [living] daughter.
When I moved into the Big Elk country, on Yaquina Bay, our nearest neighbor was 11 miles away. I packed my wife and babies in on pack horses. There are plenty of salmon, trout and deer over in that country. For years, I had run a logging camp on the Big Elk.

In this second and final installment of his story, Hodges reviews local history relating to the original act of bringing Bull Run water into Portland.
The man that brought the first Bull Run River water to Portland is George Hodges, who lives on the Big Elk River, about 11 miles above Elk City, in the Yaquina Bay district. In telling me about it recently, he said:

I was trapping for a man named Du Bois, a fur dresser of Portland. A man named A. B. Cunningham came to Portland and, after sizing up the situation here, he said Portland was destined to be a big city, and that our water supply was inadequate. He asked Du Bois, my employer, if he knew anyone who was familiar with the country who could locate an adequate water supply for a city of half a million. In those days that sounded like crazy talk. Du Bois said to him, "George Hodges, a young fellow who is trapping for me up the Bull Run country, knows that country thoroughly. I suggest you get in touch with him and tell him what you want." Cunningham and a man named C. B. Talbot sent me when I came into town with my firs, and asked me where there was an abundant supply of water. I told them in my opinion, the Bull Run water was as good as there was, so they hired me to go up to the headwaters of the Bull Run and bring out a five-gallon demijohn of the water for analysis. This was in February, and the snow up around the headwaters of the Bull Run was pretty heavy. I went up there, filled my demijohn with water, sealed it, and brought it back.
Up to then Portland had a rather inadequate water service. Stephen Coffin, Robert Penland and Jacob Cline had put in the first water system, along about 1857. They built a dam in a canyon west of 7th Street and got their water from Carruthers Creek. They used fir logs, bored by hand, as pipes. Along about the beginning of the Civil War, Coffin and his partners sold out to H. C. Leonard and John Green, who shipped in from California a lot of new pipes made of redwood logs. They got their water from Carruthers Creek and Black Creek. Along in the late 1860s they put in a pumping station on the river, at the foot of Lincoln Street, and also built reservoirs at 4th and Market and at 7th and Lincoln. In the 1880s they put in a pumping station at Palatine Hill.
Along about the time that I brought that demijohn of water out for A. B. Cunningham and C. B. Talbot, who was a civil engineer, the owners of the different private water companies became very much alarmed, for they saw that if the Bull Run water was used they would have to go out of business. One of the principal sources of water supply at that time was the Hawthorne Springs, in East Portland. Another possible water supply for Portland was Crystal Springs, on the Ladd ranch; also, a group of men were interested in having Sucker Lake, near Oswego, used. Others wanted the water brought from Johnson Creek, while still others believed it should be brought from the Clackamas River. When [Bill and Holly] McGuire, who had the water system at the Asylum Springs, or Hawthorne Springs as they later called it, learned that I had been up to Bull Run [they] got in touch with me and hired me to go with [them] to file notices of water rights on every trickle of water between Bull Run and the Sandy River. We traveled on a raft and it took us 20 days to tie up the water rights and to put up a notice at every little trickle of water. That tied up proceedings for a while.
Cunningham and Talbot hired a surveyor to make a survey of the country between Bull Run and Portland. The owner of one of the other water companies hired myself and two or three others to go with him on his crew, with instructions to keep him drunk as long as he was out. When he got back to town he didn’t know whether he had made the trip afoot or on horseback, and nobody could make anything of his notes, so that delayed the game a little longer. Finally, Hollister, and Bill and Holly McGuire, who ran the East Portland waterworks at Asylum Springs, had to give up the matter as a bad job. After the city had analyzed the water I brought out from Bull Run they spent several months taking a record of the flow of water, and being satisfied that the water was of good quality and sufficient quantity, they bought from Cunningham and Talbot their rights and began work on bringing the water to Portland. They put in a pipeline 312 miles long, that cost nearly $3,000,000. They bought the distributing main, amounting to over 300 miles, so that the total cost of buying the old water system up to about the first of 1910 was over $5,000,000.

December 11, 1926, Oregon City, Oregon: George A. Hodges, 74, died this morning at St. Vincent's Hospital in Portland, following ten weeks illness. Mr. Hodges formerly resided at Clackamas County. Surviving him are his widow, Levina Hodges, and the following children: James A., Walter, Clyde and Patrick of Elk City, Oregon; George A., Mort and Allen, Portland; and William, Marshfield, Oregon; Giles of California and a number of relatives in Clackamas County. The funeral services are to be held at Mountain View Cemetery, Tuesday morning at 11am. Internment will be in the family lot.

The author had this conversation with her uncle-in-law, Allen Hodges, while walking up and down hillsides and through thick brush—tape recorder in hand—as he remembered the family sawmilling operations. It was April 10, 1977, Easter Sunday, and Hodges was pregnant with her second child, Hilary:

Connie: What do you remember about sawmills in the Big Elk Valley?
Allen: There was never an actual sawmill on Drift Creek in the early pays other than Dad's, to my recollection. There was a shingle mill at the old Bohanan place. It was a water powered mill with a 32 foot waterwheel. They had to haul it up over the old Drift Creek mountain road and down to Gopher Creek.
Connie: Did George Hodges build a sawmill at Salado during the years you lived there?
Allen: The Camp Creek mill site was about 200 yards east of Salado. The water for the mill came out of Camp Creek. We had a ditch dug around it instead of a flume. I've often wondered, Connie, if the mark of the old ditch is still here.
At the time Dad had a mill here, this hillside was all in fern, just as it was before the old "Indian burn," and that's why there weren't any trees here. I was a grown man before there was ever any timber here. You can see that if you put that ditch in a waterwheel that it would generate considerable power.
Connie: It looks like it's running pretty swift all right. Was it running this swift years ago?
Allen: In those days—100 years ago—when the hillsides were covered with fern, they had more water running off than we do today.
Connie: You said the waterwheel that dipped into this creek was 32 feet in diameter. Do you recall what it looked like?
Allen: The waterwheel was 16 feet on each side which made it 32 feet across the center. It was two feet wide, one foot deep in each bucket with a six inch board. In other words, when the water came pouring over the wheel, it hit the boards instead of just sliding. The weight of the water on the wheel brought it up to speed. The spindle this waterwheel was made of was two feet thick. The two by fours that were needed for the construction of the waterwheel over at the Forked Horn Creek mill were cut at the old Camp Creek mill.
Connie: You said this mill didn't have a flume—just a ditch dug around it. Did the Forked Horn Creek mill have a flume?
Allen: There was a flume with a divider in it that came into the Forked Horn Creek mill. There was a lever inside the mill that you could pull, and it would trip across and shoot the water, and that would stop it from coming into the wheel itself. Then you could pull the lever the other way, and close the gate and it would come down and run through the wheel.
Connie: When did you dad build the Forked Horn Creek Mill?
Allen: That was when I was three or four years old—around 1905.

Connie: Around 1905? Isn't that when the Elk City Sawmill was constructed?
Allen: Yes. Dad put in the Elk City mill around 1905 or 1906.
That spring and winter the big flood came, which was the first flood there is record of that ever happened in this area of the country. As I recall, we had another bad one about 15 years ago (1962).
About the time of the flood, we were awfully in debt. Dad was a very honest man. He made many mistakes, but when he made one, he satisfied.
Connie: Was he able to hang onto the mill?
Allen: No. He sold the mill to Bill Ennis because he had to in order to come out financially.
Then he bought what is now the Dell Hodges place, eight miles east of Elk City, where you live now.
Connie: Did he put in another sawmill on the Big Elk?
Allen: Naturally, as soon as we moved in, Dad put up the old J. I. Case steam engine and built a mill across the river. All of that mill was made of wooden pulleys. All we had was shafting material. We didn't even have material for bearings, which at that time were made out of hard wood.

In 1910 or 1912, Dad put in the big boiler, and that came in by freight to Elk City. We went down there and loaded it on a wagon. This side of Bump's Grade, where we made the turn, the road caved in and the boiler upset and rolled down into the brush.
Connie: It must have weighed a ton. Were you able to retrieve it?
Allen: That was a center crack steam engine, and it was big; it was rated at 20-horse power. It took us a week or ten days to get it back up and loaded. Anyway, we finally got it home.
Connie: Once you got it home, how'd you set it up?
Allen: We made a rock furnace that fit in. That's what we called a return flue. We opened the doors and fired it right down into the firebox. That fire went underneath the boiler and up over the back end, through the flue, and up the smoke stack.
The log haul on the old J. I. Case engine was called a bullwheel. It was a shaft with a fiber pulley on it. There was a big wooden wheel about fix feet across; it was a drum that turned.
Connie: What was the drum for?
Allen: This was the cable that pulled the logs up the chute into the mill at Elk City.
The one in front of Dell Hodges' place was made on the same principle, only we put a boom across the river and cut our logs when they came up. Also, we had a deck there.
Connie: Were the Hodges still logging with bullteams then?
Allen: Then, all the timber was logged by our bullteam, Ted and Nig. Part of the timber was logged and brought up above the sawmill and rolled over the bank into the river. We ran the sawmill pretty much in the summertime when the weather was good, and we logged in the wintertime when the weather was bad—and had a skidding good time!

Connie: Were there any sawmills in the Harlan area?
Leonard: A fellow by the name of John Miller built a water-powered mill and damned up Feagles Creek. That was the first sawmill that was ever built in this country.
Connie: Was Miller a logger?
Leonard: Old man Miller was a carpenter by trade. The wheel He built there was 28 feet high. He didn't understand why he didn't get much power out of the wheel, but he had it rigged all wrong; he had the gear right on the outside of the wheel, instead of having it down close to the axle. He was always short of power because of this error in design. He knew the carpenter end of things, but he just didn't understand power. He had water—and wheel enough that he could really have had a good sawmill—had he not always been short of power because of this backwards construction.
Connie: Was that a commercial operation?
Leonard: They cut a lot of lumber at the Miller mill, but the operation was all local. People around here used it. Some of the lumber was sold, and sometimes Miller worked out trade arrangements with local folks in the Harlan area. He made a living at it, though.
Connie: If someone like Miller—or Hodges—puts in a sawmill—at his expense—just so his neighbors can use it, what kind of a financial proposition is that?
Leonard: A lot of people in the area put in their own logs, and Miller charged them so much a thousand board feet to saw it up. He made money by offering a service for a small fee.
Connie: Did the Grants put in their own logs?
Leonard: We put in most of our own logs, and Miller sawed them into lumber for us—for a fee—just as he did for so many others in the area.

Connie: Tell me what you recall about your father, George A. Hodges.
Allen: My father was one of the first settlers in the Big Elk Valley.
He was born in Salado, Texas, and migrated to Oregon in 1884 with his father, Amos Hodges, his mother, Nancy Dunlap, and three brothers, including my uncle Will.
Grandpa Hodges was wounded during the Civil War from a buckshot wound in the back. He died three years after the injury.
Connie: What do you remember about your mother's family?
My Mother, Levina Sager, was English, Irish and Black Dutch.
The Sager family was originally from Des Moines, Iowa, where they were farmers. The migrated West and settled down by Gold Hill—between Grants Pass and Medford—in Southern Oregon.
When the Indian war was going on at Gold Hill—where the Rogue makes a bend near the dam—there's a rock up there—Table Rock, I think—and the Indians had a camp on that flat. They'd come down through the rocks and rob the settlers, and then they'd go back up in the hills and guard the pass in the rocks and kill the squatters with bows and arrows.
Connie: If the Sagers were living in Southern Oregon, how did your parents meet?
Allen: No doubt the Sager family moved north in order for Mother to meet Dad, but I don't recall hearing the details.
Connie: Your father must have been a big man, considering all the hunting and trapping he did.
Allen: No, Dad was a little man with a mustache; he only weighed 130 pounds.
Connie: Did he have a chance to go to school?
Allen: No, he never sent to school; he was self-educated.
Connie: George Hodges spent his boyhood in Texas. Besides cattle punching, did he have any other work experience before moving West?
Allen: Before moving to Oregon he had experience on a whaling vessel just before the Civil War.
Connie: When did he start working for the furniture factory in Oregon City?
Allen: When he was 16, he went to work in the furniture factory in Oregon City. He worked there until the flood of 1890.
Connie: What did you do after The flood?
Allen: After the flood, he worked at various places in the Willamette Valley, and then moved to Philomath. That was as far as the road went.

Connie: How did he end up in the Big Elk Valley?
Allen: From Philomath he moved to Spout Creek with the thought he was going to die. He wasn't supposed to live more than a year with the ulcer he developed working at the furniture factory.
He packed over the mountain and down into Spout Creek alone, and made a cabin there; I remember the cabin.
The road between Philomath and Spout Creek came up over the north side of Marys Peak. It came out towards the sawmill and down towards the Alsea country, and then up over the hill. Then it went up over the end of Mary's Peak and down into Little Elk country.
Connie: Alone? Didn't he have a family by then?
Allen: Yes, but he wintered at the Spout Creek cabin. It wasn't until the following spring that he went back to Philomath and picked up my mother and my brothers, Jim (1885-?) and Dell (1887-?), who were about five and three at the time.
Connie: Was Spout Creek your family's first contact point with Lincoln County?
Allen: Yes. That was the first place they lived in Lincoln County.
Connie: Were Jim and Dell born in Philomath?
Allen: No, Jim and Dell were both born in a log cabin on Cougar Mountain at the foot of Mount Hood.
From Spout Creek we moved to Salado, which Dad named after his hometown in Texas.

Salado settlement was located some 12 miles up the Big Elk from Elk City. The post office was established April 18, 1891, with George A. Hodges serving as first postmaster. Hodges managed the post office with his Spouse, Levina Sager, and carried the mail between Elk City and Harlan three times a week. Hodges named the post office and community for his former home, Salado, Texas.
Salado is a Spanish word meaning "salty" or "saline," or a "plain encrusted with salt." Salt, along with sulfur, helium, asphalt, graphite, bromine, natural gas, cement and clay, give Texas first place in mineral production.
The City of Grand Saline northeast of Salado grew from a primitive salt works established in 1845, and is not the site of one of the largest salt plants in the nation. The salt dome under the city is about 1.5 miles across and some 16,000 feet thick; it could supply the world's need for salt for 20,000 years.
In Western Texas, the small community of Salt Flat grew near extensive surface salt deposits left by intermittent lakes in Hudspeth County just west of the Guadalupe Mountains. The area was the focus of a bloody dispute known as the Salt Wars of the 1860s and 1870s. Before the dispute reached a confused, tragic end, it had involved both Mexican and US citizens, political parties, legislators, mob action, army troops and Texas Rangers. Murder, assassination and revenge killings took place on both sides.
A charming Bell County village on I-35 south of Temple in Central Texas, Salado dates from the state's early days. Situated south of Stillhouse Hollow Lake, the town grew around the Sterling C. Robertson home and plantation, and was incorporated in 1867.
Named for Salado Creek, the town prospered with the founding of Salado College in 1860, and was prominent on the Chisholm Trail. The first farmer's Grange in Texas was established in 1873. But when bypassed by the railroad, the late 19th Century's ultimate transportation mode, the college closed and the town dwindled to the status of an isolated village.
Tree-shaded Salado Creek, which was Texas' first designated natural landmark, was the site of an Indian campground long before recorded history. Since Main Street was part of the Chisholm Trail, ruts from wagon wheels still appear in the bedrock of the creek just north Pace Park.
The visitor’s register at the Stagecoach Inn, a prominent site on the Chisholm Trail in the 19th Century, reads like a frontier Who's Who: George A. Custer (1839-1876), Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), Sam Houston (1793-1863), Jesse James (1847-1882) and Shanghai Pierce were among the celebrated guests. Formerly known as Shady Villa Inn, the primary old frame structure is today restored as a notable restaurant, surrounded by a modern motor inn.

On April 23, 1907, the Salado Post Office burned to the ground, and it was not until March 27, 1911 that it was re-established. At this time George and Levina's son, Jim, started carrying the route as a free agent. In 1912 the government let a contract for the job for the first time, and Jim won the job. On July 31, 1944, the Salado office closed to Elk City.
Jim Hodges carried the mail in this area continuously for 45 years, except for two four-year contract periods when William Clark outbid him on one occasion, and Andrew Bristlin underbid him another. Jim's son, Henry, did most of the carrying in the later years of his tenure.
The route was probably one of the shortest and smallest in Lincoln County. In the 1950s, it served 13 families, and at no time, ever went over 20 boxes. It was 12 miles in length and was carried twice a week.
On May 31, 1956, the Post Office Department opened bids for a new mail route to serve the Elk City-Harlan areas in Lincoln County.
Under the new proposal, the route would be carried every day. And instead of starting at Elk City and going up the river only 12 miles, it would start at Blodgett and serve Nashville, Eddyville, Elk City and Harlan, serving approximately 210 boxes.

Connie: With the post office in your home, Salado must have really been a busy place.
Allen: Salado was a halfway house for everybody that lived in the area. The sheriff would come through here from Drift Creek and go to Elk City and get a load of supplies and come back here and then go home the next day. So folks went upriver to here—the halfway point—then to Elk City, and then back here and then home.
Connie: How did you get back and forth when the river was swollen? The Hodges homestead was on the far side of the Big Elk.
Allen: Right straight across the Big Elk is where, in 1893, Dad made the wire foot bridge with a tripod on each side. The wire went over the top of it. Then he put sticks across it and wide boards that were nailed down. It was a swinging bridge of sorts.
Connie: It doesn't sound like it was what I’d call "child friendly."
Allen: It was definitely not the kind of bridge for small kids. I used to get my pants really tanned when I got caught crossing it. So I would sneak across it and hide in the lumber pile. That was my thrill in life so see my father and brothers at the sawmill pull the lever and stop the wheels and then push it and the wheels would start again.
Connie: Did you ever get hurt sneaking across the wire bridge?
Allen: I remember one time I did.
The goat shed was right across on that hill there. Because the hill is steep, it was made to conform to the shape. It didn't come up too far from the ground. In fact, it was really just a shed roof.
Anyway. Right about that time—when a wind storm came—it caught that shed and turned it upside down right on the hillside.
At the time the storm started, I was across the river, and when I came across the end of the bridge, it threw me off the bridge and over into the creek!
My brother, Giles (1897-1957), and I would crawl up in the bridge with a bunch of rocks and Scott Winfield's (1824-1886) widow would drive her cattle up across the bridge and they'd pasture at the railroad track. When she’d drive them home at night, Giles and I would get up in the bridge and throw rocks at her cattle.
Connie: I bet you and Giles got into a lot of trouble for that one!

Giles Benjamin HODGES was born May 1899 in Oregon and died March 15, 1957 in Veterans Hospital - Spokane, Spokane County, Washington. He married 1st Nora Lowanza DOWNING (Pictured Above). She was born September 9, 1898 in Woodstock, McHenry County, Illinois and died April 1, 1982 in Fairview, Buncombe County, North Carolina, daughter of Morton Elias DOWNING and Effie Eslie WORDEN. He married 2nd Minnie (Unknown Maiden Name) HODGES . Children of Giles Benjamin HODGES and Nora Lowanza DOWNING: Giles Benjamin HODGES Jr. was born August 21, 1929 in Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida and died December 17, 1986 in Bunnell, Flagler County, Florida. Vina Eslie HODGES was born August 22, 1931 in Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida and died February 28, 2004 in Odessa, Ector County, Taxas. John Mort HODGES was born March 5, 1935 in Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida.Vera Jane HODGES was born September 24, 1932 in Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida.

March 15, 1957: HODGES, Giles Benjamin - His home, W310 3d Ave. Husband of Minnie Hodges at the home. Father of Vinia Richardson in Arkansas, Martha Brewer, Walla Walla, WA. Brother of Mrs. Ethel Griffith of Redwoord City, Calif.; James, George and Dell Hodges all of Elk City, OR. Clyde Hodges of Toledo, OR. William Hodges, Coos Bay, OR.; Allen Hodges, Vale , OR. Funeral services, Mon., March 18 at 12 noon in the GOTHIC CHAPEL OF HAZEN & JAEGER FUNERAL HOME, N1306 MONROE ST. Rev. Clifford I. Cecil officiating. Burial services, Fairmount Memorial Park cemetery.

On July 1, 2006, Alexandrea Lynn Griswold Clancy wrote: "GILES BENJAMIN HODGES (GEORGE ADELBERT, AMOS) was born 24 Apr 1897 in Big Elk, Lincoln, Oregon, United States of America, and died 15 Mar 1957 in Spokane, Spokane, Washington, United States of America. He married (1) SYLVIA ROSE COWLES 14 Sep 1920 in Redding, Shasta, California, United States of America, daughter of JAMES COWLES and MARTHA ENGLAND. She was born 01 Mar 1903 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, United States of America, and died 05 Jan 1983 in Walla Walla, Walla Walla, Washington, United States of America.

Giles Benjamin Hodges married Sylvia 11 months after he got out of the military Army, they had two girls.
ALICE MAE HODGES, b. 02 Jul 1921, Grass Valley, Nevada, California; d. 30 Jul 1973, Yakima, Yakima, Washington.
MARTHA LAVINIA HODGES, b. 15 May 1923, Elk City, Lincoln, Oregon; d. 22 Jun 1992, Walla Walla, Walla Walla, Washington.

Obituary:
March 15, 1957: HODGES, Giles Benjamin - His home, W310 3d Ave. Husband of Minnie Hodges at the home. Father of Vinia Richardson in Arkansas, Martha Brewer, Walla Walla, WA. Brother of Mrs. Ethel Griffith of Redwoord City, Calif.; James, George and Dell Hodges all of Elk City, OR. Clyde Hodges of Toledo, OR. William Hodges, Coos Bay, OR.; Allen Hodges, Vale , OR. Funeral services, Mon., March 18 at 12 noon in the GOTHIC CHAPEL OF HAZEN & JAEGER FUNERAL HOME, N1306 MONROE ST. Rev. Clifford I. Cecil officiating. Burial services, Fairmount Memorial Park cemetery."

Allen: We did that for days before that "old widow woman" finally caught up with us and told mother about it. After that, we didn't throw rocks at her cows anymore.
Connie: Was that first bridge at Salado just a temporary thing?
Allen: It was "built for stout" and it was some 32 years, 1924 or 1925, before the county came in and put new pilings under it. The covered bridge over the Big Elk crossed the road on Drift Creek, and stood next to the Grace and Guy Lantz field.
Connie: You said Jim and Dell were born on Cougar Mountain. Were you born at Salado?
Allen: The house I was born in 1901 was an old log cabin. It was located at that junk car area near Qualitree™ on the road side of the river. And, as I said, the sawmill was located across the river.
The redwood tree Uncle Jim brought back from California was off to the side of the house.
The apple orchard, which was to the right of the cabin, was planted about this time.
The older boys took the finger I cut off with an axe and put it in a bottle and buried it under an apple tree. So that "pinkie" finger is the first part of me that's been buried!
Connie: Jim Parks said he—and later an old Dutchman named George Bieloh—rented this place from your folks for a while.
Allen: There was another house that stood on this site that was rented out while we lived at Elk City, and at the time we moved up to the Dell Hodges site.
Connie: What happened to it?
Allen: It burned down.

Connie: It sounds as though George Hodges was quite an engineer, considering he built several sawmills in his lifetime. Did he use that natural gift in other ways too?
Allen: Not only was Dad the first homesteader in this area, he also located and engineered all of this county!
Connie: What was an example of his engineering skills?
Allen: Dad constructed old wooden bridges up until 1916. He constructed this bridge here at Salado, and he made the bridge on the Upper Big Elk—the Dave Ramsdell bridge—and the bridge across the Yaquina at Elk City. The Salado and Ramsdell bridges both had trestles.
There was a bridge at Drift Creek, too, before I was born. I don't know whether or not Dad built that one. There was never a ford there, that I remember, although Jim Parks speaks of one.
Connie: Did he have any competition?
Allen: There was a man in Chitwood by the name of Ralph Pepin who also built bridges.

Connie: How did people earn a living in those days?
Allen: There was no work for wages in the bygone days. You raised a garden with everything you needed to eat, or you didn't eat. It was that simple. The only paid work there was at the Hodges' sawmill, and it was mostly a "help yourself" public arrangement. There was very little money available.
Connie: Then how did the sawmill generate money?
Allen: For instance, when a raft was run down the river—and arrived at where it was going—then money changed hands. But as far as the younger children knowing anything about where our parents got money, we just never did.
Connie: Wasn't chittem another cash crop for folks in the valley?
Allen: Oh yes. Like everyone else around here, we peeled cascara bark and sold that. We ran Angora goats and sold the mohair. Those were the sources of cash income that I know of for sure. And then there was market hunting and timber locating.

Connie: Market hunting? What's that all about?
Allen: In 1897, Frank Thompson (?-1928)308 and Dad went hunting for the railroad coming in from the south. They hunted deer and elk and kept the crew well supplied with meat.
Connie: How did they get the meat to its destination?
Allen: At that time, they packed the meat out on horses over that mountain trail I told you about and took it to Philomath. When the train came in, they turned the meat over to the conductor who acted as a salesman for them; they took it to the valley and sold it, and then brought Dad and Thompson back the money.
Connie: How long did George and Frank do market hunting?
Allen: They did this until the Game Commission came in and put in a law that one could only hunt for six months out of the year. So Dad gave that up and started in as a timber locator, as he already knew the country well from market hunting.
Connie: What was involved in timber locating?
Allen: When people came into the valley he showed them all the country so they could pick out whatever site they wanted. Actually, there was no charge for this service.
Connie: Then why did he do it?
Allen: It was just good community relations. But Dad's boat building ability was a profitable source of income.

Connie: When did he start making boats?
Allen: Dad built the launch, Ethel—named after my sister, Ethel Violet (1906-?)—in the workshop over at the Dell Hodges mill site between 1911 and 1912, the year it made its first run.
Connie: How big was the Ethel?
Allen: The Ethel was a full cabin launch. It was 22 feet long and seven feet wide, and carried ten to 12 passengers. It had a four-horse Miamias engine with a make and break ignition. This was the first two-cycle gasoline motor that came into the area in those days. There was a rod that went up the side and hit the igniter and caused a spark. The motor ran off a battery.
Connie: Where did the Hodges get gasoline for the Ethel?
Allen: We bought our gasoline for the Ethel in Toledo. There weren’t gas stations as we know them today, but there were places where a person could go and buy gasoline.
Connie: Did the Ethel run year round?
Allen: Every year between 1911 and 1915 or so—during the summertime—my brother Jim would bring the Ethel up to the mouth of Bear Creek and run it in on the gravel pit next to the bank.
Connie: Was the Ethel a recreational launch used exclusively by the Hodges family?
Allen: No. Some friends and employers by brother Dell worked for up in Harlan had two girls. These people would travel to Bear Creek with a team, and we'd travel from our place—as well as several other interested people—and we'd all load on the barge and we'd go down and across on South Beach. There was nothing there at that time, but that was our week-long summer vacation!

Connie: What did the Ethel look like?
Allen: The Ethel was made like a duck—a sharp front end and a fan tail behind. It was a round bottomed boat and was seven feet around the middle.
Connie: How did your dad go about constructing the Ethel?
Allen: When Dad constructed the Ethel, he set up the keel. Then he made a form cut out of one inch lumber every three feet, starting back at the stern right on forward to the bow of the boat. There were four of those forms that went in there. Then he put ribs in. Those ribs were an inch and a half by two inches. They went down and fastened on the keel—which is the main timber piece in a boat, extending from stern to stern at the bottom and supporting the whole frame—and up a-round the side. Those ribs were 16 inches apart.
Connie: How did he get the ribs to curve and bend into shape?
Allen: Dad made a steambox to bend the ribs into shape. It was a good 12 inches inside and ten to 12 feet long. There was a steam pipe from the water that ran into the box. He put whatever he wanted to bend in the box and steamed it until the wood got really soft. When wood was steamed under pressure that way, it would get soft and pliable so a person could bend it and do anything he wanted with it. Because there was already the temporary frame inside of it, he set the ribs and bent them in place.
Connie: What happened after the ribs were sufficiently bent?
Allen: Dad put a false stripping on the outside until he could put the planking on it. The planking was anywhere from four to six inches wide. It took a couple of days to put one board on and fit it in. He caulked the seams first, and then used pitch to seal the seams. The pitch had to be heated to a certain temperature. When it set a while, it hardened.
Connie: It sounds like the planking was a long, tedious process.
Allen: It took six to eight months to build the boat. We started late in the summer. Dell and I both helped Dad with the boat. Jim was married at the time and wasn't living at home. Mort and Walter had both left home. Giles was home a good deal, but I don’t recall him working on the Ethel. Clyde (1907-?), who was the baby, was too small to be of any help.
Connie: After the planking went up, what happened next?
Allen: When Dad got the side of the boat up to the top, he finished it up with a little deck rail around the outside of it so you could move from one end of the boat to the other on the outside by holding onto the railing.
Connie: You mentioned the recreational use of the Ethel. I'm surprised the family didn't have any commercial use for it.
Allen: We did put it to commercial use. The Ethel was a passenger boat that made daily runs between 1910 and 1935 on the Yaquina from Elk City, the railroad terminus and head of navigation, to Newport. It was these commercial runs that earned money for Dad and the family.

Connie: You talked about running a still in Coos Bay. When did the family move there?
Allen: We worked in the mills and logged until about 1920, then the family moved to Coos Bay where we continued logging.
The old Coos Bay Wagon Road went over through Lookingglass Valley and down into Sumner and into Coos Bay eventually.
We bought a big float house with six bedrooms. We had it up by Millington, which is a few miles south of Coos Bay, on Isthmus Slough. That is where our little sister Alice fell off of the gangplank and drowned.

Jan. 21, Marshfield: Alice Hodges, four-year-old daughter of Mr. and Ms. George A. Hodges, who reside in a float house on Isthmus Inlet, opposite the Oregon Export Company Mill, was found in the water of the inlet at noon today. As near as could be learned, she had been in the water about an hour. Doctors were in this afternoon working on the child, but there was practically no hope for reviving her as she had been in the water too long.
It is supposed that the little girl fell into the stream while playing. She was seen by Fred McCrea, one of the employees of the mill, who got the body out. The child was taken home and physicians called and everything possible was done to revive the child, but at last reports without avail.
Later that afternoon the efforts to revive the child were given up as hopeless. The little girl is the youngest of the family. Besides her mother and father there is one sister and nine brothers, most of whom are grown. One brother recently returned home from Russia where he was in the army and was wounded. Several of the brothers are living elsewhere, and the funeral will not be arranged until they are heard from.
The family came to Coos Bay eight months ago from Lincoln County.

My father, George A. Hodges, was one of the first settlers in Big Elk Valley. He was born in Salado, Texas as in 1852, and came to Oregon in 1864 with his father and mother and three brothers. My grandfather, Amos Hodges, passed away the following year. My grandmother, Nancy Dunlap, worked at whatever she could find to keep the family together until they were old enough to make their own way.
When Dad was about 16, He went to work in the furniture factory in Oregon City. He worked there until the big flood of 1890. After that he worked at various places in the Willamette Valley. He was trapping furs when a man named Cunningham came to Portland, checking the water supply. This man asked DuBois if he knew anyone who knew the country and the water sources. DuBois recommended George Hodges. Dad went to the Bull Run area and brought out a five gallon jug of water for samples and testing. It was satisfactory, so the present water supply was put in from the Bull Run watershed.
In about 1897, he went hunting for the railroad coming in from the South. He would keep the railroad supplied with meat. He did this until the Game Commission came in and put in a law, that one could only hunt for six months out of the year. So he gave that up and started in as a timber locator, as he knew the country from hunting. He went into the Big Elk country and built a cabin and stayed there for about a year..., then he went down on the river and homesteaded on 20 acres and spent about a year in the cabin. Then he went down on the river and homesteaded on 20 acres as that was better access to all the surrounding country. This was about the time they changed the game law, and he went timber locating. When people came in he would take them out and show them the country, and they could pick what they wanted. There was no charge for his services.
There was a shingle mill on Drift Creek. He made a mill about 200 yards east of Salado (12 miles east of Elk City). It was called Camp Horn mill. In 1898 the Forked Horn Creek Mill at Salado was in operation. They cut lumber for the new squatters, and also lumber for the Abbey Hotel in Newport. This lumber was rafted to Newport. Two of those lumber rafts were launched from the Dell Hodges mill site (eight miles east of Elk City).
These mills were built in the late 1800s. That was before I was born. I was born in 1901.
Dad and Mother established a post office at Salado. They named it after Salado, Texas where He formerly lived.
We went to Elk City and Dad put in a mill there, which later was hit by a flood. After the flood, Dad sold the mill land went... upriver and built at the Dell Hodges site.
When I was two years old, I wanted to be like the big boys (by this time there were eight boys in the family), so I sneaked one of their cutting axes. When I was discovered I ran with it and the brothers came running after me. I fell and cut two fingers off my left hand. Dad sewed one back on, but my little finger got lost.
Later, it was found, and the older boys put it in a bottle and buried it under an apple tree. Then, when I was six, just starting to school, my brother, Walter, and I were taking care of the stock. We were breaking a young team of oxen, when they broke and ran. My leg went through the wheel on the cart and broke... All the logging was done with horses and bull teams in those days. Dad set my leg, and you could never tell it had been broken. We had no doctors in the valley in those days, so Dad took care of us boys himself. I might add He did a good job taking care of the nine boys and two girls in the family.
Dad and mother established the first mail route out of Salado in 1891, and my brother Jim started carrying the mail between Salado and Elk City three times a week. It was one of the shortest and smallest routes in Lincoln County; it was 12 miles long, and served 13 families, and never over 20 boxes. Jim ran this route for nearly 45 years.
Dad built the launch Ethel in the shop over the Dell Hodges mill site between 1911 and 1912, and it made its first run around 1912. It was 22 feet long and seven feet wide, and carried ten to 12 passengers. It was a four-horse Miamias engine with a make and break ignition. It made two trips a week between Elk City and Newport.
We worked in the mills and logged until about 1920, then moved to Coos Bay, where we continued logging. Later on when Dad took sick and went into the hospital in Portland, I left Coos Bay and went to Portland and worked to help pay the hospital bill. Eventually, I went to work in the Kaiser-Swan Island Shipyards as a ship fitter, where I worked for seven years.
From there my wife and I moved to Vale, where I worked as an automobile mechanic for 15 years. I drifted around for a while, coming to Scotts Mills, and finally ended up in Molalla where I now live.

This Parks family history was compiled by Lillian "Lilly Ann" Parks Adams (1880-?), youngest child of Clarissa Marrs and Hurston Parks, at Capitola, California, 1949-50, when she was 70 years old. She was born July 12, 1880, in Wayne County, West Virginia, which borders Kentucky and Ohio.
The following accounts and stories are to the best of her knowledge as a four-year-old child, and from family retellings:

Robert Park(s), my great-grandfather, and his two brothers came to America from England in the early 1800s. He married an Irish woman whose name was Hardick. Among his children was Charles R. Parks (1820-1911), my grandfather, who married Margaret J. Buskirk (?-1927). Their children were Joe, Hester Ann, Hurston (my father), Leander (1853-1935), Mehalie, Harvey and Nancy.
Grandpa Parks served four nears in the Confederate army, but was given leave to return home because of Grandma’s sickness. She died, leaving him alone to provide as best he could for his children. He returned to his regiment, leaving a young woman named Cosby Lewis in charge of his motherless children. Charles and Cosby eventually became husband and wife.
Years went by. The children grew up and went their separate ways. Hurston married Clarissa and lived with his family in a small house set in the hilly portion of the farm my grandfather owned.

Clarissa Marrs was born in Kentucky, and was reputed to be quite pretty. She had blue eyes, dark hair, small hands and feet, and was well built. Mother was a sturdy girl and did a lot of hard work in her lifetime. In addition to her labors, she became the mother of seven children: William, La Verna, who was always called "Verna," Charles, Oscar (1875-1902), Paris, Lilly Ann and John.
After a time, Grandpa Parks sold his farm to my dad, and moved with the rest of the family to Arkansas.
The old family home was a marvel of architectural planning. It had two floors. In order to reach the upper floor, one had to climb a ladder propped against the outside of the house. When the children grew older, they used to store nuts up there.
Once when I was four or five years old, I climbed that ladder. Some of the older children had gone up there, and I wanted to see what they were doing up there that was so interesting. I didn't actually get off the ladder; I just looked through the open doorway. Sure enough, there was a lively walnut cracking party going on! I carefully eased myself down to the ground floor unnoticed.
There were three rooms in the house arranged in a row. A door connected the first two floors, but in order to reach the third room, one had to go outside.
The family occupied the first two rooms. Dad and Mother and the baby John slept in the livingroom, while a couple of beds in the bedroom served for the rest of the family.
The third room was used as a storage room. Mother had her loom in that room. In the summertime she did the weaving for the family.
Dad kept a small flock of sheep which grazed over the hilly portions of the farm. From these sheep, he obtained the means to clothe the family, as well as provide the woolly blankets which wrapped up chilly toes through the long cold winter nights.
In addition to weaving blankets, Mother wove the material to make pants and coats for the male members of the family. She wove Linsey-Woolsey for dresses for herself and her two daughters, La Verna and Lilly Ann, and spun the yarn to knit socks and stockings for the entire family.
Mother did most of her knitting while sitting before the open fireplace. Her knitting needles kept up a constant clicking. Occasionally she would drop a stitch, but soon her expert fingers had the wayward stitch back on the needle.
There were times when Mother helped with the summer work in the fields in addition to tending the kitchen garden. She canned the various vegetables in their respective seasons.
The kitchen was located about 50 feet from the rest of the house. It had a cook stove on which Mother prepared meals, later to be carried into the livingroom where the family ate.
"When the snow was on the ground," I asked Mother years later, "how did you manage to fix breakfast?"
My questions brought back memories for her. "Why Pa had to shovel a path to the kitchen!" she chuckled.
The well was in a handy spot, about 40 feet from the kitchen. One had to draw the cool, clear water up with a rope and bucket.
As for that other "convenience," we didn't have one! Why didn't we have a privy? I don’t exactly know, but I'm sure my family knew there were such things. To use an old Southern expression, I think they were simply too "dilatory" to fix themselves one. I never saw a single "unseemly" demonstration from any member of the family. When their "call" came, they just vanished. I don't know where they went. As for me, I disappeared behind the nearest building!
Dad kept several strands of bees on the farm. They were a safe distance from the house, but close enough to keep a watch on them.
The summer after John was born, a swarm of bees attracted Mother's attention. She quickly placed a chair across the open doorway to keep the baby from following her, and went to see what she could do with the buzzing renegades. She told me to watch him. Suddenly, I saw him shoving the chair aside. He edged himself between the chair and the door jam, and was on his way outside. There were several steps in front of the door, and I quickly realized the baby's danger. I ran to him, clasped my arms around his middle, and held on with all the strength my four-year-old muscles could muster. Of course, this made John mad, and he began kicking and screaming with all his might. I soon realized that I couldn't hold him, so I added my frantic cries to his.
"Ma! Ma!,” I hollered at the top of my lungs in hope that she would hear me.
Mother heard the hubbub and came running. She scooped up the screaming baby in her arms. "Everything is going to be all right, Lilly Ann" she comforted. There was a worried look on her face when she sat down to quiet his fear.
It sure felt good to see him in Mother's arms, but in my excitement I forgot to ask her whether or not she got the bees back in the hive.

