Polk County. This was due to the high quality of the pioneers who
settled in this area of present-day Yamhill and Polk Counties, which was
called “The Athens of the West.” Between the years of 1843 and 1860 some
of the best educated and most dedicated men ever to come over the Oregon
Trail gravitated to this section of the Oregon Territory. Wherever they
settled they started a school and a church. Many of them were members of
the Christian Church.
It was only natural that a circuit rider preacher, Elder Glen O.
Burnett, should call the people of this religious communion together in
a camp meeting in an oak grove near Bethel in 1852. At this meeting the
idea of Bethel College was conceived.
In 1851 a physician and surgeon, Dr. Nathaniel Hudson, took a land claim
in this “Athens of the West.” The first thing he did was to build a log
schoolhouse; and in the late spring and early summer of 1852, he held
the first public school in the area. Because of his superior education,
the Doctor was able to teach the higher branches of education which was
not possible in most of the pioneer schools.
In 1854, Dr. Hudson sold his squatters’ rights at Bethel and took a
claim two miles west of Dallas. The pioneer families about Bethel had
come to depend fully on Dr. Hudson’s school, and its loss was a severe
one to the whole community.
Two Christian preachers, Amos Harvey and Glen O. Burnett gave 261 acres
of their donation land claims for the financing of Bethel Institute,
later Bethel College. This was near the first of the year in 1855. A
two-story frame building, 36 × 44 feet in dimension, was proposed. From
March until July 4, 1855, materials were gathered on the grounds for the
college building “raising.”
On the “glorious Fourth of ’55,” men with their families in wagons began
arriving. Some came from great distances. Besides carpenter work, there
was a sermon, a patriotic address, and a basket dinner. At the close of
the day, the main framework of the building, with its roof in place, was
done. The building was finished and dedicated, October 22, 1855. Bethel
Institute was chartered by the Territorial Legislature on January 11,
1856. Four years later, on October 19, 1860, Governor John Whiteaker
signed the charter of Bethel College, which has never been revoked.
Although for many years Bethel College has ceased to function as far as
actual classes are concerned, it still exists. It has a board of
trustees, and owns the college property—the ground on which Bethel
Elementary Grade School is located. It elects a board of trustees each
year, and has the power to grant degrees.
Too little is known about this college which gave Oregon one governor;
the wife of a United States Senator; and many who later became lawyers,
school teachers, and clergymen. One of the founders of Bethel College,
Amos Harvey, gave to the United States Senate his great-granddaughter,
the Honorable Maurine Neuberger.
Each year in midsummer the alumni association and the descendants of the
pioneers of Bethel gather on the grounds for an all-day picnic and
annual meeting.
La Creole Academy at Dallas
_Joseph D. Lee_
[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
In Waverly, Ohio, Nicholas Lee and Sarah Hopper were married August 4,
1840. That same year they moved from Ohio to Iowa, while Iowa was still
a territory. In the spring of 1847, they left for Oregon, fully equipped
with a good team of oxen, two cows (Rose and Lilly) and necessary
household goods. Raids by Indians upon the cattle of the train and
losses by stampedes left them practically without a team. They threw
away much of the household goods and fortunately purchased a yoke of
oxen (Dave and George) from another train, enabling them to complete the
journey.
The Lees and quite a number of others took the Southern route via
Klamath Lake and Cow Creek Canyon. Of the train coming down the
Columbia, several stopped at Dr. Marcus Whitman’s station and were
ruthlessly murdered or captured in the Indian massacre of November 29
and 30, 1847.
It was late in the fall when the Lees reached the head of the Willamette
Valley, for the trip was a hard one, especially Cow Creek Canyon. The
cattle were weak and jaded. Elias Briggs, who had safely brought a hive
of bees that far, lost them when his wagon was overturned in the water.
The Lees and James Fredericks selected claims and built cabins not far
from Eugene Skinner’s, after whom the city of Eugene was named. In the
spring of 1848, Frederick and Lee with their families came to Polk
County, seeking work and supplies. Their intention was to return, but
hearing that the Indians had burned their cabins they decided to remain.
