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.

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History Snoopin': 1871 in less than a nutshell

1871 in less than a nutshell

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, January 13th 2020

History Snoopin': Peter Britt and the momentous letter

Peter and the momentous letter

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, December 2nd 2019

Peter Britt was heartbroken. Amalia, his lovely “Madonna,” the neighbor girl he had loved and painted in countless portraits since they were children, was officially engaged to someone else.

Her father had refused to let him marry her.

He couldn’t bear to suffer this pain. It was 1852, and there was free land in Oregon. Gold had just

Peter Britt

been discovered, and Peter was leaving.

He packed his wagon with a Colt pistol, a double-barreled rifle-shotgun, food and other supplies, and 300 pounds of photography equipment. He and three other men set out alone for Oregon Country.

For six months the companions continued on — over the Continental Divide to Fort Bridger in Wyoming, then to Fort Hall, Idaho, and finally arriving at Oregon City in October 1852. The men divided the wagon into two carts and split up.

Peter headed south with a yoke of oxen pulling a two-wheel cart loaded with supplies and his photo equipment. Other than a mule, the clothes on his back and five dollars in his pocket, it was everything he owned.

Coming around Blackwell Hill in Southern

Mt. McLoughlin

Oregon, Peter stopped in disbelief. The pointed peak of Mount McLoughlin sparkled with white snow. There was a valley surrounded by grassy hills and tall mountains covered in green pines. This looked like Obstalden, the Swiss village where he had been born. The wandering 33-year-old bachelor had finally found a home.

Peter camped on a brushy hill that looked down on the shanties and tents that made up the mining camp of Table Rock City, now Jacksonville. Over the next few days, he built a dugout cabin home where he opened a makeshift photo studio.

Word spread quickly that a photographer was in town. Miners posed proudly in their work clothes, holding picks, rifles, pistols — anything to impress the folks back home.

Within a month of his arrival, it began to snow, and a devastating winter began. The valley was isolated for weeks. Food supplies dwindled, and without springtime sun, there was no hope. Peter, in his typical frugal fashion, carefully managed his food until supply lines to the outside world finally opened.

When the snows thawed in the spring of 1853, Peter began to dream of the “easy” prospecting money his customers kept talking about. He closed the studio and with some other greenhorn miners took a claim on Ashland Creek. After a week of wading in frigid water and rocking a sluice box

morning ’til night, Peter settled up with his partners. His share was 75¢ and his prospecting days were over.

Peter had what they called in the old days hustle, always trying to find new ways to make a buck. His photography, mining investments and packing business made Peter a wealthy man. He came to town with just $5, but by 1857 his property holdings alone were worth in today’s money nearly $100,000.

Peter Britt House

He built a white frame house and studio. The second house evolved into one even larger and fancier — and then, an unexpected change.

A momentous letter came from Illinois in 1861. Amalia, his sweetheart of long ago, was suddenly

Amalia Grob Britt

a widow with a 7-year-old son. Peter asked her to come to Oregon and marry him.

Mother and child came around the Horn of South America to Jacksonville, and on Aug. 11, 1861, Amalia and a love-struck Peter were married.

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

History Snoopin': Tragedy and the strawberry festival

Tragedy and the strawberry festival

by By Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, September 23rd 2019

Three children stood at the rail of the ship and watched as their mother’s lifeless body fell into the Pacific Ocean.

Three-hundred miles south of San Francisco and on their way to join their father in Portland, 12-year-old Mary McGhee took charge of her brother Melville, 8, and sister Joanna, 7.

“We three children had to see her dropped over the side of the boat and buried at sea,” Mary said.

It was March 29, 1854, nearing the end of a journey that began near Jefferson City, Missouri.

Cordelia, the children’s mother, had not seen her husband for nearly three years.

John Wesley McGhee had left for the California gold fields in 1850, but finding little success, he moved north to the diggings near Yreka. Rather than struggle to find a fortune in gold, as an ordained Methodist minister he had decided it was better to preach to the mining population.

“The removal of most of his congregation from Northern California to Southern Oregon,” Mary said, “caused him to come to Southern Oregon.”

 

Mary McGhee Day

He settled briefly in Sams Valley, but Mary said in 1853 Chief Sam of the Taklema band warned him of trouble.

“You are a Bible man. I don’t want you killed,” the chief said, “Go away for a while. My young men are going on the warpath.”

McGhee went to Salem and took up a land claim southeast of the city. There he wrote to his wife and sent her money to bring the family West.

Cordelia gathered the children and caught the stage to St. Louis, where they rode a riverboat to New Orleans. From there they sailed to Aspinwall, Panama, where they traveled west across the Isthmus, by then the fastest route to California and Oregon.

