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

Hargadine, a family Cemetery in Ashland, Oregon

Hargadine, a family cemetery

BY  Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune February 04, 2019

There was a light snow in the mountains and occasional rain below. Early December temperatures were surprisingly mild; almost an early breath of spring.

None of that would last.

Under a light overcast, Robert and Martha Hargadine were burying their youngest daughter, Katie,

Katie Hargadine, first burial in Hargadine Cemetery

-Ashland, Oregon

the first of their seven children to die. Barely 16 months old, Katie died Dec. 8, 1867. Because she was the first to be buried here, the subsequent cemetery would always be known as the Hargadine Cemetery.

The owner of the only store in Ashland Mills, a town of fewer than 20 families, Robert Hargadine was one of the first settlers in Southern Oregon. In 1852, he claimed 160 acres in what would become Ashland’s Railroad Addition.

Just months before Katie died, Robert had joined with others to form a company that set up the Ashland Woolen Mills. To supply it, Robert began purchasing sheep, and especially Angora goats. The goats’ long white hair brought him a dollar a pound in San Francisco.

Born in Delaware in 1829, Robert came west across the Isthmus of Panama to California in 1850. For nearly two years, his dreams of striking it rich in the northern gold fields were futile. He gave up and

Robert B. Hargadine and wife Martha Washington Kilgore

came to Oregon, where he became the largest stock and wool raiser in the county, and one of the largest property owners.

In 1856, he married Martha Washington Kilgore, who had crossed the Plains with her family two years earlier.

In December 1876, Robert traveled to Oakland, California, seeking medical treatment for a lingering ailment that some thought had been caused by a severe case of sunstroke. There, in January 1877, at age 47, he died of a probable heart attack. Because there was not yet a railroad in town, “the body of this gentleman arrived at Ashland by private conveyance.” He was the first of his family to be buried with daughter Katie. Martha joined her husband in 1905.

Landowner James Haworth deeded nearly one and a half acres of his property to Robert Hargadine and Allen Farnham for use as a family cemetery.

Farnham and his wife, Sarah, were owners of the Eagle Mills flour mill and lived just north of Ashland. Their 5-month-old son, Cuyler, died Dec. 21, 1867, just 13 days after Katie Hargadine had passed, and Cuyler was the second burial in the Hargadine Cemetery.

Allen Farnham was born in Maine in 1822, where he must have met Sarah Billings, who was also born in Maine in 1833. Allen left in 1850 for a very successful gold search on the Scotts River in Northern California, while Sarah completed her studies at the Charlestown Female Seminary in Massachusetts. They were married in 1858 and came to the Ashland area in 1864.

Ironically, Allen Farnham was also the first of his family to be buried with his child in the Hargadine Cemetery. His 1876 death came just five months before Robert Hargadine’s passing. After he died, Sarah continued to run the Farnham flour business until her death in 1888.

Hargadine Cemetery, Ashland, Oregon

Over the years, maintaining the Hargadine Cemetery has been a problem. The Hargadine Cemetery Association struggled up to 1968, when the association relinquished control and transferred title to the city of Ashland. It wasn’t until 1989 that the state Legislature approved the transfer.

Now, with the help of dedicated volunteers, the final resting place of many Ashland pioneers is now secure under the cooling branches of the tall oaks, sturdy madrone, and Ponderosa pine.

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.

Secret of the wooden cradle

BY  Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune December 31, 2018

Old cemeteries hold tightly to their secrets, yet they tempt us from time to time with unexpected discoveries — immediately touching our hearts and minds with the pains and memories of our humanity.

The echoes of grieving parents still seem to hang in the air as we walk through Jacksonville’s historic cemetery. Here, symbolic cradles mark the loss of babies on the very ground, where, so long ago, funeral tears were shed.

Usually formed from concrete or carved in marble, cradle graves represent the last wish of fathers and mothers who hoped to comfort their babies in their long and lonely sleep.

In Jacksonville, there are two cradles that are very different — one, fashioned from wire, marks the resting place of Johannas Biede, the 2-month-old son of a Jacksonville tinsmith. The other, unidentified until recently, is marked with nothing more than a rectangular framework of rough-hewn wood.

Resting at the top of the hill, in the corner of the Catholic section of the cemetery, this rustic-looking grave is unmarked, and for more than 125 years has been a source of wonder. What child is buried here? The clue came from distant relatives.

Eleven pounds at birth, Bessie Agnes Sprague was born Aug. 12, 1880, to Herbert and Mary Maud Sprague. Fifteen days later, Aug. 27, Bessie died and was buried two days later. A year earlier, Herbert and Mary had already lost a son. Perhaps Bessie was buried with him.

Mary Sprague was 17 years old when daughter Bessie was born, and her husband was 32. She was the oldest daughter of John and Hanoria Cimborsky, the unlikely merger of an Austrian immigrant and an Alabama belle. Herbert was the son of a Massachusetts carpenter.