They had the use of a two-room cabin for a time.
The winter of 1848 and 1849 was spent by the Lees in Salem. The
California gold rush was on, and Mr. Lee, a cooper by trade, made pack
saddles that winter and sold them to men leaving for the mines.
In the summer of 1849, they returned to Polk County and bought a claim
two and one-half miles south of Dallas. The transition from the cabin to
the “new house” was an important event with the pioneer family in 1852.
The house is still in use but has been remodeled. Mr. Lee took an active
part in establishing church and schools in Dallas and its area. In 1854,
he was licensed as a preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and is
credited with organizing the original Methodist Society.
In 1855, Mr. Lee took the lead in building a log school house on the
John Nicholas place. His two older children attended. Soon afterwards a
move started for an independent academy in Dallas. Lee was one of the
members of the first board of trustees, and served as treasurer. Land
and money were donated, and the town site was moved from the north side
of La Creole Creek to the south side.
In 1856-57 were built the new courthouse and jail. The La Creole
Academic Institute had two rooms ready for school opening, February 15,
1857. Professor Horace Lyman and Miss Lizzie Boise were the teachers.
The Lee children, as they grew large enough, walked three miles to
school. To give the children advantage of winter school, Mr. Lee built a
house in Dallas, which they occupied at times until the fall of 1862,
when Mr. Lee started a small store in Dallas and they moved to town.
The Academy served as a school for all age groups until the 1880’s. The
first public grade school building was erected about 1882.
In 1900, La Fayette Seminary, organized by a board of trustees of the
Educational Association of the Evangelical church, was incorporated with
La Creole Academic Institute in Dallas. It was known as Dallas College
and La Creole Academy. The combined schools were endowed by the church.
A dormitory was erected in 1900, costing $3000. The Woolen Mill property
was purchased for $1,500, and—for the expenditure of about $1,000 in
repairs and remodeling—the second floor was converted into a good
gymnasium.
The schools closed in 1914 for lack of funds to meet the requirements of
Oregon standardization laws.
The David Stump House in Monmouth
_David Campbell_
[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
David Stump, of Pennsylvania Dutch stock, was born in Ohio on October 20
(or 29) 1819. As guard, outriding scout and hunter, he came to Oregon
with the immigrant train of 1845. An experienced surveyor, his services
were in demand for surveying the virgin territory of what is now Benton,
Polk, and Yamhill counties. In 1851, he was married to Catherine
Elizabeth Chamberlin, who had come, a child of nine, with her family in
the wagon train of 1844.
David and Catherine Stump took up a donation claim on the Luckiamute
River, six miles south of what later became the village of Monmouth,
being among the very first settlers in that part of the Willamette
valley. Here they prospered. They became devoted and loyal members of
the Christian Church, which soon established a church-supported college
in Monmouth. There were two sons and two daughters. When these were
ready for higher education, David Stump acquired from the Lindsay family
a home in Monmouth adjacent to the college. It stood at the intersection
of Jackson and Monmouth streets on the southwest corner of a half-acre
tract of land, facing to the west the Victorian Wolverton place, with
the Orville Butler home to the north. This became—and continued for many
years as—the Stump family home. Here, after a long illness, David Stump
died on February 21, 1886.
In the mid-nineties the house was completely renovated and, to a great
extent, rebuilt. The roof was raised to give space for a large attic.
Rooms and porches were added. The position of the entrances and chimneys
was altered. In all, there were now seventeen rooms. Miss Ellen
Chamberlain, Mrs. Alice Applegate Peil, Miss Antoinette Bruce, Miss Rose
Bassett, Miss Lane, and other members of the Normal faculty lived there
around the turn of the century. It became quite a center of college
activities. Miss Cassie B. Stump had inherited the property from her
father.
There was a good-sized barn at the east end, occupied by a Jersey cow
and chickens and ornamented in Autumn with the glowing red of Virginia
Creeper. There were a berry patch, a large vegetable garden with morning
glories twining the corn stalks, and a row of huge sunflowers. Mrs.
Stump and her daughter were great lovers of flowers. They had a small
greenhouse for chrysanthemums, smilax, cacti, and various exotic plants.
