in Claiborne County, Tennessee. He went to Missouri in 1832, crossed the
plains by covered wagon train with his large family in 1852, and took up
an Oregon Donation Land Claim south of Scio, Oregon. The next Spring he
had his farm underway, so that he, several members of his family, and
neighbors built a log church in a beautiful fir grove on a hilltop on
his farm. They named it Providence Baptist Church, and on that site a
larger Providence Community Church still stands today. He became its
pastor, with Reverend J. G. Berkley as assistant. The Reverend Powell
preferred to hold evangelistic meetings through the territory, while
Brother Berkley stayed at home taking care of Providence Church.
The Reverend Powell preached at Good Hope, Washington Butte, Scio, and
Sublimity churches, besides his many seasons of revivals. At first he
would not receive any compensation for his work except the hospitality
of its members, but later he did not refuse a small salary.
Joab’s wife, Ann Beeler Powell, was a small, quiet woman of German
ancestry. She and the older sons ran the farm, while Joab rode far and
near, holding church services in the widely scattered settlements. He
would return each fall to the home on the Santiam river, ragged and
dispirited. His home was a well of strength. Each night by the fireside,
throughout the winter, his wife would read chapters of the Bible to him.
Joab would listen and later repeat them word for word, by memory. She
would refer with pride to his summer’s achievements. Slowly his
confidence and courage would build up; and, in the Spring, he would be
ready for new conquests.
Elder Powell had friends in all walks of life. His adaptability, no
doubt, was one of the underlying reasons for his famed evangelical
success. He was a straight and honorable man, and his preaching far and
near was followed by spiritual awakenings of great power. His work stood
the test of time. He died in 1873 and lies buried in Providence
Churchyard beside his wife. Ann died as she had lived—gently—in the
early Spring of 1872. Joab never rode the circuit again. He died seven
months after his wife was gone.
Each third Sunday in June, an all-day service is held at the historic
Providence Church to commemorate the achievement of Elder Powell and his
faithful adherents, and the community’s tribute to a pioneer circuit
rider.
In tribute to the pioneer preacher, the late Professor J. B. Horner of
Oregon State University wrote: “During his ministry he baptized nearly
3,000 souls, a greater number than any other person baptized west of the
Rocky Mountains. The Reverend Powell was illiterate from an academic
standpoint, but he was so thoroughly versed in the Bible that he did not
require it for reference in the pulpit, although his sermons abounded in
Biblical quotations. He understood men and he communed with nature as
with a friend.”
White Spires United Presbyterian Church
_Mrs. Wayne Dawson_
[Illustration: Helen Horton]
In the late 1840’s, missionaries of two branches of the Presbyterian
faith—the Associate and the Associate Reformed—arrived in the Willamette
Valley. In July, 1850, Dr. T. S. Kendall organized the Associate
Presbyterian Church in the Oakville neighborhood, and this is still a
strong rural church. In 1851, Wilson Blain arrived in the valley. He had
lived in Oregon City and had been editor of the “Oregon Spectator.” He
organized a church at Union Point, near Brownsville, Oregon. Other
missionaries followed.
The difficulties of travel and the great distances from church centers
soon caused the question of union to come up, resulting in a compact
being drawn up uniting these bodies into the United Presbyterian Church
of Oregon. Taking part in the Union were Dr. Kendall, Dr. Irvine, and
Rev. J. P. Millar of the associate group. In the Associate Reformed
group were Rev. Blain, Rev. James Worth, and Rev. Jeremiah Dick. This
union took place at the home of Rev. Blain, October 20, 1852. These two
bodies united in Pittsburgh into the United Presbyterian Church of North
America in 1858.
In October, 1853, the Albany Church was organized, the first to be
organized as the United Presbyterian Church. The Rev. J. P. Millar was
pastor until his death in April, 1854. He was killed by an explosion of
the Steamship “Gazelle” near Oregon City.
Dr. Irvine, who was pastor at Oakville (Willamette), followed the Rev.
Millar, by giving part time to the Albany Congregation until 1873. He
severed his connection with the Willamette Church, moving to Albany,
where he was pastor until his death in 1895. He was Moderator of the
General Assembly in 1878.
The Albany congregation met in the Courthouse, an octagonal building
which burned in the 1860’s. A church was built in 1863 at Fifth and
Washington, on ground obtained from Thomas Montieth. This building
served many years, but on June 20, 1891, the cornerstone of the present
church was laid and the church formally dedicated, August 7, 1892.
