History Snoopin': Weeds of history

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, April 27th 2020

Commemorating local historical events can get quite dicey at times. Memories fade, people forget, and too often good intentions and efforts get lost.

On Oct. 19, 1952, a group of about 50 historically motivated people gathered in the Dardanelles Restaurant, on Highway 99, just across the Rogue River from Gold Hill.

This was the 100th anniversary of the official opening of Jackson County’s first post office in

Dardanelles, a small community of very few people that never rose to prominence.

William T’Vault registered his 640-acre donation land claim here in March 1852. He named the area

Dardanelles, built a cabin, and sent a letter to Washington, D.C. requesting an appointment as postmaster at a post office he would operate from his home.

T’Vault had more than enough experience for the job. He had led his family and a 300-person wagon train from Missouri to Oregon in 1845. Two years later, Congress authorized the establishment of post offices in the Oregon Territory, and, by the end of the year, Oregon had two post office locations. The first was at Astoria, and the second, in Oregon City, where T’Vault was postmaster and also editor of the state’s first newspaper, The Oregon Spectator.

William T'Vault

In June 1851, he scouted for Colonel Kearny who was traveling through the Rogue Valley on his way to a California army camp. The colonel stopped to defend local miners from Indian unrest. After a skirmish within today’s Shady Cove, Captain James Stuart was wounded and died. Some said T’Vault was the person who marked a tree in Phoenix near Stuart’s temporary grave.

T’Vault’s post office was a popular place. James Howard, self-proclaimed father of Medford, said, “A very attractive young lady, Miss Lizzie T’Vault, was the postmistress. There were more calls to see the young lady than to get mail.” Lizzie was one of T’Vault’s daughters.

T’Vault’s life ended in 1869, a victim of Jackson County’s smallpox epidemic.

In 1952, Frank DeSouza, a former Medford postmaster, led the 100-year commemoration event. He told of the great struggle to get mail to the settlers in those early days; how many private carriers carried the mail for as much as a dollar a letter.

DeSouza also announced that as soon as ODOT laid out an updated Highway 99 across the Rogue River from Gold Hill, a permanent plaque commemorating T’Vault’s post office would be installed on a concrete foundation.

It doesn’t appear that the plaque was ever installed, but if it was, I’m sure I’ll be the first to hear about it.

It was Labor Day, Sept. 7, 1959, when a commemorative marker was placed and dedicated at the rest area near the updated Highway 99.

The one-year-old Siskiyou Pioneer Sites Foundation had paid for a bronze plaque and invited Chris Kenney, a great-grandson of T’Vault, as their special guest.

With the opening in December 1962 of the I-5 freeway between Medford and Rock Point, the grass began to grow, and as cars zipped past Gold Hill, the 1959 marker slowly vanished from almost everyone’s memory.

However, this story has a happy conclusion. In 2008, dedicated members of the Umpqua Joe E Clampus Vitus Outpost, as they call themselves, “the protectors of the heritage of the American West,” went on safari.

They searched through the brush and brambles until they located the almost forgotten plaque and arranged for a rededication at a new location.

Pulled from the weeds of history, the plaque now stands near Dardanelles Store & Gas, west of the Laurel Hills Golf Course. Good work, boys!

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/weeds-of-history

Trapped! WASP Edith Clayton Keene- The Nineteenth WASP to Die

Edith “Edy” Clayton Keene 44-W-1

Trapped as a passenger in an AT-6 Texan when a wing tore off and the plane crashed near Mission, Texas.

(19 December 1920 – 25 April 1944)

Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) Edith Clayton Keene

UCLA Graduate and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) Edith Clayton Keene

Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP

After 23-year-old Edith Keene (44-W-1) graduated from Sweetwater in February 1944, she quickly moved from her first assignment at Hondo Army Air Field, in Hondo Texas to just north of the Mexican border at the Mission, Texas Army Air Base. Edith had learned to fly in the Pomona Junior College Civilian Pilot Training program, given at Brackett Field, an airfield located between the cities of La Verne and Pomona, California.

Around Moore Field, on the Mission Army Air Base, the thermometer was climbing its way to 90º on April 25, 1944. There had been a trace of rain early in the morning, but the afternoon had cleared to a partly cloudy sky with an occasional light southeast breeze from the Gulf of Mexico. Edith was flying an AT-6 Texan with Robert Kuenstler Jr., who had enlisted in the Army a year earlier and had graduated from advanced flight training at Moore Field. Edith was helping Kuenstler with his navigation and instrument flight training. She had traded places with another WASP for the afternoon flight.