A gnarled Gravenstein produced great, juicy apples. There was a big
white fig tree, which froze to the ground periodically, but somehow
managed to survive. Directly behind the house stood two exceptionally
tall Black Republican cherry trees, a rare sight when in bloom and by
July covering the ground inches deep with an over-abundance of ripe
fruit. There were madonna lilies, amaryllis, the spike of a yucca, and
roses in profusion. A sweet Mission rose, brought to the farm from
California, then transplanted to town, was by the front door. Inspired
by a visit to the poet, Longfellow, during her student days at Wellesley
college, Miss Stump had planted a hedge of lilacs modeled after his in
Cambridge.
Not long after Miss Cassie Stump’s death in 1941, the property was
acquired by the Oregon College of Education. The old house, by now in a
state of disrepair, and the once lovely garden, neglected and overgrown,
were removed to make way for the handsome, modernistic library building
and the appropriate landscaping with which it is surrounded. A Jack pine
and the great maples across the front are about the sole reminders of
the former occupancy of the land.
A collection of pictures, records, and mementos of early days at the
college is housed in the library. It seems eminently suitable that this
particular site should become a permanent part of the campus of the
school, in the founding and support of which the Stump family had had
such a large share and in which the members had maintained a vital
interest over so many years.
Christian College—Oregon Normal School—Oregon College of Education
_David Campbell_
[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
The early settlers in the Willamette Valley were not only provident and
God-fearing, they were also deeply concerned with higher education for
their young people. Academies and colleges sprang up in many of the
valley communities. A group of prosperous farmers in Polk County,
consecrated members of the Christian Church, gave land and financial
support to found a church-affiliated school at Monmouth, to become known
as Christian College.
In 1869, Thomas Franklin Campbell was engaged to head this institution.
Originally from the deep South, he had come some years previously to
Helena, Montana, where he conducted a school for boys and served as
circuit judge. He was a man of wide interests and abilities, having
served in the Mexican war, and been active as lawyer, minister, and
promoter of various public projects. But he was before all else an
educator. As a student at Bethany College in Virginia he had lived in
the home of Alexander Campbell, founder of the Christian Church. There
he had acquired an excellent classical education, had been ordained to
the ministry, and had married a cousin of Alexander Campbell, only
recently arrived from Ireland.
Responding to the call from Monmouth, with his wife, Jane Eliza and
their three sons, he made the long, arduous trip from Helena to Oregon
in a stagecoach. The challenging task for the new administrator was to
raise funds for a suitable, permanent structure. He solicited earnestly
over the state and very soon a brick building, modelled as to general
type after the Gothic-inspired architecture of Bethany College, was
constructed. It was here that distinguished jurists and others prominent
in Oregon life received a thorough grounding in the classics. The
curriculum was mostly concerned with Greek, Latin, mathematics, logic,
and philosophy. Science was not at that time, as it is with us, a prime
consideration. The first graduating class was that of 1871.
By 1892, Christian College had been converted into a State Normal
School. There was imperative need in the state to train teachers to meet
the growing demands for their services. Prince Lucian Campbell, son of
Thomas Franklin Campbell, was now the president. A new wing on the south
was added to the original building. This included a science laboratory,
several large classrooms, and an assembly hall known as “the Chapel.”
The latter has undergone some changes and is at present called “Campbell
Hall,” where hang the portraits of the two early presidents.
This new wing was surmounted by a bell tower from which the strong-toned
bell peremptorily summoned students to their morning classes. Eventually
the enlarged building was balanced with another wing added on the north
to house a training school. The whole structure forms truly an historic
Oregon Landmark, which is held in fond affection by the many who have
studied there.
A sad mutilation occurred in the great wind of Columbus Day 1962. The
familiar belfry was toppled to hang precariously. The forlorn picture
was featured in newspapers and national magazines as evidence of the
violence and destructive power of the unprecedented storm. Many great
trees of the ancient fir grove and others on the campus were badly
damaged. Much is irreparable, but effort is being made to replace the
bell tower and to restore all possible.
