Forgotten Voices of WWI: Roland Root Speers - American Volunteer Ambulance Corps in WWI France

1915 - American Roland Speers- serving France in the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps

Roland Root Speers

    (16 October 1895 – 29 November 1970)

We have now been moved to the far-away front. The work and accommodations here are the best yet, not like those in the little village where we were in “repose.” There the rats galloped up and down and around our beds, until we were forced to turn our flashlights on at intervals and bombard them with shoes and cakes of soap. I never saw such big rats.

The only apparent danger here is from gas, and all the schoolchildren as well as grandfathers carry gas masks slung over their shoulders.

The horror, the intensity and gravity of trench warfare is impossible to absorb from books or letters. I realized this when I got here. Things that impressed me were the ever-whispered conversations and the air of alertness and expectancy as if the nerves were being strained to catch the slightest sound. There seemed to be a deathly stillness. Both the men and dogs seemed to be bundles of nerves. I stooped to pat a dog in one of the dugouts that was unaware of my intention, and as soon as my hand touched him, he retired as though a hot iron had seared him.

It is the terrific explosions that wreck the nerves.

Still—in my idle moments—I can conjure up to memory those deep, dark caves where men crouch like animals; where breeding, manners, home, and the niceties of life seem ages away. I can see the stacked rifles; the well-placed machine guns, the reservoirs of wicked grenades placed so the poilus [a French soldier] can reach them as they come up out of their foul-aired caves—and always, I see the utter desolation, the withered vegetation, and the horrible churned and rechurned chaos of “No Man’s Land.”

Forgotten Voices of WWI

Hathaway Jones: Southern Oregon's Favorite Storyteller

Telling tall tales in the Siskiyous

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, May 20th 2019

When a man on a mule who looks like Groucho Marx wearing a pith helmet rides by, you just have to believe the man’s got a story to tell.

That would be Hathaway Jones. He could spin 1,000 tales at the drop of a lip and you never had to ask him.

Some called him a colorful character, a true wit. Others said he was the biggest liar Oregon had ever seen.

Born in 1871 on the family’s land claim just north of Roseburg, Ivan Hathaway Jones

Hathaway Jones

inherited his tall-tale ability from his father and grandfather, but Hathaway would outclass them both.

Nearly 50 of the Jones boys and girls had crossed the prairie in 1852 from Indiana. Heading the wagon column was Captain Jacob Jones, Hathaway’s great-grandfather. Jacob bought an interest in a flour mill, and before he died in 1865 he passed it on to his son, Isaac.

Isaac, better known as Ike, liked to say he came to Siskiyou Mountains when all the trees were just tiny saplings and the Rogue River was nothing but a crack through the rocks.

Ike claimed that his son, William, was suckled by a cougar and would only talk to cougars until he was 9 years old.

William’s favorite story was the time his son, Hathaway, was looking for gold and found a 6-inch-long nugget.

“Look what I found, Dad!” Hathaway said proudly.

William turned, spit out a chaw, and said, “Mighty fine hunk of ore son, but we’re just too far from the railroad.”

By the mid 1890s, William had turned miner, sold the flour mill, and moved with his family into the Curry County wilderness along the Rogue River, just about 50 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

In March 1898, Hathaway began his lifelong career — mail carrier along the Rogue River. With just mules to talk to as he made his way over the perilous trails that were barely etched into the canyon walls, Hathaway had plenty of time to cook up some outrageous yarns.

Hathaway Jones Delivers Mail on the Rogue River

Old Betsy, his trusty rifle, was one of his favorites. Loaded with special black powder cartridges, he said, she fired the slowest bullets anyone ever saw. Why, maybe you remember the honking goose he shot. It was so high in the sky it took all afternoon to finally hit the dang thing.

Then there was that deer, two miles away, shot with his last bullet. By the time Hathaway reached the animal he realized the deer had run into that very same bullet 16 times, just trying to escape.