Kuenstler was at the stick of the AT-6, while Edith observed from the back seat. Just after 2:30, flying about 12 miles northwest of the field, Kuenstler was going through the usual dips, turns, and rolls before dropping into a dive. As he pulled back on the stick to recover, they both could hear the straining scrape of metal as one of the wings separated and fell away. The aircraft began to fall and Kuenstler quickly unfastened his harness and jumped to safety, but Edith could not. Perhaps struck by the wing, her canopy would not open and she went down to her death with the plane.

RIP

History Snoopin': Banishment of the hated mask

Banishment of the hated mask

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, April 20th 2020

“We’re trying to save human lives here,” said Councilman John Carkin. “This council should be commended instead of getting senseless opposition.”

The crowd of at least 40 masked men hooted and booed. “It’s a highhanded outrage,” said a furious Councilman James Keene. “It smacks of the Bolsheviks.”

Medford City Council had just voted 4-3 to leave the decision of whether to abolish the mask requirement to the best judgment of the city’s board of health, a board composed of the four council members who voted in favor of keeping the masks.

It was December 1918. Jackson County was still fighting against the threat of the 1918 flu pandemic that was racing around the world and had already brought death to at least two county residents.

Mayor Charles Gates fired back at the agitators, reminding them that the flu epidemic had steadily decreased since the mandated wearing of masks had begun just three week earlier.

“There are only two classes of people opposing the masks,” he said, “those too dignified to wear them, and those who place the almighty dollar above human life.”

It had begun in early October, when Mayor Gates received a letter from Medford Dr. Elias Porter, who was studying in a Massachusetts hospital when the pandemic struck with a vengeance.

“It is the most terrible epidemic ever visiting America,” he warned, “and is very fatal. The disease appeared in Boston early in September. On the 14th of that month there were 21 deaths, and from that date until noon, Oct. 5, there have been over 80,000 cases and 2,270 deaths.”

Mayor Gates announced that starting Oct. 14, 1918, “We have decided to close all places of amusements, theaters, moving pictures, churches, lodges, schools and all public meetings of every description where people congregate, until the epidemic has subsided.”

Within days, William Barnum, one time boy-conductor on the Rogue River Valley Railway, was dead, and residents were getting sick.

Gates ordered a mandatory quarantine of anyone suffering from the flu and required a sign be posted on their door to warn the public.

By November, with 50 cases known in the county, the upper floor of Medford’s Sacred Heart Hospital was turned into an influenza ward.

Red Cross women began sewing flu masks, selling them to local stores and the public for 15 cents each.

On Nov. 24, when new cases had slowed, merchants who had lost most of their customers were delighted when the bans on gathering groups and closures were lifted.

However, two weeks later, with four deaths in four days and 150 cases of influenza, the council reinstated the gathering ban and the closures.

Also, everyone was now required to wear a mask everywhere they went, even inside where they worked. Violating the mask requirement meant a $5 fine for each offense, and over 20 men eventually were cited.

A Mail Tribune editorial supported the move. “The flu mask has been proved the best preventative, and while it entails considerable inconvenience, it is a question of safety first.”

Some merchants circulated a petition asking that the mask measure be repealed.

“The businessmen,” said City Health Officer Dr. Elijah Pickel, “are injuring their own cause. With flu masks, the individual can shop downtown without danger. Without them there would be danger on every side.”

On Jan. 4, 1919, the ban on gatherings and the mask requirement were lifted.

From the beginning, there had been 531 cases in the county, two confirmed deaths, and 26 deaths from pneumonia brought on by the flu. Sixteen deaths were in the county, outside of the cities.

“The schools reopen and all social activities will be on in full swing,” said a Tribune columnist. “It is expected that churches will be crowded again. 

Lovers of moving pictures will now be able to enjoy a show in comfort, thanks to the banishment of the hated mask.”

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/banishment-of-the-hated-mask

To Live and Die a WASP: Collision at Avenger Field

16 April 1944 

Collision and Death of Two Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP)

The 38

Jayne Elizabeth Erickson 44-6

(14 Apr 1921)

&

Mary Holmes Howson 44-4

 (Feb 16, 1919)

Women Airforce Service Pilots Jayne Erickson & Mary Howson

Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP:

At Avenger Field on April 16, 1944, Elizabeth Erickson (44-W-6), with 111 days still left before graduation, was almost half way through her training.

 

Twenty-five-year-old Mary Howson (44-W-4) was in the homestretch, with just 38 days to go. It was a warm Sunday afternoon with a light, southeasterly breeze—a good day for flying.