The General Assembly met in Albany in 1894, and Dr. Irvine was able to
attend one meeting in a wheelchair. The next pastor to remain many years
was Dr. W. P. White. He came in the fall of 1901, and was pastor until
1920. In 1906, the Dr. S. G. Irvine Memorial pipe organ was installed at
a cost of over $2,800. It is still in use.
Again the General Assembly met in Albany in 1952, with commissioners
from all over the United States and the mission fields. In 1953, the
church observed the “100th Anniversary” of the organizing of the church.
The contractor for building the church was J. B. Cougill; it cost about
$16,500. The architect, who drew the plans for the present church, was
Walter Pugh, of the firm of McCauley and Wickersham of Salem. The name
“White Spires” was made official on January 8, 1958.
The spires are outstanding and are the highest points in Albany. The
supports are made of laminated wood. Though swaying badly during the
typhoon of October 12, 1962, it stood, although traffic was blocked off
for hours. The stained-glass windows were not broken. They are very
unusual both in design and coloring. The White Spires Church still
stands and the present pastor is the Rev. Ralph R. Hawthorne.
Boston Mills
(Thompson Mills)
_Lottie E. Morgan_
[Illustration: Helen Horton]
“Boston Mills” was a familiar name to early Oregon pioneers. It was one
of the early gristmills. Men would take their wheat by horseback or in
wagons from miles around to this mill and take home the flour for their
families. Boston, like many other settlements, hoped to be a city and
perhaps the county seat.
Eliza Finley Brandon (Mrs. Thomas Brandon), 1850-1948, says: “My father,
Richard Chism Finley, built the original mill at the old town of Boston
in 1856-1858. He owned a half interest. Alexander Brandon and P. V.
Crawford each owned one-fourth interest. It was destroyed by fire. With
the flour-mill there was a carding factory. There a fire was kept
burning all the time to warm the wool as it was worked. The fire
probably started from this. Soon after the fire, the mill was rebuilt.
All the massive timbers for both mills were cut out and hewed by hand in
the woods near Crawfordsville, and hauled to Boston—an immense task.”
There used to be fairs at Boston in the early days—not really in Boston
but in the country to the east across the Calapooya, at the foot of a
small hill between Saddle Butte and the Calapooya River. This hill was
called Bunker Hill because it was near Boston, and one time two settlers
had a fight there over a land claim, “The Battle of Bunker Hill.”
Pioneers relate that Boston once had a post office, established
September 22, 1868, two stores, and a blacksmith shop, in addition to
the mills. When the railroad passed one and a half miles to the west,
Boston failed to develop as a town, and Shedd became the railroad
station.
Mr. E. D. Farwell, pioneer, says the ownership of the mill ran like
this: Finley, Crawford and Brandon; Finley & William (Billy) Simmons;
Simmons Brothers; Simmons and Knoll; Simmons & Thompson, then Thompson,
the present owner.
We are told that the old timbers, mentioned earlier, remain in the
present reconstructed structure, and that the old millstones lie under
the water of the millrace. The white walls of the present mill are
reflected in the clear waters of the millrace, the busy wheels continue
to hum, and flour is ground for descendants of the pioneers of early
days. The well-kept home of Mr. Otto Thompson, the present owner, stands
nearby, only a short distance from the home of “Billy” Simmons, the
miller of earlier days.
The Chase Orchard
_Fannie Chase_
[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
Oregon pioneers must have had a diverting time clearing the land,
planting orchards, tilling fields, and erecting homes. Doing all the
planning called for constructive creation and real achievement. However,
I wonder whether the one who moves into a ready-made house doesn’t have
even more thrills and flights of imagination. I consider myself a
fortunate mortal to dwell in a place with an interesting historical
background. I was fascinated by the Oregon farm that my father and
mother bought, near Albany.
My early childhood was spent in the sandhills of Nebraska, a land
characterized by tumbleweeds, prairie fires, and hot winds. Until I
arrived in the Willamette Valley, I had never seen a lilac or a rose in
full bloom. I shall always remember my first glimpse of the new Oregon
home. On that Spring morning, no sky had ever been so blue, no fields so
green, no fruit trees so pink and white.
The house with its high ceiling, grained woodwork, and flower
conservatory aroused my greatest curiosity. How excited I was after
several weeks’ sojourn to discover a tiny cellar that had escaped
unnoticed! It had been the special location of a barometer and other
instruments for official weather records.