John died that summer. All of us children had whooping cough, and it proved too much for baby John to overcome. We buried him one sunny day.
While I stood close to the open grave beside mother, I suddenly heard a voice. "What a beautiful place to lay him," the messenger said. I raised my head and took a good look at my surroundings. I saw how green the grass was on the sunny hillside which gently sloped downward to where a row of small trees grew. "A creek probably runs there," I thought. It was a pretty place, indeed.
I didn’t worry about the baby, but I missed him. I know Mother did too. I recall her taking me down for a long walk around the farm. We walked down toward the lower meadow (in the vicinity of the grave site) and alongside the small creek where mint grew. I stopped for a few moments to gather some wintergreen, of which I am very fond. We paused for a while under the big walnut tree.
The farm was composed of several acres. There was quite a lot of meadow. Dad cultivated a number of acres. His livestock consisted of cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep. He bought the cattle from the surrounding areas and later sold them at a profit.
Mother kept a flock of chickens and several geese. She used the goose down to make pillows and featherbeds.
There were hilly acres where the sheep grazed. Portions of this hilly land were covered with nut bearing trees such as walnut, hickory and chestnut.
Some wild fruits grew on the hillsides. There was a variety of wild grape called possum grape. This grape was not favored much because of its extremely sour taste. The possum grapes were small and jet black and grew to a good height, twining their tendrils among the branches of the tall trees. A venturesome swing could be made by cutting the vine off at the base of the growth.
One day, the older children took me with them when they went on one of their small nutting expeditions and I saw brother Oscar—then a small lad but as spunky as a squirrel—clamp himself onto one of those grapevines and take off. He swung out over a small ravine, but came back after a while.

From the house the road extended a distance of several hundred feet. One could see Dad's blacksmith shop which stood between the road and a small river called The Big Hurricane.
There was a fork to the river called The Little Hurricane. These rivers, which probably aren’t marked on any map, are located in Wayne County, West Virginia, not far from the Kentucky border.
Hurston Parks did general blacksmithing for himself and neighbors.
One day, while he was busy in the shop, I wandered in. One look around told me I had come to the wrong place. Dad had a visitor who I didn't recognize, but that wasn't the cause of my alarm. I had hardly gotten inside when I saw him step up to the forge and hastily return to the anvil with a red-hot piece of metal. Up until this time, he had it safely clamped between a pair of tongs, but now he laid the piece of iron down on the anvil and reached for the hammer. It was then that I realized my danger.
Like a scared rabbit, I darted for cover. I peeked out from behind my hiding place and watched the fireworks. When the hammer hit the red-hot metal, the sparks flew in every direction.
It wasn’t until the display of sparks was over that the two men thought about me and my safety. They looked around the shop and spotted me peering out from behind my safe hiding place. Both Dad and the stranger laughed self-consciously with relief.
"How did she know to get out of the way of the sparks?," Dad wondered outloud. The stranger looked puzzled. "Beats me," he said.
I must conclude that at the age of four I had my first—and last—experience in my father's blacksmith shop. The flying sparks frightened me so much that I didn't go back again.
Dad raised a lot of corn to feed his livestock. In the autumn he also took some of the corn to the gristmill and had it ground for home use. While at the gristmill, he bought a barrel of flour. With these staples, Mother made biscuits for breakfast and cornbread for the other two meals.

In West Virginia, Dad raised sugar cane to make sorghum molasses, which all the children loved to eat.
One year, I served as a helpful hand in this most delectable job.
When the cane was ready to be cut, Dad had an experienced molasses maker bring his equipment to our farm and made molasses with the aid of family members.
There were plenty of jobs to do. The machine was set up some distance from the house. When I arrived on the job, everything was well underway. Before I had a chance to look around, a man positioned me at the end of the pan and handed me a little paddle.
The cooking pan was divided into sections. As the molasses thickened, it was moved along from one section to another. It was my job to move the syrup along. While I did so, I ate some of the delicious sweet stuff and looked around.
Everyone was busy doing something. A little way off, the cane mill was busy grinding out the juice. Dad was in charge of this operation. Others were busy carrying the juice to the cooking pan. My sister Verna helped him with this chore.
During the summer, the Hurricane River was full of deep pools which served as swimming holes for the older children. One time Verna nearly drowned, but brother Bill luckily pulled her out in time. As a rule, Bill made his home with Mother's parents because they badly needed his help. But at that vital moment in my sister’s life he was living at home with the family.
The river was teeming with a variety of fish which the older children could catch. There were catfish, perch, and several others.

There was a coal mine on the far side of the river. I believe Dad owned it. In the summertime, He would go there and get the family's supply of coal for the winter, as our livingroom was heated by a coal-burning grate.
One time he took me along with him to get coal. I looked around, but I didn't go inside the mine. I didn't like underground places then, and I have never gotten over that feeling.
From some long-forgotten source, I heard that June beetles made a sweet sound while flying around. I loved music, and the method to acquire this living music box was to fasten a long thread to one of the bug's hind legs.
Now, June beetles are about half an inch across and three quarters of an inch long. The ones in the South are dark green on the back side and have an armor-like covering over their undersides. They feed on fennel and are harmless.
One day, I chased down a June beetle and brought it in. It was hard to hold. That bug clawed me with its sharp toes and rooted with its sharp nose. But I held on for dear life and persuaded Mother to tie a thread on its hind leg. She wasn't too anxious to oblige me, but finally the job was accomplished and I took my musical bug outside to test it out.
The ground around the house was level, so I chose a spot where I could turn my bug loose. It gladly took off, and I ran after it, holding on tight to the thread. The bug made a pleasing sound that was music to my ears. The sound that June beetle made—along with the Jew's harp and harmonica—was the one source of music my young ears had ever heard.
Soon the bug grew tired and sat down. I realized the thread might hamper its movements, so I waited while it rested. Still anxious to hear more music, I urged it to fly. As quick as lightening, the bug took off with me pounding along behind it. I was thoroughly enjoying the performance until the thread slipped off. With mixed emotions, I watched my "music box" disappear in the distance.
I felt bad over my loss and set about repairing it. I found another June beetle, but somehow I didn’t like this one quite as well as the first one. Just the same, I hurried into the house to have Mother tie a thread on its leg. This time Mother openly expressed her dislike for such activities. Nevertheless, with strong urging on my part, she tied the thread once again. I took the new June beetle outside and let it fly as I had the old one, but the knot in the thread was too loose and slipped off. This bug also flew away, heading due north. It didn’t slacken its speed for even a moment.

In the wintertime, the older children went ice skating on the river. The winters were severe and the water froze to a considerable depth.
One day, the older children bundled me up and took me down to the river with them. I stood there on the ice and watched my brothers chop a hole through the thick ice. Perhaps they hoped to make a frigid fishing hole? More likely they chopped that hole in the ice just for fun.
The wet winter weather made deep erosions along the side of the hill where the sheep grazed facing the house.
In the spring and summer, the little lambs gamboled merrily back and forth across these ravines.
The summer I was five years old, marauding dogs raided our sheep one night. Mother awakened and heard the strange sounds. The sheep were frantically running in circles around the hill. As they passed the nearest point to the house which was about 400 feet away, Mother could hear them panting. Perhaps they were too tired to bleat. Maybe it just wasn’t the sheep's nature to cry out in distress. Nevertheless, Mother was sure their panting meant something was wrong. She awakened Dad who immediately went to the sheep’s rescue. The marauding dogs paid for their roving with their lives. Dad was an expert and didn't spare even one culprit.
When daylight came, Dad started out on horseback to visit homes for miles around and enlisted the help of our neighbors. He stopped at each house, explained the purpose of his mission, and asked to see each household's dog. Nobody objected. Dad examined each dog's mouth. Wool between the dog's teeth was a sure indication that the beast had been raiding sheep; it was the animal's death warrant.
Before each excursion, Dad always expressed his regrets. But there was nothing anyone could say on behalf of their blood thirsty animals. Sheep killing dogs could not be tolerated.
One dog ran and hid under the bed and had to be dragged out. It was almost as though he understood his pitiful fate.
At home, a dog ran through our yard. A neighbor captured him and shut him up in Dad's blacksmith shop. When Dad came home, he took the dog out and carried out its death sentence.
That afternoon, Mother and I walked along the rail fence which enclosed the sheep run. We found wounded sheep lying in the corners of the fence with helpless expressions on their faces. Mother did what she could in the way of first aid, but many sheep died from the raid.

The summer I was six, I started school. The older children and I attended a one room schoolhouse located on the edge of the farm, easy walking distance from our house. The young schoolmaster lifted our budding aspirations. He handed me a slate and in no time at all, I learned to write the alphabet.
I had always been in the habit of going with Mother whenever she went to call on the neighbors. One day, she made the mistake of passing by the schoolhouse during recess. I knew she was on her way to visit Ms. Thompson, an elderly widow. I wanted to visit Ms. Thompson also, so I begged to go along. But the schoolmaster was equal to the occasion.
"Come on, Lilly Ann," he beckoned. "We'll go down to the creek and draw pictures on the rocks."
This adventurous idea appealed to my young brain more than visiting the elderly did, so hand in hand the schoolmaster and I started towards the creek.
The creek was close to the schoolhouse, and the river was low. There were many large rocks, and after a short search we found some small soft rocks he used like chalk to draw on the larger ones. There we stayed until Mother was safely out of sight.

The following spring our entire family—with the exception of brother William Marrs—moved to Arkansas. He stayed with Mother’s parents and took care of them in their old age.
That last night at our old place we divided up and stayed with the neighbors. Mother and I stayed with Ms. Thompson. Dad and the rest of the family found overnight accommodations too.
The next morning, we met at a designated place. From there we were taken to Catlettsburg, Kentucky where we were to catch a boat down the Ohio River to Cincinnati.
The boat was late in arriving, so we ate our lunch under a covered portion of the wharf. Mother had fixed us a big breakfast before we left home.
After lunch, brother Oscar was very sick. He had always been subject to severe spells of colic. Mother made a pallet for him on the floor and did what she could to make him comfortable. Since it was obvious that I couldn't do anything helpful, I wandered out onto the wharf until I found an interesting spot.
By that time, the boat had arrived and was unloading and taking on freight. Some "colored" stevedores were very busy moving great bales of cargo back and forth. I watched their activities with great interest. A nice looking colored man picked me up and sat me on a bale of freight so I could watch and at the same time remain safe from harm. But my contented stay was of short duration. Sister Verna appeared on the scene. She abruptly hauled me down from my perch, and without taking time to explain why, hurried me along the wharf in the direction I had come. It seems the boat was about ready to start, and the family wanted to go on board. We found seats on the deck of the boat and in the stern.

The entire family looked straight from the country, I suppose. Where we lived, calico, shawls and sunbonnets were the style for warm weather, and Linsey-Woolsey was worn during the winter.
There was a six-year-old girl on the boat who decided she didn't like what we were wearing, considering she was dressed in the latest fashions. We hadn't been on board long before she strolled over to where we were. She stood there looking us over for a while. Then—in order to show her utter disdain for us—she opened her mouth as wide as she could and stuck out her tongue! Nobody said a word. When she had walked the length of us, she turned around and started back to give us still another going over. That was entirely too much. She stopped in front of my brother Paris and stared at him. He looked at her for a short moment, and then promptly poked a grubby forefinger down her throat. That very same forefinger had helped dig out numerous rabbits and had never been clean-looking at best. You should have seen that snobbish little girl sputter and gag! When she’d regained her composure, she let out a vigorous howl and started running for her mother.
Of course the family was enjoying the turn of events in face of such a hateful situation. Even though I knew the little girl deserved exactly what she got, one look at Paris's grubby forefinger made me feel sorry for her.
With mixed emotions, I cautiously trailed along after the rude little girl. She shared a stateroom with her mother just around the corner from where we were sitting. Howling loudly, she ran into the room. I stopped short a distance from the door and peered in.
Her mother, the young woman in the stateroom, was pretty and well dressed. She didn't seem at all excited to see her daughter in tears. She patiently listened to the tale of what had just happened and calmly looked around. When she saw me peeking around the corner into her room, she handed me a banana and said, "Now run along, dear." The words were spoken kindly, so I took the banana and walked back to where the family was located. I suspect the girl's mother had everything under control. She wasn't seen again the entire trip!

We had to wait quite a long time for a train out of Cincinnati. Finally it came, and we went aboard.
I hadn’t been on this train long before I developed a bad case of motion sickness. Mother had me hang my head out an open window. What I did to the side of the coach didn’t help its looks any!
On this journey south we had to change trains. That night we slept in an empty boxcar standing in the freight yard. There was the noise of trains coming and going and switching tracks back and forth all night long. Nobody slept much, but we did manage to get a little rest as Mother had fixed us a place to lie down.
The next day, we arrived at our destination in Arkansas. We were met at the depot by Grandpa Parks and taken to his farm to live for a while.
The farm wasn’t as good as the one Grandpa had in West Virginia. It was large, but very rocky and hard to cultivate even with a hoe. Grandpa raised corn and other small crops.

Now my grandparents, Cosby Lewis and Charles Parks, were all alone. All of their children were married, with the exception of my Uncle Harvey. Uncle Leander had been married several years and had five children. His wife, Aunt Queen Victoria (1856-1896), was a small, red haired woman. She was very quick with her movements. When Aunt Victoria walked, her head bobbed back and forth as though it had trouble keeping up with the rest of her.
Uncle Leander and Aunt Victoria's first child was my cousin, Mary. Then came Joseph, William, Harriet, who was called "Hattie," and baby James H. (1887-?) who was called "Jimmy."
As a rule, the Parks men were tall, averaging six feet in height. But Uncle Harvey was very tall; he was probably six feet four inches tall.
My uncles Harvey and Leander were uneducated, as was Grandpa Charles. The rest of the family was more or less "educated;" they could read and write a little.
In those days and in the Appalachian section of the country, it was difficult to get an education. Everyone had to work hard in order to live. And then too, there were some parents who just didn't care whether or not their children went to school. To them, a formal education just wasn't important.
Through the spring and summer months, Dad and the family helped Grandpa Charles put in the crops. Mother and Grandma Cosby ran the house which wasn't very large or very fine. It was a crude building with riven (split) board siding, but everyone seemed happy and went cheerfully about their respective tasks.
That summer, Mother and Grandma Cosby found time to make quilts. They hung the quilting frames in a small outbuilding close to the house. Since I was too small to help with the quilting bee, I amused myself as best I could.
A path led from the house to the small building where my mother and grandmother were quilting, and then along the side to where the door was located. We used that path often.

One day, somebody—I don't recall just who—saw a hen coming along the path that led from the house to the small outbuilding. She stopped short and looked under a loose board which was lying close to the path. The hen took one good look and then clucked and squawked a warning and left on the run. The observer knew there must be something under the board and went to investigate. There was a big copperhead snake coiled under the board! Although snakes were seen in that section of Arkansas, they weren't that plentiful. Needless to say, this one dispatched in a hurry. To our dying day, we'll have to thank that little hen for that potentially life-saving warning.
One day Mother and I went to visit a cousin for whom I had been partially named; her name was Ann. She seemed to like me, and before we left, she took us out to the backyard and said, "Now I want to give you a chicken, Lilly Ann. You can have any one you want."
"I'll take that rooster," I said, pointing to a fine one. "I like to hear the soft, funny little noises roosters make when they are patted on the back." From that moment on, cousin Ann and I were the best of friends.

Plans were underway for the Parks family to migrate West. Oregon was their ultimate destination. But nothing was done to activate this plan until rather late in the season.
When the time finally arrived, my grandparents, Cosby and Charles Parks; my parents, Clarissa and Hurston Parks, and their six children (William, La Verna, Charles, Oscar, Paris and Lilly Ann); my Aunt, Nancy Parks and her spouse, John Watkins, started out in three covered wagons for the distant West.
Grandpa's near neighbors, the Baleys, and their five children, Nancy, who was called "Nanny" like my
Aunt, Alice, Lucy, Molly and Thomas, decided to go along with us, making four wagons in our caravan headed West.
Some of the men had good teams, but some of them didn't. Dad had a strong pair of mules named Bill and Jen. They were willing workers and faithful to their task at hand.
The wagon owners drove their own teams. The rest of the adults—and those who could—walked. It wasn't difficult to keep up with the wagons. The ones who walked were usually way ahead of the wagons and had to wait for them to catch up.
This route took them through Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington and then into Oregon. It was a long, hard undertaking, but the folds who did it were used to hardship and privation. They had always lived simply and hardily. Their wants were few, and their needs were cut to the barest necessities of life.
The Parks family originated from three nations: England, Scotland and Ireland. The characteristics of these three nationalities would be need before their long, dangerous journey was over, and it was dangerous.
To begin with, they should have started their migration earlier in the year. Even though they sold their farms, they wanted to harvest their crops before leaving. For a time, the handicap of startling late in the autumn didn't show up.

Uncle Leander's team wasn't very good. He had an old gray more and one day she decided she had gone through enough. The old nag stopped dead still in the middle of the trail. She refused to move an inch. At first, mild measures were used to encourage her to move, followed by something a little stronger. These gentler tactics having failed, the men tied a rope around her long gray neck and put so much pressure on it that it literally broke! Finally, they built a fire under her. The last measure was guaranteed to move the balkiest beast. Later on when the opportunity presented itself, uncle Leander did a little "horse tradin'."
One time the caravan made camp early and selected the best site available which had wood and water and other necessary conveniences. There was a considerable amount of green stuff growing near the campsite, and the womenfolk mistook this herb for one they had been used to cooking as "greens." Not one person in the family recognized the difference, and soon every family had a good mess of greens cooked up. Our family ate heartily of the tasty greens.
After the had been cleared away, Mother began getting me ready for bed. I slept in the big covered wagon along with Dad and Mother. The rest of the family slept in a tent. But before Mother got me settled down for the night, I announced that I was sick and would have to "up chuck." No sooner had Mother taken care of my needs than she had to succumb herself.
Mother and I were lucky to get rid of the greens so soon, as they didn't have time to do their mischief on us! Others in the party weren't quite so lucky; those nasty greens worked both ways!
Fortunately, we had made camp where there were plenty of bushes and young undergrowth. Those bushes played a very important role that night. From the looks of things, more people were in the bushes than in their beds. Since everyone was more or less modest, each person wanted his or her own bush. If a person picked out a likely looking bush and started for the rear side of it, he was sure to hear receding footsteps leaving the opposite side. The entire episode was nothing short of terrible. Uncle Harvey said he thought he would die. After that, the women were more careful about what they cooked.

Days became weeks, and weeks became months. Still the old covered wagons—looking tired and worn now—crept onward towards Oregon.
No doubt the travelers became weary and discouraged, but nobody every complained. Occasionally we laid over for a day of rest and a chance to wash and change our clothes.
The Baley family dropped out of the caravan somewhere in the Midwest and finally located in Idaho.
More time went by and winter was close at hand. Some snow lay on the ground, making travel difficult. But the Parks' wagon train moved onward.
Finally, we reached Pueblo, Colorado and camped for the night. Snow still lay heavily on the ground. The men built large campfires. The light from the fires shone bright all around, making the snow glisten. The tired Women fed their hungry families and hustled the younger children off to bed. It was cold and everyone could feel the chill in their bones. The children were cross. I heard baby cousin Jimmy crying about the time I was hustled into the wagon and put to bed. Before I had quite gotten into the wagon, I suddenly became aware of visitors in camp. They were standing around the campfire talking to our menfolk. I was too far away from them to know what they were saying, but I sensed they were there for an important purpose; their mannerisms and gestures told me so. But it wasn't until years later that I learned the true nature of those men's visit while talking to Mother about times past. We were camped near a fort and those men were soldiers. They questioned our menfolk as to where they were going. When they found out, they advised against any further travel.
"Don't try it, men; you'll be snowed in for sure," said one solder. "Just look around you all these women and children," said another soldier. "What will you do?" He observed that the first soldier's words didn't have sufficient clout.
The place under discussion was a wide strip of land laying between Pueblo, Colorado on Arkansas River and Herber City, Utah on Provo River about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City. In the summertime, that strip of land was lush and green, and the Mormons used it for grazing cattle. But in the wintertime, it was just a wide, white wilderness. No trails. Just the sky above and a few small cottonwood trees growing along a hidden creek.
But our menfolk didn't heed the soldiers' advise. The next morning, after they had their morning meal, the hitched up their teams. Once again, the old wagons rolled along snow-covered trails, carrying innocent victims into the worst experience of their lives—lives they no doubt would have lost, had it not been for the friendly, hospitable Mormon people.
Dad stopped the team and set me outside the wagon in the snow to do what I had to do. At that moment, Uncle Leander stopped his wagon behind ours and started talking to my father. My uncle was so soft-spoken that it was difficult to hear him at best, but I heard Dad's reply clearly. He told Uncle Leander that the trail was covered with snow and that he didn't know which way to go from there; we were lost!
By this time, I was ready to get back in the wagon, so Dad lifted me in and climbed back in himself. He drove for a short distance and stopped again. The menfolk decided to make camp for the night.
The caravan of covered wagons was lost in Strawberry Valley, Utah. It was the most terrible time the Parks family ever had to face migrating West.
It was some time before I learned that Grandpa Charles's team had given out completely. It was a young mare—one he highly prized. One horse alone couldn't pull the wagon, so it was left behind. Two wagons weren't enough for everyone, so some said they would stay with the abandoned wagon and wait for what Grandma Cosby felt was a doubtful rescue. My grandparents, Aunt Nanny and uncle John, and some others, stayed behind with the wagon. Years later, Grandma Cosby said that when she saw those two wagons pull out, she never expected to see them again.
But now the two wagons—loaded with human freight—had gone as far as they could. They camped on a wind-swept hill. The menfolk made big campfires. Everyone gathered around to deep warm with the exception of the Smaller children who stayed in the wagons. There was no panic; each person was doing the best he or she could. The women were used to cooking under every kind of condition, and prepared everyone something to eat before going to bed.
It was horribly cold. I was already in the wagon when Mother came to fix the beds. While she was doing this, we heard a loud, "Ma, what ya doin' in there all this time?" It was Aunt Victoria's son, William. He was standing by the fire which hardly warmed him on one side, waiting for his mother to fix his bed in the wagon.
The next morning, Dad and all the rest of the menfolk—including my brothers—started out with the hope that they could reach civilization. The women and children were left behind in the camp. Mother refused to be left behind. The first thing I knew, she was trying to put a pair of pants on me. I objected to wearing boys’ clothing, so we compromised by putting them on under my dress. Thus prepared, Mother and I started out. We walked in the path the menfolk had made earlier. Fortunately, it wasn’t snowing, and the snow wasn’t terribly deep to begin with. Mother walked in front, but she walked too fast for me, and I got behind. She turned and called me to "Hurry up, Lilly Ann!" and then—not waiting for me to catch up with her—she walked on. I kept trying to keep up with her, but great lumps of hard snow had formed on the heels of my shoes, throwing me down as fast as I could get up. By this time, Mother was quite a distance ahead of me, and I was frightened of loosing track of her. I saw her stop and look back. She called to me to come on, but she was too far away for me to tell her what the trouble was—that I couldn’t keep up with her because of the snow balling on my shoes—so I continued to struggle along as best I could.
We trudged along in this tedious manner until we reached a small building which turned out to be a small sawmill. Mother disappeared inside. When I caught up with her, I entered also, and stood clumsily on my two ice-numbed feet. Those "ice cubes" on the ends of my legs didn't seem to belong to me at all, although I don't think they were frozen solid.
I stopped near the door and saw Mother talking to a couple of young men about our desperate situation. One of them spotted me and sat me down on a long seat built against the wall. I didn't say anything. He was a stranger, and I was too cold and exhausted to speak.
I hadn't sat there very long before I heard sleigh bells! That was a good sign that help was on the way. There was no sweeter music on earth (next to June Beetles!) than the sound of those sleigh bells that day. When I think of them now, my eyes mist over with tears and a fullness fills my throat; they were literally the bells of salvation.

A well-dressed young man entered the sawmill. He got me and my mother into the sleigh, bundled us up in warm robes, and headed for Heber City where he made his home.
On the way we passed other sleighs going in the opposite direction. They had some of our menfolk along, and were on their way to rescue the stranded segment of our party.
The latter day saints had good sleighs and fine horses. Under the family's guidance, they quickly went to the rescue of the marooned Parks family members farther back in Strawberry Valley who were just sitting there in the snow waiting for whatever fate had in store for them. Knowing the wonderful impression they had made on me, I wondered how the rest of my kin would feel and react to the music of those heavenly sleigh bells and the sight of those caring Latter Day Saints.
The man who rescued me and my mother took us to his home where we were welcomed by his family. Later on, the rest of the Parks family joined us there. We stayed for two weeks. All the other members of the expedition were given care and located in homes of their own for the rest of the winter.
The Mormons who took us in had a large, lovely home, and appeared to be moderately well off. One could see the look of prosperity nearly everywhere all over the city. Well dressed people drove around in their smooth running sleighs, with a couple of sleek, well fed horses at the front. Tinkling bells filled the air with sweet music, giving the whole thing a heavenly air.
They had a daughter about my age and a younger boy. We children played together. I recall one incident in particular while I was in Heber City. I was in the playroom with the two Mormon children and had just discovered some beautiful buttons which were on a doll's dress. I admired the buttons, and fearing it would be taken away from me, I put the doll dress behind my back. Oscar saw me, and his face took on a decided stern expression. "Don't take those buttons," my brother scolded me. I didn't reply. The situation was tense, to say the least. The owner of the dress—and the buttons—saw what was happening and said in a calm voice, "Let her have the buttons if she wants them."
Oscar ignored me, and didn't say anything more. But somehow those buttons had lost their attractions. I hadn’t meant to take them for my own. In fact, I think I learned right then and there that one could take things that didn't belong to him. I laid down that doll dress and went on about other activities, but I never forgot that lesson.
Later, we moved into a log house. It had three or four rooms, and was sparsely furnished. It was obvious even to me that the place was cheaply built. But we had enough to get along with, so we were right in our natural element.
We didn't see any of our fellow travelers until spring.
One afternoon, a couple of Mormon elders called on Dad. They sat down in the livingroom to talk. Earlier that day, I had been given a little piece of gum. I chewed on it for a while, then "parked" it and couldn't remember where I put it. I hunted around the kitchen for a while, then wandered into the livingroom thinking maybe I had put it somewhere in there. Not finding it, I wandered from room to room. I felt I had to find that gum, for it was doubtful when I would get another piece.
While I wandered in and out of the livingroom, now and then I caught a low spoken word from one of the men. Actually, no one said much, so I didn't hear much. But the elders were so well dressed and prosperous looking, I felt certain they were on business, and I wondered what that "business" might be. Later on, Mother told me the elders had extended an invitation for us to stay on in Heber City. But Dad explained our situation in a satisfactory manner—that we wanted to settle in Oregon. Incidentally, I never did find that piece of gum, and finally decided that I must have swallowed it.
A young doctor and his wife and family lived on one side of us. One day, Mother went to visit, and she took me along. They were nice, sociable people, and had a daughter about my age. The girl brought out a doll and showed it to me. It was a store-bought doll, I knew, because it was still dressed in a short chemise. Dolls came dressed that way in those days.
That doll was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. It was about 12 inches tall, was blue-eyed, pink cheeked, and blond haired. That type of doll was called a "wax" doll.
The girl offered to let me hold it. I took it in my arms and cast a wishful look at Mother. She smiled a little and shook her head "No!" I took this gesture to mean that I couldn’t have a doll like this one. Before long, Mother and I went home. I didn't mention the wax doll, and neither did she. I knew I couldn't have one, and that was that.

On the other side of our house lived a plural wife. In 1887, Plural wives were legal and common, but every man did not live "plurally." The woman told Mother she was "willing" to "let" her husband marry another woman. She seemed to think it would be very convenient for her to have someone at home to leave her children with when she wanted to go some place. Perhaps she had a point. This plural wife was living in a house just like the one we were living in, and she had several children.

If polygamy shocked the rank and file of Mormons when they first heard of it, it positively outraged their gentile neighbors. Throughout the West women were scarce and much of the antagonism for the Mormons after they reached Utah undoubtedly arose from the basic resentment of womanless frontier men confronted with a system in which one man had several wives.
The question then remains as to how women were lured into polygamy when the frontier offered so many single or widowed men. The answer lies at least partially in an ingenious system of supply and distribution that was a by-product of the Mormon's continuing recruitment of new followers. Ceaselessly the Mormon elders sent missionaries out into the world to seek new converts for "the gathering of Zion." Cannily, they fastened on England as a principle target just at the time when the Industrial Revolution had uprooted thousands upon thousands of English people from rural and village life. To the dispossessed and impoverished lower classes now thrust into the horrors of mid-19th Century factory and sweat shop, the message of salvation brought by the Mormons must have appeared to be a duel one: eternal bliss in heaven and a much-improved material existence in faraway Utah.
People from the British Isles—among them thousands of young women cut adrift from their rural families—enlisted in the new religion. Once proselytized, the converts were carefully herded by a chain of missionaries over the ocean by ship, past the temptations of the East Coast cities, and then across the wide empty plains and mountains to the desert fastness of Utah. Many young British women did not know what lay ahead of them. When they reached Salt Lake it was literally too late to turn back or to resist. Friendless and poor in a desert land, they were in a real sense trapped. To many an impoverished woman in the wilderness, polygamy must have seemed the lesser of evils...
Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's Wife Number 19, wrote that her mother confided that polygamy "was the most hateful thing in the world to her, and she dreaded and abhorred it, but she was afraid least she be found fighting against the Lord." Religious devotion—blind and submissive—was what basically drew women into subjecting themselves to a condition that was for most of them heartbreaking.

One day, shortly after I held the beautiful wax doll, I was playing with a small girl from this home next door, when I was stricken with a terrible pain in my left side. We were playing in our front yard, so I stopped what I was doing and went into the house. My mind went blank for some time. The next thing I remember—the following morning—Mother and the doctor's wife were standing by the side of the bed discussing me. I was terribly sick, but I still managed to listen to their conversation.
It seemed the doctor had been called in and had ordered me to be wrapped in a wet, hot blanket and sweated. But apparently I had objected to this treatment unless I was given a wax doll! "Yes," I heard Mother say, "she said that was her price." Mother had to smile a little, and the doctor’s wife laughed. Then she said, "She can have the doll; I will get it for her." Then she turned tome. "Now Lilly Ann, you let them sweat you," she said, "and I'll see that you get a wax doll. I can't do it right now; I'll have to wait until my little girl comes home from school. Then I'll send her down town to get you a doll just like hers."
I didn’t express my gratitude; I was just too sick. I don't even recall bargaining over the doll. But I did want it and sort of sensed that things were working my way. I was thoroughly sweated, and the wax doll came just as it had been promised. They laid it on the right side of my bed, where by turning my eyes just a little, I could gaze upon its sweet loveliness. Later on, when the doctor came in he said quite jovially, "Well, Lilly Ann, I see one member of the family is all right!"
Mother and my sister Verna both had had the same ailment, although their cases were lighter than mine. The disease was known as mountain fever.
After a while, I was up and around the house, but I was still feeling like a ghastly wraith of my former self. I walked around with my precious doll clamped tight against my thin stomach; I just couldn't get enough of her beauty.
One day, disaster struck my small world. I discovered that my doll's face was dirty! I hunted up a small cloth and proceeded to gently wash her face. I has utterly amazed to see the pink in her cheeks begin to fade from the water. I took a long, long look, then let out a howl one could hear a block away. I couldn't be consoled; I cried and cried over the damage I had done to my most precious possession. Since I had not harmed her badly, I finally decided I would have to make the best of it, and I did just that. However, I can assure you, I never washed her face ever again.

Spring came, and gain the old covered wagons rolled along the prairie on their way Westward.
As we moved farther Westward, Indians became a familiar sight, riding along the trail single file on their spotted ponies. Everyone was pretty much in awe of them at first, but after seeing so many, we finally became accustomed to their presence. They were friendly enough, to be sure, and for that we were thankful.
One day while a long line of them filed by our wagons, a squaw, seeing Oscar was barefooted, stopped long enough to ask where his "mocks" were!
Sometimes it was moving day for the tribe. It appeared as though an entire tribe would come riding by, with now and then a travois trailing along behind.
One Saturday evening we camped close to a small river, and also to an Indian Reservation. The next day, some of them paid us a call. There were four of them, and all were dressed in their Sunday best. The braves nobly walked around the camp looking at everything. There wasn't much of a conversation, considering the language barrier. Everyone around the camp tried to look pleasant and just sort of smile a tense situation away.
Mother and I sat down on a small log which laid right in camp. Verna was, no doubt, with some of the girls her own age. Dad stayed close to our wagon. I could see he was straining to look as hospitable as possible. I thought he was succeeding quite well, and so was Mother, considering how afraid I knew she was of those unknown strangers. I didn't feel too good about them myself.
A young squaw, well wrapped up in a blanket, came and sat down on the ground close to us. Mother and I smiled at her, but she didn't pay much attention to us. She just sat there and stoically looked the other way.
While Mother and I were trying to look as pleasant as possible, the blanket on the squaw's back moved aside a little, and a small, black-eyed mite peeked out, much to our surprise.
One of the braves was wearing a beautiful feather headdress. About this time, he walked over to a small tree standing on the river bank and leaned against it. It was a fit subject for an artist's brush as he stood there casually looking the place over, yet appearing to see nobody. While he was doing this, I was giving him some of my attention. He was tall, and had an attractive blanket around his shoulders. The blanket came well down to his legs, but did not conceal the white buckskin pants he wore. The whole eagle feather headdress framed his black hair and dark, stoic face. A pair of leather moccasins completed his attire.
Our way lay across arid deserts where there was just an occasional well. Here, travelers must stock up with enough water to last until the next stop. Five gallon cans were used to transport water. They used the square kind, and ever wagon had two or three strapped to its side.
Dad had his quota, and also some old guns. These latter were more for moral support. He just hoped that anyone seeing his guns—with an evil intent in mind—would get an eyeful of heavy armament. For the most part, they weren’t any good. However, Dad did have three guns that really would shoot. The other wagons were more or less equipped in the same manner. In those days, just about every man was called upon to shoot a gun some time or other in his life. Just the same, I don't recall much shooting during the journey West. Folks were too intent on getting to their destination.

There was a time we ran out of water while crossing a desert. Mother held a cup to my lips with a little yellow, brackish looking water in the bottom of it. I took a good look at the water and turned my head aside. Then Mother told me, "Lilly Ann, you'd better drink this; this is all the water there is."
Out of water. Even I knew what that meant. We were crossing a desert. What would that mean to us? I wondered how long we had been out of water. Apparently for some time, as Mother was now offering me that last bit she had. No doubt she had saved it for me. Mother, now with an anxious look, offered the brackish sludge again. This time I firmly refused; I didn’t want the water. I hadn't even asked for it, but Mother—knowing this was the last little bit—wanted me to have it anyway. When I refused the second time, she said, "All right, daughter, if you don't want it, I'll drink it." I watched her swallow it; she looked like she needed it badly.
The next day—about midday—we reached a well of good water, and I sensed the relief it brought to everyone. A small, clean stream paralleled the trail for a while before we reached the well. The water looked tempting, but everyone had gained intimate knowledge the past few months of its drinking qualities.
However, the need was great, so someone took a container and brought some of it back to be tested. They had visions of making a pot of delectable coffee out of it. But that water was so heavy with alkali that it probably would have borne up an egg!
Our lack of water may have caused considerable suffering, but nobody complained. I rejoiced when we had at last reached cool, clear water farther down the trail.

Grandpa Charles had a brother living in the state of Washington. His name was Ballard Parks. We stayed at his home for several months. Our family—and Grandpa's—lived in the house. Uncle Leander and his family, along with Uncle Harvey, located farther back in the faming country. I didn’t see them all summer. Uncle Bal, as we called him, had farming property farther back in the interior. They were busy planting and harvesting crops. They took my sister Verna along with them to cook meals for them.
Uncle Bal was a widower and had two grown daughters, Mary and Lottie. Both women married brothers by the name of Palmer. Mary, the oldest, lived on a farm in the Willamette Valley. They were also hop growers. Lottie and her husband, Henry Palmer, lived on a ranch about four miles above Elk City.

Uncle Bal’s home in Eastern Washington was a large, two-story frame house, painted white. It was set well back from the very turbulent Snake River.
The surroundings were rugged—the mighty Snake on one side and a series of hills on the other. A road wound in and out among the hills, dipping down to make a turn near the house. Frequently great herds of cattle could be seen passing along the road, either going to a new grazing ground or market.
Down the river a short distance from the house was a large warehouse. Riverboats stopped there. The Snake River was a very difficult river to navigate; boats simply struggled up it. We used to watch them coming and going.
Sometimes passengers came there to take the boat. Perhaps the boat stopped by a prearranged date, or maybe it was coaxed in or flagged. I don't recall.

One day my brother Paris discovered a young Chinese boy was in the warehouse waiting for the boat, and told the news at home. Grandma Cosby and Mother wondered if he was hungry. They were aware he didn't have any way of getting food. After wondering for a while what Chinese people ate, they fixed him a bowl of bread and milk and sent Paris and me down to the warehouse with it. When we arrived, Paris called to him, and told him what we had for him to eat. The boy was grateful and thanked us profusely.