 

Mary, flying solo, was the last of her classmates to approach for a landing.They were completing a 530-mile roundtrip training flight around San Antonio.

 

Elizabeth was practicing touch and go landings. Previously, she had made three of these practice landings with her instructor, but now, she was alone in the cockpit and lining up for another landing.

 

Both women were flying AT-6 Texan trainers. For some reason, the ground controller didn’t notice that the women were both at 800 feet and descending from opposite directions. Both were on their next to the last turn, in preparation for their final approach to the runway. Elizabeth and Mary were on a collision course. …

Women Airforce Service Pilots Jayne Erickson & Mary Howson

Just after 1:20 p.m., Mary Howson and Elizabeth Erickson’s AT-6s slammed into each other. As the planes began tumbling, Mary managed to unfasten her harness, climb out of the cockpit, and jump, but she was too low and her parachute never completely opened. Elizabeth had no chance at all. She was trapped in her cockpit and unable to jump. Both women died instantly just a few yards apart.

The following evening, all of the trainees and training staff attended a memorial service for both women in the Avenger Field gymnasium. Classmates took up a collection to send both friends home.

Mickie Carmichael (44-W-4) accompanied Mary home for her funeral and burial in the Washington Memorial Chapel Churchyard, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

Elinor Fairchild (44-W-6), Elizabeth’s friend, accompanied Elizabeth to her burial in Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery.

RIP     

History Snoopin': A Tenderfoot Remembers

A tenderfoot remembers

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, April 13th 2020

A hundred years ago, just about everyone knew that the county seat was going to move from Jacksonville to Medford, and not everyone was happy about it.

Chandler B. Watson, better known as C.B., had come to Southern Oregon in 1871, nearly 50 years earlier than his conversation. He said the courthouse move was heart rendering, just as sad as if a member of the family had been taken away.

 

Chandler B. Watson

“Old Jacksonville, as I first saw it, comes before me now,” he said, “a moving picture of animation and energy. I am living again in retrospect, in the presence of that picture, such a one as will never again be seen except to memory.”

Arriving when he was barely into his 20s, C.B. had been an active resident. In those 50 years he had been Jackson County district attorney, Ashland city attorney, editor of the Oregon Sentinel newspaper, a local historian, and so much more. He had abandoned his Illinois home and fell in love with Oregon.

 

California St., Jacksonville, Oregon

“For one who had recently arrived as a tenderfoot,” he said, “a new world was opened and his young blood was made to tingle as he tried to come into correspondence with his environment. To such a one there are memories not to be obliterated, and sentimental preferences he would not suppress.”

C.B. understood that moving the county seat was in the public’s interest, “in the interest of the great majority,” he said. Jacksonville’s population had been falling for years. His only worry was whether the old, brick courthouse would remain standing.

“If you take away the courthouse, some suitable monument of lasting character should be erected at the old site.”

He remembered when Jackson County ran all the way from Goose Lake in today’s Lake County, through Klamath and Jackson counties, and up to the Josephine County line.

He admired the resident’s sense of duty and how they responded to a summons or subpoena “with less complaint than they do today.”

Those were days when a visit to the county seat might require days and nights of travel and camping. “A cheerful and uncomplaining attitude was maintained,” he said. “All were neighbors, though separated by forests and mountains of great extent.”

The county courthouse in 1871 was a simple wooden structure standing where the brick courthouse still stands. “The jail was little more than a dugout banked with dirt,” he said.

He was also amused that Medford would be the new county seat, remembering, “50 years ago jackrabbits and coyotes held high carnival and sole possession where Medford now stands. At that time there were not more than two farm houses within what is now the corporate limits of the present metropolis.”

There were vast open spaces and only a few tiny villages. Phoenix was second in population to Jacksonville, and miles of desert separated Central Point from Eagle Point, where the foundation of a flour mill was being laid.

“There were no thoughts of railroads,” C.B. said, and the passing of the overland stagecoach was the chief daily event.

“Roads were little more than trails. Kerosene lamps and tallow candles furnished the only light at night and special messengers on horseback performed the duties now obtained from telegraph and telephone.”

They were all fond memories for C.B. as he entered his 70th year, but he never was a prisoner of the past.

“The world is moving with accelerated speed,” he said, “and we are bound to keep pace with it. Changes are constantly required in the interest of the great majority, and we are bound to bow when demands are made.”

 

Courthouse, Jackson County, Oregon

The county seat moved to Medford in 1927, three years before C.B. died. He would be happy to know, the brick courthouse still stands.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including“History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/a-tenderfoot-remembers