The farm was a part of the Cline donation land claim of the 1860’s. In
1887, Mr. and Mrs. John Briggs bought ten acres of this tract, cleared
the land, erected buildings, planted trees, and established a rose and
shrub nursery. In 1902, fifteen years later, when Mr. Briggs began to
fail in health, the farm was sold to J. L. Howard; and, in 1906, it was
sold to Nels Savage.
My father purchased the farm in 1908. For fifty-four years it has been
called The Chase Orchards, but older residents still refer to it as the
Old Briggs Place. Old Mr. Briggs was a dyed-in-the-wool Britisher.
Everything he planted was English to the extreme: English box, English
laurel, English holly, English hedges—all fashioned in precise rows,
circles, and squares.
If Mr. Briggs could see his old home now, he would find many changes.
The little pines, firs, and cedars are giant in size, real patriarchs of
the forest. English ivy covers the farm buildings, and the box hedges
are broad and rambling. The nursery stock forms a rose-garden lawn with
panels of the same old-fashioned roses that were planted seventy-five
years ago. Filbert, walnut, and holly orchards have replaced some of the
original trees.
In those early days, there were two entrances: a large gate for the
carriage, and a small picket gate leading to a narrow walk between the
hedge and the driveway. At another corner, near the farm buildings, was
a secondary entrance designed for farm vehicles and delivery wagons. Woe
to the misguided laborer who, inadvertently blundered through the wrong
gateway!
Much of our knowledge of the early activities was gained from Mr.
Briggs’ widow, who lived only a short distance from us. From her we
acquired a floral language of technical titles for trees, shrubs, bulbs,
and flowers. We ourselves made a special contribution to the
time-honored Pacific Coast flora by adding a cutting from the rosebush
that our Great-grandfather Chase had brought to New York State, a
century and a half ago. We are not pioneers. We are not Webfoots. We are
not Oregon mossbacks. We cannot claim relationship to a native son or a
native daughter. We simply adopted a friendly Oregon community, which is
still animated by the courage and industry of former beauty-loving
Oregonians.
History of Early Albany Schools
_Mary Myrtle Worley_
[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
The account of perhaps the first instruction given in Albany, dates back
to the 1840’s. Since there were not enough children in the community for
organization of a school, it cannot be classed as one. Mrs. Abraham
Hackleman gathered a few small children into her home, a log house which
stood in Hackleman’s Grove, and taught them reading, writing and
numbers.
The following incident illustrates the very busy life of these pioneers:
When it came time for the geese to be picked, Mrs. Hackleman did not
want to neglect the children, so the geese were brought in, and the
picking went on with as little interference with spelling and writing as
possible.
The first school was situated in the west part of town, not far from the
cemetery, and was taught (1851) by Dr. Reuben Cohman Hill. Dr. Hill was
a practicing physician and a Baptist minister. In 1850, he crossed the
plains to California on the back of a mule and soon after came to
Albany, where he taught the first school before returning east for his
family. Soon after this, Andrew J. Babb conducted a subscription school
in one small room near the location of Takenah Park. During the Civil
War, feeling ran so high that the school was divided. One subscription
school, the Republican, stood where the Methodist Church was on Third
and Ellsworth streets; and the other, known as the Dixie School,
Democratic, was located on the southwest corner of Second and Montgomery
streets.
A daughter of Oregon pioneers, Miss Lottie E. Morgan has said: “In
Albany, Takenah Park has been officially marked as a part of the Pioneer
Oregon Trail, and it eventually became the site of Albany’s first
Central School. One who attended the first Central School, in 1866,
tells that it was a one-room building, some thirty by fifty feet in
size, standing in the block known as Takenah Park. Soon after this date,
two ells were added, forming a T-shaped building, where more teachers,
perhaps three, and more pupils were accommodated.”
Mrs. Zella M. Burkhart contributed the following, copied from a
manuscript by J. J. Davis, who came to Linn County with his parents in
1847, and attended the first school taught in Linn County in 1848: “Mr.
Anderson Cox, having several children, built a school house on his place
that summer and hired a teacher, Robert Huston, for a term of three
months. He was the first teacher in Linn County.”
By the 1880’s, Albany had three schools. The Central School at Takenah
Park has four rooms and four teachers and took care of pupils beginning
with the advanced section of the third grade. Dr. Oliver K. Beers was
one of the teachers at Madson, which was then a one-room building. There
were sixty pupils in five classes of the first, second, and lower level
of the third grades. The Maple School did the same grade of work. The
schools at this time were free, being supported by taxation. Albany
Collegiate Institute at this time had a preparatory department for those
in the upper grades. Because some people had not yet outgrown the idea
that free schools were for paupers only, there arose again two rival
groups among the young people, known as College “Bummers” and the
District “Scrubs.”