Then there was the time a middle-aged woman stayed the night with us. I remember her well. That evening, the children were playing hide-and-seek down on the sand. We had some unusual company that evening. The menfolk had come home from the wheat fields, and brought the women along. I was just about to make it to home base—which was a rather large log with rough bark on it—when my hand came down with such force that I struck my left wrist on the rough bark. I cried out loud and was taken home. When the woman guest saw me, she came and took hold of my wrist and said, "Lilly Ann, I'm a doctor. Let me examine your wrist." She examined the sore wrist and thought one of the bones might be fractured, so she ordered it bound up. I wore the bandage for a short time and the wrist was all right once again.
It seems that uncle Bal had an enemy. Dad kept a large dog to guard the place, and one day he found it dead on the sand. Right after that, Grandma Cosby found a paper bag containing candy sitting on the fencepost. It had been placed near the road, supposedly with the thought in mind that some of us children would find it. Grandma brought the candy into the house and set it on the table. Before she had a chance to explain how she came by the candy, Uncle Bal, who happened to be home, picked up a piece of the candy and popped it into his mouth. Grandma's cry of warning caused him to take it out in a hurry. She explained the situation to him. Later on, he felt the effects of the poisoned candy slightly.

In the late autumn when the harvesting was over with, the travelers once again got together and the wagons began rolling over the rocky trails on the way to the Oregon Coast. The Parks family planned to locate near Elk City.
At that time, the wagon trails were new and rough. It was the rainy season, which made traveling unpleasant and treacherous. The folks planned to stop a while at the home of Lottie and Henry Palmer, and luckily everyone arrived safely.
It was the latter part of December 1888, when we arrived at our final destination. It had taken us about two years—counting the stopovers—to make the journey Westward.
Lottie and Henry, and their three daughters, lived on a homestead. Nellie Palmer was born some time after we arrived.
The Palmers had a large two-story house painted white. They had many rooms, but considering there were so many of us, it was likely we camped close by.
As soon as we arrived, the menfolk began looking around for a place to locate. For a while, Uncle Leander settled down with his family on a farm near Elk City belonging to Dr. Franklin M. Carter. They rented the farm from him as sharecroppers. It was a large farm with a good-sized livable house, a barn, and other outbuildings. There was an orchard and well and several acres of good bottom land. They stayed there for about five years. Aunt Victoria had two girls there—Verna and Ollie.
Grandpa Charles located on some land in back of the Palmer place. He built a small house out of riven boards and settled there for a while.

Dad took up a homestead from a man by the name of C. B. Mays who ran a small general store in Elk City at that time. He tore the existing two-room "box" house down and brought it to its new location from across the river on a scow. Harvey and Charles helped him reconstruct it on the homestead site.
Reconstruction of the box house was a most difficult job to do. The underbrush was so thick where they wanted to rebuild the house, that they had to crawl on their hands and knees to clear the site. Finally, they got some of the brush cleared away and then rebuilt the house, adding another room on for a kitchen. In the meantime, Mother, Paris, and I and sometimes Oscar, lived in a one-room cabin made of poles. This cabin was a mile or so down the river from the Palmer place, and was across the Big Elk. We had a small dugout canoe for transportation when we had to cross the river, and from there on we walked.
Several acres of cleared land surrounded the place. It had been covered with a small hardwood growth called vine maple. This wood grows in clusters and has branches that often bend over and take root in the ground. The wood was, no doubt, used to build the cabin. The menfolk had done a rather good job of it at that. It was crude, but warm. We had bunkbeds along one side of the cabin, and there was a fireplace in which Mother prepared our meals. We lived in that place for several months. The weather was like summer when we finally left it.

There was a fair-sized hotel in Elk City, owned and operated by the Marsh Simpson family. Marsh headed the operation, but his wife, Joyce, did most of the work. Marsh could usually be seen somewhere around the river—fishing!
My sister, Verna, now about 16, went to work at the hotel helping Joyce.
One evening, she had to go to work, so Mother and I stood on the river bank to see her go across. Charles was home, and he was to take her across. That old dugout canoe looked mighty risky to me, but Verna thought if she had come over in it, she could go back the same way. She eased herself into it and sat down in the stern the same way. She wasn't a large girl, but she just seemed to fit that end of the canoe. As she got settled, the canoe did likewise: It also "settled!" Verna knew what was happening. She gazed at the ever nearing water. When it seemed to be within an inch or two of the top of the canoe, she gave one mighty heave and rolled over the side of the canoe!
Fortunately, this incident happened a few feet from shore. She couldn't swim, but she had been around the water some. So, before anyone could aid her, she thrashed her way back to shore. Charles and the canoe stayed upright, and he came back for his soggy passenger. Mother wanted Verna to return to the house and put on dry clothes, but my sister insisted on going to work as she was, so Mother let her go.
While we were at the homestead Dad took up from C. B. Mays, I learned to read a little. All I had learned in school was the alphabet, and that had been two years before. Still, I hadn't forgotten everything. With the help of a third grade reader which belonged to Verna—and Mother to pronounce my words—I learned a couple of pieces.
As far as work, there wasn't much to do. Paris took care of the wood problem, and Mother cooked simple meals. The rest of the time, Paris and I played around with bows and arrows, or made little stick "prisons" along the side of the small creek which ran near the house. We filled these prisons with such small creatures as we could catch along the creek. These small critters didn't stay inside the little fences we made for any length of time, which was a good thing for them, no doubt.

One evening, Dad "suddenly appeared." He came to tell us that we were going to move into the new home. While we sat around the fire that evening, Mother told me to read to Dad. I sat down with my book, and by the light of the wood fire, I read to him. Dad "rewarded" me with a big smile. He was a very quiet man, and never talked much about anything.
Shortly afterwards, we moved. Mother and I walked to our new home.
The first mile, we had a good dirt road. Then, in order to stay on our own side of the river, we followed a rough trail the menfolk had cut out around the side of a steep hill.
Before we started on the trail, we stopped at the Dave Ramsdell place—the old fish hatchery—where Pauline (Fine) and Harold Parks live now—to get acquainted with our new neighbors and to rest a while before starting out over the rugged mountain trail for home.
After we told the Ramsdells who we were and rested a while, Mother and I started for our new home again. We arrived without any mishaps. Mother set about getting her house in order.
The new house had three rooms, none of them large. It also had three windows. The menfolk made three beds, which were equipped with slats but not springs. A straw tick was laid upon the slats and then a feather mattress.
With help, Mother set up two beds in the bedroom, and one at the end of the long kitchen. The kitchen was narrow and had a small window at one end. The door was at the other end.
While Mother was thus employed, I took a look around and decided she didn't need all that room because she didn't have anything to put in it. Without saying anything, I decided to make a playhouse. I chose the livingroom. Then I went outside and found some long, wide boards and lugged them inside The house. I set them up against the wall. Seeing that everything was to my liking, I crawled inside. I must have taken some of my treasures along, as I recall setting my table. At this point, I heard Mother say, "You'll have to move, Lilly Ann. I want that corner." Horrors! Tear down my playhouse? I just couldn’t see what Mother wanted with so much space. Nevertheless, I tore down the playhouse and lugged the boards back outside.
That night, while Mother and the children sat around the fireplace, Dad worked; he tacked wallpaper on the livingroom walls.
Originally, the house had been papered with a red floral print, and before Dad had torn it down, the paper had been carefully removed. Now he was putting it back on the walls again. In those days, people reused everything.
The walls were single [sic] with bats nailed on the outside to cover up the cracks. The livingroom and bedroom was sealed with the same wide boards as was the floor. These, in time, splintered up quite badly. There was a double window in the livingroom and one in the bedroom. I was given the bed nearest the window. Mother hung a curtain between the two beds. There wasn't much room beside the beds, but what clothes we had were hung on nails against the wall.

Charles went to work for a man who lived about a mile above the Ramsdell place. This man was a brother of Clara Ramsdell. Charles was there for several months.
Harvey homesteaded a government claim a few miles above the Palmer place. We saw him occasionally, but he lived alone. No doubt he was lonely, but he never complained about his solitary existence. Grandpa Charles decided to live close to Dad, so he located on some land over the hill from where we lived. There was plenty of fir timber on these claims to make houses, so the menfolk, knowing timber, cut them down with heavy saws, and after cutting them into the right length, they made riven boards. They used wedges to split the timber, hitting them with heavy mauls. Some of the wedges were of iron; others were of hard wood. From these boards they made Grandpa a two-room house and other outbuildings. He had a large barn for storing hay, as well as livestock. Dad also had a large barn and other outbuildings made from the same boards.

In addition to putting up houses, they cleared a lot of land of its dense timber, mostly vine maple. It was conducive to good soil, so once it was cleared away, they had no trouble in seeding the soil with timothy grass for hay. Before they cut down the timber and sawed it up, they grubbed out the roots. They worked from early morning until evening. However, they didn't work on Sunday; that was their day of rest.

Aunt Nanny and Uncle John took up a homestead on the other side of Grandpa's place. They built a log house and lived there for about five years. In order to make ends meet, John worked away from home a good deal of the time, clearing land for other people. Finally, they moved away. After that, they continued to move around a good deal of the time. Finally, they located above the Palmer place, and lived there for a while. They had two children while living on the homestead—a boy and a girl. While living on this place, they lost their daughter, Frances; she died from scorfula [sic]. Her Mother had it also, but it never seemed to come out in any of the rest of the family. Had she lived, she might have passed it on to another generation. A girl had to die!; the men didn't have it. After Frances passed away, the Watkins family moved often and finally left the state.
Dad and Grandpa raised considerable livestock, which they sold at certain intervals. Both families raised good gardens which supplied their tables. Just about anything could be grown there without much labor.

Later that summer, I started school at Elk City. Oscar and Paris were so badly needed at home that they didn't go. I had to walk two miles to school over rough road, and after being ferried across the river, I walked by myself to Uncle Leander's place. From there, I went the rest of the way to school with my young cousins.
At that time, we had only three months of school out of the year. It was conducted in a small, one-room cabin. Later on, that building was removed and a larger one-room building was built in its place. The old-style high, homemade desks were replaced with desks from the factory. This building remained for as long as I went to school. I never attended class much, though. If the term started in the autumn—which it did sometimes—the rain made the rough road impossible for me to go. Sometimes sickness in the family kept me home.
If school started in the autumn, Oscar and Paris went. In the course of time, they managed to acquire some book education.

Verna was married the following summer to Commodore Perry Bevens (1859-1913 OR)—"Tuge" as we usually called him. He was a young brother of Joyce Bevens Simpson. They made their home with Tuge's parents who were well up in years. The Bevens' lived about one half mile from Elk City in the direction of Pioneer.

Tuge and Verna were married at our home, and when the ceremony was over—and they were getting ready to leave—I insisted on going along! Her bridesmaid was to blame. I knew Verna would go home with Tuge. When the wedding was over, I went into my portion of the bedroom and was standing by the window. I didn't feel too good as it was. But when that strange young woman came in and began "twitting" me about losing my big sister, it was too much. I burst into tears and refused to be consoled. I wanted to go along with them, and there wasn't much they could do but take me along!
Tuge took us home in a rowboat. The Yaquina River and the Big Elk joined were Elk City is located and flowed into the Pacific Ocean as one. The Bevens' home was located on the Big Elk. When one wanted to reach their place, they rowed down to where the two rivers joined and turned into the Big Elk Fork.
The newlyweds didn't want me along, and I knew it. They treated me all right in spite of it. After an hour or so we reached the Bevens home. I met Tuge's parents for the first time. His mother, Mary S. (1821-1893 KY), was a tiny woman, about five feet tall and very quick in her movements. His father, Hudson J. Bevens (1819-1902 KY), was about six feet tall and inclined to be stout. Verna had been staying at their place for several weeks, so she felt at home with the Bevens family. Mary Bevens wasn't very well a good deal of the time, so Verna had been called in to help the family out.
Before long, we sat down to a nice supper. We ate in the kitchen. I sat beside Verna, so she helped me with my supper. I spotted some round white balls on a dish. They looked good, so I quickly nudged Verna a little and looked at the dish. Verna understood and promptly put one of the balls on my plate. I thought it would be sweet; I loved sweets. But when I cut off a small piece and put it in my mouth, I was sadly disappointed. That ball was cottage cheese! I kept the token sample it in my mouth, but left the rest on my plate.
After supper had been cleared away, Verna and her new spouse went out for a walk. I stayed with Mary Bevens contentedly enough, but after a while she took me upstairs and put me to bed in a trundle bed. I didn’t like that one bit. After I looked at the situation I was in from all angles, I decided that I had brought the whole thing on myself. I laid there quietly and fell asleep, and slept soundly all night long.
The next day was Sunday and Mary Bevens was giving a dinner for the newlyweds. Dad and Mother came down. We had a nice dinner, and I went home willingly with my parents. After all, I had performed my Sisterly duty and saw Verna safely launched on the sea of matrimony!
By 1895, Verna had a boy and a girl. Mary Etta was born July 12, 1892. She and I were only 11 years apart in age and shared birthdays the same day of the month; I was born July 12, 1880. About three years later (1884-?) Edgar was born. Tuge's mother was dead; She died in the winter of 1893. I stayed with Verna and helped out with Etta when Mary Bevens was sick. I was with her when Edgar was born too. I helped my older sister with the housework as well as with the children.
During that time I stayed with the Bevens, I sometimes heard Tuge play his violin; he played beautifully.
Uncle Leander stayed on at the Carter farm about five years, where his two girls, Verna and Ollie, were born. Then he moved his family from Elk City. About that time, the Baley family children were married, with the exception of Thomas and Molly, who many years later—after both were married and divorced— married my brother Paris.
A couple of years after moving on the hill, Aunt Victoria had another boy. She named him Walter. Then two years later she suddenly died. Mary (1878-?) was then about 18 years old. She kept house for the family for about a year and then she married Bill Griffith around 1897. They moved to California. Hattie kept house until she was 17 or 18, and then married Lonnie McDonald around 1896.

After the death of her first child, Verna's mind was sorely troubled, so she sought help in prayer. The house was small, so after the supper had been cleared away, she would step inside the entry to the stairway and close the door. Closing the door gave her the privacy she wanted, but it also left her in total darkness.
One evening, Verna had just eased herself into the stairway and had closed the door, when she heard something swooping down the stairs! Its wide wings were brushing the walls as it came. Verna put her hand behind her hoping to find the doorknob, and fortunately she did. She let herself out of the closet—and weak-kneed—she entered the livingroom where Tuge and his father were. Tuge took one look at her and said, "What's the matter? You look as white as a ghost!" Not wishing to explain the phenomenon she had just experienced, she said the cat had frightened her.
Joyce Bevens Simpson stayed one night hoping to hear something strange. But she picked a bad night. It stormed heavily, and she didn't hear one strange thing. Uncle Harvey didn't hear anything either, but he picked a bad night also.
It seems Harvey road horseback from his ranch at Elk City, and not caring to ride back in the rain, decided to stay at the Bevens place. He rode up there and was welcomed, so he put his horse in the barn for the night. He was given the bedroom off the livingroom. By this time, Tuge's father was dead, and in the course of solving the mystery which hung over the house, the rest of the family had moved upstairs.
Uncle Harvey had just gotten settled in bed when he felt the bed shake. He didn't like it, so he said, "If you do that again, I will get up." The bed shook again. And then something white—about the size of a pillow—floated across the room. The setup was too much for Harvey; he preferred the storm to what he had been experiencing. He dressed and went to the barn for his horse and rode through the wild night to Leander's place.
One time Mary Etta decided the upper part of the house would be a good place to play, so she spent some of her time up there. The trunk was in the attic over the bedroom, and it held some clothing which had belonged to her grandmother. Etta found the clothes and had fun dressing up in them.
One day, she became badly frightened. She saw something dressed in black crossing the room. She didn't see the face, but the other garment was held up, showing a white skirt. The skirt had lace on it and the lace was set up on the skirt. Mother said that was exactly how Etta's grandmother dressed; she had helped her dress. The robe was too long for her; if she walked in it, she would have to hold it up. And the white skirt she wore had lace on it; the lace was set up on the skirt!
Mary Etta, scared out of her wits, ran as fast as she could down to the orchard where her mother was.

My many thanks to Diana Edmonds, granddaughter of William Parks, for sharing with me additions to the Parks family history. She acquired this material from Pat Dunford, who made "minor corrections in spelling where sure, but otherwise left alone." Many of the additions came from Millison Bevens Thompson, granddaughter of Hurston Parks. She states she "added the pen notes to the typed copy" by Lilly Ann Parks Adams, the daughter of Hurston Parks.

Robert Park(s) married an Irish woman by the name of Hardick. The Hardick's were big strong people. Some of their children were: Charles, Ballard, Cage, Harris, Shelton and Sally. Shelton died in a Yankee prison. His son, Cage, had his heel shot off at Gettysburg. Another son, Jim, was a scout for the South. Harris was a scouts captain for the South. His son, Tom, was a guard. Will came West and taught school at Big Bend, Washington. Francis, Charles and Bill went away and were never heard from again. Sally Parks married a man by the name of Buskirk. Ballard settled ten miles west of Colton, Washington, on the Snake River where he raised stock. The couple had eight children: Wade, Robert, Gale, Jim, George, Mary, Lottie and Florence. Charles married Margaret Buskirk. Their children were: Joe, Hester Ann, Hurston, Leander, Mehalie, Harve and Nancy. Joe became a doctor and died of tuberculosis in Florida. Hester Ann married Henry Lewis, a brother to Cosby Lewis Parks. Mehalie married Hamilton Marrs who was the brother of Clarissa Marrs. Nancy Parks married John Watkins.

Robert's son, Charles Parks, served in the army under the Southern flag. At that time, he had six children: Joe, Hurston, Hester Ann, Leander, Nannie, and Harve. He served four years in the army, but during that time, on account of sickness, he was given leave to return home. His wife, Margaret Buskirk, died, and after providing for his children, he returned to his regiment. Cosby Lewis, only a few years older than his children, moved in to care for them. Margaret's father had a land grant on either the Big Hurricane Creek or the Big Sandy River in West Virginia. But Charles later he returned home, and this time he married Cosby Lewis, a sturdy, dependable woman. Cosby Parks was about five feet, six inches tall, and had dark brown eyes. She could neither read nor write. She was a good cook and sewed shirts for the men and dresses and skirts for the women. She worked beside Grandpa in the fields then did the housework while he rested. She could walk miles and miles. She was the sister-in-law and mother-in-law of Hester Ann Parks who married her brother, Henry Lewis.

Years went by and the children grew up, and some of them married. Huston married Clarissa Marrs from Kentucky. She was well built and quite pretty with blue eyes, dark hair. She was sturdy and did a lot of hard work. Hurston and Clarissa had seven children: William, Luverne, Charles, Oscar, Paris, Lilly Ann and John. William was born of a Civil War romance between very young people. Suffice it to say that had they married, William would have been William Crocket, son of Robert Crocket, a soldier for the south, and none of the children from the Hurstan-Clarissa branch would have been born. Life is a tenuous and accidental thing. Robert Crocket had to move on with his regiment without his child. He said he would be back but Great-Grandpa Marrs had moved his family and Robert Crocket could not trace them.

William Marrs Parks was a tall, handsome, aristocratic looking man with brown eyes. He was fussy as to clothes, and on the street wore a suit and bow tie, along with shined shoes. He grew up with the Marrs grandparents and took care of them in their old age. He married, had a family, and later divorced. Until he retired, he was a railway telegraph operator in Kentucky. He died of a heart attack in Capitola, California during the World War II years. He had just returned from a visit to Kosmos, Washington to see Jack Morris, his mother's sister's son.

Charles Parks left home when he was a young man and never returned or communicated with the family. Lilly Ann and Billie Marrs later lived together in California until his death during World War II. They first lived in Cincinnati, then Florida, before Lilly desired they move to California. When a young woman, Lilly worked in Portland retouching photographs. She made hundreds of raised pictures of animals and birds for use at the blind school in Santa Clara County.

James H. Parks (1887-?), who was 90 years old at the time I taped this conversation with him, March 25, 1977, and has long since died, had lived in the Big Elk Valley since he was four years old. He owned a 920 acre cattle ranch five mile east of Elk City, which he farmed with his son, Dick, who is now tending the property. Their operation included 80 to 100 head of beef cattle, 40 Suffolk sheep, fryer chickens, pasture and timberland.
Bea Willoughby (1892-?) and Jim Parks were married in 1910. They lived for a few weeks with Jim's father, Leander Parks, on the latter's homestead near Elk City. After living several places in the valley, the Parks family moved up to Beaver Creek a few miles from Jim and Bea's homestead where they made their home for ten years. Several of their children were born there.
About that time, the Parks bought their last homesite from Florence Young, Charley Young's wife.
Jim Parks and Lillian Adams were first cousins, their respective fathers being Leander and Hurston Parks. Their common grandparents were Charles Parks and Margaret J. Buskirk, who died after giving birth to their common aunts and uncles. Their common grandmother-by-marriage was Cosby Lewis Parks.

Connie: Your cousin, Lillian Adams, said your great-grandfather, Robert Park(s) and his two brothers migrated to this continent from England in the 1880s. Where are your mother's kinfolk from?
Jim: My mother's folks were from Scotland.
Connie: Do you know anything about your two great-uncles?
Jim: No, but I know that originally the family name was "Park." My grandfather, Charles Parks, and his brothers went to the county seat in West Virginia and had an "s" added onto the family name.

Cosby (Lewis) and Charles Rice Parks William Parks with Sailor
Photo Courtesy of Pat Dunford Photo Courtesy of Julie Hendiricks

On May 5, 2009, Pat Dunford wrote: "[Charles'] wife was Margaret Buskirk. She died during the War in 1863, and Charles came home to do something about the kids. He found Cosby [Lewis] to take care of them (I think her brother Henry Lewis married Hester Ann, one of Charles’ girls, but don’t have the proof). After the war, Charles and Cosby were married, but there is no evidence of children. He was 43, she was 25. As you know, they both lived long and probably healthy lives near Elk City. He died at 90, she at over 81. Actually, we don’t have a death date for her, just that she’s on the 1920 census."

Connie: From what I understand you were just a toddler when the Parks started migrating West. I don't suppose you remember very much about it.
Jim: Only what I've been told. When my folks first came to the Oregon County in 1889, we started from Arkansas where I was born. Dad, uncle Harvey, Uncle Hurston, my grandparents, Charles and Cosby, and my Aunt Nancy and her husband, John Watkins, all came West together. We landed in Oregon in October, and that is as far as the wagon would go.
Col. Frank Parker and his wife Martha owned the family's first homestead—over across the road—and Uncle Hurston and Granddad homesteaded down below. Sulphur Springs were found on the Parker place near Elk City, July 4, 1896.
Dad moved from here down to where Rosa and Don Schriver live near Elk City. Old Doc Carter owned that land then. He went down there and stayed the first winter we were here. The winter of 1890 was when the big flood came and washed everything out.
Connie: Do you remember anything about the flood?
Jim: I know that our neighbor, Dave Ramsdell, went over there and told Dad, "The high water isn't over yet; she's still coming."
As you are probably aware, Connie, Elk City was built on a flood plain. My folks had to go in a boat from the house to the road during that flood.

Joanna Young Parks
On February 21, Diana Edmonds wrote: My grandmother's maiden name was Joanna Young.
She married William Parks. His dad was Charles Rice Parks.
Grandma's mother was a Harlan. I am related to the Parks, Youngs, and Harlans, all on
Mom's side. On Dad's side would be Harrises and Ericksons."

Jim: They moved way back into a pole cabin that old Doc Carter built as a homestead. Then they moved from there up on the mountain near Elk City where my nephew, Elmer Parks, lives now. Elmer and Edward Parks are Iva Allen's brothers.
Connie: Lillian talks about living in a pole cabin on the Henry Palmer place. Was that the same cabin?
Jim: Yes, three families lived there. It was on the ridge of Fred Brown's place.
Doc Carter's homestead was huge; it was about a mile long. Years ago, Marsh Simpson bought the 40 acres Ethel Bryant has recently sold to Publisher's Paper.
Connie: Did Doc Carter tend to any of the Parks when they were sick?
Jim: I remember he was with my mother when she died in 1895 or 1896.
Connie: Bea, where did your family come from?
Bea: The Willoughbys came West from Kansas and settled first in Chico, Washington. Later on, my father, brother and one sister moved to Oregon by train.
Connie: Was that a through train in those days?
Bea: No. We had to change trains in Portland.
Connie: How old were you when your family migrated to Eddyville?
Bea: I was 12 years old. I remember we arrived in Eddyville on February 2, 1904, because it was Ground Hog's Day!
Connie: What happened to the rest of the family?
Bea: The rest of the Willoughbys stayed in Washington.
Connie: Did the Oregon Willoughbys keep in touch with the Washington Willoughbys?
Bea: Jim and I got married in 1910 when I was 18 years old. In the 67 years we've been married, I've been back up there only twice.

Connie: I presume you eventually left your parents' place and got your own land.
Jim: I moved away from Dad's place when I was 21, and I never went back home. Dad moved away and built the house down where my brother Walter's wife, Mary Parks, lives now on the Elk City-Harlan Road about four miles east of Elk City.
I was still 20 when I filed my own claim in 1907. Right after I filed my homestead, I moved in on it and lived there.
The first winter I stayed in a little eight feet by 12 feet cabin that was already there. Bea and I used it for a chicken house after we were married in 1910.

Connie: Did you know any of the Hodges brothers then?
Jim: Yes. Delbert's uncle, Mort Hodges (1881-?), went over there after I had been there just a little while. His dad, Delbert's Grandpa George, got after him and ran him off his place. He went up and stayed all night with my old Uncle Harvey. Mort wanted to stay with my uncle, but Harvey said no. "I'll tell you where you can stay, though, and that's with my nephew, Jim Parks," Uncle Harvey told him.
The next morning, they came over. Most said his dad was mad enough to kill him, but he failed to tell me what the offense was. He asked If he could stay with me, and I said, "I'll be glad to have you stay."
Mort assured me that if he could stay there, it would only cost me what he ate. He said, "Jim, if it's too wet for you to work, it'll be too set for me to work too. But I'll do the cooking. If you go fishing, I'll go fishing. If you go hunting, I'll go hunting. I'll go with you wherever you go."
I said, "Yeah, Mort, that'll be fine." I thought bout it a while and said, "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll get all I'll want to eat from now until spring. When Spring opens up, I'm going to get a job and go to work and pay the debt for this food that I'm eating."
I went and asked Martha Dixon at the Elk City Store about it. When I proved up on my claim, I had one silver dollar left to winter on. I offered it to her. She said she didn't want it. "I'll tell you I'll do, Jim," she said. "I'll let you have any kind of grub that you want—anything to live on. If you're going over there to work, I'll do try and have some. But if I hear of you doing like you did all last summer, I'll shut you off and won't let you have another thing on credit!"
"No doubt you'll heard bad things about me," I said. "But if you do, you tell me what you're shutting me off for, and I'll tell you the truth. If it is the truth, I’ll deserve to be shut off."
Connie: Were you true to your word with Martha Dixon?
Jim: That coming summer, I went over to her place and slashed brush and cleaned up the grounds and helped her make a ranch out of her place. This was how I repaid my debt to her.
So, as I said, Connie, when Mort said he wanted to move in with me, I told him I'd go and speak to Martha Dixon. I told him, "I'm going out to Dad's place this afternoon. You can stay here if you want." But he didn't want to do that, and I finally told him I wouldn't take him to Dad's.
Connie: He had just agreed to be your hired hand. Why didn't you want him along?
Jim: You see, Connie, Mort was a mess; he didn't even have a coat. The holes in the belly and the collar and the wrists were all he had left of his shirt. His pants were just hanging together. He had buckskin string tied around the soles of his shoes to hold them on. I told him he couldn't stay anywhere without clothes!
"I'll see what Martha Dixon says about getting you a pair of shoes and a pair of overalls and a duck jumper and a couple of shirts," I told Mort. "I'll go that far with you, if she'll do it."
Connie: Did she agree to outfit Mort on credit?
Jim: I told her about Mort's clothing needs, and she said, "If you want to do that for him, that'll be fine with me. Now listen," she said. "That's going to be charged to you."
"That's okay," I told her. And I wasn't sorry, either. I never had better help than that boy was. He stayed with me until the fifth day of May. I told him we were going to have to fix up the creek bottom. We had to cut the brush and build a fence. I had some cattle in there, and so did Uncle Harvey. I told him we had to get a garden planted before the 5th of May because I promised I'd log for my uncle.
Connie: What happened to Mort after that? Did he go home?
Jim: I told Mort I was pretty sure he could get a job over at Chitwood with my brother-in-law. He used to hire me and give me a dollar a day and board. I told him that was about all he'd ever pay, but he'd give a hand all he could eat.
Mort said, “That'll suit me fine." So we planted the garden up until noon on the 5th of May; I told him I was going to lock up the cabin and go straight up over the mountain and straight through Bear Creek to go logging.
Mort said he'd heard it wasn't too far through the mountains to Chitwood, so he went over there and got the job. And I got a job with my uncle. I paid off my store bill—and I’ve never been broke since!
Connie: How long were you at the old homestead?
Jim: I was at the old homestead two winters. After I "proved up" on the place in 1914, I rented 120 acres from Elmer Longergan. I own it now.
Then George Hodges sold his old homestead at Salado, because he wanted to get out, and I went up there and bought the hay that was in the barn, and a field of corn, and put it in the silo.
I wintered over there at Salado myself. I fed my cattle there until the first of April. Bea stayed on our homestead, and kept one milk cow. I had my team and saddle horse with me, and 20 some odd two-year-old steers I was feeding.
Connie: Bea, did you appreciate being left alone all winter?
Bea: No. Jim drove home one Saturday evening and told me that I might as well go over to Salado with him. George Hodges had left a stove, dishes and other household items I could use.
Jim: All we moved out of my old homestead was what we could put in my little wagon with sideboards on it. We must have left two or three sacks of flour and a half a sock of sugar when we left. Of course, I was going to go back for the rest of our things.
Bea: I was planning to come and stay a while and then go back. When somebody saw Jim move out with that one wagon, he said, "Jim'll never go back."
Jim: I built a nice house on the homestead, too. It was built in a "T" shape and was 16 feet by 26 feet. It had a kitchen attached to it, and there was a porch on each side of the kitchen. I put brick flues in the house, which were made up of ship lap. It was a heck of a nice house, even though it wasn't painted. It was Frank Lange who built it for me, and by golly he did a darned good job.

Connie: Did Mort ever work for you again?
Jim: The next summer was when I built my log cabin where I stayed for two years. I worked out all that summer and managed to have a couple of fat hogs butchered, packed in, and salted down, as well as a winter supply of fruit laid in. I went there after supper one night, and who should knock on my door but Mort Hodges! "Are you there, Jim?" he inquired. "Yes, very much so! Come in," I answered. I told him to get a plate and sit down.
While he was eating supper he said, "Do you know why I came over here?"
"No, I can't say that I do."
"I came over here to see if I could stay with you again this winter."
"By golly, that sounds good to me," I said.
"Well," he continued, "I'm going to charge you a little bit this winter." He looked around and spotted a couple of Winchesters I had sitting in the corner.
“By golly,” he said, "I see something that I want, and you haven't got use for so darned many of them. I'm going to stay with you like I did last winter, but you’ve got to give me that gun."

I went over to my place after the Fourth of July with a couple of boys to mow hay, and my house was burning in log and chunk piles. I don't know for sure whether I burned it or if somebody else burned it. Elmer Longergan always said I burned it to collect insurance, but I didn’t have a nickel of insurance on it.
Connie: Was there any truth to that?
Jim: Well, I was smoking a pipe then, and I had smoked up all my tobacco. I chewed tobacco at that time too, and I put some off my plug and put it in my pipe and tried to get it to burn. I had shaved the shingles right there next to the house, and the wind had scattered them all over the yard. I was lighting a match. I went over there about the 29th of June. I had sheared my sheep and went over there to haul wool out. My son Wesley was about seven or eight years old and he wanted to go along with me; we had dinner there. We loaded up the wool, threw a few things in the wagon—like an axe and other things we had to have. I was walking backwards and forwards there, striking a match and trying to get the pipe to burn, and throwing it down. I never stopped to think about the thing burning; I never thought I had energy enough to burn my house down. If some of the stuff there had been taken, I might have thought it was foul play.
Connie: Had anything been taken?
Bea: No. The flour and salt and sugar and soda, my nice long coat with big buttons, all of Jim's clothes, etc., were there. I just don’t think we were ever robbed.
Connie: Then who do you think burned your house down?
Jim: The only thing that I can figure is that I burned it down myself—accidentally—with scattered sparks from my pipe.
Connie: I’m confused. Was that the house at Salado?
Jim: No. We didn’t stay at the Hodges place at Salado very long; it was a temporary feeding station for the cattle.
When the cattle had finished feeding on the hay I brought them at Salado, I shoved them over to the homestead. They went out by the head of Bear Creek to feed. I went out there on Sunday and didn't find them until it was getting dark. It was fine feed in there, so I decided I'd leave them there and go back in the morning and move them.
We were living at the Brown place at the time. The house that burned down was the same house that Vernon Brown had lived in. There were 400 acres there, and I rented that from Badger Brown to pasture my cattle.
Connie: When did you and Bea move to this place?
Jim: I bargained for this place while we were living up at Brown's.
Flo Young, who had been my teacher at Elk City School three different terms when I was a kid, always said she was going to sell it to me when I first was taking up a homestead. She was going to run a race with me, and have her spouse and son slash and tear this 80 acres up. "When you prove up on that, I'm going to sell you that 80. You just make up your mind that you're going to buy it." I told my dad when I was 16 years old that I was going to buy that 80 acres. But after Youngs bought it, I thought it would be out of the question. "You've got a better chance to get it now than you did then," she said. "I've decided I'm going to sell it to you."

Connie: Did the Hodges move back into the Salado house after you moved out?
Jim: Not at that time. George Hodges sold his Salado site to an old Dutchman, George Bieloh, after I had rented it from him. I had paid the rent on it for still another year, but Bieloh thought I should have to relinquish my rent agreement, just because I had moved out of the Hodges' cabin up to the Brown place, and therefore was no longer residing there. The house at Salado leaked so bad that I had to move out! Bieloh had his own stuff moved in there—a team of horses and a cow or two—and he never said one word to me. He had an old man—about 75 years old—living with him to help run the place.
One of the neighbors was down at Elk City and got to talking to the old man and said, "That place is already rented; the rent is paid up on it. I know that to be a fact, because Jim Parks showed me his receipt."
That old man didn't know what he'd do. He came and talked to me, and wanted to know if I'd rent the place to him. I said yes. I had given old man Hodges $150 for it, and I told him I wouldn’t take less than $200, as I had already done some plowing and seeding.
"Well," he said. "I'll tell you what. I can't do anything else but promise you I'll take it if you'll let me stay there."
Connie: Did you agree to let the old man stay on at the Hodges place?
Jim: "I wouldn't want it to be said that I left an old man out in the cold," I told him. "Yeah, I'll do her."
The old man told George Bieloh the deal he had made with me. Bieloh told him, "That's entirely up to you. As far as I'm concerned, when Jim let you move in, he gave up all the right he's got there."
The old man answered, "Well, I don't know so much about that. Jim Parks had witnesses to prove that I said that I'd guarantee his money."
Connie: Did the old man keep his word; did he pay you the $200?
Jim: One day I went by the place, and the old man hollered at me to "Come on up to the house, Jim. I want to tell you something. I've been working for the old Dutchman for a long time. You've got to hit him just the right way. When he's got money, he's willing to pay. When he hasn't got money, he'll swear he doesn't owe it! So I’ll tell you what," he said. "If I gave you half of that money now, and told you I'd pay the other half later, would you believe me?"
I said, "By golly, old man, I would! I don't really think you're a dishonest man." I had never seen him before, but he didn't talk like he was not to be trusted. So, he paid me half and by gosh he dug up the other half in time. He was a nice old man.
Connie: How long did the Dutchman own Salado?
Jim: Eventually Hodges went back to Salado, and ran the old man and the Dutchman out because he was delinquent on his payments.
Connie: What happened to George Bieloh after that?
Jim: Bieloh went and bought the Dave Ramsdell place—where Pauline and Harold Parks live now.
Connie: If he couldn't made payments to George Hodges, how did he swing that?
Jim: He went down to the Lincoln County Bank and borrowed money and paid cash for the place.
Connie: Did he keep up his mortgage payments to the bank?
Jim: No. The bank ended repossessing the place back because he was delinquent on his payments.
Connie: What happened to the old man who was working for George Bieloh?
Jim: The Dutchman gave the old man a bill of sale for nearly all he had down there—the cattle, machinery, what have you.
The old man had taken sick. I was going to town one morning, and he had gotten some men who were building a bridge across the Big Elk down there to stop and help him butcher some hogs.
There were three of them. They told me that the old man wanted to see me, and if they saw me to be sure and send me over to the house. I went over there, and the old man was sicker than the chickens! He asked me if I’d haul those hogs to Elk City and send them to the Dutchman on the train.
Connie: Did he expect you to drop everything and slaughter the hogs?
Jim: No. He had quartered them and cut them up and got them ready to salt before he took sick. He even had them boxed up. So I told him I'd be glad to take them to the train.
Connie: Did the bridge crew help you out any?
Jim: Yes. I got those men working on the bridge to come down and help me load the hogs into my wagon.
"You stop by when you come back," he said, "and tell me you got them on the train."
Connie: Did you stop by and reassure him his cargo got safely on the train?
Jim: I sure did. He had me loaded down with heads, feet and ribs; I had as much meat as the Dutchman!
"That's all yours for hauling them to Elk City," he said. "I've got no money."
"I wasn't going to charge you anything anyway," I told him, "but I sure appreciate all this meat."
Connie: I notice you have cattle and sheep. When did you start raising sheep?
Jim: There's an old feller I'd like to mention here because he treated me more like a son than my father, Leander, did. He really helped me out when I was first getting started. "If you know of a bunch of sheep for sale," he said, "let me know."
I went over to Chitwood one Saturday, and there was a woman with a bunch of young ewes she wanted to sell. There were lambs that had never been sheared as well. I asked her what she wanted for them, and she said she didn't know. "I'll take $5.00 a head for them," she finally decided. "I'll throw the lambs in to boot."
"Will you hold the deal off," I asked her, "until tomorrow noon?"
"Yes I will," was her reply.
"Well," I said, "I'll let you know for sure by tomorrow noon." I rode on up to Eddyville and told the old man about the sheep and said, "Why don't you buy those sheep? I don't have any money myself or else I would."
"Are they good sheep?" he asked.
"Well, I think they are," I replied.
"Then you'd better stay all night with me," he said. "You can stay in the barn. You needn't go any farther."
He took my horse and unsaddled it. The next morning when I got up, he had his horse saddled and mine too.
"We're going to go down and look at those sheep," he said.
We went over and looked at them. "Those are fine looking sheep," he said. “I wonder if the old woman has raised the price on them."
"I don't know; we'll find out," I answered. I went back to her house and asked her if she'd raised the price on those sheep, and if she still wanted to sell them.
"Why sure I still want to sell them, and I told you yesterday what I'd take for them," she said.
The old man was deaf. "What did she say, Jimmy?" he wanted to know.
"She said yes, she'd sell them," I said loudly.
"Would you take a check for them?" he wanted to know.
"I don't know why I wouldn't," was her reply.
He got down on his knee and wrote out a check for the sheep. We ran them home and into a shed. At the time, the old man lived where Pauline Howard had that restaurant on Little Elk past Eddyville.
"I'll call up my Uncle Harvey and have him send one of the boys down to help us shear the sheep," I told him. I thought they were his sheep; I didn't know any different.
"Don't tell them these sheep are yours!" he warned. I heard what he said, but I honestly didn't think he meant it.
One of his wife's brothers came down with a shearing machine and sheared the sheep. It was one of those you put on the wall and had to turn. I turned it, and he sheared four or five of them.