Cherub in Jacksonville Oregon's Historic Cemetery

Mary was born in 1863, during one of the worst storms ever to hit Jacksonville. Rain poured down for days, muddying creeks and filling gullies in just a few hours. For nearly a week, the town was completely cut off from the outside world. It was a turbulent beginning for what would become a turbulent life.

The couple celebrated the birth of a son barely a year after Bessie died. Named for his father, Herbert Jr. survived to adulthood.

Already there was something going wrong with the marriage. Mary had recently returned from an extended solo stay in San Francisco to find her father dying of liver cancer. Soon afterward, there was a marital separation of some sort, with Herbert heading south to California and Mary Maud and her son relocating to Washington.

In July 1892, Mary was granted an uncontested divorce from Herbert by Seattle’s Superior Court. She married Frank Clancy, who adopted her son. Frank was a prominent member of Seattle’s political and sometimes shady sporting communities. Notorious for his fistfights with enemies, Frank and his brothers operated a number of liquor businesses and owned a group of hotels. Mary managed one of them.

Mary Maud died at age 49 in August 1912. Her son followed a year later, and Frank Clancy died in 1917.

Herbert Sprague settled near Sacramento, California, and was last heard of in 1910, when he was 62 years old and working as a hired hand on a farm south of the city.

The oak and madrone leaves have fallen for yet another year on little Bessie Sprague’s wooden cradle. But at least now we know who and where she is. The baby who never got a chance will never be lonely again.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “Silent City on the Hill: Jacksonville, Oregon’s Historic Cemetery.” Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

Pioneers From Everywhere

Pioneers come from everywhere

When I say “pioneers,” what picture comes to mind? The Oregon Trail? Covered wagons on a dusty plain? Maybe it’s an old and equally dusty western movie? Well — what about Illinois?

Say what?

 

Maybe you’re like me and learned your earliest history in an Oregon schoolhouse. That’s where Lewis and Clark were the heroes, Sacagawea was a queen, and we were told to be very proud of our ancestor pioneers — pioneers who braved it all to settle in the West.

 

Chief Blackhawk

Imagine my surprise, while visiting along the Mississippi River a couple of summers ago, to hear a museum docent at the Black Hawk State Historic Site in Illinois say, “When our pioneer settlers arrived here in the 1820s … .” But, of course! How could I be so blind? They had pioneers, too.

At the museum, I learned more about the Black Hawk War than I ever had. I also saw the death mask of Chief Black Hawk, the Sauk leader, who led the fight against white settlers who were taking tribal land and forcing Black Hawk’s people west across the Mississippi.

Returning home, I discovered one person resting in the Jacksonville Cemetery who had been a volunteer soldier in that war, and eventually he came to Oregon.

Chief Blackhawk

Daniel Newcomb was born in Kentucky in 1804 and, as a young man, moved to what would become Decatur, Illinois. At the outbreak of the Black Hawk War in 1832, Daniel volunteered as a mounted ranger with Captain William Warnick’s company. Warnick was friends with Abraham Lincoln, who was a captain of another volunteer company. Neither company ever fought with the Indians.

In 1846, Daniel again volunteered to fight, this time in the Mexican War. He was elected captain of a company in the 4th Illinois Regiment of volunteers. The regiment’s commander was Col. Edward Baker, also a close friend of Lincoln who, in 1860, would become one of Oregon’s senators. Baker successfully led his regiments against the Mexican Army, first at the coastal city of Veracruz and then at Cerro Gordo. It was the first direct clash between Mexican General Santa Ana and the American forces.

In 1852, Daniel left Illinois for Oregon, leading a wagon train over the Applegate Trail. His granddaughter said Indians attacked the caravan and Daniel negotiated a truce, believing “he was crossing their territory and should pay his way with cattle instead of fighting.” That gesture didn’t stop Daniel from fighting in the 1855 Rogue River Indian War. He had moved from the Corvallis area to Southern Oregon in 1853.

With Oregon statehood approaching in 1859, Daniel was part of the delegation from Southern Oregon to the Constitutional Convention. There he voted for slavery for Oregon. He had to strongly deny rumors at home that he actually favored a Free State. Oregon voters refused slavery, but banned free blacks from living in the state.

 

Daniel Newcomb - Jacksonville, Oregon Cemetery

In quick succession, Daniel was appointed State Brigadier General and also Indian agent at the Siletz Reservation, but with the election of Abraham Lincoln, Daniel, a Democrat, lost both positions. He returned to private life with his large family, living near Williams.

After losing his wife at the end of 1863, his health began to decline. In March 1867, pioneer Daniel Newcomb died.

Meet the Pioneers is coming

Final dress rehearsals are done.
Now its time for this weekend's 12th Annual Meet the Pioneers performance in Jacksonville Oregon's Historic Cemetery.

Volunteer efforts and proceeds help to preserve the cemetery and local history.