The Oregon College of Education, with the other institutions in the
State System of Higher Education, is experiencing a record enrollment.
There are new and modern buildings to meet increasing demands. To foster
tradition and the realization of past accomplishment, and to stress the
foundation on which present achievement is based, the preservation and
history of this original building at the Oregon College of Education is
of signal importance.
Fort Hoskins
_Preston E. Onstad_
[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
The site of Fort Hoskins, Benton County’s first military post, was
chosen by second lieutenant P. H. Sheridan with the help of Oregon
Indian Superintendent, Joel Palmer. The name Hoskins was chosen by the
Fort’s first commander, Captain Christopher Colon Augur, as his first
official order, on July 26, 1856. For the next nine years Fort Hoskins
served as the home and training ground of regular U. S. Army troops as
well as volunteers from California, Washington, and Oregon. Although a
few troopers from Hoskins knew some anxious moments in the early days,
no shots were ever fired into or out of the fort in anger. In fact, the
biggest argument to affect the Fort at any time was whether or not there
was any excuse for its existence.
Fort Hoskins was located at the Middle Pass over the Coast Range of
mountains to keep the surviving Indian participants of the Rogue River
War on the reservation which General Palmer had prepared for them on the
Oregon coast, near the present towns of Newport and Siletz. However, the
post was so far—some thirty miles from the Indians—that a blockhouse had
to be established on the upper prairie of the Siletz River. Fort Hoskins
supplied men, munitions, and materiel for the blockhouse.
Of the later generals who served there, at least two became famous:
Philip Sheridan, who located the site of the Fort and served as its
first quartermaster and commissary of supplies; and C. C. Augur, who,
during his five years in command, learned how to deal with his superiors
the hard way—by letter. In the Civil War, Sheridan started his climb to
fame as a commissary officer; and Augur, who had developed into a
persuasive writer, not only won battles but served with distinction on
many military courts and committees, where his early training in mental
organization served him well.
Fort Hoskins also provided a training camp for western volunteers
between 1862 and the end of the Rebellion, although few of the men who
trained there ever heard the whir of Indian arrow or the whine of enemy
shot. They did, however, learn the rudiments of the military discipline
of living month in and month out with themselves and with crushing
boredom. At first only a sutler’s store catered to the wants of the
soldiers, but at length a Corvallis firm, hard on the trail of easy
money, opened an establishment near the post that dealt in a commodity
the sutler’s store was not allowed to sell: spirits.
No Indians ever tried to attack Fort Hoskins, but during the turbulent
days of the Civil War, threats were made against the undermanned Fort by
Secessionists, of which there were many in the immediate neighborhood.
The nearest town of any size, Corvallis, was notoriously sympathetic to
the cause of the South and was contemptuously known in other parts of
the state of Oregon as the only town that ever had a Copperhead mayor.
To make matters worse, this worthy was twice elected. Certain Southern
sympathizers were organized into a secret state-wide society called the
“Knights of the Golden Circle.”
Fort Hoskins was permanently evacuated on April 13, 1865, the last
company to leave being Captain Waters’ Company F of the First Oregon
Volunteer Infantry. A year later the buildings were auctioned off, and
the land, which had been rented, was returned to the owners. In the
accompanying photograph, the cluster of unpainted farm buildings, left
of center, stand on what was once the parade ground of Fort Hoskins. The
large farmhouse behind the trees, at the right, rests on the site of the
old hospital. On the light-colored field between the trees and the hill,
soldiers once drilled and learned how to shoot at distant targets. Time
and distance have lent enchantment, of a sort that never really existed,
to the history of a lonely little frontier Fort in an all-but-forgotten
corner of Oregon.
Bishop Simpson’s Chapel
_Madeleine L. Nichols_
[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
In 1858, the old Simpson’s Chapel was completed. It stood on a hill
about halfway between the present towns of Bellfountain and Alpine. The
church was built of hand-planed lumber and was a plain oblong with three
windows on each side and a porch in front. It was surrounded by oak
trees, many of which are still standing and which served as hitching
posts for horses.