Connie: How any sheep were there in all?
Jim: I think there were 20 of them. By golly, I got 12 or 14 lambs! They were nice lambs, too.
The old man took three old grain sacks and ripped them open and sewed them together and brought them to me. He had some twine and tied the wool up in the sacks.
"Where are you going to put the sheep?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I answered.
"Those are your sheep, Jimmy! Where are you going to put them?," he insisted.
"Well, if they really are mine, we'll take them over to Bear Creek," I said. The next day, we drove the sheep over to Bear Creek as planned. He took the wool and shipped it out and gave me the check.
As I said before, Connie, he did more for me than my dad ever did.
Bea: I can vouch for that; he was almost like a father to Jim. His wife was the same way.

Connie: What was Elk City like in the early 1900s when George Hodges had a sawmill there?
Jim: Elk City was really hoppin' old George had his sawmill there. He employed local people at his mill. There were a lot of loggers living all around.
The town had two hotels, two barrooms, two stores and a whole lot more.
Connie: Was everyone farming and logging? How did the early east county settlers make a living?
Jim: The Daniels, for instance, only had about two or three acres of land. Most of the homesteads went right up the side of the mountain and there was very little bottom land for crops.
Wendell Hopkins bought a bunch of railroad land around Deer Creek. They built a big fine house in there. Others raised sheep, goats, and cleared land for crops.
Connie: It sounds like you were doing okay. Did you ever get into any financial difficulty?
Jim: I mortgaged my homestead to buy fencing after I proved up on the place. I paid the mortgage on the old place, and let the county have it for taxes; I never got a dime out of it. In fact, I went back and took off all the woven wire fence and brought it over here.
Connie: From what I understand, George Hodges got into the same boat and never paid the mortgaged on his place.
Jim: That's right. Old George never paid the $2,000 mortgage on his homestead; his son, Dell Hodges, was left to pay it off after he died. Bea and I were there at the party where we helped celebrate having paid it off. In other words, Connie, George "gave" Dell the place, but, as it turned out, it really wasn't a "gift" at all because of the mortgage against it!
Connie: You must have known George Hodges quite well, considering your homesteads are only three miles apart. What do you remember about him?
Jim: For one thing, George was a US marshal in Texas and a county sheriff here.
He and Dell were both fire wardens here for a long time. They went around and gave people permits to burn, and looked at fires that were already burning.
Connie: Were run-away fires always a problem in the Big Elk Valley?
Jim: In the late 1800s—when this country was all in fern—had the young fellers who liked to hunt kept their fire in their pockets, this area would have been nicely covered with fir trees. It wasn't the livestock—as the forestry department claims—that kept the fir trees down; it was fires.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. I quit mowing my old homestead two years and the trees were up too big to cut anymore; they had come up as thick as they could be.
There had been stock running on that old place of mine all the time. It was only when there weren't any more fires that the trees came up thick and 12 to 15 feet high.
Connie: Supposedly cattle are eating the trees that are being planted these days for reforestation.
Jim: Well, I really don't know too much about the trees people buy these days and transplant. If the cattle bit off the tops as some folks claim they do, they must be putting something on them to make the cattle do it!
Leonard Grant will tell you that there were 2,000 head of Angora goats running up there on Saddle Mountain at one time. Now the trees are up solid, so it is obvious to me that the goats never kept the trees down either. The only place they kept them down was in their bedding grounds, but they didn't rip the tops off any trees.
Connie: What do you think would give the saplings a better chance for survival?
Jim: The forestry department would get more trees to grow if they'd sow grass. The only place WOW got trees to grow was where I sowed two or three hundred pounds of grass seed in there. When they burned it, and they went in there to plant trees, grass was coming up. Afterwards, the only place the fir trees grew was where I sowed the grass. Where we didn't sow grass, alder and vine maple came up and froze out the fir saplings.
In my pasture—on the other side of my barn where the cows are all the time—the trees are just as thick as they can stand.

"MR. FIXIT, please state in your column that were are seven pupils in a mountain school that has no electricity and we would like a Victrola. We love music."
The guiding spirit back of this plea from a tiny mountain school district near Toledo was Laura R. Mack, who in nearly three decades of teaching has passed on to thousands of children the beauty she sees in life.
Through the Journal's "Mr. Fixit" column came a number of offers to send Victrolas to music-hungry youngsters. Among these generous responses was one from Ms. Kathryn Hoyt, through whom word of the school reached this writer. When a reply from Ms. Mack informed her they already had accepted an instrument from a source nearer the school, Ms. Hoyt again responded with an offer to send records, a gift to the school children.
During the ensuing two years "Sub-31" as the school is known, received many albums of fine music from the Portland woman. Then one day Kathryn Hoyt drove down to visit the youngsters and their kindly instructor. She reached the school, some 160 miles from Portland, after following a road that at times seemed little more than a ranger's trail. It was just as it had been described to her, sitting on a knoll above the road, looking as if it were cradled in the lap of the close-crowding mountains.
It was newly painted a shining white for Ms. Mack's return. The two front windows on either side of the front door gave it a look of wide-eyed curiosity. Ms. Hoyt was entranced with the setting, and the children were delighted at the chance to get acquainted with their hitherto unseen benefactress.
Kathryn Hoyt so thoroughly enjoyed herself that she plans another trip to Sub-31 this autumn, when Ms. Mack will be back for her third consecutive year.
Two years ago, Ms. Mack had decided to quit teaching. She was already several years past the time of retirement for teachers in Oregon. During the summer, however, she realized that this "resting" business was more tiresome than teaching and a lot less fun in the bargain. So she went to the Teachers' Placement Bureau in Portland and asked for the smallest school in the state.
She was directed to Sub-31 in the Coast Range—the smallest in need of a teacher at that time.
The patrons of the district numbered three families, and four of the seven pupils were from the same family. This autumn there will be five from that family.

Ms. Mack did not always teach in one room schools. She taught in the slum districts of New York and Chicago. At one time she was head of the art department of the Eugene schools, then of the Oregon City schools.
In her new, highly unique post at Sub-31, she found the people industrious, thrifty yet content with their way of life. She has earned among them a revered and respected place in the community such as few teachers are accorded.
A great deal of time naturally is devoted to the "three R's," but these youngsters rush toward mastering them as they realize these "tools" are needed to read about their birds and animals.

Ms. Mack fostered the organizing of an Audubon Club. Last year Freddie Shewey was president, and Janice, his sister, secretary. The political implications of this concentration of power seem to bother the children not a whit. They have learned the thrill of watching at close hand through a pair of fine binoculars the building of birds' nests, and the manner in which the bird families grow to maturity.
Ms. Mack believes wholeheartedly in the words of Francis Wayland Parker (1837-1902):

Character constantly realizing itself in practical citizenship, in community life, in complete living, is the immediate, everlasting, and only purpose of the school.

All of her pupils are learning the duty of the stronger and older toward the younger and the weaker. They have a chance to explore, to investigate and to satisfy their curiosity.
About 20 steps from the neatly painted school building itself is the little shingled cabin that was fixed up for Ms. Mack to live in. Just one of the inducements to insure her return. The first year she boarded with a family close by, but the weather was such that at times she found it difficult to climb the knoll to the school.
Last year the icy condition of the road and yard kept her confined to the schoolhouse and her cabin for six weeks. School has never been closed for bad weather or sickness, although one day last winter seven pupils were dismissed because the carburetor on the oil furnace froze. The man who came out to fix it had to tunnel through the ice and snow and under the building to get at the furnace.
There are no lights of any kind in the school and the Christmas programs are always given in the afternoons. This does not keep the fathers away, though. They are always there—all three of them!

Connie: When did the Parks family settle in Elk City?
Iva: The Parks were some of the later pioneers in the Elk City area.
There were three brothers and one sister who came here in 1889, bringing their families from Arkansas by wagon train. There was Hurston, Harvey and Nancy Parks Watkins. They settled on the banks of the Big Elk. Nancy Watkins and her spouse and children lived for a short time in the valley and then went back to Oklahoma.
Leander and his family lived on a ranch owned by Col. Frank Parker and his wife Martha where Jim Parks lives now. They moved to the Dr. Franklin M. Carter Ranch where Schrivers now live, but they had to leave because of high water in the winter. The banks of the Yaquina and Big Elk rivers are flood plains.
That winter, three families lived in a log cabin on the hill above the river for a time until Leander homesteaded the old home place at the head of Blair Creek. He lived there many years, raising his family of eight children: Mary, Joseph, Will, Jim, Hattie (1878-1915), Ollie S. (1884-1914), Verna and Walter. Uncle Jim is the only living child.
The older children were born in various states—West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas. Ollie was born on the Carter Ranch. Verna and Walter were born on Blair Creek. Uncle Jim is his only remaining child.
Hurston Parks settled one and a half miles above Elk City on the Big Elk. He had only a wire foot bridge to cross the river. He lived there until 1925 when he moved to Washington.
My brother, Elmer Parks, lives on the old home place near Elk City at this time.
Nancy Parks Watkins and her family lived five miles above Elk City where Tancredis live now.
Connie: What did Grandpa Leander do for a living?
Iva: He was a shoe cobbler. He had a little shop here in Elk City when they had the rock quarry up at Morrison Station. He mended shoes for the men who worked at the quarry.
Later on, when we were up at the old homestead, the old shoe molds were there, but we didn't think about saving them or taking care of them.
Connie: What did your dad do for a living?
Iva: My dad was in the moonshine business, as were most people at that time.
He started because he was sick and had to have an operation, and of course he couldn't work. He had a bunch of kids to support so he made moonshine.
I never could stand the taste of whiskey because it made me think of the old moonshine pot. The folks would get it going and make Cleo and me watch it. It stunk something terrible.
I remember one winter they ran it off on the kitchen stove.
Dad set a barrel of mash with sugar and cracked corn and water on the stove until it got to the right temperature.
He used to use a wash boiler for making moonshine. He would hew lids out of maple. Then he'd mix up flour and water and make a gruel to fit down there in the boiler. Then he'd fill that with water and flour and as the stuff got hot it would cook that dough and seal it.
It had to hole on top, and the copper tube came out and down and wound around and through the keg of cold water. When that steam went through there it condensed it and it ran out, and ran through a charcoal filter.
The moonshine had to run twice. The first run was poison. After the second run, it would run around 100 proof.
It had a taste and smell all its own. The only thing pleasant about it—if you can get it down—is the after affects.
As I said, Connie, nearly everybody did it; they had to survive.
Connie: Once the moonshine was made, how did your folks sell it?
Iva: They'd make contact with the distributors and leave it at certain places, or they'd take it over the hill on horseback and leave it down there where it'd be picked up.
I'm not sure, but they must have been paid on delivery.
Mom used to bring the moonshine down in a suitcase and get on the train and take it to Toledo, deliver it and come home.
I don't know who my parents' connections were; I don't remember.
Anyway, Dad finally moved his still across the river and up Palmer Creek a ways. We lived on that place up there.
Connie: Was your dad ever arrested for moonshining?
Iva: Yes, but it didn't stick. We got word that the revenuers were coming to look for dad one time, but he didn't pay any attention. I guess he was setting up there and had the still running and was just sitting there whittling a stick when they found him.
So they took him to Toledo and locked him up and a sheriff told the revenuer to tell Mom to come down the next day. She told him how many kids she had to feed, and if they locked him up the county would have to feed them all!
Well, they turned him loose, and didn't even fine him. After that, he didn't make moonshine so steady. Once in a while he'd run some off, but not very often.
Now it's funny, but at the time it made things rather exciting.
Connie: Were you born at Elk City?
Iva: No, I was born at Harlan, but I lived at Elk City too.
Connie: Did you go to school at Harlan?
Iva: No, I went to school up at Bear Creek on Uncle Jim's place.
Connie: Did any of your Uncle Jim's kids attend Bear Creek School too?
Iva: Yes. When my cousins, Wesley and Bob went to school there, they did chores before school and they'd get by the fire and smell like the barn! My cousin, Juanita Parks, also went to Bear Creek School.
J. K. Canterbury was hired to teach the first school two miles up the Yaquina from Elk City according to some of the old-timers.
The next school was built at the forks of the road at Elk City. My dad and uncle attended school there.
Connie: You spoke the Parks having to leave the Elk City area because of high water during the wintertime. Where did your family go during floods?
Iva: Just as sure as the water got high, the folks wanted to go to Harlan to see Grandma and Grandpa Young. They’d go down and ford the river with a team and wagon and the wagon bed would be floating. I could look back and see the suitcases floating around. It scared me to death.
It would take all day to make the trip clear up to Harlan where the road, in the bad spots, would be corduroyed with alder trees. The trees were right up close together, making a solid road. The wagon would go bumpity bumpity.
Connie: Were the roads bad all year round?
Iva: No, the roads weren't quite as bad during the summer they were during the winter.
In 1924 or 1925 when I was a kid, up where the Tancredis live, they only graded the road once a year, and that was in the summertime. They had an old motor-powered grader. The rest of the time, the road crew worked for a dollar a day with pick and shovel with the old horse-drawn scraper.
Connie: What kind of recreation did folks in the Harlan area have when you lived there?
Iva: Nellie and Bill Davenport and Ella and Charles W. Brown lived up Drift Creek. They were wonderful neighbors, and were always having dances over there. Dancing was the only recreation people had at that time. They would go from house to house and put on dances.
Dell Hodges, Clyde Hodges and Walt Parks were fiddlers. Most people had organs, so different musicians would cord along with the organ. We did square dancing, waltzes and one steps.
Connie: Did the dance parties ever get out of hand?
Iva: You bet. There was a lot of partying going on outside. Sometimes they got pretty wild.
Connie: Tell me a little bit about Elk City.
Iva: Elk City is located at the junction of the Yaquina and Big Elk rivers. It was platted by Marsh Simpson in 1866.
Marsh, as everybody called him, was born in Kentucky in 1838. He crossed the Plains in 1845 and first settled in Polk County
He married Joice Bevens and moved to the coast. He took up a land claim when the middle part of the reservation was opened for settlement.
He laid out the town in streets and lots which soon began to build up.
The Corvallis & Yaquina Bay Wagon Road Company put up a warehouse in Elk City when the oyster people, Winant & Company, operated a store.
The wagon road came through from Chitwood by Dudley Trapp's ranch, on over the hill and down past the cemetery, to the point across from Elk City.
Marsh Simpson had a store here and also ran the post office for a time. Thomas J. Blair built a hotel and called it the Blair House.
Elk City had two lodges, the IOOF Hall which was above the store, and the artisans, which was in the upper story of the building.
Connie:When did Kit Abbey come into the area?
Iva: Kit Abbey, who was born in New York, arrived in Benton County in the autumn of 1851 and located a claim four miles from Corvallis.
He made his first trip into the Yaquina Bay country in 1856 with Eldridge Hartless and Dr. Thomas J. Right, who had been appointed surgeon at the Siletz Agency.
On the way they met Lt Philip H. Sheridan and a party of soldiers who were cutting a trail over the mountains to the reservation.
Abbey lived in Corvallis from 1862 to 1865 when he took up a place near Elk City where Ella and Jack Scoville now live. Kit Abbey was Ella's grandfather.
Connie: Who had cars in Elk City when you were a kid?
Iva: Dick Abbey and Jim Dixon, who owned the store, had cars.
I remember my sister Cleo and I brought the cream to town in the horse and buggy. We'd meet one of the cars on a grade and our horse would start backing up. We'd be just almost over the bank and then he'd go ahead.
Connie: Did other people in the area sell cream?
Iva: Everybody sold cream. We'd separate it and then we'd bring it down to Elk City in a buggy to ship it to Corvallis by train.
We had mail twice a week and could send the cream with the mail carrier for 25 cents and that was better than making a trip to town.
Connie: When did Dr. Kellogg come in here?
Iva: In 1866, Dr. George Kellogg located the town of Pioneer, which is also near the Scoville place.
Connie: And Barney Morrison? Didn't he settle at Pioneer?
Iva: Barney Morrison and his wife, Zimma Stoner, settled at Pioneer in 1878. They raised a large family of eight children. Here's his obituary:

Barney Morrison (1827-1907) died at his home at Pioneer, September 24, 1907 at the age of 80 years, three months and 24 days. He was born June 1, 1827 in Washington County, Tennessee. He was married April 1, 1846 to Zimma Stoner. The couple had six girls and two boys. Of those living, Ruth Embree of Dallas, J. H. Morrison of Washington, Chelsey L. Morrison (1859-1940) of Pioneer, Tabitha Simpson and Josephine Bevens. The "good wife" [sic] survives him.

Connie: What about Thomas J. Blair?
Iva: T. J. Blair, who operated the first hotel He was born in Illinois in 1830. He crossed the Plains with his wife to the Willamette Valley in 1853.
In the spring of 1854, he settled on the south fork of Mary's River in Benton County. Two years later, he moved to Yaquina Bay.
Blair was the treasurer of Benton County in 1884.
Connie: Dr. Carter was another early settler. What do you know about him?
Iva: Dr. Carter was one of the early settler. As I said, he owned the ranch where the Schrivers now live. He married T. J. Blair's stepdaughter, Olive Barker, in 1876.
Dr. Carter attended schools at Eugene. Later on, he attended Wilbur Academy. From Wilbur, he went to Willamette University where he graduated from the Medical Department.
Shortly after graduating, he was appointed physician at the Siletz Agency were he served many years.
He started practicing medicine in 1871 when he returned to Elk City. He had been practicing for over 60 years when he died.
Connie: Dr. Carter sounds like such a humanitarian. Was he interested in the well-being of the community at large?
Iva: Yes, he was always interested in current events and in good roads, bridges, and ferries.
Connie: How did he make house calls before there were good roads, bridges and ferries?
Iva: He used to have to swim his horse across the various rivers in what was then Benton County when answering calls up and down the coast.
Connie: Do you remember the Elk City Sawmill built by George Hodges?
Iva: Yes, I remember a sawmill built by George Hodges around 1893. It was later run by Jonathan Van Orden (1854-1923) and William F. Enos (1854-1929). Enos bought it around 1908. The lumber was shipped out by water and rail.

Prohibition (1920-1933), widely regarded as a key to progressive reform, became the law of the nation on January 16, 1920, so stated the 18th Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act. Proponents had long asserted that elimination of the saloon and alcoholic beverages would bring much-needed sobriety and efficiency to the workplace and clean up politics. As an example, the Columbia Saloon in Portland was one of the era's many favorite targets of temperance reformers who deplored the connection between alcohol, prostitution, and political corruption. The Amendment had been ratified a year earlier after a long crusade by Prohibitionists who believed that drinking was evil because it often led to drunkenness, especially in the working classes, and that saloons, where men could squander money their families needed, were the very core of this evil.
Prohibition arose from the sincere belief of many Americans, mostly WASPS whose ancestors were early squatters, that drinking, especially among the millions of newly arrived immigrants to the cities, was a threat to law and order. There was some evidence to support this belief. In the large cities, slum conditions were so severe that men went to saloons to escape the depressing reality of their home life. Drunkenness among these men produced rowdyism and crime. The hardworking non-drinking church going farmers and business people in the country districts and smaller communities began to think of the cities as "citadels of sin," for which they blamed alcohol. To combat its bad effects, they launched temperance movements, but the poor, who were most in need of temperance, were least interested in it. Drink was their recreation. Temperance advocates gradually concluded that complete Prohibition was necessary to "save" the people from their thirst.
According to historian Joyce McKay, soda pop was offered as an acceptable alternative to alcoholic beverages during Prohibition:

Although the production of soda pop or soda water was begun in 18th Century England, it attained its considerable popularity in the US at the start of Prohibition in 1919. The sale of soda water in America first occurred in pharmacies who carried it as a medical drink in the early 19th Century. As such, soda water first lacked flavoring, and a sweetening agent was added in the second decade of the 19th Century. Soda pop eventually came in root beer, lemon, lime, orange, grape, strawberry, and cherry. Manufacture and of the beverage did not become commonplace in America until the 1860s and 1870s. This production occurred after improvement in the apparatus to manufacture the drink in the 1830s and in the bottling process to retain the carbonation in the 1860s and 1870s.

When Prohibition began, many people believed the public would soon accept it. Who would risk a $,1000 fine or a six-month jail term just for a drink? But an ominous incident soon occurred in Chicago. Six masked men invaded a railway yard and took $100,000 worth of liquor from two boxcars. It was a professional robbery. Chicago's gangsters could already see in Prohibition a promising business opportunity. Because of the Prohibition issue, liquor was on everyone's mind. People were furious, and drinking was more attractive now that it was while illegal. Saloons quickly reopened as speakeasies, supplied with liquor by underworld dealers and protected from arrest by corrupt police officials. Bootlegging became a vast enterprise controlled by murderous gangsters, who divided territories among themselves, settled their differences with guns, and bribed public officials by the bunch. Their confederation had since grown into what is now known as the Mafia.

Bootlegging is the illicit manufacture and distribution of liquor. Originally derived from the American frontier practice of smuggling whiskey in boot tops to Indians, the term was common by the 1880s when Kansas became the first state to prohibit the sale of liquor. During the 13 years the amendment was in effect, bootlegging was a major industry much like the illegal drug trade is today.
In the early 1920s, bootleggers schemed to supply stuff right off the boat from Europe. Exploiting America's vast coastline, rumrunners operated from Nassau, the Klondike of the bootleggers, and from St. Pierre and Miquelon evaded US Coast Guard cutters in everything from sponge boats and garbage scows to submarines. Most imaginative was the schooner Boise, which fired whiskey filled torpedoes shoreward. Landlubber bootleggers smuggled liquor by road over the Canadian and Mexican borders.
By the late 1920s the bootlegger's major source was liquor distilled from easily obtained corn sugar, yeast, and malt syrup. Prohibition was farmed out to alky cookers or was undertaken in large, concealed distilleries. The resulting liquor sometimes contained aldehydes, fusil oil or salts from the metal coils of the still, and earned the names rotgut, coffin varnish, squirrel juice, or strike-me-dead. Careless drinking could result in blindness, paralysis or death.
But like a good many reform measures, Prohibition never achieved all that its supporters promised. Its fate proved that no reform meant much unless grounded in popular support and backed by a long-term commitment to enforcement.
Gangland and corruption in government helped to bring the repeal of Prohibition by the 21st US Amendment in 1933. Bootlegging diminished, but in 1935 federal agents seized 16,680 stills, and in the 1960s an estimated 50,000 bootleggers were still operating.
The level of support for Prohibition dropped during the 1920s, and its advocates realized only too late that the Achilles heel of any reform law is the willingness of government officials to make it work. The Prohibition experience serves, too, as a useful reminder that one person's reform may well be another's poison.
Not all business people—and farmers—were nondrinkers, however, and many of them were involved in moonshining and bootlegging in Lincoln County, Oregon, regardless of what special agent GSW reported to the governor of the state in his letter of November 22, 1919 as these local pioneers reported:

After making my visit to Lincoln County, I beg to submit the following report:
I am of the opinion that Lincoln County, at present is free from bootleggers. There are no complaints on file with the district attorney, of any violations since the army left this section. There has been one or two rumors that in Newport, there was moonshine being distributed, I would call these "hear say" rumors for this reason that when you come to pin the rumor down, it is handed from mouth to mouth, and there is no foundation on which to work upon, therefore I term them groundless rumors.
The cigarette law is being enforced in this was: all tobacco merchants have given their promises and are living up to their guarantee in selling minors any cigarettes or papers and tobacco for making cigarettes. While the attorney and myself are of the opinion that there are some minors who are using this, yet they get this from other men. The district attorney is going to put forth every effort to see that this is stopped, and that the law is rigidly enforced.
Sometime in September, attorney Charles E. Hawkins resigned and attorney George B. McCluskey was appointed to fill the place. I fin McCluskey a very fine gentleman, one who believes in your office, sympathizes with your work, a very rigid enforcer of the law, capable and willing, and one who we may depend upon to do everything in his power and put forth every effort. If possible attach a "Blue Ribbon" to the law enforcement in Lincoln County.
Of course we must admit a slight hindrance in having a new sheriff in this county, a country young man just being broken into the work, but me thinks without a doubt, that he too, will put forth every effort to cooperate with the attorney in all enforcement of laws in preparing this county in a standard as I am standardizing it. I would class it along with Benton County in law enforcement and in my visit with the district attorney, I assured him that at the present or any time in the future, that if he needs any outside aid obtaining evidence suitable for conviction on any violation of the law, you would gladly send men into the field and that he would depend upon, and he feels these assumed; but at the present time no need of bringing special agents is required, for I see no work for them to do.
Thanking you for the time I have taken in handing you this report, I beg to remain yours, G. W. Snyder, Special Agent

Lincoln County lost a real stronghold of commerce when the excursion trains stopped. Also, when Prohibition ended, the county suffered.
As one story goes: On the way from Albany to Corvallis, people would leave their suitcases on hue train when they got off at those little stations. Then they'd go on down to Yaquina City. On the way back, when ever they got off the train at Nashville, Morrison Station, Summit, or whatever, they'd take their suitcases with them.

They did this because the only place in the country that liquor was available was out on the float in the Yaquina River! They packed suitcases full of liquor back to Albany, Philomath, Corvallis, etc., and they'd get off the train and take their suitcases with them.
There were several saloons out on the floats, with little narrow planks leading out to them. I don't know how the drunk people ever walked those planks! There was some kind of law that stated they could have liquor out on the water but not on the land.
Lincoln County have a lot of female bootleggers in the old days. At one time, we had a "local option," which meant a town could vote to be wet or dry.

As far as Prohibition goes, I never made any moonshine myself. I bought lots of it for resale though. I furnished the materials to make it with, and just about everyone in the Big Elk Valley made it. I used to go up to one still with a saddle horse and pack the stuff back down, five and six gallon jugs at a time. "Don't get up where they can see you," the moonshiner said. He had it down in his garden and sent me word that he had to run off.
The revenuers cracked down on them all the time. I really made money out of the deal. I'd buy it from the moonshiners for $5.00 and sold it for $20 a gallon to the Elk City people. People were in the moonshine business in those days because they really needed the money to make ends meet.

That summer the Elk City Grange built their hall over part of the swale near our house. It was up on large timbers so it would be above the water in winter. It was used as a community center of sorts—where 8th grade graduation, bazaars, plays, and dances were held. That was during Prohibition, but most of the folks had their own personal or favorite moonshine supplier and there were usually some pretty rough fights at the dances!

Jim Hodges said he sat on a keg of whiskey while Earl Conrad could never find his still. He told me he ran the still through Prohibition. He said it was located in a brush pile. Earl Conrad, who was district attorney at the time, and Jim Hodges were great friends. But W. P. McVay was the revenue man at the time, and he hated booze in the worst way. But nobody would help him out in this county, because everybody around here kind of like their booze. He was always trying to get somebody for bootlegging. He made up his mind he was going to get Jim Hodges. Jim told me that he’d sneak around up there where the still was located, but he was never able to find it.
Conrad came to the house one time and said that he had made a chair out of a barrel. The bottom part was full of booze, and old Earl was sitting right on it! That was probably around 1920 or 1930; somewhere in there.

Connie: What are your memories of Yaquina City ?
Violet: My memories were of a flourishing little place. We'd go across the river by boat and walk down the railroad tracks to town. We had friends there. We had heavy shopping to do, since there were some really nice dry goods stores. They didn't have a bank there nor in Oyster City.
But It had one hotel and six saloons! During the time of "local option," people had to vote about being "wet" or "dry." They passed a law that the city could only have so many saloons per capita.
Anyway, someone wanted to build another saloon in Yaquina City, so he built a walk out to a float that rose and fell with the tide, and that was his saloon! They had to walk out to the saloon when the tide was right. People came over on the train with empty suitcases from Corvallis and Philomath which were "dry" towns. They would get their liquor and take it back on the train in their suitcases.
As I recall, Philomath just passes a liquor ordinance a few years ago. They had the "high" religions that just wouldn't let it in

Connie: How did you get started in the moonshine business?
Allen: I was the spoke of the Hodges and the moonshine business.
When we lived in Coos Bay, we had an old Kentucky moonshiner for our neighbor. He took me to his still and showed me how it worked, and taught me the tricks of moonshining. My liquor was good because of that experienced old moonshiner.
Connie: What were some of the tricks he taught you?
Allen: I’d take an old spoke shape—a little plain bit about an inch or so long with a handle on each side of it—and run it like you would a plane, but it cut a little bigger shaving than what a plane would, and I'd plane up a good-sized bread pan full of these shavings and put them in the oven and brown them. Every five or ten minutes, I'd open the oven door and stir the pile so the shavings wouldn't burn. I'd made more than two gallons of shavings at a time. Then I took a gallon jug and set it where it was pretty cold, because in those days we didn’t have a refrigerator. Then I'd take hop twine because it was pretty flexible and put it in coal oil and soaked it good. Then I'd turn the jug upside down and wrap that twine right around the bottom as close as I could get it. Then I set it on fire. When it burned off, it caused the jug to split in two; it split the bottom out. I made a hanger that the jog would hang on. I used white woolen socks or white woolen underwear for a filter. Then I put charcoal into the filter and hung that right on the coil where the alcohol was coming out. It ran through the charcoal filter. That was the first method I used, but there were others.
Connie: It sounds like a lot of work. What attracted you to moonshining in the first place?
Allen: At the time, people got about $2.50 a day for nine hours of work in the logging woods, and paid 75 cents a day board. That left $1.75 a day wages; not much.
Connie: How did making moonshine compare with wages?
Allen: In those days, moonshine whiskey was worth $10 per gallon, and I could make ten gallons from a 100 pound sack of sugar and a 30 pound sack of cracked corn. So you see, Connie, How much more a person could make moonshining than working in the woods for wages!
Right from the beginning—about 1920—I really started capitalizing on it.
Connie: Did you make any moonshine in the Big Elk Valley?
Allen: Yes. Some of my brothers and a neighbor had a still with two barrels at the lower end of a field. We ran several barrels of moonshine there.
Connie: Where did you sell your whiskey?
Allen: We made a batch of whiskey we took to Toledo. We were right up over the hill about where Butler Bridge is now, when somebody squeaked on us that we were there.
Connie: Did the revenuers get you?
Allen: The state revenue man and his helpers came in there. We saw them right on top of the hill in the light, so we just dropped everything we had and took off. When we started to run away, they saw us and hollered, "Stop! Revenue Department!"
Connie: Wow! Did you get away?
Allen: The more they hollered—and they fired three shots—the more we speeded up, but they didn’t catch us. That was on the Millford side of the hill going to Toledo.
Connie: What was your moonshine operation like in Coos Bay?
Allen: When we lived in Coos Bay it was all country and there were practically no roads at all. I would take a rowboat and go up the slough. The flat land there is a tide flat. There's a tide grass that grows up there three feet high. When the tide came in, it would stand clear up, and when the tide went out, it laid clear down. Whenever there was a creek, there would be a channel cut clear into the main tidewater.
And the whole country was just covered with red huckleberries. There was fir timber, but you almost had to crawl through it. The deer made trails, and in order to walk in there you had to get down almost on your haunches in order to crawl through the underbrush.
Connie: Where in that wilderness did you set up a still?
Allen: We went up a little creek about 200 or 300 feet from the tidewater, dug out a cave in the bank, and set our barrels. We had an old coal oil stove so that it wouldn't smoke.
Connie: How long did you run your still at that location?
Allen: I ran a still there for better than a year.
Connie: Did the revenuers ever catch up with you in Coos Bay?
Allen: Once the revenuers got pretty tough on me. They caught me and threw me in jail and I was in for ten days. That was in 1923—about the time the D'Autremont boys robbed the Gold Special and blew up Tunnel 13 the other side of Ashland.
Connie: Did they think you were one of the D'Autremonts?
Allen: Three days before that, there had been a man by the name of Hodges—no relation to us—in Hornbrook that tried to pawn a ring. So they connected me with the D'Autremont crime since I already had a bad record from moonshining and bootlegging and so on. The authorities picked me up and put me in jail for the train robbery and murders!
Connie: This is incredible! Did you know Ray D'Autremont was an acquaintance of mine while I was a student at the University of Oregon?
Allen: You’re kidding!
Connie: I'm not! I even wrote a story and an epic poem about him.
Allen: And now you're a Hodges. That's too much!
Anyway, to continue my moonshine story, I had one of those big boxwood heater stoves, and nearly every night we'd go up to my brother's place and get half a gallon of milk. We'd build a fire with green vine maple and get a pretty good fire in the stove going. We'd shut all the drafts off and put our dishes in the dishpan—the plates on the bottom, the cups on the top, and the knives and forks set around it. We'd set the dishpan on the heating stove. Right back of the heating stove in the corner was the ammunition rack. There were two Winchesters and a .22 set back in that corner. Then in 1929, the house burned to the ground!

Connie: Yours too? Jim Parks said his house burned down and he wasn’t sure what caused it. Did you suspect foul play because of moonshining?
Allen: Well, it’s suspicious. After the house burned down, the dishpan sat across on the opposite end of the house which would be about 20 some odd feet from there, with the dishes all in it. Both the sides of the heating stove were blown right out.
Connie: Was that the result of the house fire?
Allen: No. A regular fire wouldn’t have caused the heating stove to blow up. There had to be something else that caused it to blow up like that. If there was a good fire in it, and the top of it was green wood, then naturally it wasn’t very hot. But if you throw in three or four boxes of shells, it would be an hour or two before the powder would explode. The explosion would have been great enough to blow the stove up. But, if it blew the stove up, it would have had to have blown the dishpan off the top! It just doesn’t seem likely that the dishes would have landed on the other side of the room—right side up—without one dish being broken!
Connie: Considering you were engaged in illegal activities, did you have enemies?
Allen: I really do think some enemy came up there and blew up my house; somebody who disagreed with the way we lived our lives.