Sometimes he loaded Old Betsy with salted bullets, explaining, “That danged rifle kills at such a distance that if I didn’t salt them bullets, especially in warm weather, the meat would spoil with age before I could get to it.”

Hathaway Jones told his last story in August 1937. In the middle of the night, his riderless horse led a team of five pack mules into Marial, the old post office in Curry County. Hathaway had fallen off the trail and onto a sharp rock.

“He soaked up the flavor of the pines,” said a reporter. “When he sat across from a campfire, he always had a story to tell. We will miss him.”

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/telling-tall-tales-in-the-siskiyous

Forgotten Voices of WWI: Nurse Frances Crane

August 1914

American Frances Crane from Seattle, Washington, hears the call and volunteers. 

 “We heard over the wireless that Europe was at war.

Right then, I made up my mind to return to my former profession of nurse. I was willing to go to any country that most needed aid.”

Forgotten Voices of WWI

 

Forgotten Voices of WWI: Sir Philip Gibbs

Memorial Day 1925

“We are no longer conscious of any gap in the ranks of youth, torn out by the machinery of destruction. We do not realize the loss of

all that spirit, genius, activity, and blood, except in private remembrance of some dead boy whose portrait in uniform stands on the mantle shelf.”

   Journalist Sir Philip Gibbs—Colliers magazine.

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

History Snoopin': Barney Riggs, inspiring generations

Barney Riggs, inspiring generations

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, May 6th 2019

When you think of sport coaching legends, you probably think of a favorite pro, college, or high school coach.

Around here, a lot of athletic fans remember just one coach — a coach who meant more in their own lifetime than just about anyone outside of their family.

Barney Leland Riggs liked nothing better than playing ball and being a coach — or as some would call him, an athletic mentor. Just when he finally picked up that first ball isn’t known, but it couldn’t have been much later than when he took his first baby steps.

Born in California, May 3, 1926, his family brought him and his two sisters to Talent before Barney was 6. One can only assume that Barney quickly took to competitive baseball and football games with his neighborhood friends, but it wasn’t until he was 13 that he finally broke into the newspaper. It was 1940, and he was graduating from the ninth grade at Ashland’s junior high school and headed on to the Ashland High Grizzlies.

Barney had played guard on the school’s football team, and his coach, Al Simpson, was lamenting the fact that 19 of his starters, including Barney, were graduating and leaving. Ironically, in a few more years, Simpson would be Barney’s football coach all over again.

In Barney’s three years of high school, he played baseball and lettered in both football and basketball. He also played the sousaphone, one of those tubas that wrap around your shoulders, but he didn’t get very much newspaper ink for that.

His claim to fame in baseball came in May 1942, when he ruined a Jacksonville pitcher’s no-hitter by singling in the first inning.

Most of his high school headlines came from football — a simpler game in the 1940s — the offense most often in a T-formation. Barney was the team captain and starting 170-pound left halfback.

Barney had a field day in November 1943, taking down the Black Tornado with 130 yards rushing and two touchdowns. “He was literally unstoppable,” said a reporter.

As a 17-year-old hoopster, he helped lead the Grizzlies to the state basketball championship in 1944, and, a month later, April 12, as if to celebrate, he joined the Navy. He served two years, and when discharged he celebrated again by getting married and signing up for classes at Southern Oregon Teachers College, today’s Southern Oregon University. Again, Barney was reunited with Coach Simpson and taking the football team to an undefeated season.

 After graduation, he began 26 years of teaching, always finding time for sports. 

 

Hedrick Middle School Football

From Talent Elementary to Medford at Lincoln, then Central Point, and finally, in 1955, Medford’s Hedrick Junior High, he mentored his way through the classroom and onto the field. Hedrick was a brand-new school, and Barney helped choose the cardinal and gold school colors. And, of course, he coached the football team.

Barney Riggs died Feb. 24, 2008. Gone is his positive, smiling, inspiring personality that left its mark on generations of students and student athletes — and for them, Barney will be missed.

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.

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