Their fare included railroad tickets on the still incomplete Panama Canal Railway and a relatively comfortable 12-mile mule ride to the Pacific.

As they headed north on a steamship, 32-year-old Cordelia broke out with Panama Fever, a variant of malaria common to the Chagres River Valley of Panama. She died within days.

After arriving in Portland, Mary had to find her father.

“At Oregon City we met a man who knew my father,” she said. “He took us to Salem and out to my father’s place. Father asked me, ‘Where is your mother, Mary?’ and I said she was buried at sea three days before we got to San Francisco.”

Without a wife and having no way to take care of his children, McGhee placed them in Tabitha Brown’s orphanage and school in Forest Grove. When he remarried and decided to move to Washington, Mary and Melville stayed at school, and little Joanna went with their father.

Mary was one of the first graduates of the Tualatin Academy that would soon become Pacific University. “I took up teaching as my life’s work,” she said.

 

Add caption

At a Salem strawberry festival in 1870, Mary’s life work took a detour when the president of the university approached her.

“He said, ‘Mary, I want you to meet a friend of mine from Southern Oregon.’ He introduced me to Mr. Day,” Mary said.

A little later, a fellow university student approached, and he too introduced her to Mr. Day. That evening, a third friend approached, but this time Mary was ready.

“He said, ‘Mary, I want you to meet,’ I said, I know him already. His name is Silas Day. He is a miner and lives in Jacksonville.”

Silas called on Mary the next day and they began their “courting by letter.” They married May 22, 1871. They had four children and would remain in Jacksonville for the rest of their lives.

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

History Snoopin': Steamships, a Sandbar, and One Fire Engine

History Snoopin': The Cradle Over the Grave of Johanness

Tin, cradle and family

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, May 13th 2019

Last New Year’s Eve, I wrote about the mother and father who placed an unusual wooden “cradle” around the grave of their 15-day-old daughter, Bessie Sprague.
Usually these symbolic cradles, marking the graves of babies and young children, are formed from carved marble or concrete, and not wood, but not always.

There is another cradle in the Jacksonville Cemetery. Like Bessie’s, this cradle was an unmarked mystery for well over 100 years. No one knew what child was buried there until recently, when family members came forward.

On a corner, barely visible from a dirt road, is a tiny, wire-frame cradle that marks the resting place of Johannes Biede. Johannes was born June 1, 1891, and died just 2 months and 15 days later. Johannes was the only son and youngest child of German immigrants Otto and Marie Biede. Otto was a tinsmith and fashioned the wire cradle himself.

Wire Cradle over Johannes Biede's Grave- Jacksonville, Oregon Historic Cemetery

We don’t know how or why Johannes died at such a young age, however, in the 1800s and earlier, it wasn’t unusual for children to die young. Accidents, disease and lack of adequate medical care and medical understanding were the primary culprits. The possibility of losing one or even all of their children was never far from a parent’s mind. They were used to it and lived with their unspoken fear that their children would die.

Otto and Marie Biede were born near Hanover, Germany, Otto in 1853, and Marie Helene in 1858. Both emigrated to the United States in 1884, but whether they came together or with family members isn’t known. Staying with friends, they married Oct. 17, 1885, in Chicago.
By 1886, they had arrived in Jackson County, and daughter Helene was born there. Three years later, in 1889, daughter Gertrude joined the family.

Otto set up his tinsmith business in Phoenix and soon was well known throughout the county. Before Johannes was born in 1891, Otto moved again, bringing his family and business to Jacksonville, where he bought a house on South Oregon Street.

The only known location of Otto’s tin shop and hardware store is the small brick building on the corner of South Oregon and California streets. He leased the store in May 1899 and had an advertisement for his business painted on the brick wall that is still visible today. It reads, “O. Biede, Tinshop. New and Second Hand Stoves.”

Biede Tin and Hardware Store South Oregon and California Streets Jacksonville, Oregon

The family moved to Ashland in 1902, and a few weeks later, Nov. 25, Otto died of a sudden heart attack and was buried in the Ashland Cemetery. His wife, Marie, who later married Herman Stock, an Ashland undertaker, would join Otto in 1948.

Daughter Helene received her state diploma as a licensed embalmer in 1917 and worked with her stepfather, Stock, until her death in 1935.

Daughter Gertrude worked as a clerk for Ashland until 1918, when she was appointed and then reelected city recorder until 1933. From 1937 until her retirement in 1954, she was Ashland city treasurer. She died in 1998, two and a half months before her 109th birthday.

A story of a tinsmith and his family — that’s what history’s made of.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

 https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/tin-cradle-and-family