Linn County Courthouse
_Florette Nutting and Helen J. Horton_
[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
Linn County, Oregon, is a mountain and river-valley region, extending
from east to west from the summit of the Cascade Mountains to the
Willamette River. The Santiam River and the Calapooya River, tributaries
of the Willamette River, which have their sources in the Cascades,
traverse the valley at approximately the county’s northern and southern
boundaries.
In mounds south of Albany have been found human skeletons, and utensils
and weapons of possibly Indian manufacture, pointing to the custom of
burying with the dead, the weapons and implements used in life. This
indicates that Linn County was a happy hunting ground for a large tribe
of Indians known as the Calapooya tribe, which gave this name to the
river flowing into the Willamette River at Albany.
Earliest settlements were made in Linn County at Albany, Brownsville,
and Lebanon, in the Spring of 1846, by pioneers who had crossed the
plains the year before and had wintered near Oregon City. The first
cabin was erected in 1845 by William Packwood, where the old Indian
trail, between Scio and Lebanon, crossed Crabtree Creek. It was sold to
John Crabtree in the Summer of 1846. The Earl family were the first
permanent settlers. They built a cabin about two miles east of Knox
Butte in the Spring of 1846, and in the same year settlers located at
Brownsville and Lebanon.
Brownsville was the county seat then. The schoolhouse on the Spalding
donation land claim in South Brownsville was the first courthouse.
Organization of county government occurred December 11, 1849. Albany was
designated as the county seat of Linn County by legislature in January,
1851; and, in 1852, a courthouse was erected.
Linn county’s second courthouse, erected in 1852, was identical in plan
with the famed Octagon House. The Octagon courthouse cost nearly $5,000.
This wood-frame building, located on West Fourth Avenue, Albany, burned
to the ground September 1, 1861. The fire did not destroy the county
records in use at the time, as they were protected by a fireproof vault.
However, many records and historical documents from the early days of
Albany and Linn County were completely destroyed.
The Courthouse, pictured here, was completed between 1862 and 1865, at a
cost of $35,000. The architecture was similar to Southern Colonial. It
had a brick portico and four large Corinthian columns, two stories high.
In 1899, the third story and the clock tower were added to the original
building.
At the turn of the century, the town that didn’t possess a large town
clock, with chimes, was not a town worthy of mention. Accordingly, the
courthouse addition was designed around the clock tower. The clock
itself had four ten-foot faces and was kept in motion by 1,000-pound
weights. The bells, which rang Albany people to work in the morning and
sounded curfew at night, could be heard in Sodaville when the wind was
right. The clock was made by the Seth Thomas Company and kept nearly
perfect time throughout its lifetime.
Not only was this courthouse interesting from a material standpoint but
also for its outstanding usefulness to the whole community. In addition
to housing the courtroom and county offices, it often served as a town
hall, meetings of various kinds being held in the courtroom or in the
attic above the second floor. In these same rooms, many eminent
lecturers, evangelists, and other visiting speakers drew appreciative
audiences of town and country folks. Some of the county’s able lawyers
made their first speeches there. Directly to the north of the courthouse
lay a vacant block which, in those early days, was called the
“Courthouse Square.” Also, closely associated with the courthouse was
the square, two-storied brick jail which stood on the southeast corner
of the block. It was erected in 1871 at a cost of $9,550. When the
second courthouse was enlarged and remodeled, the addition of a third
story, two towers, a town clock, a statue of justice, and other
adornments changed the style and appearance of the building completely,
and the old courthouse became only a memory to those who had loved it.
[Illustration: STATE of OREGON]
Portland
West Union Baptist Church
Joe Meek Donation Land Claim
Old College Hall, Pacific University
George Gay House
George Fox College
Belleque House
Champoeg Farmland
Amity Church of Christ
Wheatland Ferry
Salem
Monmouth Normal School
Stump House
Fort Hoskins
Bishop Simpson Chapel
Albany
Octagonal House
Lynn County Court House
St. Charles Hotel
Montieth House
White Spire Presbyterian Church
Eugene
Villard Hall
Wilkins House
Christian House
Condon House
Walton House
Cartwright House (Lorane)
Applegate House (Yoncalla)
Transcriber’s Notes
—Silently corrected a few typos.
—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.
—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.