The history of the Alpine community may be said to have had its
beginning at the time of the erection of two buildings, the Ebenezer
school house and Simpson’s Chapel, though it is true that quite a number
of settlers had come to the valley before that time. The school house
was built of logs and was situated on a promontory about two miles south
of the present town of Alpine and on part of the old Gilbert place. It
was probably built about 1849 and served both as a school and a “meeting
house.”
It was and always has been a Methodist Church and was called Simpson’s
Chapel because Bishop Simpson was the presiding officer of the first
annual conference, held while the group was still meeting in the old
Ebenezer school. In 1903, it was decided that a new church was needed,
so one was built at the present site of Alpine and was completed in
1904. At this time the congregation divided, part of its members going
to Bellfountain and part to Alpine.
The whole community was once known as the Belknap settlement because of
the preponderance of Belknaps among the first settlers who, in pioneer
days, had come by wagon train to the valley from Ohio, Missouri, and
Iowa. Other early families were the Starrs, Hawleys, Howards, Gilberts,
Catons, Woodcocks, Goodmans, and Nichols.
Another interesting part of the early history of the Chapel centered
around the campground which, in 1871, was bought from George Humphrey
and is known as the Bellfountain Park. People came from miles around,
primarily for the spring of clear cold water, held meetings, and
visited. The gatherings were religious but also social. People would
bring food, put up tents, and stay for a week or more. Sometimes someone
would bring part of a beef and hang it on a tree and those present were
free to help themselves. The pioneer days are gone but Simpsons Chapel
is still used as a house of worship by those who have taken the place of
the pioneers.
The Mitchell Wilkins Family Home
_Lucia Wilkins Moore_
[Illustration: Painting by Lucia Moore.]
In 1847, Mitchell Wilkins and his young wife, Permelia Ann Allen, then
eighteen, arrived on foot at “The Falls.” He was twenty-nine. Their
wagon, plus goods and tools, were beside the Barlow Road with the
last-dying oxen. Permelia’s father Robert Allen, still driving wagon and
ox team, made their last miles easier. The three pushed on from Oregon
City toward Silverton and, on October 1, came to Butte Creek. There they
halted to build cabins, plow, and plant. Ten months later my father was
born. When the baby, Francis Marion, was two months old, Mitchell
Wilkins took a land claim in upper Willamette Valley, edging the Coburg
hills. During the sixty years he lived there, the 640 acres grew to
20,000.
The pioneer home which replaced the original cabin was of southern
origin for Grandfather was of North Carolinian stock. Built in 1854, it
was low and wide with a small gallery above and a wider one below facing
the west and overlooking Centennial Butte where, in 1876, Mitchell
Wilkins planted maple and fir trees. He carried water by sled to the
butte’s very top to make sure the trees would live. They stand, to the
present day, like a tuft of hair on an Indian’s skull.
Willamette Forks post office was housed in one of the small outer
buildings, bringing neighbors together when stage or pony rider dashed
past on East Side Territorial Road, dropping off mail. “Late news” was
at best a month old but worth discussion as the years brought disunion
and secession problems to be faced among southern democrats and members
of the newly organized Republican party. Indians had made the hillside
trails which were to become the Territorial Road, and Calapooias still
roamed the trails and dug camas roots in the blue-flowered fields.
When the Wilkinses built a cabin, there was not yet a Eugene village.
Mr. Skinner had only just brought his family to a sheep-herder’s cabin
on the butte called Ya-po-ah, and had hardly formed his dream for Eugene
City. That town would one day be ten miles south of the Wilkins home.
The land proved out Mitchell Wilkins’ plan for raising fine grain and
fine cattle. He took his prize grains to Philadelphia’s Centennial in
1876, New Orleans Exposition and Chicago’s Columbian Exposition in 1893,
returning with honors for Lane County and Oregon. He served in the State
Legislature, 1862-64, there presented Eugene’s petition for
incorporation, and was instrumental in its passage. He was one of the
men who organized Oregon’s Agricultural Society and Fair, which became
the State Fair. He served as an early president and on its board until
paralysis forced him to give up all activities. Inaction was hard for
the tall, eager-eyed Scotsman, but he endured it with a smile, though he
was unable to speak.