Connie: What was your method of distilling whiskey?
Allen: In order to distill whiskey, we took a 50 gallon barrel and heated the waster to a warm temperature. We took a sack of corn and divided it into three parts. We put the portion in the bottom of the barrel, then we poured the warm water in on it. We took a sack of sugar and dissolved a portion of it in the boiler. We filled the barrel up to within four inches of the top with luke warm water. For that amount of mash, we put in four pounds of Fleishmann's fresh yeast. We didn't want the water to be too hot or else it would kill the yeast. Then we dug a hole in the ground four to six inches bigger than the circumference of the barrel, and put fresh warm horse manure in the bottom of the hole. Then we set the barrel in the hole and filled up the outside edge. When we put the warm mash in the barrel, it caused the horse manure to start working and turning warm; in the wintertime, that kept the barrel of mash warm.
Connie: How often did you have to tend the mash?
Allen: I always tried to stir the mash at least once a day.
Connie: How many days did it take the mash to ferment?
Allen: It took four to six days to ferment. After the second day, it would begin to ferment and cause the scum to rise to the top of it. Then it would start bubbling. When the bubbled came up through the scum, it broke up and just phased out.
Connie: What happened after the mash started bubbling?
Allen: When it got to the point where it would bubble, the scum would turn almost clear. If you'd dip your finger in it and sample it, it would taste almost like beer. We dipped that out and put it in the still.
Connie: What source of energy did you use to run the still?
Allen: I ran the still several different ways. Sometimes we ran it on a wood fire, and sometimes on a coal oil stove. We didn’t have gasoline stoves in those days. Most moonshiners used coal oil stoves because they didn’t smoke, and they were hard to trail down.
Anyway, we got three or four boilers full of liquid from one barrel of mash.
Connie: How many gallons of moonshine did you get out of a barrel of mash?
Allen: Out of one barrel of mash I could run about ten gallons of 100 proof moonshine.
Connie: You said in 1923 you spent ten days in jail once for moonshining. Was that your only rub with the law?
Allen: In 1925, I ran a still in Medford and finally lost it in a moonshine raid. That was when I had a still out of Marcola.364 That one was a big round copper can with a dome top. The coils came out of the top of that.
When moonshiners weren't using copper coils, copper this and copper that—this is what caused the poison people got back in Prohibition days.
Connie: You mean fusil oil?
Allen: Yes. Fusil oil is an oily, acrid liquid that forms in alcohol that hasn't been distilled enough to separate the ethyl alcohol from other stuff with a low boiling point. Because of fusil oil poisoning, there was a lot of bitter resentment against moonshiners. Too many of them would take an old iron pot or just anything they could get their hands on to make a still. You’re not supposed to use any metal other than copper to run alcohol through. Otherwise it is poisonous.
Connie: It amazes me that more people didn't die from rotgut.
Allen: Most of the drunkards at that time would take the liquor and shake it up good so the fusil oil wouldn’t show. A person really didn't get enough of it that way to poison him. But, for instance, if a quart of whiskey just came out of the still and was never run through a filter—like the one that old Kentucky moonshiner taught me to make—and was consumed by a person who didn't know any better, he would have gotten enough poison to seriously harm—or kill—himself.
Connie: Tell me about your very first still.
Allen: My first still was an old wash boiler. We took an alder log about an inch wider than the wash boiler was. We cut the log in half and smoothed it down and laid the boiler over the top of it. We took a pencil and marked around the outside. Then we took a chisel about a half an inch wide and cut a groove around the block that the boiler would just fit in. It fit about a quarter of an inch down in the groove. Then he hollowed the top of the log out from the ends, and the sides as much as we could make it for a dome shape at the top. Then we bored a hole right in the center and we put the coil in the hole in the top and that coil went out through a barrel of water. As it boiled, the alcohol came up and went through the copper coil and came out down below—and that was the moonshine!
Connie: How did you calculate the percentage of alcohol you were getting with each batch of mash?
Allen: We had an alcohol tester that told us the percentage of the moonshine. We had to run it until we got it down to about 20 percent. We set that liquid we'd run up to 20 percent back by itself. Then we ran the balance of it out into a container. When we let it run for five minutes, it would run a stream out a half inch coil out of one of those old boilers about as big as a stick match would be. We would run a pint or so, and then we’d catch that and test it. If the mash was as strong as it should be, that was fine. If it wasn't, when we ran the next barrel of mash, we put the low proof (20 percent) stuff back into the boiler in the next barrel of mash. When it went through the boiler again, it would come out pure, 100 percent alcohol! When that started running, it would run around 140 to 150 proof.
Connie: Do the distilleries today run whiskey that strong?
Allen: Ordinary liquor that you buy on the market today is about 80 proof. Moonshine was pretty powerful stuff by comparison. When it came up to 100 proof, we were getting pretty much into the alcohol.
Connie: Did you do any bootlegging?
Allen: The reason I didn’t get into any more trouble than I did was because I seldom did any bootlegging.
Connie: Why was that?
Allen: Bootlegging was the dangerous part of the job—not moonshining. The moonshiner was just by himself in some obscure place and nobody knew what he was doing.
Connie: Once a batch of moonshine was bottled up, how did it end up in the hands of bootleggers?
Allen: I sold the whiskey to the bootlegger for $10 a gallon, which gave me $100 out of a batch. Not bad wages for the times.
Connie: I presume the bootlegger turned around and sold it for a profit.
Allen: The bootlegger cut the whiskey with water to 60 or 70 proof and profited that way from the sales.
Connie: Do you mean he cut it with water and still sold it for $10 a gallon?
Allen: No. The whiskey was sold in quarts and pints. Then manufacturers came out with fifths and even sixths. They looked like quart containers. This is where the bootlegger cheated the man he sold it to, because he always represented the fifth and sixth as a quart!
Connie: It sounds like the glass companies were in cahoots with the bootleggers.
Allen: The glass companies that made fifths and sixths had a good market going. They could sell more of those containers than they could quarts.

Members of the Corvallis-to-the-Sea Trail Partnership
Photo Courtesy of Janet Throop

Little did Mary Williams (1829-?) realized the grief which would soon come to her, when she married and became Mary Williams Cullen in Kentucky in 1846. Alice Armenia, her baby, was six months old and was sitting on a comforter before the fire when Mary, her young mother, opened the door to face the kindly intentioned river men who carried in the frozen body of her spouse.
Young Cullen, with another man, was operating a boat on the Ohio River that winter day when the river rose very suddenly and became a rushing torrent. Their boat was capsized and swept away. To save themselves, they climbed into the top of a submerged tree and tied themselves to the branches with their suspenders. When found, they had been frozen to death.
About a year later Mary Cullen met and married Elijah Grant in Adair County, Kentucky.
Young Elijah, about 22 years of age at the time, was a direct descendent of Elizabeth Boone, Daniel Boone's fifth sister. Perhaps the family heritage of pioneering and adventure made him and his wife, Mary, listen eagerly to the reports of new lands available west of the Mississippi.
Others interested were Elijah's Cousin, Kitturah Huston, known to all the family as "Aunt Kitty" and her spouse, Joe. E. Huston. But they had been married longer and there were greater responsibilities for them to face should they decide to migrate into the West.
The Hustons finally did decide to join a wagon train leaving soon for Missouri. Lands were sold and Negro slaves were given their "choice" of staying in Kentucky or coming West with the family.
The "darkies," Alfred Drake and Mary Drake, his sister, insisted on going with "Marse" Joe and "Miz" Kitty. For many years, Mary Drake was the Huston's Cook and Alfred Drake the handyman, to help and serve as he could.
Together with the Grants, they joined the Westward bound wagon train. There were Elijah Grant with Mary Cullen Grant, his young wife, and Alice Armenia Cullen, his adorable little step daughter, Uncle Joe Huston and Aunt Kitty and the darkies, Alfred Drake and Mary Drake.
They settled on farmlands in Boone County, Missouri. There the two families became more than cousins; they were close friends—helping each other whenever possible and enjoying the friendship and companionship of relatives who had come on before to pioneer in the new country. Miz Mary and Alice Armenia, with her dark curls, had been very dear to Alfred and Mary, the darkies. But after Benjamin Franklin "Frank," a son, was born to the Grants in 1849, and then little Kitturah, two years later, the bonds between the Hustons and their darkie slaves were even closer.
Frank Grant was sturdy and blue eyed. Kitturah Grant, named for Aunt Kitty Huston, and like her, also called Kitty, was a little doll with a great wealth of golden hair and blue eyes. Then came little Huston Grant, the baby, with dark hair like his mother's—a striking contrast to Frank's almost white hair and Kitty's, so golden.
Tales of wealth—picked out of the earth in California—broke into this companionship, and in 1856, Elijah Grant, with his family, again responded to the urge of the pioneer to move into new lands.
Sad goodbyes were said and the Grant family joined a wagon train bound for California. This time the family consisted of Elijah and Mary, Alice Armenia, age 9, Frank, age 6, Kitty, age four, and Huston, barely two.

A young man in the wagon train, John Winston Allen, 24 years of age, became a close friend of the Grant family. Little Kitty became his special pet, and many weary miles he trudged beside the wagon oxen with her in his arms, singing to her or talking to her as he urged the oxen through the dust, mile after mile, and day after day.
At one point, they saw an Indian peering through the bushes as they passed by a cliff of rock. Impulsively, one of the young man aimed his gun at the Indian, killing him. The body fell over the cliff, hurling through space. For weeks after that, little Kitty would awaken from sleep to scream in terror, thinking Indians were all about them to mete out the revenge she heard grownups say was sure to follow.
At the Platte River, they were joined by another wagon train, consisting of the Inmans, the Fromans and other families headed West.
On the trip, Mary Froman, who afterwards became Mary Froman Logsden, and was well known in Benton County, Oregon, wrote in later years:

We used three wagons for the trip across the plains. Four yokes of oxen were hitched to each wagon. A carriage with upholstered cushions also crossed the plains with us.
Seven or eight loose horses were led, and about 70 or 75 head of cattle were driven along with the train.
The wagons were the covered type with sealed beds or boxes for fording the rivers. Instead of bringing sturdy dishes as most of the pioneers did, they brought porcelain dishes. These were laid tightly together in a tub with packing. At one time the wagon turned over and none of the dishes nor the cast iron stove were broken.
Other equipment brought along were lots of bedding, including six or seven feather beds, a dasher (a rotating device for whipping cream in a churn), and other necessary personal belongings.
While crossing the plains, our folks would milk the cows mornings, put the milk in the churn and by evening they would have butter.
It was the duty of one of the girls, Hannah Froman, to always set the sponge (dough) for light bread when they stopped traveling evenings. Before retiring, she would knead it into loaves and bake it before they started that day’s travel.
Provisions for the entire trip were laid in at the beginning of the journey. They included flour, bacon, dried apples, candles, five gallons of syrup, coffee, tea, and also medicines and several gallons of brandy.

The combined train, of which the Grant family was a part, traveled up the Platte River for several weeks. They followed the Immigrant Trail on the north side of the Platte past Fort Kearney before crossing the river.
At the time the two trains came together, Froman had a horse injured. It was turned loose to shift for itself, but it followed the train as far as Fort Kearney. A man there took the horse and treated it and it was said that it recovered.
At the time they crossed the Platte, the water was about half a mile wide up to the axles of the wagons in depth. The men wee told not to let the wagons or stock stop or they would sink in the quicksand. They crossed the North Platte on a toll bridge at Fort Laramie.

Fort Laramie, a military post that operated from 1849 to 1890, was a favorite rest stop for thousands of weary travelers heading West. Narcissa Prentiss Whitman and Eliza Hart Spalding stopped here in 1836 to lighten their wagon loads in preparation for their historic trip as the first white woman across the Rockies. A marker in front of sutler’s store informed us that once Calamity Jane (c1852-1903) visited with a girlfriend. They borrowed cavalry uniforms and roamed around the fort saluting puzzled officers.

One of the fort's responsibilities was to warn the pioneers of any Indian movements in the area, but at least once it seems the forward observers didn't do their job. In the summer of 1864, Sarah Larimer and Fanny Kelly were among 11 travelers in five wagons heading for Idaho who stopped here to inquire about Indian activity. "Renewed pledges of safety on the road" brought instead a band of 250 mounted and war painted Oglala Sioux who surrounded the party near Little Box Elder River, about 80 miles past the fort. According to Sarah Larimer, at first the Sioux were friendly, as they rode along with the wagons and said they would leave after they were fed. "Though to prepare a meal for 250 Indians was not a small undertaking, the work was soon in progress. When all the men were busily engaged, the savages deeming it a favorable opportunity, threw off their mask of friendship, and displayed their true character and intentions." The Indians, fugitives from anglo retaliation for the Minnesota Sioux Massacre in 1862, broke into the wagons and killed several of the men. Larimer and her eight-year-old son, Frank, and Fanny Kelly and her five-year-old niece, Mary, were taken as captives, but 30 hours later, Larimer and Frank escaped. The others were not so lucky. Kelly spent seven months as a captive and little Mary was scalped. Larimer's story, The capture and escape; or, Life among the Sioux, which she published five years later, was such a success that she tried to get a second book out about her friend's experiences, but Kelly slapped her with a lawsuit and wrote her own best seller.

A troop of cavalry was at the fort. The immigrants from Missouri saw the first house there that they had seen since they passed Fort Kearney. A camp was made that night on the bank of the river on a bed of gravel.
Of their stay there, Mary Froman wrote:

There was very little grass for the cattle. It happened that there was another train from Arkansas camped near by. In the night the cattle from both trains swam the river. There was good grass on the other side. My brother and a man from the other train took a horse apiece and swam the river, hoping to be able to drive them back. Neither of them had on any clothes and they got very cold. The water was very swift. In midstream they slid off and caught the horses' tails, that they might be less handicapped in swimming.

At one of the camping places, Mary Grant had washed her children's clothes and hung them on some nearby bushes to dry, when an Indian chief and some of his braves rode into camp. They were greeted by Alexander Chavaughn, guide and Indian scout for the train, who showed them about the camp. As they passed Mary Grant's wash on the bushes, the Indian chief stealthily reached out and snatched a small dress of little Huse's and hid it under his blanket. Elijah Grant saw what had happened and told Alexander Chavaughn.
Stepping quickly in front of the Indian, the scout jerked his blanket open and the little dress dropped to the ground. With harsh oaths and curses the guide ordered the Indians out of the camp. Running to their horses, they mounted and soon were gone in a cloud of dust.
The Inman train had intended to come to Oregon, but hearing of the "danger" from the Indians, they decided to stay with the others and go into California. They passed Table Rock of which Mary Froman said:

It was a great rock standing out in the valley by itself. No other rock was near. It was supposed to be from one fourth to one half mile across the top. It seemed to be perfectly flat and composed of sandstone. There were hundreds of names cut on it.

We camped near what they called The Devil's Gap where the Sweetwater passed through the mountains. We were told that it was so narrow across the chasm that the Indians could jump across it. The walls of solid rock were supposed to be about 100 feet high. The water ran very swift and deep. It was also cold, clear and fine to drink.
One evening when we were camped on the Sweetwater River, some Indians came into camp. Among them was a little Indian Boy about ten to 12 years of age. My sister, Frances, had a very large pin in her dress. He kept motioning at the pin (It was what was known as an "ounce pin," which was put out in a paper, loose, and were about two inches long), and then to the river. In a short time he returned with a nice strong of fish and gave them to her.
He showed us how he had bent the pin and made a fish hook out of it. He seemed very pleased in giving us the fish and they certainly tasted good to us after having no meat but bacon for so long.

Just before entering the Humboldt Desert of Nevada, the trains came upon a lot of springs of water bubbling out of the ground. Some were hot and some were cold. There were two whites camped there. They said that you could place a kettle of cold water in the hot springs and it would boil in a very few minutes.
When they were ready to cross the desert, they filled all possible containers with water, let the cattle drink and then eat grass for several hours. Then just at dusk they started across the desert which was level as a floor, white as a plaster wall, and so hard that neither the wagons nor the cattle made any mark on it.
They lost several head of cattle on the desert. They would lie down and could not be made to get up. The Fromans left a fine Durham cow. A train close behind gave her half a gallon of water, and then she got up and came through.
At daylight, they arrived at the foot of a mountain where there was water, but another train ahead had used much of it which came from a small spring and it was not plentiful.
In crossing the Sierra Nevadas they came to a short hill which was so steep that they took all the oxen off the wagons, but one yoke. Then they locked both back wheels, a man was put at every wheel to hold it back and one man at each side of the oxen to "beat them on the heads" to make them hold back the wagons.
At the foot of the mountains, they found big meadows where there was an abundance of grass and water.

At Chico, California, the two trains divided and some of the families went their separate ways.
The Grants went into Amadore County, California and settled at Volcano. After so many weary months of travel, it was a great relief to everyone to have a resting place. When they unhitched the oxen from the wagons, Mary Grant sat down suddenly on the wagon tongue and wept hysterically from sheer exhaustion and gratitude that they had reached their journey's end. Here the family decided to locate in the midst of the California goldfields.
A pioneer home was established. Elijah Grant worked the goldmines. There was never very much money or many comforts, but the family was happy. Evenings were spent in front of the open fireplace. Elijah Grant read aloud to his family from the Saturday Evening Post and Waverly Monthly. He was a college graduate and educated better than the average person. He was also a wide reader.
Other children were born. Margaret, or "Maggie," followed by the baby, John Huston, who was always called "Huse," William Samuel was born in 1857, and was called "Willie" by his mother and "Sam" by his brothers; then Mary, who died in young womanhood, and Bernice (1869-?), born on George Washington's birthday, and who was "Babe" to the whole family.

Kitty was the first to marry. Wince Allen, the young man who had carried her so much of the way across the plains had never failed in his devotion to the golden haired girl. When she was 16 years of age and he was 36, he asked Mary and Elijah Grant if he might marry her. Thunderstruck, the young girl heard his proposal and responded, "Why marrying Wince would be like marrying my own brother." "But he's kind," her father told her. "He is dependable, honest and thrifty."
She was impressed, and so in 1868 Kitturah Grant became the bride of John Winston Allen, to love and cherish the rest of his natural life.
The Allens established their home at Volcano, near that of Kitty's parents.
On June 3, 1870, their first child was born, and he was named Douglas Allen.

Letters came from the Hustons in Missouri saying that they intended to go to Oregon. Then, soon after, came the letter announcing their arrival in Salem. The darkies, Mary Drake, her brother, Alfred Drake and his wife, Elizabeth Drake, and their three older children came with them. Two other children were born to Elizabeth and Alfred Drake in Salem in later years.

It was in the summer of 1873 that John Stubbs and his wife, Abbie, decided to move to Oregon from Volcano. They persuaded Kitty and Wince Allen to come with them to settle in a farming section of the state.
Little Douglas was three years old and the Stubbs' boy was the same age.
The two families went to San Francisco, and then on board the boat bound for Astoria.
The weather was good and the voyage was uneventful except that Kitty was very seasick. On account of his willingness to make friends with the other passengers, Douglas Allen was very popular.
Arriving at Astoria, the party transferred to a riverboat bound for Salem. They ascended the Columbia River and the Willamette, arriving at Salem the week of the State Fair.
Feeling bewildered and lost in their new surroundings, the two couples rented a small furnished house until they could get their bearings.
Abbie Stubbs carried the family funds of $1,500 in her handbag and the fear of robbers was constantly with the two women.
Upon inquiry, Kitty and Wince Allen found that Joe Huston and Aunt Kitty had moved to farmland in Blodgett's Valley, west of Marysville, which was afterwards called Corvallis to avoid confusion with Marysville, California.

Mary Drake, their darkie cook, had married a negro blacksmith named Bayliss, and was living in Salem. Their “right” to live in Oregon had already been in effect for seven years.
As soon as they heard of the newcomers in Salem, Uncle Joe Huston sent a neighbor, Jimmie Cross, with a wagon and team to bring them to Blodgett's Valley.
Kitty and Wince—and especially little Douglas—were made very welcome. A 13-year-old daughter of freed slave Alfred Drake was Aunt Kitty's "helper" in the house and she did much to "entertain" Douglas. She was very religious and delighted him by carrying him about and singing hymns to him.
A letter came soon announcing that Abbie and John Stubbs were homesick and were returning to California.

Eager to have a home of their own, Kitty and Wince were delighted to find that a farm with a house and barn on it cold be rented, and so they moved upon what was known as the Jerry Lilly place.
Huse told them of land in a valley of the foothills, which was extremely fertile and had not been homesteaded yet. Acres and acres of government land was available along the Big Elk!
Letters were sent to Mary and Elijah Grant in Volcano telling them of the unclaimed land and opportunities for home building. Soon a letter came stating that they were starting for Oregon—overland rather than by sea—by the pass over the Siskiyous.
Only Alice Armenia Cullen, the half-sister of the other children, was left behind. She had married, and some years later died without seeing her people again. The family Bible with the family records, pictures and other precious heirlooms, were left with her for safe keeping. But the family never returned.
Alice Armenia died and the Grant family records passed into other hands to be forgotten and lost until this present effort was launched to bring these events back into focus for the later generations.

When the family finally arrived at Uncle Joe Huston's place in Blodgett's Valley—or more accurately on the Mary's River—there were tears and many embraces to express the joy of reunion. Even the darkies, Mary Drake Bayliss, her brother, Alfred Drake, and his wife, Elizabeth Drake and their children came from Salem to visit the newcomers.
When the two Marys met, Mary Grant threw her arms around Mary Drake Bayliss, and the two women wept. "Law sakes, Miz Mary, I is glad to see you," sobbed Black Mary as the tears ran down her face. By this time, she was very "broad" and "fat," but after the long absence Mary Grant was still to her "Miz Mary" from Kentucky. There was no happier reunion than this one. The black woman loved the quiet, gentle Mary Grant from Kentucky who was near her own age, and they had gone through many trying experiences together in crossing the country to Missouri about 25 years before.

Frank (1849-1940) was the next one of the Grant children to marry. He married Lousetta C. Oglesby, (1854-1921) daughter of another pioneer family. Their children were Cora, Lester, Laura, Willis, Bernice, Elijah, Huston, Leonard (1891-?), Bessie, and Sam, who died in infancy.
Soon after, Maggie Grant, the second daughter, was married to Clark Herndon, and they went to Eastern Oregon to settle at Fossil in Wheeler County.
Then Mary Grant became the bride of Tom Godley. His letter of proposal was extravagantly phrased, asking if she could bring herself to share the life of a "cowboy riding over the billowy bunch grass hills of Eastern Oregon." She shared his life for only a short time, for when their first child was very small, she passed out of this life.
Sam—or Willie—went to Eastern Oregon to follow the life of a farmer and freighter. He was married to Josie Smith, a widow. He was an expert driver, and could handle an eight, ten or 12-horse team, which required real skill to get over the hills on narrow grades with many sharp turns. Two heavy wagons were usually attached to the lead wagon as trailers, and these were drawn by ten, 12 or maybe more horses across hundreds of miles of country to the inland towns before railroads were extended to these towns.

Grief came to Mary Grant's life on September 19, 1880, when her spouse, Elijah, died of glanders, contracted from his work with horses. He was buried in the cemetery at Kings Valley near his good friend and kinsman, Joe Huston, who had passed on a short time before.
On Elijah Grant’s gravestone are the three links, insignia of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), of which he became a member in Volcano.
Left alone with her youngest child, Bernice Capitola, Mary Grant moved to Philomath and supported herself and daughter by keeping boarders. The house in which they lived stood where the telephone building now stands.

Two years later, in 1882, Simon Mason, a "patriarchal" appearing man with a flowing white beard, proposed marriage to Mary Williams Cullen Grant. She knew him as a "deeply religious" man of the United Brethren faith. He had enough property to offer some security to Mary and her young daughter. They were married and moved to the Wamic community in Southern Wasco County to live.

Huston—or Huse—the second son, took government land in Benton County near Philomath. Although a farmer, he also became a minister of the Baptist church and was affiliated with the Baptist missionary organization. Many weary miles he rode on horseback, visiting the small outlying towns to preach the Gospel. He asked for no salary and permitted no collections to be taken in the church service. Individual gifts were accepted as the only compensation for his work in bringing spiritual expression to lonely, hard working families of farmers and stockmen and officiating at weddings and funerals. The coming of the minister was an event of importance in the lives of these people so barren of everything except hard work.
Huse married a young widow, Bertie Ridgeway, with two small sons. Some years later, when his children were small, Huse had driven a four-horse team with a wagon load of lumber into the barnyard when he was struck by lightening and instantly killed.

Four years after her mother's marriage to Simon Mason, Bernice Grant (1869-1936) became the bride of James E. Patison on July 4, 1886. She was 17 and he was 26. They settled on a homestead to acquire their first 160 acres of land by living upon it for five years, according to the requirements of the federal government.

Five years later Mary Williams Cullen Grant Mason was injured when the buggy horse she was driving became frightened and ran, and she was thrown from the buggy. She was taken to the home of her daughter, Bernice, and was cared for there. After some months she died, and her body lies at rest in the cemetery south of Wamic, beside that of Simon Mason, who died some years later.
The descendants of Mary and Elijah Grant now number more than 500 people in many walks of life.
Of the eight children in their home, Kitturah (1852-?), or "Aunt Kitty," lived longest. During the morning of January 31, 1945, at the age of 93 years, two months and 16 days, she quietly slept her life away when Belle, her daughter, came to awaken her. Bernice (?-1936), the youngest, had died on the same date nine years before. Both are resting in the IOOF cemetery at The Dalles, Oregon. Margaret passed on June 1939. William Samuel followed in July 1939, and Benjamin Franklin—or Frank—the oldest of the Grant children, went in February 1940.

Connie: Tell me a little bit about your background, Leonard. I hear you're related to Daniel Boone (c1734-1820).
Leonard: That's right, Connie. My great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Boone, was Daniel Boone's fifth sister. I suppose that's where my "mountain man" nature comes from!
Connie: I've just reviewed a long essay about your grandparents, Mary and Elijah Grant. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents?
Leonard: My father, Benjamin Franklin Grant, who was always called Frank, was born on the Missouri on an old flat boat in 1849. My grandfather, Elijah Grant (1825-1880) was captain of that boat during the Civil War.
My grandparents, Mary and Elijah Grant, migrated to Volcano, California in 1856, to work the goldfields when my father was only 14 years old. When the railroad over the Sierra Nevadas was built into California, he started to work for it. My dad was the head brakeman, which was a position next to the conductor.
Connie: Why did your grandparents migrate to Oregon?
Leonard: Grandpa Grant migrated here because Grandma had asthma so bad in California, and They thought Oregon would offer her a change in climate.
When they got here, they began to write back to my dad about the elk and deer and so on, so Dad got a 90 day furlough from the railroad, came up here, and he never went back to California!
When they first arrived, they spent some time with Kitty and Joe Huston in Blodgett's Valley, because there were no roads into this area. In fact, there was only one family in this valley besides my folks! Their name was Mulkey. William Mulkey (1848-? MO)—or Bill, as we called him—was the one who lived here that I knew well. The Mulkeys had the place Don Kessi has here now.
Connie: Where did Mary and Elijah Grant build their first home?
Leonard: Grandma and Grandpa built a cabin where a spring comes right out of the hill. Dad built his cabin just a little farther up the creek from here. When the land was surveyed, It showed that my place is section seven. That made it a railroad section. My family didn't have the money to buy the land from the railroad company, so my grandparents moved to Kings Valley.
Connie: When did you and Ruth start homesteading?
Leonard: We first homesteaded the area up where our barn is in 1911. The barn is an original structure. However, the original Grant house burned down.
Leonard: I used to run 300 head of Angora goats, and I built that barn especially for the goats.
I remember one time when there were about 24 inches of snow on the ground, and then it rained and froze solid on top. We had to have caulk shoes to get around at all. For 30 days, those 300 goats never got more than 100 feet from the barn, which was erected in 1900 when I was nine years old.

Connie: Did the goats make it through that terrible time?
Leonard: I only lost one goat out of the 300. I had enough hay to feed them, and I didn't have any trouble with them to speak of.
Connie: From what I understand, most families were raising goats then. Who were some of the others in the Harlan area?
Leonard: That's right. We weren't the only family raising Angora goats. Other families, like the Hilltop Browns, made their living from raising goats. The hills were all open pastures in those days.
Connie: How many goats were the Browns running?
Leonard: The Browns kept 400 to 500 head of goats. They sold the mohair just as we did.
There was one man in Eddyville who had 1,400 head. There were several people who had anywhere from 600 to 1,000 head of Angora goats, so you can see it was big business.
Connie: Tell me about the mohair pool in Eddyville.
Leonard: At one time, the biggest mohair pool in the world was at Eddyville. There were thousands of heads of goats in this country when I was a boy.
Connie: How did the mohair pool work?
Leonard: The mohair was advertised for sale in Eddyville on a certain date. Like all other sales, it was stipulated in the ad that they could accept or reject any and all bids. The mohair was sold to the highest bidder, of course.
Connie: Was the entire operation conducted in Eddyville?
Leonard: No. Some big outfit it would buy the mohair in Eddyville, but it was weighed in Salem. Every rancher’s sacks were tagged. The pool would send a member of the association to Salem, and he would bring back the checks for everybody. I made trips many times and brought back the checks for my neighbors.
One spring, when I was a boy, I sheared 1,000 head of goats myself.
Connie: You sheered 1,000 goats yourself? That sounds like some sort of monumental task.
Leonard: It was. The Angora goats at that time didn't shear like they do today. They weren't real fine blooded like they are these days.
Connie: What's different about the new breeds of goats?
Leonard: They've got what they call non shedding Angora goats now.
Connie: Are any of the Harlan ranchers running goats today?
Leonard: There was a fellow by the name of Springer up here who had one of those non shedding goats a year or two ago (circa 1975), and its fleece sheared better than 20 pounds. He sheared it twice a year. But before the turn of the century, the average Angora goat fleece weighed about five pounds and the average price usually ran around 35 to 40 cents a pound.
Connie: Did the price per pound fluctuate much over the years?
Leonard: At one time, during Teddy Roosevelt's (1858-1919) administration, the price of mohair went up to better than 75 cents a pound. Everybody thought they were going to get rich. But it wasn’t long before the price dropped down again.

Connie: Allen Hodges said the countryside was covered with fern at the turn of the century. Was that your experience?
Leonard: There were no timbers on these hills when I was a boy. After the big burn in this country, all hills were in fern, and the livestock ran all over the slopes.
Connie: Did sheep run those slopes as well as goats?
Leonard: One time, when I was a boy, there were over 3,000 head of sheep between here and the foot of the mountains. This was beside the Angora goats and the cattle. Nearly everyone had sheep as well as Angora goats.
Connie: Was that true of your family?
Leonard: The Grants had Angora goats, sheep and cattle; we primarily run sheep now.
Connie: How did the price of wool compare with the price of mohair?
Leonard: When I was a kid, wool went for around 35 to 40 cents a pound—just like mohair. During that boom year I was telling you about, it went for 60 cents a pound.

Connie: With so much livestock roaming the hills and valleys, were predatory animals much of a problem?
Leonard: Grandpa Grant said gray wolves were running his dogs under the house every night. He said the had two dogs. They began to raise cane, so he got up and went outside barefooted.
Connie: Were to hounds afraid of the wolves?
Leonard: Yes, they were. The dogs were under the house, and when they saw Grandpa, they came out. They started running after something, and then they'd run back to him. He followed along after them quite a ways down the creek. Pretty soon, one of those wolves was ahead of the dogs and there was another one that answered back behind him. He called the dogs and started sneaking back towards the house. The wolves were on both sides of him. He didn't know how many there were altogether, but he knew for sure there were two—one behind and one ahead of him.
Most people today aren't aware that there were ever gray wolves in this part of the country, but there were.
Connie: Were Mary and Elijah Grant the first squatters in the Harlan area?
Leonard: A number of people came here before my dad did. My uncle, Jack Oglesby, homesteaded the William Wakefield place. Ruth is also an Oglesby. The Oglesbys came from Kentucky and Virginia.
I heard my Uncle Jack tell stories about when he first came here—he and a man named Hunt.
Hunt homesteaded a place just this side of Eddyville, just below the mouth of Salmon Creek. They went there on foot and built two cabins. When they came back, they brought a cow and a calf with them.
That night, the wolves began to howl. They killed the cow and then they tore down the pen and killed the calf. The next morning, there wasn't a vestige of them left except the skulls and some of the biggest bones.
At first they heard just one or two howls. Finally old man Hunt and those men with him had a fire in the old cabin. He got up and got his musket. Uncle Jack asked him where he was going. "I'm going out there," answered Hunt. "Then you're going out there alone," my uncle said. "I'm not going out there in the dark." Hunt put his gun away and decided not to go.

Connie: I though stock ranchers were trapping predators—not shooting them.
Leonard: There was a lot of trapping going on too.
Long before the turn of the century, I heard my dad tell about Frank Mulvaney. He figured Mulvaney trapped the last wolves ever seen in this country. Frank had his traps set, and Dad went with him that day.
Connie: Was there a wolf in the trap?
Leonard: There was a wolf in the trap. It weighed about 180 pounds.
Connie: How did Mulvaney construct his wolf trap?
Leonard: He bent over a pole and fastened it down. That kind of a trap was called a "spring pole," and it was fastened on the other end.
When Dad and Mulvaney got in sight of it, the pole was bent. When the wolf jumped, the pole spring 20 feet high up into the air!
Most of the wolves were killed off with poison, though.

Connie: When was the Harlan post office established?
Leonard: Jim Harlan was one of the originators of the plan to secure a post office for the area. When the post office was at Salado, which was operated by the Hodges family, it was named for Jim Harlan, and he was the first postmaster. I can remember when he still ran it.
Connie: Where was the Harlan post office located?

Leonard: It was originally located way up the river, at least three miles from here. It kept moving around because different people had it after Jim.
Connie: Who had it after Jim Harlan?
Leonard: A man by the name of Frank Hart had it next, I think. That was around 1898. They lived on the Morgan Lillard (1823-1891) place where he was killed in a gun fight with Robert Lew Feagles, a German fellow who homesteaded the place known as Feagles Creek. He married Jane F. Lillard; Morgan Lillard was his father-in-law.
Connie: Really? Feagles shot him to death? When did that happen?
Leonard: That was in the late 1890s, as far as I remember. I was pretty little when he got killed, but my sister, Laura, witnessed the gun fight. He was killed right where the old store stands now.
Connie: Was Morgan Lillard a mean old guy?
Leonard: Lillard couldn't get along with anybody, and there was a feud going on. He always carried an old .45 six-shooter.
Connie: Was he angry with his son-in-law for any particular reason?
Leonard: For whatever reason, he got it in for his son-in-law. Every time he saw him he'd beat him and he'd pull that gun out and abuse him. He'd call him all the dirty names he could think of.
Finally, his son-in-law told him, "Morgan, if you ever pull that gun on me again, I'll kill you."
Connie: Did Feagles even own a gun?
Leonard: No. He got on his horse and rode on over to Corvallis and bought himself a six-shooter. He was prepared for the worst. The next time Lillard pulled a gun on him, he killed him!
Connie: Wow! This is only supposed to happen in spaghetti westerns!
Leonard: I heard my dad say he'd seen Morgan Lillard shoot chickens' heads off. He filed the trigger off of the six-shooter and "thumbed" the hammer. Then he'd pull the hammer back with his thumb and shoot. He shot six shots at his son-in-law and never touched him. That shows how much nerve he had.
Feagles didn’t kill him dead on the spot. Lillard walked home. When he got home he told his folks that he didn’t think the son-of-a-bitch had the nerve to shoot. So when he pulled that six-shooter on Feagles, he was badly mistaken.
Connie: What did Feagles do after he shot Lillard? Wasn't he scared for his life?
Leonard: Feagles got on his horse and rode to Corvallis and told the sheriff what he had done, and they didn't even arrest him.

Johnny Feagles (1873-1963) was the first white child born in Lincoln County's Harlan area. His recollections of the early days include the terrain. The Harlan area was nearly all fern in the early days. There were lots of burnt trees and snags standing and some on the ground. All the trees and the brush have grown up since he was a boy. When he was small, there were only a few scattered trees here and there.
The area was the scene of a forest fire sometime back in history. But nobody knew exactly when it happened, including the Indians.
Johnny Feagles remembers an abundance of cats and cougars in the area when he was a boy. There were also many deer. He was ten or 11 years old when he shot his first deer. Fishing was good in those days too. Salmon was abundant on the river in autumn. Feagles remembers one party who caught 200 trout in just one day’s fishing. The advent of good roads in the area brought people out in greater numbers. Now the fish are scarce in comparison.
There weren’t any roads at all in the area when the first three settlers packed in to Harlan from Burnt Woods by horse.
One of the first three settlers was Johnny Feagles' father, Robert Lew Feagles, who moved into the Harlan area in 1872, having originated from Missouri. Nearby Feagles Creek is named for him. Johnny was one of four children. His brother died in scarlet fever epidemic that swept the area. The doctor said the other children would have died had they arrived for help two and a half hours later.
Johnny Feagles attended school only three months out of the year. He figures learned more in those three months of concentrated study than children learn in nine months of school today. The curriculum stuck strictly to the basics.

Connie: Who were some of the other Harlan postmasters?
Leonard: There was a fellow by the name of Bradley who fought in the Spanish-American War who ran the Harlan post office following Jim Harlan's retirement. Bradleys had it before Harts, I think.
After the Harts left, the Hathaways got the post office, and it was on this side of the Big Elk where Winston Grant's house is.
Minnie and Irvin Payne had the post office for a good many years, and it was on the south side of the river. They bought the place where Winston Grant's house is, at the mouth of Feagles Creek.
Connie: When did the Paynes move to Harlan?
Leonard: They moved to Harlan in February 1911—the same year the Grants did. They traded their small farm in Hillsboro for the big 300 acre farm where the store was known to be. Even with the train to take their belongings to Blodgett, it was hard and expensive to move, from what Evelyn Parry has told me.
Connie: Literally? The Paynes traded one place for another?
Leonard: It was a common practice at the time. When folks moved, they also traded their household goods, dishes, chairs, and all the odds and ends on the place.

Connie: How bad was the 1911 flood?
Leonard: 1911 is listed as one of the very destructive flood years in this part of Oregon.
The train that took the Paynes to Blodgett was the first train over that railroad for a week.
Connie: So a lot of people were stranded, I suppose.
Leonard: You bet. Old man Thompson, of the Plunkett & Thompson Store, had a small house beyond the store that was full of people who could not continue their journey because the bridges were out.
According to Evelyn, her father, Irvin Payne walked 14 miles in the mud and rain to Harlan! The next day, he got the team and wagon at the new farm and drove back to Blodgett to get his family.
Every river and creek was running high, and when the Paynes made the trip the next day, they discovered just how many creeks and fords there were!
They reached Harlan late, and Ms. P. H. Martin, who was the postmaster at the time, had sent word they were to spend the night with her family.
Connie: When after that did the Paynes start running the Harlan post office?
Leonard: Minnie Payne took over around 1913. Two bedrooms and a long hall were opened into one big room, and a branch store from Plunkett & Thompson was opened in her home.
Connie: So she was a branch manager of sorts for Plunkett & Thompson?
Leonard: Right. Irvin Payne freighted goods to the store the 14-mile distance from Blodgett with a wagon. During the winter months, he used a buckboard for most essential items.
Connie: How did the Paynes know what to stock in their store?
Leonard: Irvin kept a "want" list of needed items for his neighbors.
Connie: Was theirs the only general store in the Harlan area?
Leonard: About that time, Wesley W. January had a very small store in Harlan. Actually, he took the post office from Ms. Martin—not Minnie Payne—because she was resigning from the job.
Connie: What kind of a set up did Ms. Martin have when she was postmaster?
Leonard: When she was postmaster, it was kitchen-diningroom affair in her own home, an arrangement that was not uncommon in bygone days.

