History Snoopin': The Girls of Summer

The Girls of Summer

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, June 8th 2020

It simply couldn’t be true. The Girls weren’t coming. They had turned around.

The male population was justifiably heartbroken. What would have been a “fine exhibition of lower limbs,” was now just a pipedream. Something had to be done!

Early the next morning, on the southbound train to Redding, two of Medford’s best talkers prepared to negotiate. Their wives had laughed at them and called their “mission” ridiculous, but male friends had not so jokingly warned them, “Don’t come home without the Girls!”

The Girls were the Boston Bloomer Girls, a barnstorming bunch of baseball exhibitionists who claimed to be “World Champions of the National Pastime.” Since women of the Victorian Era seldom played baseball in public, the scandalous thought of females in uniforms challenging the men of America was incredibly exotic.

The uniform was much like a baggy softball suit of today. There were no bloomers, but the calf-high trousers they wore were just as controversial. To see a woman’s ankle in 1897, even covered by stockings, was unheard of.

Newspapers, anxious to see the women perform, assured readers there was nothing to fear. “The Girls not only play exceptional baseball,” they said, but were also “blessed with ladylike behavior.”

Perhaps not all of the Girls were women. Losing teams often said some of the Girls were actually men in disguise.

Medford was desperate for a major attraction, and sending their frantic negotiators to meet the Girls in person seemed to be their last chance for success. When the men returned with contract in hand, the male population of the valley went bonkers.

Every evening for the next two months, on the town’s dusty ball field, balding businessmen slid in the dirt, perfecting their baseball technique. 

With temperatures in the 90s, everyone from middle-aged bankers to youthful laborers struggled to make the team. Overweight husbands ran themselves to exhaustion, fragrant cigars still clutched in their teeth.

Amused wives shook their heads in disbelief, but secretly enjoyed watching their “old fools” pretend to be 16 again. Inevitably, it was the town’s younger men and boys who would challenge the Girls.

The Girls arrived in style aboard their personal and private Pullman “Palace” car, a symbol of prosperity. They brought with them everything necessary for a first-class and profitable exhibition — a portable 2,000-seat grandstand and a seven-foot-high canvas wall that surrounded the game and kept freeloaders out.

In October 1897, the Girls stepped off the train, elegantly dressed in long skirts and double-breasted blazers. With simple hats on their heads and soft scarves tied at their necks, no one would have believed that they were talented athletes.

The crowd gladly paid 25¢ to see Medford’s “Boys” beat the “Girls” in a slow game, 17-16.

The next day, the Bloomer Girls traveled to Ashland to face the town’s semipro team. It was a closely contested game until the second inning, when the local boys “chivalrously fell all to pieces,” allowing the “cultivated ladies to take the game 11-8.”

While Medford’s citizens loved every minute of their rival’s pain, the humiliated Ashlanders were furious with their team.

The Bloomer Girls could care less. Winning was the last thing on their mind. They hopped aboard their “Palace” car and headed to California — world championship intact — and nearly $200 richer.

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.

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.

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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

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