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

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

History Snoopin': The Jackson County epidemic of 1868

The Jackson County epidemic of 1868

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, March 30th 2020

Though not a pandemic, smallpox was the scourge of 19th century America. Few diseases caused such fear and panic when it began to race through a community.

Even though Englishman Edward Jenner had shown the effectiveness of the smallpox vaccine over 70 years before the Jackson County outbreak in the winter of 1868, very few in Southern Oregon had been vaccinated.

The sudden epidemic killed over 20 men, women and children, and at least three times that number were infected but recovered.

Four hospitals were hastily set up outside the city limits and doctors assigned to each. There, those infected could safely be treated without fear of infecting others.

By New Year’s Day the town was in a panic.

Sister Mary Francis, one of the brave Roman Catholic nuns who volunteered to nurse and give comfort to those who were suffering, told a horrifying account of an infected 3-year-old little girl whose mother had just died.

“I have in my arms her youngest child,” she wrote. “Her face is as black as my dress, and the little sufferer, in trying to find a cool place, has rubbed her face on my cape and left pieces of her decaying flesh on it. Oh! This dreadful disease! No one except an eyewitness can form any idea of it.”

Two weeks later, the child died and was buried with her mother.

Jacksonville’s Board of Trustees passed stringent ordinances to combat the spread of the disease and established a fine of up to $100 for any violation.

“Each and every person residing within the town limits who has never been vaccinated or, in the opinion of a competent physician, is liable to an attack of smallpox, shall submit to vaccination.”

The town marshal was ordered to record the name of every person in town, and a statement determining whether the person had been vaccinated or had previously survived a smallpox attack.

Physicians were to be immediately notified and were required to vaccinate anyone on the list who was “unvaccinated.” The doctor would receive 50 cents for each vaccination, but would be fined up to $100 if they failed to change clothing after each vaccination.

Anyone exposed to the disease was banned in public places; including stores, bars, hotels, “private houses of amusement,” public gatherings, or even walking down the street.

Funeral processions of victims through town were not allowed, and mourners at nighttime-only burials were restricted to family. County residents who died of any infectious disease were completely barred from burial in the town cemetery on the hill.

On every home or building where infected persons were living, a visible yellow flag was required outside, as was a large sign on the door reading “Smallpox.”

The requirements were so strict that the local newspaper had to apologize for the lack of local news within its pages.

“Our paper is not interesting and we know it. No local items, but we can’t help it. The town is like the grave, but it is not our fault. Yellow flags are to be seen on every side, and if this issue partakes of the ghastly character of its surroundings, we are not to blame.”

At the end of February, it was finally over and the newspaper celebrated.

“We are rejoiced to say that smallpox has entirely disappeared from this place. Every house in which cases have occurred has been disinfected and the quarantine flags removed. We hope it may stay away, but if it should appear again, our people will be apt to recognize it.”

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/the-jackson-county-epidemic-of-1868

History Snoopin': A census joke and a fairytale

A census joke and a fairytale

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, January 6th 2020

In 1920, for the first time, the national census would start on Jan. 1 instead of June 1. It wouldn’t be without controversy.

Enumerators would have just two weeks to count the people and livestock living in their assigned district. Their pay was 10 cents for each man, woman, child — and beast.

The previous month, dozens of local census takers had qualified for their task with an examination held at the county courthouse in Jacksonville.

With the First World War behind them, everyone in the county expected a rosy future. Ashland leaders even expected their population to top 6,000 people, an increase of over 1,000 citizens counted in 1910.

However, no sooner had the two weeks of counting ended than Medford leaders were

smelling trouble. The chamber of commerce urged anyone who wasn’t counted, or believed they weren’t counted, “to report the same to the Chamber.”

The Mail Tribune printed a coupon to be filled in with name and address, entitled, “Have You Been Enumerated?” If the person wasn’t counted or was in doubt, they were urged to send the coupon to the Supervisor of the Oregon Census in Salem.

By July, initial results were announced and the controversy exploded under a first page Mail Tribune headline — “Joke Census. Figures Give Medford 5,756.” That was 3,084 fewer residents than those counted in 1910!

“Anyone familiar with Medford knows that this census figure is a farce,” the story said. “Conservative estimates place the population at 10,000 to 12,000.”

In its defense, the paper cited its circulation figures within the city. And based on mail receipts, the post office had estimated a population of 6,554. The article claimed that prominent citizens and their families were also missed.

The Chamber sent a protest letter to Salem and to Washington, D.C., demanding the city receive a re-enumeration, an investigation and a “square deal.”

With a column headlined, “a Fairy Story,” a Grants Pass newspaper relished its neighbor’s squeals.

“Once upon a time there was a city in the U.S.A. that aspired to excel all other cities in that part of the country in every particular, but especially in size.

“When results were published — Oh horrors! This proud city had lost nearly one-third of its citizens. There was a great hue and cry from the indignant dwellers, but when the calm succeeded the storm, some of them admitted that the previous census had been padded.”

The column ended with a question and an answer.

“Can you guess the name of this city?

“No, not Medford, for our neighbors have not yet admitted that they stuffed the 1910 census. The city connected with this little story is Omaha.”

Oregon Congressman Willis Hawley said he was sure he could get “a new census ordered” if Medford residents could “show they have not had a square deal,” and they made an effort to prove it.

By August, a month of screaming protests became mere grumbles. The Bureau of the Census issued final and official results.

Over the previous 10 years, Jackson County had lost over 5,300 residents. Ashland couldn’t reach its anticipated surge to 6,000 residents, actually losing over 700 people.

As for Medford, there was no recount, and the initial tabulation remained at 5,756 — a 34.9 percent loss; the worst loss of all cities in Jackson County.

What about Grants Pass you might ask?

Its population rose by nearly 8 percent. Hmmm. Could it have been the climate?

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

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/a-census-joke-and-a-fairytale