About that time congress opened new sections of land for homesteading, and city folks wanting a new way of life came to the Harlan area in droves. They flocked to the hills to get free government land!
Connie: Did the same homestead rules apply to latter day settlement?
Leonard: The law required them to live a specified amount of time on the land, build a house, and cultivate a certain amount of land in order to own it free and clear.
Those folks had children, and schools were built. They built their own roads with hand tools. Those families did not get welfare checks, food stamps, or free supplies from the government. Men left for work in logging camps. Many took their families with them.
Entire families went to hop yards, and some folks peeled chittem and sold it.
Connie: I know the Hodges were among the early squatters who peeled chittem. Where were people finding cascara trees to peel?
Leonard: Nashville had an abundance of cascara trees.
Connie: There was a lot of stock ranching going on in the Harlan area. What kind of crops were the farmers raising?
Leonard: Farmers in the Harlan area grew wheat, oats and hay. The hay was hauled loose and pulled with a big fork up the side of a barn on track to the right place. In July, farmers cut oat hay for horses.
Connie: Were farmers doing their own threshing?
Leonard: The grain that was to be threshed was done with a binder which tied the bundles. These bundles were shocked or stacked in groups in the fields so They would be off the ground and become dryer and ready for the machine.
Connie: What were the first threshing machines like?
Leonard: The first threshing machines were horse-powered. Some six or eight teams were hooked to the threshing apparatus and moved in a circle around it. Their movement turned wheels which vibrated grain-filled cylinders until the chaff was shook out. Then clean golden wheat poured out of the spout.
Connie: It sounds like an awfully big job. Did farmers hire outside help during the threshing season?
Leonard: Many men worked at threshing. Some were hired. Some traded work with their neighbors.
Connie: Did entire families help with the harvest?
Leonard: Women were called upon to help with the big meals for several days until the job was done.
Connie: What happened to the grain after it was threshed?
Leonard: The man who tended the grain had a pile of gunny sacks made of burlap or heavy cotton. He had a heavy string and a sack needle. It was a course of pride to sew the sacks quickly. Each sack had two ears and had to be "gigged" to be plump, so a neat-looking row of sacks would be seen.
Connie: How was the chaff handled after the winnowing?
Leonard: The straw was carried on conveyers and blown into sacks, or directly into a barn.
Connie: What about blacksmith shops? I've gotten the impression most homesteaders were doing their own smithing.
Leonard: There were no local hardware stores, so many people had their own private blacksmith shop. If horses were to work, they had to be shod.
Connie: I presume cattle, goats and sheep all have different grazing needs, and therefore must have impacted the land in different ways.
Leonard: All of the Harlan farmers owned hillside land. Cattle could graze on it, but goats did the hills much good by eating the brush. Sheep made the land better by killing the weeds.
Connie: Did the Harlan farmers raise other barnyard animals?
Leonard: When I was a kid, practically every farmer in the Willamette Valley had a band of sheep and a big bunch of hogs and some cows that he milked. He raised grain. He utilized everything that he raised on his farm right there; it didn't matter what the season was. Those old-time farmers always had something to sell. They'd have big bunches of ducks, geese, chickens, eggs, milk, butter, hogs, sheep grain and so on to take to market.
Connie: What about orchards?
Leonard: All the early settlers planted fruit trees, and they expected to sell their excess harvest.
A good orchard had bees to pollinate the fruit and honey was extracted as sugar for the table.

Everyone who knows the Big Elk Valley knows it can't be beat for orchards. Almost any kind of fruit will grow here that you want to raise, if you take care of it. We never tried to market any of our apples. We let the stock eat most of them.
Connie: Why was that? Wasn't there a market for local apples?
Leonard: Nearly all the big stores are under contract with large outfits, and they won't even talk to the little farmer.
Sometimes, Connie, if we have any surplus, we do trade with a place in Corvallis. They buy most of their fruit locally, but they are the only outfit I know of that you can sell any fruit to.
Connie: Is anyone around here making money from their orchard?
Leonard: Not really. These days, you have to specialize in a single crop in order to do any good. The small operator is out of luck.
Connie: What about registered stock—like Don Kessi has? Is there any money in that?

Don Kessi, a lifelong resident of Harlan, is Lincoln County's Tree Farmer of the Year.
A sheepherder and cattleman, Kessi has been actively involved in agriculture and forestry for the past 50 years.
Annually sponsored by the OSU Extension Service, the Portland Chamber of Commerce, and the Small Woodlands Association, the award is given to a tree farmer who best exemplifies good land stewardship.
Kessi's farsightedness in promoting the conservation of soil and woodland resources is reflected in the fact that he was planting seedlings during an era when many of his neighbors were still burning the hillsides to keep out trees. Judges found that his 450 acres of precommercial Douglas fir fit the criteria of a well-managed program that requires discipline, patience and planning on the part of aspiring tree farmers.
"There are a number of important points the committee looks at when evaluating the overall quality of a tree farming operation," Kessi said. "Site preparation, good planting stock and brush control are some of the criteria the committee takes into consideration."
A man who has nurtured a deep respect for the land and what it yields, good stewardship is not a cliche when applied to Kessi, but rather an all-embracing way of life. The pastures where his sheep and cattle graze are in prime condition. The average density of his hillsides is 400 trees per acre, varying in size from seedlings to trees more than 30 years old.
The trees are destined to become wood products trees for pulp and lumber, but harvest time for Kessi's bountiful crop is "60-70 years down the road." In partnership with his son, Delbert, and his grandson, Brad, the Harlan tree farmer and rancher said he herds 200 head of purebred sheep and goats, and 200 head of cross breed cattle, because "I have to make living while the trees are growing."
He is a consistent supporter of the 4-H program and an active leader in the Livestock Association. It is no coincidence that one of the reasons Kessi is a dedicated stockman is the fact that in the Harlan area, ranching is more than just "a way to make a living while the trees are growing," it is a tradition.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, nearly every homesteader in East Lincoln County had sheep and Angora goats. Area ranchers belonged to wool and mohair pools, the biggest of which was at Eddyville. Bags of wool and mohair were collected at Eddyville from ranchers throughout the Big Elk Valley and were trucked to Salem where the valuable natural fiber was weighed in and sold to dealers for handsome prices.
During the Roosevelt administration, the price of mohair shot so high that local ranchers thought for a moment they were going to get rich. Shortly afterward, the market plunged, and dreams of opulence and splendor from the sale of mohair was squelched.
"This area was very heavily populated with Angora goats until the late 1930s," said Kessi, who got his feet wet with the 4-H program he avidly supports today during the 1920s when Harlan had an active Angora Goat Club. "Reforestation started around then and goats were singled out as a major source of forestry problems." As fate would have it, the tastebuds of goats with fancy coats were no more discerning than those of their plainer counterparts. Billys of all rank an file like to nibble tender forest seedlings.
As a result, Angora goats, once thought to be bleating goldmines, have all but disappeared from the Harlan landscape. Sheep have continued to prosper. Raised as much, if not more, for breeding stock as for their wool, sheep ranching is still the leading source of industry in Harlan.
An obvious sheep lover, Kessi proudly said, "I've been raising purebred stock for 33 years." A tireless worker and an energetic promoter of the sheep industry, Kessi has been national president of the Sheep Breeders Association, and chairman of the Willamette Ewe Sale for 23 years. He has been instrumental in planning the annual Lincoln County Sheep Day.
Kessi, who is the group's president, went to Louisville November 18 to attend the annual meeting of the National Sheepherders Association.
The Harlan rancher has also been a livestock judge at the Oregon State Fair in Salem, the California State Fair in Sacramento, and the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver, BC. "I've been a judge there five different times," He said.
His considerable achievements and service over many years give all the testimony that is needed to show that Kessi is a conscientious steward of the 1,000 acres of woodland and pasture He has always called home.

Leonard: A lot of fellows talk to me about raising registered stock. There is such a small demand. I have a friend in Salem by the name of Doug Chambers. He had some of the finest sheep I've ever seen. At one time he operated the Valley Packing Company in Salem. He's still the buyer there now. He told me that you've got to attend all the big shows and fairs—like Don Kessi does—go here and there, including the South and back East. The expense is so much that there isn't anything in it for the stockman any more. A rancher is better off just to raise the best stock he can and just forget about registered stock.
Connie: Filberts are still a good deal for farmers, aren't they?
Leonard: My grandson, Sterling Grant, has been after me to put in a filbert orchard. We have some land here that would be good for raising filberts. But it would be eight years before we'd ever get it to turn a dime. You've got to belong to the filbert co-op, and last year filbert growers didn't even make expenses. In this sense, you've got all of your eggs in one basket. Whenever you start something like that, you’re out of luck if it doesn’t turn a profit.
Today those Willamette Valley farmers out there either sow wheat or rye grass or something specialized like that. If the market goes down, they're sunk.
Connie: Do you know any of those Willamette Valley farmer?
Leonard: Just last autumn there was a friend of ours who was one of the big grass seed growers in Tangent who said that they went in the hole. He had a lot of wheat also last year, but it rained on his crop. Normally, he could have gotten $130 a ton for it, but since it was rained on—and not the best quality—he was trying to sell it for $75. He said that the wheat cost him around $2.50 a bushel to produce it—with the fertilizer, combines, and everything else involved in its production.
Connie: I know Morris Smith is still raising bees at Chitwood. Are you and Sterling?
Leonard: No. I quit raising bees because it was like everything else—too costly. It got to the point where I had to have them inspected and I had to have a permit to keep bees.

Connie: Johnny Feagles talks about going to school. Where was the Harlan School located?
Leonard: In 1885, the first schoolhouse was built in the Harlan area was next to Jim Harlan's place. It was called the Black School, and was named for Robert Black (1862-1917). There were 80 some odd students attending at the time my brother, Lige (1883-1975), started school.
In the early 1900s there was a rough building on Dad's place, called the B. F. Grant School, that served the purpose.
The desks were split cedar unplaned and big enough for a large man. The students were given printed words to copy. If anybody talked too loud—and punishment did not curtail the habit—the pupil would not be allowed to attend school.
Connie: Who was the teacher at the B. F. Grant School?
Leonard: That was Jenny Timberlake.
Connie: Johnny Feagles spoke of three-month-long sessions. Was that the case at the B. F. Grant School?
Leonard: Both of the Harlan schools I mentioned had three-month-long terms. During the summer, the kids walked barefooted to Black School, or the upper school, as it was known. There were many people who walked across the hill trails to this school to get a bit of "book larnin'." They did not learn as much as they wished they could have, but they learned to be hard workers, to be honest, and to do good in their communities.
Connie: Who was the teacher at Black School?
Leonard: Jerry Banks (1869-? OR) was the school teacher at Black School. He had a homestead over on Gopher Creek. Banks was also a photographer and would go over to the Payne place and take pictures.

Connie: Ruth, do you recall what did people in the Harlan community do for fun?
Ruth: There were a lot of community-type events. Picnics in Harlan, for instance, were really glorious events. Some of the big crowds gathered at the natural vine maple grove near Black School for Fourth of July celebrations.
Connie: Was the Fourth of July celebrated the same way we do today—with sparklers and firecrackers and fireworks displays?
Ruth: The Harlan storekeeper usually had a stand—or a booth—prepared to sell confections and small flags, fire crackers, etc. There were no big fireworks displays.

Connie: Were there any sawmills in this area?
Leonard: A fellow by the name of Nels Miller (1891-1947) built a water-powered mill and damned up Feagles Creek. That was the first sawmill that was ever built in this country.
Connie: Was Miller a logger?
Leonard: Old man Miller was a carpenter by trade. He did the finest workmanship anyone ever saw. The waterwheel he built there was 28 feet high. He didn't understand why he didn't get much power out of the wheel, but he had it rigged all wrong; he had the gear right on the outside of the wheel, instead of having it down close to the axle. He was always short of power because of this error in design. He knew the carpenter end of things, but he just didn't understand power. He had water—and wheel—enough that he could really have had a good sawmill had he not always been short of power because of this backwards construction.
Connie: Was that commercial operation?
Leonard: They cut a lot of lumber at the Miller mill, but the operation was all local. People around here used it. Some of the lumber was sold, and sometimes Miller worked out trade arrangements with local folks in the Harlan area. He made a living at it, though.
Connie: If someone like Nels Miller—or George Hodges—puts in a sawmill—at his expense—just so his neighbors can use it, what kind of a financial proposition is that?
Leonard: A lot of people in the area put in their own logs, and Miller charged them so much a thousand board feet to saw it up. He made money by offering a service for a small fee.
Connie: Did the Grants put in their own logs?
Leonard: We put in most of our own logs, and Miller sawed them into lumber for us—for a fee—just as he did for so many others in the area.
Connie: You said Nels Miller was a carpenter by trade. What did he build besides waterwheels?
Leonard: Miller built a huge barn for a neighbor. It must have been 100 feet long and 60 to 70 feet wide. It only stood up a few years because it didn't have a foundation under it. Miller never put a foundation under anything he built, and the first thing you'd know, a building of his would fall down! Maybe he could put joints together so that you couldn't tell where they were at, but Miller never understood foundations any better than he understood harnessing power. That's what my dad always said, "There is no building that is any better than the foundation that is under it." When B. F. Grant erected a building a building, it would stay there.

The Arnolds lived up on Gopher Creek. Bill Arnold homesteaded where Nellie and Bill Davenport's (1870-1921) place is. He had a little sawmill down there where the gorge is. Several of the people he sawed lumber for built pretty nice houses. He built himself a nice house as well.
Connie: Where exactly were Nellie and Bill Davenport located?
Leonard: Nellie and Bill Davenport moved in the early years to Gopher Creek. They used a cart called a lizard which was cut from a forked tree limb. The horse was fastened to what made shafts and a box holder built on the crotch of the limb. This would slide along most any trail. They moved their household goods on the lizard. Their homestead was at the foot of the hill on the road between here and the hilltop where the two apple trees are. When he came down in here, there was just a trail up there. Bill left all of his outfit with us, and he went up there with those pack horses and that cart. Drift Creek did not have any ready-made highways of water as did Elk City and Toledo. A steep road to Salado was used by the mail carrier, and much of the time Nellie carried the mail on horseback.
Connie: Did Davenports ever get a descent trail put in there?
Leonard: Bill finally got a dog trail down the hill to the Big Elk so he could get out of there. When I was a kid, there were no roads in there at all.
Connie: Were there other Davenports in the area?
Leonard: Bill’s younger brother, George Davenport, lived at the head of the creek at the site of that old lake. He married Sam Stewart's daughter.

Connie: These are big ranches out here. Did the Grants see much of their neighbors in those days?
Leonard: Dad’s place used to be a halfway house or station between the Willamette Valley and Drift Creek. Occasionally, when I was a boy, I saw half a dozen wagons in the barn at one time. The old trail was pretty much over the same area as the road is now.
Connie: Who were some of your neighbors?
Leonard: Delbert Kessi's ranch is west of mine toward Elk City. It was originally homesteaded in 1896 by Mort Glass. Two years later, in 1898, Frank Hart homesteaded where the river makes a big bend.
Morgan Lillard homesteaded the place just below the bluff around 1900.
The next place on down, at the mouth of Wolf Creek, was occupied by a man by the name of J. R. Chapman (1816-1886).
Frank Irish's place was next. He settled there around 1900. Wheeler lives there now, down below Spriggs.
The next homesteader was Charley Bancroft, who settled there about the same time. Bancroft Gorge is named for him.
Charley Overland and Frank Thompson—those two old bachelors—were the next in line.
Old Elmo Davis settled at the mouth of Deer Creek. Elmo was a barber. He didn't stay there too long. He went to California and didn't return to the area until years and years afterwards, at which time he settled in Siletz.
Jim Dixon settled that place where A. A. Ullman lived. Dixon was a big, tall, lanky guy who came to the Big Elk Valley in the early 1900s.
Wilfred H. Daniel, who were next in line, settled on Deer Creek around 1901.
George Hodges came in around 1891 and homesteaded at Salado where Qualitree is now.
Frieda and Vernon Folmsbee homesteaded up Bull Creek where I had my hunting shack.
Sid Neal’s folks were among the first to homestead near here. There were three or four families of Watkins, who came from the South. There was old John Watkins and his wife, Martha Burch, and his boys, Nathan and Elmer, to name a few. Johnny’s brother, James Watkins, also homesteaded there.
Connie: Was anyone living around Meadow Creek?
Leonard: There was an old Irishman down there on Meadow Creek by the name of Bill Reedy. He used to stop at our place.
I remember when I was a kid there were some outlaws the Griffith-Baker gang—who scared that old Irishman to death, and he left the area!
The Bushes were way down Drift Creek. They were the farthest ones down below the mouth of Meadow Creek. They had three homesteads down in there.
Charley Cator was a Texan. He came in here and bought the old Morgan Lillard place, where the high school building is now.

Lige Grant was born in the Harlan area in 1883 and he spent his entire life there. There was no Lincoln County when he first remembers the region for the county had not been sliced from Benton County until ten years after he was born!
He was the son of Benjamin Franklin Grant [and Lousetta Oglesby] who was born in 1848 in Missouri, came to California and later to the Oregon country, settling in the area of West Benton County known as the Big Elk Valley. There were eight children in the family, four boys [Lester, Willis, Elijah, Huston, Leonard, and Samuel, who died in Infancy-] and four girls [Cora, Laura, Bernice and Bessie], but only two now live here. His brother, Leonard Grant, a former county commissioner, still lives and farms in the Harlan community.
Lige Grant remembers the fond memories of his childhood in the Harlan country. They were rich, full days when children worked along with their parents as full-fledged members of the family unit. Most people were farmers and there was no lack of work and chores to keep them busy. Everything else was raised or made in the home or in the neighborhood.

The nearest gristmill was over in Kings Valley and he remembers the great adventures of that two day trip to get flour and cornmeal. Once a year most families made a trip in wagons to Corvallis over the hills to get supplies. They took grain and came back with supplies enough to last most of the year, he recalls.
The biggest problem was kerosene for their lights. On the trips to Corvallis, they would try to bring back enough for a year, but usually they would run out and this required jaunts to Summit, the closest railroad and supply point for kerosene.
For many years, Lige Grant recalls his father and James R. Harlan carried the mail from Summit to Harlan without cost so people could have this service. Finally the government established a post office in Harlan's house... and the men got a contract to carry the mail.

Telephone service came to the East Lincoln County community in 1905 when lines were strung over the hills from Blodgett. This really opened the world to residents of the Big Elk Valley, but transportation continued to be poor.

It was in 1887 that a horse trail was built across the foot of Marys Peak to Philomath and it was the next year that a trail was surveyed from Elk City to Harlan.
But this did not mean getting from one place to another was an easy task in the Harlan Community.
It was still a long trip to Corvallis and to Kings Valley and to Summit.
Occasionally people traveled to the West over poor roads. Toledo was a thriving town on the Yaquina River as was Newport and Yaquina City. Lige recalls that as a youngster the family traveled over the trails down the Big Elk to Elk City. It was nestled in a green valley rimmed by high hills, had a hotel and a store and docks for the river boats. He says today He recalls it as a "busy town" and one of the "most pleasant and beautiful" he had ever seen.
Lige Grant says more people lived in the Harlan area in those early days than now. There were many farmers, each raising crops and cattle and sheep and most with big families.

Schools came first. The first school was held in 1885. By the time Lige was old enough to attend school there was one located in the center of the district, and some 80 kids were getting an education in the three-month school years. There was one teacher handling the entire job.
Today there are only 30 to 50 children attending Harlan schools and two teachers are assigned to the instruction job.

"When I was a kid, there were only three-month school years. That's all. And we probably missed half of that! There were 50 kids who went to school in this valley. Some of the girls who went to school were 18 years old.
The schoolhouse was three and a half miles from here up the river. There wasn't a bridge anywhere. Every morning the schoolteacher got out her bell. She'd come to the schoolhouse door and she'd tap the bell, the kids "marched," one behind the other, into the schoolhouse. They didn't even sit down until she tapped the bell again and gave them the signal to sit down. When They were seated, they stayed there, too, unless they had permission to get up. That's the way they did things—what little I went to school."

Lige Grant declares he can foresee a decline in the population of East Lincoln County. Few people in the population farm the soil. Most earn a living logging and lumbering and this is a declining industry. As the timber diminishes, people will leave the Big Elk Valley to earn their living in other areas.
Grant himself, although he is 80, actively operates his 740 acre ranch and raises around 100 head of Whiteface cattle. He and [his wife, May Cook Grant], have been on the ranch for the past 45 years [since 1918], and as recent as 1951 constructed themselves a new, modern home in which they live today [1963].

Connie: Did the ranchers around here rely much on wild game to supplement their diet?
Leonard: B. F. Grant used to say that fame was bound to go ahead of civilization. There was no other way about it. He used to say when the varmints were bad, that we'd be better off if there weren't any deer, so farmers could get rid of the varmints. Then there wouldn't be anything to bother our stock. That’s the way people made their living in those days—with stock—and the wild game didn't mean anything as far as making a living was concerned.
Connie: What about the old-time market hunters like George Hodges and Frank Thompson who were making a living off deer and elk?
Leonard: When the early settlers first came in here, game was how they made a living, but not later on.
Now that’s what happened to that Griffith-Baker gang I was telling you about earlier who scared old Bill Reedy right off his place.
Connie: How many of those guys were there anyway?
Leonard: There were three of those guys. One fellow was named Baker. He had served time in the penitentiary. The other two were brothers, Bill and Bert Griffith, who lived up there by Drift Creek Falls.
Connie: Where are the falls located?
Leonard: The falls are on the old Charley Bohanan place.
When those guys first went in there, all they did was hunt elk and deer and fish for salmon, which ran up in there by the thousands.
Connie: Were they market hunting?
Leonard: They'd dry the meat, and come out past our place on pack horses loaded with venison going to the valley to sell it. Like Hodges and Thompson, that was the way they made their living, and that was fine with the Grants and everyone else.
Connie: If that’s all they were doing, what was the problem?
Leonard: After the deer and elk began to get scarce, they started butchering the neighbors' cattle! They dried the meat and sold if for elk, and that's when all the trouble started.
Connie: How long did that go on before they got caught?
Leonard: This went on until finally a man by the name of Albert Watkins, whose folks lived just south of Philomath, went back and forth here.
Connie: Did Watkins catch them in the act?
Leonard: During the summertime, in good weather, Watkins came to our place and reported that somebody had burned his house down. Whoever it was had killed some of his cattle. He was sure it was that Baker-Griffith outfit who had done this evil deed.
Watkins came to our place from his folks' one day—just like he was headed home. Dad invited him to come in for dinner. He told Dad all about it. Somebody had sent him word that his house had burned to the ground. Dad didn't say anything for a while. Finally he said, "Albert, what are you going to do about it?" Albert answered, "Frank, I'm going over there to kill those guys."
Connie: Was Watkins as serious about it as R. L. Feagles was?
Leonard: Oh yes. He said that as calmly and matter-of-factly as though he were planning to kill a sheep-killing dog!
Connie: That's pretty serious business. What did your dad have to say about it?
Leonard: Dad went ahead and ate his dinner—and never said another word to Watkins.
After he had finished eating, he didn’t talk much. Finally Dad said, "Albert, I wouldn't do that, if I were you. You'll be in serious trouble. You wait until I can get a horse and I'll go with you."

Connie: Did your dad end up going after the gang with Watkins?
Leonard: You bet. I've still got the gun that Dad took with him to flush out the Baker-Griffith gang. I remember that after dinner Dad got a saddle horse and that old rifle—and left. He didn't come back for a day or two. I was in bed but not asleep, and I can remember him telling my Mother about it.
Connie: Did they manage to flush out the gang?
Leonard: Dad and Albert went and gathered up some more neighbors. There was just a trail up to where those outlaws lived on Drift Creek, which they stayed on. "We had a good rope, too," Dad told my mother.
It seems that Baker came down the trail on his way somewhere, and the vigilantes captures him. He began to swear up a storm and wouldn't tell them anything. They told him they had a tree already picked out for him, and got that rope around his neck and pulled him up! The first time they let him down, he still wasn't inclined to talk. They pulled him up again, and that time he still wasn’t ready to talk. The third time, they kept him dangling on the end of that rope so long that it was a long time before he came to.
Connie: Did he confess to rustling cattle when he came to?
Leonard: At that point, they didn't know if he was going to talk or not. But when he got so he was able to talk, he told them all about it.
They tied Baker up and went up there and got the Griffith brothers. They sent a man to Toledo to get Jim Ross, who was the sheriff in the 1890s.
Connie: Did the three of them do any time?
Leonard: They each got seven years for their crimes, and they never came back to this part of the country again.

Connie: It sounds like there were a number of bachelor-type men in the area in the 1890s.
Leonard: Frank Thompson and Charley Overlander were two bachelors who shared a house, but they each owned a piece of property on either side of the house.
In the early days, Connie, this country was grown up in alder and brush, and mostly along the river banks was vine maple. Thompson and Overlander cut everything right to the ground. They fenced off the land. It didn’t interfere with the hay crops or anything else, so they ran a few goats in there to keep the brush down.
Old Frank Thompson was cutting an alder tree one day, and it split up on his and kicked and caught him and tore his log up pretty bad. Instead of taking him in a car and going over Shot Pouch—that road was pretty rough—they loaded him into a boat and brought him up the Yaquina to Corvallis.
Connie: Did they get him to a doctor in time?
Leonard: By the time they got there, he'd lost so much blood that he died. If they would have put him in a car and rushed him to the hospital, He probably would have lived.

Friday evening last week Frank A. Thompson of Big Elk was falling a tree which kicked back breaking one of his legs near the thigh. He was rushed to a Corvallis hospital, but medical aid was of no avail as he passed away Sunday.
When a young man, Frank, as he was universally known, came to the Big Elk Valley and settled upon a homestead adjoining that of his "lifelong friend," C. A. "Charley" Overlander. From that day to the day of his death, these men were known and admired for "their devotion to each other" and for the general hospitality extended to those who sought shelter under their roofs.
Respect for his excellent manhood extended beyond his immediate neighbors and friends as the electors of Lincoln County made him county commissioner, in which position he exhibited that same high degree of character and soundness of judgment that has made him an outstanding figure in his community, and likewise a very valuable public officer.
The world has been made a better place by his presence and while there are none left behind to bear his name, the good deeds of his lifetime are so firmly etched upon the pages of our memory that posterity could add nothing to their brilliancy.

Connie: Were there any other notorious types who managed to infiltrate Harlan?
Leonard: I saw Dad go away from home with his rifle in hand three different times in a posse intent on bringing back dangerous criminals who threatened the life of the community—and its livestock.
I recall one time, there was an old German fellow who came into this country with two Old Squaws and a young Buck who was about 18 years old. They were from the Rogue River Reservation in Southern Oregon.
The German was well behaved, but the squaws robbed everybody in the country! They stole things right and left.
Connie: Did a posse catch up with them?
Leonard: Nobody ever did catch them at it, unfortunately.
Finally, the old German fellow got cancer, and a German friend was taking care of him.
Connie: What happened to the three Indians who'd been staying with him?
Leonard: The Indians smelled trouble and moved out, and it was later discovered that they were camping at an old homestead cabin up on the hill behind the old Charley Kidder place.
Connie: Did they leave on good terms with their accomplice?
Leonard: They stabbed the old guy in the back! He always bought his supplies for the winter in the autumn and had someone pack them in for him. Those squaws stole the whole bloomin' works; they even robbed his bee hives!
Connie: The Indians high-tailed it, but the old man must have been a sitting duck if he had cancer.
Leonard: When we kids got home from school one day, that old German fellow was sitting at the post office where Frank Hart had it, and two or three guys standing there with rifles across their knees. He stayed right in the corner all right—with the posse Dad gathered up guarding him. The posse comitatus turned him over to the sheriff, and he went to the penitentiary.
Connie: Did the posse ever find the Indians?
Leonard: They gathered up all the Indians who had been living with the old German fellow and sent them back to the reservation.
Connie: Who were some of their victims?
Leonard: My oldest brother, Lester, was one of their victims.
Lester (1877-1957) had a homestead up the creek with a cabin on it. However, he didn't live up there. There was a bachelor who bought it, and went up there to live—and discovered that everything in my brother's cabin had been packed off!
Connie: Was there anything of great value to Lester?
Leonard: There was an old iron kettle that Mother's people, the Oglesbys, had brought across the Plains that was packed off. She got it back—eventually—but it was those squaws who had packed it off! They really cleaned out Lester’s place; there wasn’t anything left in the cabin at all by the time the bachelor moved in.

Connie: When did people start moving out of the country and back into town?
Leonard: Most people didn't start moving out of the Harlan area until after WWI.
The stock market crashed in October 1929, at the tail end of the Coolidge administration (1923-1929) and the beginning of the Hoover administration (1929-1933), and a Great Depression cast a dark shadow on the nation.
Then WWII broke out in Europe during the Roosevelt administration (1933-1945). The war effort sent wages booming—in town!—and people could get $1.00 an hour for their labor.
Country folk started selling out right and left and moving to town. Now the Forest Service owns most of the property in the Big Elk Valley.
Connie: Who were some of the old-timers who moved away ?
Leonard: The Hilltop Browns lost both of their sons to tuberculosis. They sold out and moved away. The fellow who bought them out took out a real estate loan on it—and lost it—when the Depression hit.
Connie: Was it common practice during hard times for folks to mortgage their property?
Leonard: Unfortunately, it was. Most of them bought cars, and during the Depression, practically everyone who borrowed money on their places lost them. And that's when they left the area in search of work for wages.
Connie: You said the price of wool and mohair fluctuated from time to time. But everyone's got to eat. Weren't stockmen protected from losing their ranches?
Leonard: Cattle prices varied along with the economy just as they do now.
During the Depression, I sold Durham cows for $14 a piece. One year during the Depression, I made only $150—and there were four others in the family!
Connie: Obviously you managed to stay in business; you're still here.
Leonard: Larry Wade was county clerk at one time. I was in Toledo one day talking to him, and told him what a tough time I was having making ends meet; I was about to lose my place like so many of my neighbors.
Connie: Did you own this ranch outright at the time?
Leonard: No. Like everyone else in the Big Elk Valley, we bought this place and didn't have enough money to pay cash for it; we put a down payment on it.
Lester wasn't home to help; he was in the US Coast Guard. We had a federal mortgage on the ranch. We couldn’t pay the property taxes—let alone the interest on the mortgage!
Connie: Had foreclosure proceedings already begun!?
Leonard: The government was about to foreclose I tell you, Connie, I never got such dirty letters in my life!
Connie: I presume the Grants always paid their debts.
Leonard: I never owed anybody anything that I didn't eventually pay. But, from that federal bank loan, I really got some nasty letters demanding payment.
Connie: What did Larry Wade have to say about all of this?
Leonard: I kept a daily diary in those days, and Larry Wade wanted to borrow it—as proof of my annual income—because I had documented the fact that I only made $150 that year. I asked him what he wanted it for, and he said, "Well, I’ll tell you something, Leonard. I went to school with a guy in Marion County who is a US senator. I'm going to write him a letter about this thing that's going on. I want the figures of somebody who knows just what they've made." So I told him, "I'll loan you my diary."
Connie: Did Wade follow through?
Leonard: You bet. He wrote that letter to the senator. He took it to Hoover, who declared a moratorium on federal mortgages, and stopped the foreclosure of farms. This was the result of my diary! I've got a copy of the letter that he got from the white house.
Connie: Since the Depression, have your property taxes remained stable over the years?
Leonard: About a year ago (1976) the county assessor was going to assess all the land that lays along the river here as subdivision land. They were going to sell it off in lots along the river, so they taxed us for the subdivision land.
My nephew had a place in Portland. The county assessor's office kept raising his taxes until he finally had to sell out; they were taxing him for commercial property! Now there’s a business on the land where he used to live.

Connie: Leonard, I read that Daniel Boone's son, Andrew Jackson Boone, was among the earliest trappers in the passes of the Rockies and his party are said to have been the first to camp on the present site of Denver; and you are widely known around here for your many years as a government trapper. When did that start?
Leonard: I have to tell you, Connie, that I really didn't have anything to do with becoming a government trapper.
Connie: By that do you mean you didn't actually apply for the job?
Leonard: The first thing I knew, the district agent from the US Fish & Wildlife Service in Portland approached me on the subject.
Connie: What prompted the district agent to approach you?
Leonard: The coyotes were getting so bad—and were killing people's stock—that finally there was a small appropriation for a government trapper—just as a trial. So when the district agent came to the house and asked me if I'd be interested in the job, I said, "Yes, I'd be in it, of course." I told him I had worked away from home a lot and I trapped wild animals ever since I was big enough to trap. I must have been pretty small, because when I first started trapping, I had to bring my traps home and get Dad to set them, and then I'd pack them back out and set them out. "I've not only trapped; I've made a study of it," I told him.
Connie: How did the district agent find out about you?
Leonard: I asked him where he learned anything about me, and he told me he'd been to Toledo and had searched the records. What he discovered was that I had turned in more scalps for the bounty—not only in Lincoln County—but in the entire State of Oregon! "That's what we're looking for," he told me. And that's how I got the job of government trapper.

Leonard Grant became a professional trapper in 1938, when, as he told us, the US Biological Survey (now the US Fish & Wildlife Service) examined the county records and found he had turned in the most predators for bounty. They offered him the job, and he took it—"Besides, things were tough about that time."
In his trapping experience, he estimates he's bagged 300 or more black bear and has no idea the number of bobcat, coyotes and cougar he's destroyed. His official trapping career, however, concerned more than the major predators—"I was called out to trap anything that bothered people and their stock. And that includes chicken-killing skunks!"
Mr. Grant had dogs. "At one time when I was a kid, we had 11." His dogs were usually a cross of Redbone and Bluetick.
Of the many anecdotes he can tell, one concerns the cinnamon bear he trapped "four times." One time, the animal sat down in the trap while attempting to reach an overhanging bait, thus marking itself. "I caught him on the fourth trap. The scars identified him."
Leonard often used overhead bait, to relieve the animal's suspicion. He never set traps in the center of the trail for bears—"I've followed their tracks for miles in the snow and found out their prints are a foot and a half apart, not in the middle. And the cubs follow exactly in the steps of the larger bears."
For 18 years, until he retired with commendations in 1956, Leonard Grant was a trapper for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, and during that time, he disposed of hundreds of stock-killing predators in the area. And even though he is long-retired from the official service, he still takes to the trail on occasion to help out a neighbor.

After the US Fish & Wildlife Service gave me the job as government trapper, they came back and started giving me instructions about what I was supposed to do. After the district agent got through telling me what I had to do, he told me I'd have to "cooperate" with the local game warden.
Connie: That's a whole other ball game. How did you respond to that?
Leonard: "Just forget it," I said. "If that's the kind of job it is, you just go hunt up somebody else. I'm just as big an outlaw as there is in Lincoln County. I've hunted wild game all my life, and when I want a deer, I kill one. I never aim to kill a doe that's going to have a fawn, but if I want a deer, I'll kill one. I've lived here all my life and I feed them. I'm not about to help prosecute some of my friends I've known ever since I was a kid. I'm not that kind of a guy. If that's the kind of job," I told him, "you get somebody else."
Connie: That must have rocked him back on his heels!
Leonard: He just laughed. "Just forget it," he said. "You just run things the way you think they should be run." "I'll take the job on that basis," I told him.
Connie: Did the illegal game question ever come up during your 18 years with the US Fish & Wildlife Service?
Leonard: I saw fellows packing deer on their backs. Most of them were people I knew, and they needed the meat and they took care of it. That's the way I feel yet; I'm still an outlaw! I still kill deer when I think I'm going to need a piece of meat, and when they come around the ranch here.
Connie: I know the Hodges feel the same way you do. And probably the Parks and Browns and everyone else in this valley.
Leonard: I obey the laws that are just, Connie. Unjust laws, I haven't got any use for; I think the laws that pertain to deer and elk are unjust laws. When the deer come down and get into the orchard, they're going to get shot. I've had trees practically ruined by deer breaking the branches off of them and so on. Deer fences just aren’t all that effective.

Connie: What about elk? Aren't they more scarce?
Leonard: When I became government trapper, it was during a time when there was open season on elk. I killed a bull elk the first open season there was, but I don't recall the exact date.
When I was a small kid—not even big enough to hunt—the elk were almost extinct. The government passed what was called the Eleven Year Law: elk season was closed for 11 years. The first open season at that time was in 1910, so the Eleven Year Law must have gone into effect around 1899.
Connie: Did any of the Grants take part in that first open season?
Leonard: My brother, Lester, and my mother's nephew and I went elk hunting. I killed an elk and so did my brother. We were gone almost two weeks.
Connie: Where did you go hunting?
Leonard: We went clear to the ocean. We killed three elk down Trout Creek down at Tidewater. We dried the meat right where we killed the elk. It took us two days to pack it from Tidewater to Harlan.
Connie: How did you go about preparing the meat so it wouldn't spoil those two weeks you were gone?
Leonard: The first think we did was skin the elk. Then we hung up the quarters. We laid the hides on the ground to put meat on. Then we stripped the meat off the bones. We took about a gallon of water and put it in a tin bucket and put the salt in that, so we could save the salt. Then we hung the bucket over the fire and kept it boiling. We dipped that meat in there and out again, and that makes it plenty salty. We cut forked poles and drove them into the ground, and then we cut poles that we dropped in there. Then we split sticks and ran the meat on those cedar sticks and hung them across poles. A fire was built under that.
Connie: That's quite a sophisticated process. How long did it take the elk meat to dry?
Leonard: That meat dried in 24 hours. It was smoked with mostly green alder, which is really the best. Once you get a fire and a bed of coals, it will burn all night long.
Connie: You probably didn’t have a hunting shack at Tidewater. Do you have one around here?
Leonard: One of my hunting shacks is still standing on top of the mountain. There was another one on the divide between the head of Bull Creek, where Folmsbees lived, and the head of this creek. Georgia-Pacific Corporation has logged that area off.
Connie: The 1956 Ruralite article about you says you killed 300 bears! That's unimaginable! Do you have any more "bear" tales?
Leonard: I remember I killed bear one for an old widow woman on the other side of Toledo that had already killed a herd of two-year-old calves. It's hard to say how much other damage it had done to other people's property.
I killed another one up on Weasel Creek. I caught so many there in traps.
There was a man living there, just this side of the Siletz Mountains, who had lost five head of Guernsey heifers and a Holstein cow that he was milking. I drove my Model T Ford over there and set up a trap where the cow had been killed and I caught eight bear there! All in all, I trapped 36 bears on that one ranch.

In 1795 Daniel Boone (c1734-1820) ...turned to the "sure comfort" of the wilderness. A wanderer in the forest came upon the Boones bear hunting along the Sandy River. Daniel, Rebecca, two of their daughters and their husbands, were living deep in the woods with no shelter but the usual "half-faced" hunter's eating all their meals from a common rough tray, "very much like a sap trough," set on a bench. Their forks were made from stalks of cane. They had only one butcher knife among them, and nothing to eat but bread and the game they killed.
But the bear hinting was magnificent and Daniel was jubilant. He had just killed "the master bear of the Western country," two feet across the hips. The camp was full of drying deer skins and salted meat, which the hunters intended to sell at the salt works on the Kanawha River.

Connie: You said you've made a study of trapping. What do you mean by that?
Leonard: I've made a study of wildlife ever since I was just a boy. I've worked at it all my life. I'm pretty sure there isn't a guy living who knows more about wild animals in this country than I do.
Connie: What are your thoughts about the protection endangered species—including predatory animals?
Leonard: I’m an old-timer, and I don't go for laws that protect the cougar and other predatory animals. I've been to wildlife conferences and I've told them just what I thought about it—whether they like it or not! If they want to have cougars, bears, wild cats, coyotes and wolves, that's fine with me. But I think they should put them on game reserves and build fences high enough that they can't get out! That way, people can go and look at them and not be harmed. But to leave them out in the wild where they can destroy the property of the people who are making a living from livestock isn't right in my estimation.

Connie: I've seen some of the road building pictures of this area. Were the Grants involved in road building?
Leonard: Dad and I were both county road supervisors for a good many years each.
When we first started building roads, it was all done with horses. The dump scrapers were pretty primitive, but we got the roads built anyway.
When I was elected county commissioner after the war, we had one grader in Lincoln County. There just wasn't any money to do anything.
Dad and I practically built all the road between Harlan and Burnt Woods, originally. I rebuilt it after we got the modern equipment, and I put in the culverts that are now. That was while I was county commissioner.
Connie: It sounds to me like there were a number of sawmills in this part of the country. Even when people were logging with bull teams, it seems to me they needed good roads.
Leonard: There were 16 sawmills throughout the Big Elk Valley in the early days. There were three at Chitwood alone. Up every canyon, there was a sawmill. There were no graveled roads like there are now—just dirt roads leading from logging operations to the county roads.
Connie: As logging got more and more sophisticated equipment, did they create any problems for the public?
Leonard: Logging outfits would bulldoze a road down into the county road and just let the water and debris flow! Then they walked off and left the whole mess for the county to clean up. They'd haul logs across the county roads and make a terrible mess.
Connie: Since the county roads are public property, weren’t logging outfits ever held accountable for the damage they caused?
Leonard: Every little while we had to have some poor fellow arrested for tearing up the county roads. We finally passed a resolution saying logging outfits had to have a permit to bring a road from the canyons into a county road. The commissioners would estimate how much it would be, and made them put up a cash bond; they'd deposit it. It was stipulated in there that when they finished logging, that if they'd clean up the mess they made, they'd get their bond money back. But if they didn't clean up, they'd forfeit it.
Connie: Did that prove to be a workable plan?
Leonard: That worked pretty good. There were a very few of them who forfeited their cash bond.
Connie: How much was the fee for the permit?
Leonard: The fee for the permit ran anywhere from $200 to $500—along in there. In those days that was enough of a penalty that loggers felt inclined to fix the county road when they got through making a mess of it.
Connie: Did you ever have to have a logger arrested for not cleaning up the county road?
Leonard: We finally had one fellow arrested. That outfit stood suit and went to trial! We had to carry that case up to the Oregon Supreme Court of Appeals before we could beat him. The judge knew the law. Why he ever decided against the county, I never could figure.
Connie: What were the circumstances that led to his arrest?
Leonard: There were people living on the side of the Yaquina who had lived there for 60 years and never had any way to get out except by boat, so I built a road through there all one winter. I did all the blasting and most of the chainsaw work myself. We had it pretty well done, but we didn't have it rocked. We closed it up for the winter and went back and rocked it in the spring.
That logger we had arrested was logging right down into Yaquina Bay with a cat! He hauled the logs right across the county road until it got so mud He couldn't make it any more. So he'd bring in the logs and leave them right at the bottom—and run over them with his cat. Believe it or not, Connie, it was five logs deep on the county road where they crossed, so you can imagine what kind of a hole there was in there.
We got a warrant for his arrest and set the sheriff out after him for the destruction of public property.
Connie: Was he surprised when the sheriff arrested him?
Leonard: That fellow, who was working for a local logging company, was meaner than heck. He said it didn't make any difference to him; the logging company he worked for would pay the fine!
The county engineer had a good friend in Portland who was a lawyer. They went to school together. He was one of the best attorneys in Portland. We got him on the case and by golly we really the logger over the coals and beat him. I can’t see how a judge can decide against the law, but apparently it can happen.
Connie: After the case made its way through the Oregon Supreme Court of Appeals, what kind of a penalty did that logger get slapped with?
Leonard: That fellow was fined $1,000. Besides that, there were damages. It came to $7,000 altogether.
Connie: Did his company fork out the $7,000 on his behalf as he anticipated they would?
Leonard: No way. The logging company didn't back up the logger, so he was really in the soup!
I ran into that same fellow again after that over around Rock Creek. I was going over the road, and by golly there was a fellow logging there!
Connie: Did he have the nerve to mess up the road again?
Leonard: He really had a mess in the county road. There was a cat running with nobody in it; they were loading logs right in the county road!
Connie: What did you do when you saw that?
Leonard: I just sat there and waited, and pretty soon the fellow drove up. He was mad right away. He was a big, husky fellow, and he came right over to my pickup and said, "Hello! I suppose you're looking for trouble!"
Connie: How did you respond to that one?
Leonard: I said, "No I'm not! I've got more troubles than I can take care of already. But I'll tell you one thing; you're going to do like everybody else. That's all I'm going to tell you," I told him. Then I asked, "Have you got a permit to load logs right here in the middle of this county road? Have you put up a cash bond yet?" He answered, "No, but my mother has."
Connie: After dragging him through court over the last incident, did you believe him?
Leonard: I told him, "I know who your mother is. If she'd got the permit then it's all right. But I’ll tell you one thing. I'm headed for Toledo right now. If your mother hasn’t got the permit, I’ll have the sheriff after you by dark."
Connie: Did his mother have the permit?
Leonard: Actually, she didn't have a permit, but she wasn’t long in getting one. I never saw the man since that time. He went to Alaska and some fellow shot him to death in a fight. Doesn't surprise me; he was meaner than heck.
Anyway, Connie, these are the types of things you've up against when you're county commissioner, and try to do the right thing.

Connie: In addition to maintaining county roads, what were some of your other duties as county commissioner?
Leonard: Road maintenance was my primary duty. When I was county commissioner, I didn’t just sit and swivel a chair. I could tell you the condition of every road in Lincoln County; I drove over them and saw them myself.
Believe it or not, I had to help move the courthouse from Toledo to Newport while I was county commissioner!
Connie: Why you?
Leonard: The north end of Lincoln County had always wanted the courthouse. I talked to a lot of people personally and told them we were going to have to have a new courthouse. There wasn't even a place to park a car in the old one. I told the, "The courthouse is just about to fall down. You're going to have to have a courthouse. If you don't get funds and plan to build one, you're gong to lose it."
Connie: Did the powers that be take your advise?
Leonard: They must gave me the horse laugh and said they could never get it out of Toledo. I told them not to fool themselves that it certainly could happen. "The majority of people are along the coast," I said. "If they ever vote on it, Toledo is going to lose the courthouse."
The first thing Newport did was offer to give free grounds. It amounted to several thousand dollars. It was right there that Toledo lost it. The town had no place to build a courthouse. Nothing. Toledo didn't have a chance in keeping it.
Connie: Did it come up for vote?
Leonard: Yes. When it came up for vote, that was it. To cap it all off, the county judge came up missing when it was time to move all the old records and everything.
Connie: What do you mean by missing?
Leonard: Nobody knew where he went! The other commissioner and I had to move all lithe old records. We had to hire trucks and oversee the entire operation; we were responsible for the records and everything.

Connie: When did people in the Harlan area get telephone service?
Leonard: The first telephone line that was ever built in here was when the Davidsons were living here. They were the family who ran the post office at Peak.

   "I want to thank you for all the work you have done on Oregon history. I also admire your genealogical work although obviously not in the context of my own family.
   I'm a life-long resident of Corvallis and long interested in my own family history, both in this state and beyond. I've had several copies of your book "Lords of Themselves," the latest purchased on the web and having your signature as well as your ex-husbands signature. Thanks for that.
   I have for three years been chairing a group called the Corvallis to the Sea Trail Partnership and in that role I have roamed the hills west of Marys Peak for years looking at old logging roads, historical locations, trailable hillsides, etc. Your book has given me so much background that I hope I can weave into historic/educational materials for the trail (with proper attribution, of course). One of the routes we are considering is the original route into the Big Elk Valley from the Philomath area, viz. up Old Peak Road, past the old Peak, Oregon location (and the Davidson Cemetery), across the head of Shot Pouch Creek and down into the Big Elk Valley just north of Sugar Bowl Creek. This route is shown on early survey maps from the 1870s, but did not continue quite as far west as the Harlan store location or Spout Creek. This route will use part of Grant Creek Road before striking off onto Forest Service lands, past Gopher Creek and Palmer Mt, and, eventually, the coast.
My grandmother's brother, Ivan Taylor, used to come over from his land on Bark Creek and hunt deer and elk along those ridges south of the Big Elk Valley. His parents, Frank and Mary Taylor lived on the Blodgett-Peak Road after operating the Old Central Hotel in Philomath early in the 1900s. I'm told that after Frank and Mary's death, that land was the first puchased by T.J. Starker as he began his quest to have his own timber-lands.
   Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for your efforts. You have preserved much important information that may have been lost forever."

At one time the Bell Telephone Company had the only telephone line in the country. It went down through here and down the Big Elk to Toledo and Newport.
Connie: Where did the cooperative telephone line begin?
Leonard: The cooperative telephone line came from Blodgett. The Davis brothers came in here. They owned the place that Don Kessi has at Harlan now.
Connie: What did the Davis brothers have to do with the telephone cooperative?
Leonard: When Elmo Davis and his brother came in here, they got to talking to people around the Big Elk Valley. The citizens here built a line from here to Blodgett. It went out on the Big Elk and down Bear Creek to Blodgett. The Bell Telephone people came in over our poles down to here, then the line went on from here to Elk City.
Charley Hyde worked on the line; he was a lineman for the Bell Telephone Company.
Connie: Harry Hawkins mentioned Charley Hyde. He said George Kentta over at Logsden used to have him come over and stay with him and tape recorded some of his stories.
Leonard: He's past 90 now (1977) and lives in Toledo. He's still pretty active and might remember those days.
Connie: When was the Pioneer Cooperative started?
Leonard: The Pioneer Cooperative was started just before WWI.
My son, Jack Grant, was home when the US started drafting men for WWII. He enlisted. I told him to enlist in something he could learn something useful from if he was going to enlist at all.
He went to Camp Lewis in Washington for basic training. Right away they could see that Jack understood electronics. They never let him come home on leave at all. He went on the first ship that went to Australia. He was away at war for four years and eight months. When he got to Australia, his work was all electrical there. He built power lines.
Jack went to work for Pioneer Telephone Cooperative when they were cleaning the right-of-way. When they got done cleaning the right-of-way, the boss contracted men to build the line. The contractors hired Jack to help set the poles. That's where he started in working for the telephone company.
Connie: Does Jack still work for the telephone company?
Leonard: No. He’s now general manager for Springfield Electric and has 20 men under him right now.
Connie: I take it Jack wasn’t interested in sheep ranching like your grandson, Sterling, is.
Leonard: I tried to get Jack to stay on the ranch. If the two boys—Jack and Winston—had stayed on the ranch, I could have earned enough money to buy more land and we really would have made some money then.

Connie: Where did the Pioneer Telephone Cooperative get its name?
Leonard: It was called the Pioneer Telephone Cooperative because it was the first cooperative telephone line in the US.
Connie: Do you remember how it got started?
Leonard: I’ll tell you how we came to get it. I knew a fellow who was a representative from Oregon. I was a county commissioner at the time, and I got really well acquainted with Walter. He was a real fine fellow. When we tried to get this telephone line in here, we were turned down. Although he lived in Salem, Walter was in Washington DC at the time, so I wrote him a letter. I got a letter back from him and it said, "When I come back to Salem I'm going to come over and see you." Ruth and I lived in the old shack then, because our new home had burned out.
Connie: Did Walter finally pay you and Ruth a visit?
Leonard: One day, Walter showed up, just like he said. I took him all over the country around here in that old Model T Ford with the top on it that I drove when I would be gone for a week at a time.
Walter went back to Washington DC. Right away I got another letter from him saying he had got the appropriation from the REA to build this telephone cooperative!
At the time, there was an outfit in Philomath who owned this line. The lines were all down and were going to wreck. They were trying to peddle the line to the people here, but they didn't have the money to take it over.
Connie: Did you buy them out once you got the appropriations?
When we got the appropriation, we bought out that guy in Philomath; that’s where the cooperative started.
Leonard: There was a big appropriation when they built the power line in here. There was a fellow who got on the board of directors of the Benton-Lincoln Electric Cooperative who lived up the river. This fellow was pretty sharp so he go on the board and made sure he got electricity on his place. The line came from Blodgett to Shot Pouch and then on down the Big Elk. Just about the time they got the line down to the Grant ranch, they ran out of money!
Connie: Why did the cooperative run out of money?
Leonard: WWII came along and they couldn't build it on down to the Big Elk Region. We finally had to dig up the holes and set the poles ourselves from Harlan down to where we live in order to get it down this far.

The first real water power system for Corvallis began in 1890 when Johnson Porter bought out the L. L. Hurd franchise for an electric system. Hurd had a small dynamo which was unsuccessful for supplying the necessary power.
Porter sold some of his stock to Edward Strange and together they started the Corvallis Electric Light & Power Company. They required some larger machinery and set up a plant just north of the Willamette River Bridge. They had their wires under the wooden floor of the shop and when the high water came up that spring, it came within inches of the wires, nearly putting them out of business. When the water went down they put in a concrete floor and put their wires up higher. This worked satisfactorily.
In 1903 they sold their interests to A. Welch who in turn sold it to the Oregon Power Company and it was operated under this name until 1919 when it was taken over by the Mountain States Power Company.
Today, under mr Bennett, who became manager in 1935, the company serves 1,669 residents, 1,340 light and cooking outlets, 470 commercial houses and 169 industrial plants which use power, making a total of 17,000.
The Mountain States Power Company employs 18 people. Besides furnishing all the power for this vicinity they retail from their store all line of heavy duty household equipment. Included among their stock are nationally advertised trade names such as Hotpoint, General Electric and Westinghouse.

I’m May [Cook] Grant, President of the Board of Directors of the Benton-Lincoln Electric Cooperative, located in Corvallis, Oregon. My home is in the Big Elk Valley—150 miles from Portland, 36 miles from Corvallis. I live on a stock ranch in the foothills with my husband, Lige Grant, where we raise beef cattle and sheep. My husband was born there; it had been my home for 50 years.

I was elected to the Board of Directors of Benton-Lincoln Electric Cooperative in 1946 and have served as President for five years. The cooperative serves—Benton, Lincoln, Polk, Linn and Lane. We have approximately 20,000 people. Our cooperative has grown from a very small beginning into the reality of Big Business. It was formed, like so many others, by a group of farmers seeking a better way of life.

Faye Barclay, still serving on the Board, called a meeting of a few neighbors in his home in the Alsea Valley back in 1938 and from this meeting, many other meetings followed. Finally, in 1940, the cooperative was incorporated and the first few miles of line were energized.
Directors and management of our cooperative realize the growing necessity of a continued source of low-cost power so we can attract industry into the Pacific Northwest. With industry will come more people.

We know that Hells Canyon is a symbol of our program—it is part of the master plan to the Northwest Power Pool, and if we lose Hells Canyon, the first link in the chain is broken. At a meeting of the members of our cooperative, at which approximately 1,000 members were in attendance, a resolution supporting a high dam at Hells Canyon was unanimously adopted.
I look at this need for the multipurpose dams built by the federal government using our own we had quite a little farming community: one sawmill employing about 15 men and selling the output locally. Since Benton-Lincoln Electric Cooperative energized their lines in 1940, we have two large mills employing 120 men in the mills and in the logging woods. The two mills marketed 16 million board feet of lumber in 1954, shipping it all over the world. The payroll for 1954 exceeded $500,000. The stockmen sold "feeder" lambs and steers in 1938. Now, with irrigation, it is possible to "feed out" the steers and lambs.
But I feel most deeply about the standard of living of our people in the so-called "fringe" areas in comparison with 15 years ago. I stumbled around in the dark for more than 50 years—filled and trimmed kerosene lamps every day of most of those years. We drove 15 miles to the nearest telephone and 36 miles to the nearest doctor and hospital. There have been many of these trips that ended in tragedy. Now, thanks to the ERA program, we have telephone through the Pioneer Telephone Cooperative, financed by the REA.
These things have been made possible by people believing in each other, and by cooperative effort, they built a better way of life. The fact that we have an abundance of low-cost power brought to us by Bonneville at a reasonable rate and that up to this point more power has been available when needed, has made it possible for us to meet the demand of industry. That is why we will not settle for less than full development of our water resources that will continue to bring us low-cost power, thus making it possible for us to continue area coverage.

Connie: This is such a lovely ranch, Leonard. How do you keep it in such good condition.
Leonard: People often wonder how I keep my ranch in such good condition, when I work away from home so much of the time. When most fellows are at home, they're their own bosses, and they don't do anything. But every day I'm home I get something done. When you're your own boss and you don't work, you don't get very far. As old as I am now—86—I still feel that way; every day I get something done.
Connie: Where did you learn your work ethic?
Leonard: I watched a lot of Germans. Old A. A. Ullman, Frieda Folmsbee's father, who used to be down the river, got something done every day. That's the only way you can run a ranch.
Connie: Do your grandsons, take your advise?
Leonard: I try to tell my grandsons that a ranch is the best way of life there is. But I don't forget that there’s work to do. Every day you lay off, nothing gets done. When you're your own boss and you want to take a day off, nobody is going to be on your back. But every day you don't get something done the ranch is going backwards. You only have what you take care of; you either take care of it, or it isn’t there.

Near the middle of December, 1906, at breakfast one morning, my dad, Frank Lange, with a sly grin and a twinkle in his eye, looked across at Mother and said, "How would you like to go to the folks' for Christmas?" We were living in the town of Montavilla, which soon after became part of Portland. The grandparents (Sarah J. Golly and John T. Calkins) had left a year or two before and settled in Lincoln County on the coast in Oregon. Excitement ran high as Dad left for work that morning. There were three kids to get ready for the trip—I was eight that month, my sister was five and the baby was one and a half—clothes to make and clothes to buy.

The old sewing machine hummed far into the night for the next week. And finally the eve of the departure: we must get up at 4am as our train left at 6am. We children must go to bed early and get a good night's rest. With the anticipation of the coming trip, I'm sure it was 3:30am before I slept a wink. Mother worked far into the night on last minute details. Boy, what a sleep pair of kids my sister and I were when they tried to wake us up! But we came to life quickly when they finally got it across that this was the day we were to leave for Grandma and Grandpa Calkins' place. We had to walk ten to 12 blocks to the streetcar and then a five miles ride to Portland. The train was on time and we were soon on our merry way up the Willamette Valley to Albany. The weird whistle of the train and the clicking of the rails are memories to never be forgotten. At Albany we were to take the Corvallis & Eastern—the only train in America to make the slow train through Arkansas look like the lightening express. However, several tunnels and beautiful mountain streams along the way helped to pass the time, and of course, there was the peanut butter man sitting just ahead of us with a big store of good things to eat at double the regular prices. We had little money to spend with him, but it was fun watching him travel back and forth through the cars selling his wares.
Early in the even we arrived at the little town of Toledo on the Yaquina Bay. Grandpa Calkins and my Uncle Ray were at the depot to meet us. My sister and I were anxious to get on over to Grandma's, but we were told that it was too far and that we would have to stay at the hotel that night. We were told that we must hurry, as supper would be ready and if you didn't eat when supper was ready, you didn't eat. There were no short orders.
Mother rung my sister's nose with one corner of her handkerchief, then wet the other corner with her tongue and gave my ears a last once-over just before we went into the hotel. We were shown to our rooms, and after a quick wash and brush-up, went down to the dining room for one of those good old-fashioned family-style suppers.
The Ellsworth, for many years the leading hotel in Lincoln County, was built on pilings over the Yaquina Bay. We were tired and retired early, but were up very early in the morning. After breakfast, the waitress took us out on the back porch and let us feed the seagulls, which was a new and thrilling experience.
We must hurry along, as we had a long hard trip ahead of us. Our luggage was loaded into a rowboat and we were on our way for a four mile trip up the bay. We children were told to sit very still, which was extremely difficult with so many things to see along the way.
After debarking from the boat we still had eight miles to go—four up and four down. The team which had been left at a ranch at the edge of the bay was soon hitched to the wagon and we were off on the last leg of our journey. The "road" wasn't worthy of the name; it was as narrow as a trail through the timber, barely wide enough for a wagon to travel. The wheels would roll up over the road on one side and down into a chuck hole on the other side. My mother drove the team, as the men never role going up the hills, and quite often got behind and pushed on the steeper places. The team were chestnut sorrels and very difficult in disposition. Topsy was slow and easy going. If she didn’t get there today, tomorrow was soon enough. Dick was nervous and flighty and wanted to get the trip over with as soon as possible. But they were both true pullers, and soon they were at the top of the hill.
At this point, Dad said to me, "Let's jump over the hill and see what we can find." I didn't know what he had in mind, but to follow him was my greatest delight. So we left the road and went bounding downs the hill over logs and through the timber for a couple of miles, and then out into the road again. We had only gone a few yards when we rounded a curve in the road and there before us in a very narrow valley with the hills rising steep and high on either side was my grandfather's farm. To me it was a wonderful delight, and I stopped to drink in the beauty of it.
The barn was in the floor of the valley while the house set on the bluff across the creek. The buildings were made of split cedar boards and you could throw a cat through most any place. But it looked like a paradise to me.
There was a long log running from the road across the creek, and then a long flight of steps up to the bench where the house sat.
On the top step—with an arm around a black spaniel dog—sat a ten-year-old boy, my mother's youngest brother, Gerald Calkins, my uncle and my life-long pal. I hadn't realized that I was looking at my grandfather's place until my father said, "Do see anybody you know up there?"
I let out a war whoop and boy and dog came alive right now. We met at the end of the log, and after some hearty hand-shaking and back-slapping, I made my way over the logs and up the steps to see Grandma Calkins and my two Aunts, Inez, who later married Jesse Daniel, and Leota, who married Willis Grant.
Soon the wagon arrived and after the women had gone through the usual ordeal of hugging, crying, and kissing, we went into one of those glorious meals that only a grandmother can set before you.
When we came out from dinner the shadows were lengthening fast; the sun was nearly gone behind the tall green ridge to the west. I gazed at the high mountains at each side of the narrow valley with awe.
There was a small field below the barn and the mountains closed in again from the east. How could Grandma call this "Penitentiary Hollow?" True, the only way you could see out was straight up, and to a woman who had been raised on the vast Plains of the Midwest it must have seemed close quarters. But to me, it was all I had ever dreamed of.
Water for washing, cooking, and drinking was carried from the spring to the foot of the bluff—a 50 feet descent down the slippery trail and then back up with your pails of water—but it was wonderful water when you got it.
It was soon too dark to see, but still we boys lingered outside. The day had been beautiful for December and now the moon was just peeking over the hill below the barn.
The menfolk were filing out the kitchen door with lanterns and milk pails. It was time for evening chores. We trailed along. When we reached the barn, old Dick and Topsy were sleepily munching their hay, glad that the hard trip of the day was over.
When the doors were opened, the cows came hurrying in, eager for the feed they knew was waiting for them in the mangers. The three I remember best were Jenny, Daisy, and Bellflower.
While the men were milking, we romped in the haymow, a treat that Grandpa Calkins seldom permitted. But this was a special occasion.
After the chores were finished, we gathered in the front room around the big box heater and listed to tales of the mountain. One night the wagon went over the grade and sent them tumbling down the mountainside, only to be stopped by trees or logs. No one was seriously hurt, but it was an experience long to be remembered.
My aunt had been trailed by mountain lions when she stayed too long at a neighbors' and was coming home in the dusk of the evening. Grandma Calkins had been treed by one of the bulls that ran on the open range. These stories were all very thrilling to an eight-year-old boy.
As the evening wore on, Grandma said we must have a bit to eat before going to bed. I will never forget those winter evening meals: huge thick slices of homemade bread with lots of homemade butter and jam, tomato preserves, sweet and sour pickles, relishes, and what have you. Oh yes, there was pumpkin pie and milk for the kids, and well boiled tea for the grown-ups. If Grandmother's tea wouldn't float the spoon, it was too weak.
Bless Grandmother's heart. She passed away February 16, 1946, at the age of 92, and was laid to rest in the mountains of Harlan she had learned to love so well. Her eyes were bright, her mind was clear. Grandma had a sense of humor seldom equaled in one her age. She was respected by young and old alike.
We children had been send to bed that night, stuffed to the ears, dog tired, but happy.

When we woke up in the morning, the sun was high. Breakfast was over, and the women were busy preparing for the following day. We were given a hurried breakfast and told to go and play.
There was no room for kids in the kitchen. There was a goose to dress, pies to make, and cakes to bake. Tomorrow was Christmas, and a bang-up dinner was in the making.
"Skip the country," said Grandma. "Your room is worth more than your country." That was a welcome suggestion. With axe in hand, Grandpa led the way to a grove of small firs not far from the house.
I was quick to find a tree, but Grandpa wasn’t so easily satisfied. He looked them over and finally found what he was after—a well formed tree just the right height for the room.
It was soon cut down and taken to the woodshed where a base was made for it.
Dad and uncle Ray had taken their guns and gone for a short hunt. We would wait until they returned to decorate the tree as Dad was an expert in that line.
The rest of the day was spent exploring the ranch, doing a little fishing and running errands.
When evening came, the tree was decorated and the candles were ready for lighting. Santa Claus would be there soon with the presents, so we must stay out of that room. We had been told that there would be few presents that Christmas as it cost so much to make the trip, but Old Saint Nick took care of that part of the deal, and we fared very well indeed.

Christmas day dawned bright and clear, and the dinner was a howling success.
Some young men dropped in to see my unmarried aunts in the afternoon. They were dressed in overalls and heavy wool shirts, with guns in hands and hounds at their heels. They claimed to be "just passing by," but before we left for home, I learned that they "passed by" that way often when the girls were home.
Neighbors dropped in and the day was spent with stories and songs. My grandparents told of the great prairie wolves in the Midwest, while the neighbors related tales of encounters of wild cats, lynx, and cougar.
When the party broke up and we were tucked in bed, we stole under the covers and lay very quiet, fearing that each noise we heard in the night was heralding the approach of some savage beast.

The day after Christmas Dad had to leave to get back to work. We watched him and my uncle ride away on the horses for Toledo. Mother and we children were to stay another week.
And what a week it was! The event that stands out most clearly in memory was the visit to the neighbors' with my aunt and uncle. They lived in a house with just one room. The cook stove, cupboards and table were at one end. A heating stove and several beds were at the other end. There were mink, skunk and raccoon pelts stretched and drying over the stove. The aroma told of their presence before entering the house!
The family consisted of the father and mother, a boy 11, a girl 12, and a boy 16 who was subject to epileptic fits. I had been told of the fits, and was assured that he was "harmless." When I saw him, I had no doubt about the "fits," but was far from convinced as to his "harmlessness." To make matters worse, he seemed strangely "attracted" to me, and sat for what seemed an eternity across the room grinning and staring at me. He finally got up and came towards me with a large pocket knife in his hand. "I'll show you what I got," he said, and promptly fell into a "fit" at my feet.
There was only one door in the house, and the only way to reach it was to go over the top of him—which I did—leaving plenty of room between him and me. I might have been going yet if the father, who was coming in just as I made my exit, hadn't caught me just as I reached the gate. I was brought back in the house and was laughed at all the way.
My "friend" with the "fits" soon recovered, but he didn't get between me and the door again.
In later years, I learned to know these people better, and finer friends and neighbors never lived.

The week passed all too quickly, and we were soon ready to start our trip back over the mountains, spend another night at the Ellsworth in Toledo, and then take the long train trip back to Portland.
As the team was hitched to the wagon, ready to carry us over the mountain, my pal and I stood side by side. There wasn’t much to say. Old Rowdy seemed to sense the situation and I reached a big kiss between his brown eyes, and climbed into the wagon.
The vacation was over, and we were headed home, but if I live a thousand years, I could never forget my first trip to Penitentiary Hollow.

Connie: How did Harlan get its name?
Evelyn: It was named for James R. Harlan, who was the first settler there.
When we moved to Harlan, there was a prune orchard and a hop yard on the old Harlan place. I think Jim built the house before he left. He fixed that place up just beautifully. He was a real workman. Jim left the area suddenly because his wife, Martha Ann (1858-1893) died during childbirth. I think he married again and lived in Corvallis. He must have given up and left the area out of grief.
Connie: What in particular drew people to the Harlan area?
Evelyn: Harlan is a sportsman’s intrigue. People then were running their mail routes—anything they could do early and fast—so they could go to Harlan to fish. People liked it there.
Connie: When did the Paynes first arrive in the Harlan area?
Evelyn: We moved here from Hillsboro in 1911. That was the first train to Blodgett after the big flood. Before we moved to Hillsboro we lived in Tillamook.
Connie: What was your dad's name?
Evelyn: My dad's name was Irvin Payne. My uncle, George Payne, was his brother.
Connie: What do you think caused the westward movement?
Evelyn: All the people were moving West for more land, or better circumstances. They wanted to better themselves. The West was settled by roaming people who were the strongest, brightest, most intelligent citizens right out here on the West Coast. In accordance with the theory of natural selection, only the brightest and strongest made it and survived.
The early pioneers were active people—not necessarily intellectuals. They weren't "bookish." But then, there were some who were, like Ella Brown who came to Harlan and started a school. She was very "bookish" and intelligent. She started the school with her family and she made it work, of course.
Connie: Tell me about the post office at Harlan.
Evelyn: It was soon after 1913 that the post office opened things up so that everyone could send more material by mail. You had to pay five cents for the first pound and a penny for additional pounds. That made it just about a penny a pound.
My mother, Minnie, was the seventh Harlan postmaster then. During the winter, she charged a penny a pound for hauling. This made parcel post accessible, so people could move their entire belongings by mail. They could move from Portland to Harlan for that low price. People were literally moving into the area via the mail!
That's when the people really started coming into Harlan. There's probably an economic reason why they started the migration, but I'm not aware of what it might have been.
Connie: What were the roads like in the early 1900s?
Evelyn: The roads were nothing but mud. There were wheel tracks for a wagon. That road went over Marys Peak coming by Woods Creek, which is 21 miles from Harlan and about two miles from Philomath. That was the mail route. It came into Harlan one day and back to Philomath the next day.
You had to go around Marys Peak to get to Harlan. But there was a shorter route. You could start at Philomath and go out toward Alsea a little ways and hit right up across the hill to Newman's Camp.
Connie: I haven't heard about Newman's Camp before. Was it a labor camp of some sort?
Evelyn: Yes, some of the men went to work at Newman's Camp. Vern Young, who lives near Elk City now, worked there. Family men who didn't have any work went to Newman's Camp and worked a little while in the woods. They were loggers. They had a little boarding house up there on top of the hill. That was one way a man could support his family when nothing else was available.
Connie: What do you know about early sawmills in the Harlan area?
Evelyn: There was a big water-powered mill already built, by a man by the name of Miller, in Harlan when my family arrived there in February 1911. But it was inactive at the time. It was located on our place. They built a dam on Feagles Creek about a mile above our house, and they made a flume all the way and dug deep ditches. In some places, the flume was five to six feet deep across Big Elk Creek. The flume threw the water down into that wheel, but it was still revolving in the river.
There was also another mill built clear back across the river which very few people remember.
Connie: Where was the other mill?
Evelyn: The other mill may have been up on the old place settled by Charles C. Mulkey II (1812-?) and his wife Levinia Read (1815-?), but I could be wrong about that. There's a little neck of land on the Mulkey place just wide enough for a mill, and it was hanging over a little valley. Of course for water, they had a little pond in there.
That mill really sawed a lot of lumber. Mulkeys had a board fence around it, and the sign painted on it said: 1000 board feet for $10. So I ran home and told the folks that lumber was so cheap that we could build just about anything we wanted to!
That was Del's granddad, G. A. Hodges (1852-1926) and his older boys who worked that mill. He was building mills for other people. It was always my impression that he built it for Charles Mulkey, but whether he had the money to pay for its construction or not, I don’t know.
Jane (1846-1910) and Vance Kinney may have fronted the money for the mill, because they had a place on that land.
Connie: What do you know about George Hodges?
Evelyn: I know he learned to make mission furniture in Portland, and from what I understand he continued making it at the sawmill on the original Hodges homestead at Salado, which is about three miles east of Claudine and Dell's current place. They floated the furniture to Newport on rafts.
Elmo Davis visited Harlan quite a few times before he actually bought any land. He finally bought the place next to where the sawmill was up the river. He eventually moved to Siletz.
Whether that sawmill was on his place or the Mulkey place, I've never known for sure. Dad sold them (the Mulkey family) our general store in 1920, and they moved it up to that old place.
Connie: I know Vern January, who ran the Elk City Store, was from Harlan. Do you know anything about that family?
Evelyn: About four miles up Big Elk Creek toward Marys Peak is where Wesley W. January homesteaded. He was Harlan's sixth postmaster. Wes also owned a sawmill which was a little farther up the river.
Connie: Did the Indians venture inland or did they stay pretty much on the coast?
Evelyn: They traveled around quite a bit as a matter of fact. So did their artifacts and tools. For instance, John Steiger dug down in the slough one day to put his boat in and repair it. When he got down rather deep, he found a flat rock from the beach—a heavy iron rock—with old fern and a fish bone with the fat and everything still on it fossilized onto it. He thought that perhaps a flood came quickly and covered that rock immediately, and the dead matter never deteriorated.
Since that time, I found the same kind of rock on this side of the river. It didn't have a fern or a fish on it, but it was definitely not the kind of rock you would find here. It was from the beach and was used by the Indians to do their cooking on.
On the flat of Elk City where the houses are, is the old Indian campground. Mother remembers when they were there. Tribal members stopped off at Elk City and had their campfires and ate and smoked.
James H. Parks (1887-?), who has a sheep and cattle ranch on the Elk City-Harlan Road, had four mounds on the river bank at his place that had Indian tools stacked on top of them. These were burial mounds, not shell mounds. When the Indians died, they always took all their earthly necessities with them to heaven.
Connie: Did the Indians ever camp as far east as Salado?
Evelyn: Oh yes. Del’s dad, Dell Hodges (1887-1969) recalled that when he was a toddler, there were Indians staying at Salado. They wanted to play with him, but he was afraid of them.
Connie: Do you know anything about the eel trap on Jim Parks' place?
Evelyn: As I recall, there was an Indian eel trap on Big Elk Creek on the upper end of his place. There was another one on the Yaquina near Verba and Albert Croston's place on the Elk City Road.
Connie: It sounds like the Indians were free to come and go and weren't confined to the reservation.
Evelyn: That's true. Many of them didn’t live on the reservation. In fact, as they got more education and more money, they moved away from the area completely.
Connie: Then I presume there were members of the tribe living in Toledo.
Evelyn: Sure. There were Indians living on Depot Slough when I moved here in 1921. In fact, there was an Indian by the name of Archie P. Johnson (1875-1967) living on the slough who had a dugout canoe. Indians weren’t the only folks using canoes; Hunts also had a dugout.
Connie: Did Indian children have a chance to go to school outside the reservation?
Evelyn: Oh, yes. The old Central School had a wonderful library of school materials. Esther Anderson told me this story:

A woman was teaching in Toledo, and the Indian children who hadn't been enrolled in class would come and peek in the windows. At first she waved to them or smiled at them. Finally, she got them to come in and sit down and listen. They were just as afraid to go to school as Dell Hodges was afraid to play with them.

Connie: How did Shot Pouch get its name?
Evelyn: According to Jerry Henkle, an early Benton County pioneer, Shot Pouch Creek was named in 1856 when some settlers were exploring the Coast Range looking for grazing land.
According to a fellow named Mark Phinney, who interviewed Jerry Henkle about Benton County history in 1937, George Knowlton, a member of the party, lost a shot pouch near the stream, which was named on that account.
Connie: Have you been to Shot Pouch?
Evelyn: I was there once and I've been I've been afraid to go back ever since.
Dad took me through there with a wagon one year, and we ate some chocolate cookies. The next day, I vomited all day long, I was so sick.
The road jumps down into the creek, which flows northwest from Marys Peak, and then it jumps back out again, then down in and back out again until you're dizzy and suffering from motion sickness.
The mail has been making that loop daily for years, but I wouldn't dare take my car that way, because I remember that one fateful trip!
Connie: When were cars first introduced in the Harlan area?
Evelyn: In 1911, there were no cars at Harlan. The Mulkeys got a car in 1915. as did G. A. Hodges. Then C. D. Springer (1882-1953) and his wife Connie Nell (1884-1971) got an old Ford. Dad bought that Ford from him and taught me how to drive.
I learned to drive among the fruit trees on that road. But it wasn’t too bad. It was a dirt road and you didn't drive in the summertime because of the dust.
My granddad bought a big seven passenger Studebaker and crossed the river in the summertime because it was very low. They used to grade it up so it was fairly smooth.
We attended picnics in Grandpa's Studebaker. Sometimes we had to back up at the bends, because the Studebaker couldn’t make it clear around the bend.
People got cars in those days as their luxury. However, the people who got cars early on weren't necessarily the more well to do. Those with the most actual, substantial property value were more careful about financially going out on a limb.
Connie: I've heard Leonard Grant is a descendent of Daniel Boone (c1734-1820). Were the Grants the first settlers in Harlan?
Evelyn: Leonard Grant's grandparents, Mary Williams Cullen and Elijah Grant (1825-?), claim to be the first family in Harlan, but Jane Lillard and R. L. Feagles, the parents of Johnny Feagles (1873-1963) also claim to be the first.

The Grants settled in here and lived one year before the Siletz Reservation was opened for settlement, which was in 1866. They couldn't get title to the land, so they gave up and moved back to Kings Valley.
Mary and Elijah were the parents Leonard's father, Benjamin Franklin Grant (1849-1940). His mother was Lousetta Oglesby.
Many people continued moving around, but the Grants didn't. B. F. Grant stayed put; he'd been there since 1866. He got the very first deed and patent in the area. He saw to it that all of his children got a piece of land next to him, and they just spread out and spread out. Finally, his brother, Lige Grant got that place down below, so he's a little bit farther away than the rest of them.
Jack Oglesby is Leonard's uncle. His wife, Ruth, was also an Oglesby. They're fourth cousins to Lousetta and Benjamin Franklin Grant's children, Cora, Lester, Laura, Willis, Bernice, Lige, Huston, Leonard, Bessie, and Samuel, who died in infancy. The Oglesbys came from Kentucky and Virginia.
Leonard was married to a first cousin, but we're not going to talk about it in the book [sic]! She just quietly disappeared. They both knew they had made a bad play, and there was the "disgrace" of a divorce. They were both very young at the time they married, and probably decided later on that "kissin' kuzins" wasn't a very good idea.
Following the divorce, she'd walk down to our place; she was lonesome. She lived up on the Point at Leonard's homestead, and she'd run back and forth after the mail, which was then at the home of P. H. Martin, Harlan's fifth postmaster.
Connie: Del said he took piano lessons from Ruth Grant.
Evelyn: Oh yes. Ruth was a piano teacher. She helped in the Grant District and was the musician for the new church. Edna Howard Brandeberry was also a fine musician and singer. Helen and Max Town owned a gramophone with horn and cylinder records. These bits of music were most precious to the Harlan Community.
Connie: Were the McDonalds related to the Grants?
Evelyn: Yes. Cora Grant, the oldest, married a McDonald. She lived with him just about long enough to have Clifford, and then she divorced him. Later, Cora married a man by the name of Davis who lived in Philomath. They had another boy, Grant Davis.
Cliff McDonald grew up with his aunts and uncles as part of the family. He married Jesse Brown, and they had two daughters, Lois and Juanita.
Then old man McDonald, who was somewhat of a "no good," married Hattie Parks. Anyway, she died of tuberculosis and is buried somewhere at Elk City.
Connie: Do you know anything about the "Barn" Davenports who live on the far side of Big Elk Creek?
Evelyn: The "Barn" Davenports near Elk City is the granddaughter of Nellie Bennett (?-1962) and Bill Davenport (1870-1921).
Nellie Davenport was one of the finest hearted people. I loved her! I could never feel hurt about anything she did or said. She was one of the nicest people you could ever know. She did more good for this world than anybody ever thought about. Nellie was always so optimistic. She could make you feel good no matter what the trouble was. She had the character and the strength and the will power that made you feel everything was just all right.
But, she was one of the poorest housekeepers you ever met! She just couldn’t keep house.
Bill Davenport lived near me little while—five or six months maybe—and we had the same phone line. The phone line had been short and the rig got so it wouldn’t come in right. He was getting off work at 3am. I hopped out of bed scared to death that somebody was dying, considering my son-in-law, Jake, was nearly killed on the job five times. It was Bill Davenport, and he knew immediately that he'd gotten the wrong number.
Later, we found out that it was my line that had been shot to stitches, and it wasn't ringing right when it was damp. So in the night when it was a little bit damp he was getting me! He was as nice as he could be. He and I never had any trouble.
But that outfit over there in the barn! One day, I just took the receiver off the hook and that Davenport kid just cussed me out for bothering him on the phone. I wrote down just exactly what he said to me and sent it to the telephone company. I don't think he ever had phone service again after that.
The "Barn" Davenports didn't pay their bills half the time, and they were in trouble all the time.
Connie: Davenports sure sound like a colorful bunch. Who were some of the other interesting settlers?
Evelyn: C. D. Springer was an early homesteader, but he wasn't a wealthy man. He had been in there and then went up to the Cascades and worked as a forester and then came back to Harlan. His place was on top of the hill above the Carter place. He bought a place near Milton H. Young (?-1918), who was married to Jim Harlan's daughter, Eva. Young's had four children: Riley, Ben, Anna and Mildred.
William Allison and his wife Bessie Grant (1897-1953) came in on a homestead. Later, Charles Allison came with his family. Frank Allison took a homestead before he married Dorothy. For whatever reason, she never lived on the homestead.
Lloyd and Mable Graubaugh were in a cluster up by Browns, who were part of the old settlement on Gopher Creek.
The "Hilltop" Browns, Ella St. Johns (1869-?) and Charles W. (1864-1937), were in the Glen—or Glenwood—settlement. By 1920, the Glen post office was in the Brown house. The family members were especially fine neighbors. Three of their sons volunteered for WWI, two died of tuberculosis, but their son, George Everett recovered. Althea married Lester Grant, Jessie married Cliff McDonald, and Louis married Reva Allison.
Then Prof. Jerry Banks, started teaching in Harlan. In the course of time, he taught in schools all over the country.
Jerry was a penmanship expert. His flourishes were extreme; that was the style in those days.
His parents, Sarah Arnold and Bradley Troxel, also lived in Glen.
Bradley died, and Jerry stayed with Sarah, who put him through college. His grandmother, Catherine Arnold (1813-1902 OH), is also buried at Glenwood Cemetery.
Emily Timberlake (?-1915) is also at rest in Glenwood Cemetery. She is the mother of Jenny Timberlake who was a teacher at Glen when I started school at the age of five. She married a Bohanan, but she maintained the use of her birthname, and was "Jenny Timberlake" in all her pictures.
In 1911, Jenny was teaching in Harlan. She lived to be 104, and "broke" the man who was going to pay her way [sic]. She's "history" in the Glen community [sic].
When Jerry Banks was teaching at Glen, he got interested in going to Klickitat Lake, which is nestled away in a beautiful setting. On top of all his other skills, he was a photographer, and he took postcard-sized pictures of the region.
Connie: It sounds to me as though Klickitat Lake was a pretty popular place in those days.
Evelyn: Klickitat Lake was quite a resort. People used to go up there and get drunk and stay in a little cabin over night. They used to run around the house at night and bang [sic] at each other and have lots of fun.
Jerry Banks and Blanche and Percy Mulvaney used to enjoy walking up there and just looking at it.
Connie: Was the lake a haven for anglers like so many lakes and streams in the area?
Evelyn: As far as I know, there weren't any fish in the lake at first, but later on it was planted with fish. Myrtle Govro, who later married into the Grant family, owned much of the land up there, but I don’t know whether or not she personally was responsible for having the Klickitat Lake planted with fish or not.
Connie: Which Grant did Myrtle marry?
Evelyn: Myrtle's spouse died, and Sam Grant, B. F. Grant's brother, sold his place and moved into Robert Black's (1862-1917) old place after he died, which was near Govro's.
After Sam and Myrtle got married, I swear she thought she was the smartest woman in the world because she had "earned" the "status" of Grant.
One year, Myrtle was even voted Queen of Pioneer Days even though she wasn't originally from this part of the country. But, she was the oldest woman in the county, and that's what it took to qualify. I didn't think it was fair because she wasn't born here and she wasn't a "real" Grant.
Connie: What do you think was the main attraction of Klickitat Lake?
Evelyn: Well, I think some of the early people settled there for the "fun" of it. They wanted to get away from "civilization," and they chose those "remote" areas on purpose. But they didn't do like the our modern days hippies; they kept their best clothes, they came to the picnics, they mingled, and they had talents. There were nurses and musicians and people from all those professions.
Some of the people who owned land there had bookstores and pharmacies and so on. They kept a little farm land, just like today, and they just realized how nice it was to have that land to camp on when they wanted to.
For instance, a druggist from Philomath came out and camped in our pasture, which seemed more like a backyard to us.
Basically, nothing has changed in the course of time. Everybody looks forward to retirement. Something different. Lots of people wish they were living on farms right now.
Connie: What do you know about the Kessi family?
Evelyn: The older Kessis were living about two and a half miles up Klickitat Road when the Paynes arrived. He had a little bunch of creek bottom. It was just a little area, but very very rich.
The family was young yet. There were William and Georgia, who was a very bright woman, and then there was Elizabeth who was in school in the 8th grade when I was in the first grade, and Mary who was my age, then two little tiny boys later.
At the time, here was no bridge to their place. Kessis went right through our house yard and through our orchard, and right through miles of our hay field, on through P. H. Martin's old place, right on up to Klickitat.
The first built was an open bridge. That was replaced with a covered bridge after 1921, because the open bridge gave out.
The younger Kessis are loggers. Millionaires. They can offer $100,000 for a sheep or cattle ranch and not bat an eye. They offered Lige Grant that amount for his place, and they would have given him the use of the land. But Lige didn't take it, even though that was a good offer at that time.
Connie: Was the old generation of Kessis wealthy?
Evelyn: No. The older Kessis were so poor that they couldn't have white bread in the house. They ate less white bread than I do cake by far. They didn't have it. They're the ones who parcel posted all their vegetables and potatoes and everything to Jennings Lodge. Ms. Kessi had a sister teaching there. They'd live up there and put all those kids through grade school, high school and then through college.
Their daughter, Georgia was a violinist. She married a man who wrote text books. Mary never married. She attended University of Oregon for many years, and worked in the history department's archives.
Connie: Who homesteaded next to Kessis?
Evelyn: Just above the Kessi place were Cyrus Walker and Dr. Joseph E. Rankin (1906-1970), two unmarried men who fixed their cabins close together like Charles Thompson and Frank Overlander.
The Boise family had a summer home near Walker and Rankin that turned into a schoolhouse. They called it Feagle’s Creek School. In the summer, Mary Kessi used to attend classes there.
Eventually, Dr. Rankin married one of the Boise girls, and was the father of these vegetarians [sic]. In fact, there are several generations of Rankin vegetarians.
At one time, Mary and Teresa Rankin were living in Corvallis on a scientific chicken ranch. They always had to have "brilliant chicken" for that family—They were all college people.
Eventually, some of the Rankins moved to Astoria, and you can find them in Salem now.
Then Max Town homesteaded right next to the Boises, in a cluster.
Connie: Where were Mulvaneys in relation to other Harlan settlers?
Evelyn: Frank Mulvaney (1866-? OR) settled above Kessis on Klickitat Road. He had grown up in Harlan, but on the Jones place.
Alvin Jones, who married Mary Grant, was located about four miles above Harlan, and the Black School was two miles up the road from him. That's also where the old Jim Harlan place and the first post office was.
When the Paynes moved there in 1911, Frank Mulvaney was already an old man. He was older than my dad. His natural ability was to locate these property lines. He could fine the corners and the blaze marks.
Martha and Charley Arthur had a place on the other side of Washburns. They were right above Frank Thompson’s and Charley Overlander’s place where Raymond Smith had been. In fact, Samuel Grants first Spouse was Josie Smith.
Martha Arthur was sick much of the time in town, but she was perfectly healthy the minute she moved to the country.
Charley had a pension from the Spanish-American War. They had goats all the time and a cow, and they always had a big garden with berries and everything.
Connie: Claudine Hodges told me the blackberries in the valley weren't always growing wild like they are now; they're nothing more than briars.
Evelyn: At one time, there were no Himalayan and Evergreen berries here. You're right. People raised them domestically and they got away from them.
Mother ordered and bought the first Himalayan blackberry plants in Harlan, and we worked like everything to get them to grow. The Evergreen is older, and I'm not sure when it came in.
Connie: You mention how the briars got out of control. How did Tansy Ragwort get into the Big Elk Valley?
Evelyn: Tansy Ragwort originally was brought here from Europe. It came in ballast or seed that hadn't been cleaned. It could just get on the hair of an animal and travel for miles.

Connie: Did any circuit preachers serve the Harlan area?
Evelyn: Yes. Many notes on church services were displayed in the old schoolhouse. Rev. Winan of Philadelphia was sent by American Sunday School Union. These missionaries were guests of interested families and services were in schools and homes. Rev. Rhorbaugh of Albany came to Harlan. He had a small lightweight folding organ which he carried in his buggy. Bible verses were painted on board fences. Rev. Tunison who lived in Harlan around 1905 or 1906. The Tunisons were all gone by the time the Paynes got there.
In the Gazette-Times there was a book about Harlan written by one of the Tunisons. The name of the book is One Armed Circuit Rider. It was printed as a serial in the paper quite a while before the 1950s, because I taught at Blodgett right about 1951 or 1952. Twylah Davis told me that she had read it and said she enjoyed it.
Reverend Peoples was another preacher living at Harlan. [S]he [sic] married all the Mulkeys.
Alma Plunkett’s father, Rev. Rolla Phelps, came here a few times. He built the Little Log Church by the Sea at Yachats.
There was a preacher by the name of Brown who preached here years ago. He came from Newport to Elk City, then down to Riverside. Then he'd come on up here and preach. He walked most of the way.
We always had a baseball team in the summertime, and Rev. Brown would come and sit out there and watch them play baseball after everyone had gone to church.
Connie: Considering how close Harlan is to Philomath, were any of the families connected with the United Brethren?
Evelyn: My dad grew up in Wisconsin where there were United Brethren. The United Brethren were German Methodists. One year, they had a Methodist minister, and the next year they had a United Brethren minister to satisfy the Germans. They rotated that way, in the same church.
The Henkle family brought the United Brethren sect from Pennsylvania. They sent missionaries out West. Philomath college was established by the United Brethren.
The Wrights—the airplane people—are United Brethren. Orville and Wilbur's father, the Rev. Milton Wright, was a preacher in the Willamette Valley, out of Bethel someplace.
Flossie Overman, who is an authority in Philomath, said both the Wright brothers walked the streets of Philomath and went to school there.
Connie: What do you know about the Wrights on Poole Slough?
Evelyn: There was a religious colony on Pool Slough. The Colony House, as they called it, might have been established by the United Brethren. That point has never been figured out.
The Wrights on Pool Slough, who were leaders in the Colony House, were kinfolk of the airplane people, because they bragged about their famous kinfolk. They wore gunny sacks around their shoulders around the barn, just like I wear.
They were educated people. Those Wright girls had life certificates for teaching. One of them lost her certificate for hitting a kid over the head.
The young Wright boy had a fiendish disposition. The three got in a fight one day. The two girls were downstairs, and the brother went upstairs to "clean house" for the girls. He threw everything—all their antiques—out the window. He was going to have a bonfire. The girls went out in the yard and packed it back in as fast as he could throw it out.
There were no descendants of the Wrights on Poole Slough. The girls didn't marry and the boy didn't marry either.
Connie: Tell me about Charley Lillard.
Evelyn: EphriamConrow's homestead became the homestead of Charley Lillard whose wife was a Conrow. Ms. Conrow's mother died, and he married one of the Lillard girls. And then he died and his wife sold the place to Charley Lillard.

Gravestones of Martha Ann Harlan and Morgan Lillard
Photos Courtesy of Julie Hendricks

Ms. Conrow was a Davidson. Those were the people who ran the post office (1899-1917) at Peak, which is in Benton County.
Connie: Where did the name Spout Creek come from?
Evelyn: There was an Oglesby and a Hunt from Eddyville who went over there and looked at this land at the same time, and that's where the name Spout Creek comes from.
As the story goes, one of those two became very ill. He vomited all night long on something that probably poisoned him. The next morning, the other one said,
"How do you feel this morning?"
"Well, I think I'm pretty good this morning, and I think I might make it," he said.
"I thought you were going up the spout [sic] last night," the first fellow said.
Connie: Why did the Paynes leave Harlan?
Evelyn: I asked my dad, "Why in the world did you leave Harlan?" “Well, there was no money left in goats, there was no money in sheep, there was no money in cattle, nobody could pay their store bills, and I was poisoned by the dog fennel in the hay," he told me.
Connie: What was dog fennel poisoning like?
Evelyn: It was just like having poison oak. He was broken out all over. His neck would run water until his collar was soaked. His eyes were swollen shut. It was very miserable for him. I break out on the inside from it.
Dad was into thrashing and haying all summer long. When things broke down, he was out there to fix it. He suffered so. That was one of the biggest reasons we moved.
But the economic condition changed and this was the real reason. Now many of the old homesteads are just a memory. Times got hard. The people starved out.
Connie: What do you know about the early settlers in Elk City?
Evelyn: Elk City is the oldest community in Lincoln County, and it's the oldest school district.
There's a funny story Violet Updike (1893-1980) told me about a guy named Johnson who wanted to make sure he was the first to claim some land there.
George Meggison and R. A. Bensell stood on the bank waiting to claim the same land. They couldn't stand on the land itself. They had to wait until midnight to stake their claims. They crossed the Yaquina in a rowboat.
But there was Johnson standing there naked, dripping wet! He swam across the river ahead of them and claimed the land!
Well, Meggison and Bensell did better. They went down to Yaquina Bay and claimed their land.
Johnson got his land, but he didn't stay there. He must have closed immediately after that and sold it to Marsh Simpson.
Simpson is always thought to be the first settler at Elk City. But he really didn’t get his name on the original map I had.64 He bought the lots and platted a town with 80-foot streets, dreaming of a college on the hill.

Most of us call the Glen, or Glenwood District, in Lincoln County, Oregon, by the name of Drift Creek because of the largest creek in the area, which has its beginning somewhere on the slopes of Table Mountain. It is not to be confused with Drift Creek in the northern part of the county.
Lewis A. McArthur, in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, September 1947, gives the following information about Glen:

Glen post office was in the west part of Township 12 South, Range 9 West, a few miles south of Salado. It was on Upper Drift Creek or one of its tributaries. Glen post office was established January 17, 1894, with Simeon J. Wilhoit (1869-1894)67 the first of three postmasters. The office was closed to Elk City on June 30, 1912. The name Glen is said to have been applied by Jerry Banks in honor of some town where he lived previously, but the compiler has been unable to identity that place.

According to the Official Register of the US, the other two postmasters were Bradley Troxel and C. W. Brown.
The postmaster, Simeon J. Wilhoit, was known as "Grandpa Wilhoit." The building was on Gopher Creek, a tributary of Drift Creek. It also contained Grandpa Wilhoit's woodworking shop where he made wooden butter bowls and tables and other small articles on his lathe. There was a fireplace in his shop. He lived with Sarah Arnold Banks (1849-1921 IN) and Bradley Troxel (1848-1924) in the house behind the post office. Troxel Creek was named for the Troxel family. It is further up Gopher Creek and is to be remembered by the silvery sheen of the waterfall just before it crosses the road and joins Gopher Creek.
Sarah Arnold Banks Troxel was the mother of Jerry Banks, who named the Glen post office. Her sister was Mary F. Arnold who married Henry Wilhoit. Simeon J. Wilhoit was Mary F. and Henry C. Wilhoit's son. The Henry Wilhoits lived on the adjoining place up Gopher Creek, which was later owned by Adella Ellenburg (1864-1943) and Bill Moore (1859-1938).
The first family to live on Drift Creek was Martha and John Watkins and their children, but there were two bachelors who had settled there earlier. John Arnold took up a claim on Gopher Creek, later taken over by Mary and Henry Wilhoit, and finally owned by the Moore family. Margaret Lillard (1866-1939) and Charley Allen (1849-1934), an Englishman, lived between the Drift Creek and Gopher Creek fords.
When John Watkins and his brother, James, first explored their section, it was more open because the Indians had kept the brush burned off, and there was plenty of good grass, and it looked like good cattle country. At that time, there was no road into Drift Creek, only a trail over the hill from Big Elk Creek so they packed all their possessions in by horse until the first cabin was built; and Martha cooked the meals over a campfire.
The first cabin was a one-room affair, with a loft above where the boys were to sleep. They lived in this small house five years before they built the new and larger house. Their son, Nathan, hewed all the logs by hand for the new house, and they invited all the neighbors in for a house raising. Martha served stewed chicken and huckleberry pie, made of the red mountain huckleberries which grew so profusely in the woods.
In later years, Nathan took over this homestead and lived there for many years, taking care of the many flowers that Martha had planted in the picketed yard. We remember the white rose over the deep blue hydrangeas by the kitchen window, the honeysuckle trailing over the fence, and the native rhododendron which grew to giant proportions in later years. There was a huge black walnut tree not far from the porch. It was felled by the axe of someone who was more interested in cash than beauty or sentiment, or memories of swings and summer days. The second family to make a home on Drift Creek was Lizzie Munkers and N. B. Neal and their children, Fred (1878-1955), Leo, Bessie and Delman. Lizzie Neal’s father was Benny Munkers of Munkers Station72 west of Scio.
Samuel Gregory was the first teacher in the year 1891. Some of the first pupils were Fred, Leo and Delman Neal; Jim, Ethel, Lily and Bill Brown; Arthur Gordon; and Waldo, Lee, Leona and Elmer Watkins. Alice Brown attended school for a few weeks. The first school was built of hand-split boards, and the work was all donated by the men of the neighborhood. It was on Meadow Creek about one mile from the Watkins place. School was held for only three months in the wintertime.
The Brown family lived on Deer Creek. Clementine Brown and several of their children lived there: Charley, Fred, Bill, Jim, Vern, Alice, Lillian, and Mamie Siletz Brown, as well as a married daughter, Maude Brown Hatfield, living in California.
Arthur Gordon was the son of Emaline and Charley Gordon, who lived on Meadow Creek. Emaline Gordon had been Emaline Carson before she married Charley, and had two sons, Ted and George Carson.
The second teacher was Jennie Watkins, who taught in 1892, and the third teacher was Frank Wilhoit, in 1893. Belle Butler was the teacher in 1894, and Jerry Banks took over in 1895 to 1896, and perhaps Ollie Brown, Sadie Kennison and Grace Chatterson.
This schoolhouse was taken over by Oliver Altree, and for four years the school was held in a vacant dwelling about three miles from the Watkins home. Then a new school was built on Meadow Creek with lumber sawed by Oliver Altree in his mill near the first schoolhouse. All the men helped in the building.
The first child born on Drift Creek was Pansy Harris, daughter of Edward Harris, who had another daughter, Princess. Their home was later taken over by Irwin Winfield Scott Zachary Taylor Holbrook—his full name! The Holbrook children were: John, Charley, Lyle and Elgin.

Early details of Little Elk have been compiled from a letter to Emma Allphin McBride, February 1938, from Florence Mason; Rachel Ann Henkle Shipley Kitson's interview with Fred Lockley 1937, and Branch V. Henkle Genealogy, page 359.

In 1872, Col. T. Egenton Hogg, a Confederate soldier, bought the wagon road land for $25,000. The money was divided equally among the eight who had carried out the project. He agreed to maintain the road. The tollgate was removed.

Shipleys sold their land to Ezekiel Eddy for $1400, who paid for It with silver dollars. Eddy had said, "I wouldn't a gi'en ten cents for the place if it hadn't been for that orchard."

Among those who were held as slaves in Oregon were Louis Southworth, who in 1855 purchased his freedom from his master in Polk County for $1,000, and Reuben Shipley of Benton County.
Reuben Shipley had been a slave in Missouri, according to Mark Phinney of Corvallis, who interviewed John B. Horner, professor of history. His master, Robert Shipley, trusted him to a large share in the training of his sons, whose mother had died, and he was regarded as almost one of the family. When Shipley decided to come to Oregon, he promised Reuben his freedom if he would drive a team of oxen on the road. Reuben left a spouse in Missouri who died before he could send money for her. After he purchased his freedom, he was employed by Eldridge Hartless, who settled one mile south of Philomath in 1846. Hartless was quite well-to-do and had many cattle. In a few years Reuben had saved $1500, and with a part of it he bought a farm where Mount Union Cemetery and Mount Union School are now located.
Now Col. Nathaniel Ford, who settled in Rickreall in Polk County in 1844, owned a young African-American woman named Mary Jane. Ford allowed Reuben to marry this woman and take her to his farm. Then, having learned that Shipley had money, he came without knowledge to his anglo friends, and made him believe that he must purchase his fiance's freedom, which he did for $700.
Reuben and Mary Jane reared a large family—Wallace, Ella, Thomas, Martha, Nellie and Ed—on their 80 acre farm four miles west of Corvallis. Reuben was industrious and Mary Jane was a splendid housekeeper and the family entered into the life of the church and the community without too much consideration of the question of social equality.
When William Wyatt, another pioneer spoke of the hill on Reuben Shipley's farm as a likely place for a cemetery, Reuben agreed to give two acres for that purpose if he might be buried there. This two acres donated in 1861 was the beginning of Mount Union Cemetery where many of the pioneers of Benton County are buried. Reuben is there among them. According to Benton County Archives, page 18, he died in 1873 at the age of 74. His Spouse Mary Jane lived in Benton County until 1880. In after years she married Alfred Drake and lived well into the third decade of the 20th Century.

According to Bea Eddy-Wilcox, who is a member of the Lincoln County Historical Society and the DAR, Israel Fisk Eddy (1824-1911), the legendary early settler of Eddyville, was an enormous man. He stood six feet, seven inches tall, and was said to be very powerful. He probably weighed well over 250 pounds, and had to stoop and enter an ordinary doorway sideways.

Most of the legends about Israel Eddy had to do with his tremendous strength. One old timer said he saw Israel take the axle of the wheel of a loaded hay wagon and lift it out of the mud so the horses could pull it out of a mud hole. He said he was a tiny boy at the time, and was overwhelmed by Eddy's strength.
Another tale says that Israel could put a heavy steel spike—similar to the ones used in making bridges—between his fingers, slam down on it, and the spike would bend to their shape.
Israel settled in what is now the town of Eddyville, in 1870. He was 46 years old. At the time, the area was known as Little Elk.

Eddy’s first Spouse, P. D. who he married back in Vermont, died after he had reared a family, so he remarried on October 21, 1876 in Le Sueur, Minnesota. His second wife was Marie Phelonise Manuel, was born January 30, 1842 in Gentilly, PQ. The marriage ended in divorce. She died May 6, 1916 in Albany. Marie, who was called Phelonise, first married to Felix Aikey in 1858. He was born about 1825 In Sorel, Richelieu, PQ, and died December 22, 1873 in Kelso Township, Sibley County, Minnesota.
Israel and P. D. had a son named Perry and a daughter named Eva May (1862-1875) who was 13 years old when they came West to Lincoln County. She died December 27, 1875, at the age of 13 years and seven months.

Israel left his land and everything dear to him in Minnesota and came out West to join his father, Ezekiel Isaac Eddy (1800-1890) who was already here with his wife, Lucy Fisk (1805-1878).
Ezekiel had crossed the Plains at least twice in his lifetime. He was a considerably old man to be making such a move, and he brought his grown children with him.
The old man was a true son of the American Revolution (1775-1783), because his father, James Eddy, fought in the war.

Israel bought land in Little Elk from a young bride and groom. Legend has it that he and his father rode to Corvallis and came back with a mule or two loaded down with silver money to pay for the land.
They built a sawmill and a gristmill on this land, and used a small dam on the Yaquina River to supply the power.
The heavy stones used to grind the grain were shipped from England, and were carried from Siletz Bay to the Eddy gristmill on the back of a Indian woman!
Israel’s reason for putting a gristmill in the middle of tall timber was a puzzle to some people, but he was convinced that the railroad was coming through to connect Central Oregon—which people then believed would become the grain capital of the world—with the Central Oregon Coast. The prediction was that Newport would become an enormous seaport, and the grain from Eastern and Central Oregon would be shipped to foreign ports from there.
These plans never materialized, however, and Israel ended up grinding flour for local use instead of foreign trade.
The railroad, it is thought, could have been instrumental in changing Little Elk to Eddyville. Israel owned a lot of land in the Little Elk area when Col. T. Egenton Hogg was putting in the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad through to the coast. When Israel gave the railroad right-of-way privileges through his land, it was under the consideration that they would name the area Eddyville.
But there were other more powerful interests, primarily in Portland, that didn't want to see Newport become an enormous port with all the grain from Eastern and Central Oregon being shipped through it.
Although it is "unofficial," some people still speculate that there was sabotage beyond belief on this railroad. Tunnels were set on fire, bridges were undercut or burned, and every underhanded deed was done to try and keep the railroad from succeeding. It went bankrupt time and time again. Wallis Nash (1837-1926) poured millions of dollars into it. But Portland interests bought up a great deal of land around Yaquina Bay, so that docks couldn’t be built. Considerable land in Lincoln County is still owned by some of these old estates. There were people who were determined that Portland alone was going to be the big port; they didn’t want Newport developed at any cost.
Another story states that in 1888, Israel Eddy, who was then postmaster of Little Elk, moved the post office a mile west onto his own property and changed the name to Eddyville. He also established the cemetery on his farm. This location was approximately where Eddy Creek and the Yaquina River meet.
The office was moved east to McBride’s store in 1892 with the name changed back to Little Elk. Upon petition, the office was moved back to Eddy’s and the name was changed to Eddyville. Eddy sold to Conroy and the post office went with it. The next change was to Flam Young who kept it until 1897 when it moved back to McBride’s store. The post office department however declined to change the name, giving as the reason, they did not like the double name. The office was sold to Stringer, and in about 1938 to Frances Mauch. Ms. Sparks and Ms. Boynton took it when it came under civil service.
Israel was fond of trees and had a fine orchard in Eddyville.
People from around Siletz and Kernville would come over and help out with the apple harvest. This was something they looked forward to in the autumn because they always had a good time, particularly the children.
In the evenings they would build campfires and Israel would entertain them with an organ grinder, at which he was reputed to be quite talented. That was a big treat for everyone—especially the children—in days of limited entertainment.
Besides the other enterprises, Israel owned a grocery store. Above the store was a big room he divided off with curtains into a sleeping room for people traveling through. The room was also used for dances he threw on Saturday nights.
Dances in those days were very important sources of entertainment. People would come from miles around on horseback or in wagons. They would bring along their children and put them to bed in the back of their wagons and prepared to spend the night. The dancers and their families would have breakfast the following morning.
Liquor was brought to the dances. Inevitably there would be a fight, and Israel took it upon himself to break them up. He would take the offenders by the back of their necks and pull them apart. Then he would escort them outside and dump them in a watering trough.
Israel Eddy loved to travel. From one trip he took on horseback to California, he brought hack several redwood trees. One redwood stands today on former Eddy land. It is located on the north edge of Highway 20 on the straight stretch in the road just west of Eddyville. The redwoods around Chitwood might possibly have been planted there by him.

Israel’s son, Perry, married Mary Amanda Frantz. She was the daughter of a Civil War Captain, Samuel Frantz, and his wife, Mary. They came across the plains 1850 and bought Fort Hoskins directly from the government.
Perry and Mary Amanda had a family of five children. They were all born in Kings Valley or Hoskins, at the junction of the Kings Valley and Hoskins roads.

The Edwards and the Hamars are kin to the Eddys. James Hamar, who was the first white man who ever settled at the headwaters of the Yaquina River at Nashville, was a native scout who came to Oregon in the 1850s and 1860s to Fort Hoskins. He slashed a trail from Summit to Nashville. He applied for a homestead and was granted a square mile of land. His sister, Sarah Hamar Miller, was widowed after the Civil War. Some of her older children were already married. She had younger children; and it was terribly hard for widows to raise families in those days. There just wasn't work that women could do to earn a living. So she came West to locate on the land at Nashville.
Then Norman Edwards decided that he would like to come out West. He left his wife and children back home and come to Oregon for a visit. When he saw this area, he decided this was the place for him. He had a big wheat farm and pure bred stock and a lovely big stone house back in Kansas. Edwards offered to move his family out here up on the ranch on the Yaquina River when there they would literally starve to death. Anyone who has lived long in this area knows that no farmer could make it without other work. Almost all of the men in this area work at other jobs, out of necessity. But Norman Edwards left fairly well to do circumstances and came out here to scrape out a living on a stump ranch. In this fresh air, it was the first time in his life he could breathe freely. For this reason, it was worth everything to him to leave what he had to come out here and live in a place where he wanted to be. He loved his ranch and he loved the land.
The Indians must have felt much the same about this area. They had a permanent camp on the Edwards place, members of the family recall. The stones to a sweathouse were all there. The Indians only built permanent Sweathouses at permanent campsites.
Emma Edwards Eddy recalled Israel Eddy coming to her wedding at Nortons in November 1908. He wore a coonskin cap on his head. The old man had a booming voice and carried an ear trumpet, as he was hard of hearing in later years.
He had just recovered from a slight case of auge fever, a disease similar to malaria, before the wedding, but he joked about it saying he had taken a big swig of piano polish—mistaking it for his medicine—which cured him!
In 1911, Israel Fisk Eddy died at the age of 87, following a bout with pneumonia, which—legend has it—was brought on when he walked from Eddyville to Toledo to pay his taxes.
Winifred McBride Girdner wrote in 1978 that she recalled her mother, Emma, saying they reached Eddyville the day of Ms. Eddy's funeral. Lucy Fisk Eddy, mother of Israel Eddy, died June 20, 1878. She had been stung by bees. She was buried in the cemetery by the Yaquina just upstream from the Eddy home.
Eddyville Cemetery was donated by Milton J. Allphin and the first burial was Rose Derrick in 1895.
Girdner states,

The old toll road crossed the Little Elk where the high school was built and continued toward where Ms. Eddy lived and forded the Yaquina near the railroad bridge to reach the Eddyville Station.

Eddyville was quite a town during Eddy's lifetime. In fact, it almost became a big land development project before WWI.
The following historical anecdote was written in 1956 by Henry W. Fish, son of Leon Herbert Fish, long-time Albany realtor who some 50 years ago bought up a lot of land in the area around Eddyville and towards Nortons, and envisioned the settling of Eastern Lincoln County and parts of Benton County by anglo families:

But for the unwise act of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, the population and economic, social and religious life of Lincoln County and Western Benton County might be quite different today.
Early in Oregon history, the government wanted a military wagon road connecting Corvallis and Yaquina Bay, and made a grant of land to encourage and help finance its construction. This grant consisted of the odd-numbered sections of land to a depth of 12 miles along the road route, sizable incentive, it would seem. The route of the old wagon road can be visualized today, as it approximated the course taken later by the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad.
Eventually, large blocks of the grant lands fell into the hands of early-day speculators, substantial ownership even being in London, England.
A young man in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Leon H. Fish, got the idea that the time was ripe to break up some of these holdings and sell them to small ranchers.
He envisioned large acreages being sold to active new investors in Oregon's future. He organized a company of Eastern men, which purchased 72,000 acres of the former grant lands for resale. In 1906 He moved his family to Oregon and made Albany his headquarters.
Fish, the sparkplug of the new company, had the exclusive sale of his associates' 72,000 acres. He drew no salary and enjoyed no expensive account. He operated solely on commission, with an implied warranty that unless he came up with some effective selling ideas and put in incredibly long, hard days, his family would not do much fancy eating. Those were the times of the rugged individual, before guaranteed security became a way of life!
Henry W. Fish, wrote that his father, Leon Herbert Fish, formed a syndicate of easterners and acquired some 72,000 acres of Lincoln and Benton county timber and grazing land around 1905:

In 1906, Fish moved his wife and sons from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Albany, Oregon where he set up an office as agent and sole sales person for the syndicate. He was successful in the ambitious undertaking, but almost lost his life because of overwork in showing the timber and lands, then long hours in the office where he drew up his own legal papers, prepared his advertising, and handled his correspondence.
After a year or two, Fish formed a partnership with his next door neighbor, Dr. Andrew Jackson Hodges, a graduate dentist and one-time Albany drug store owner. The firm of Fish & Hodges prospered for a half-century, dealing mostly in its own timber, farm, urban, and suburban property. After Hodges retired from an active part in the business, Fish carried on as a licensed real estate broker, assisted by his son. He died in 1965, at the age of over 94 years; by that time he had lost his wife and son (highway crash), and his second wife. His work was completed and well done—a part in the development of Oregon, especially Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties.

The record shows that this young man from Iowa had the stuff. His business prospered and his family ate well. Almost single-handedly he sold off the entire 72,000 acres, wearing out several pairs of stout logger boots tramping up and down hills through fallen timber, brush, fern, rain and snow to show the lands to prospective buyers. As his activities expanded, he took a partner, Dr. Andrew Jackson Hodges of Albany. The pioneer real estate firm of Fish & Hodges operated successfully throughout Oregon for a quarter of a century.

Now, with this background established, let’s get back to the opening story.
Meanwhile, in crowded Europe, generations of hardy farmers and ranchers had wrestled a modest living from their hilly, rugged homelands. They longed for good, new soil and a better future for their families. America offered a good fortune to all who would go after it. And Eastern Lincoln and Western Benton counties had the good, new soil in abundance that would be real homelike to these Europeans.
Leon Fish, that bold young man from Iowa, had the large-scale intimate knowledge of these lands, and the actual experience of buying and selling them in huge quantities.
The firm of Fish & Hodges, as well as certain members of the Roman Catholic church representing thousands of Austrian, German, Greek, Rumanian and Swiss members of that faith who were potential immigrants and colonists, saw an opportunity and tried to seize it. The two interests joined forces and soon an amazing colonization plan was in the offing.
The plan was no small-time undertaking, and involved a lot of land, people and money. To accommodate the proposed colony, Fish & Hodges rounded up 100,000 acres of land in Eastern Lincoln and Western Benton counties, part of which was from the Corvallis & Yaquina Bay Wagon Road grant.
Eddyville appeared to be a practical center for the colony, and as such its manifold growth was foreseen.
The colonization plan shaped up rapidly. Group leaders in the movement inspected the lands and found them good. Over 1,000 people already had reached America and were ready to form the colony with their countrymen when these later arrived from their homelands. Finally, a group of organizers started to Europe to sign up the colonists and get them on their way to Lincoln and Benton counties.

Then Emperor Wilhelm's tragic mistake: he started WWI. People in Europe, who might have become neighbors and warm friends in America, put on uniforms and died. With them died the almost colonization of Lincoln and Benton counties.

Try and imagine today—nearly half a century later—an organized community of thousands of former Europeans and their descendants, now prosperous farmers, ranchers, businessmen and teachers, public officials, etc., all strongly influenced by Old World culture and the doctrine of hard work, all united in one religious faith. Envision Eddyville as a greatly enlarged, prosperous town, perhaps a rival to Toledo and Newport. All of this might have been had it not been for a war that changed the course of history.
Lincoln County has strong ties to this pioneer real estate broker. His father, Liberal C. Fish, once ranched near Nortons, and the youngest brother, Everett L. Fish, ranched for several years near Nashville.