Oregon History Online 6

James Craigie (1813-1895), Presbyterian, humanitarian and fur trader, was born August 11, 1813, in Rousay, Orkney Islands, Scotland, and died at Ocean House, the home of his daughter, Mary Craigie Case, September 29, 1895, in Newport, Oregon.
Craigie came to America on board the Prince Albert in 1835. At the age of 22, he went to work for the Hudson's Bay Company.
Capt. Nathaniel J. Wyeth had built a trading post where the Portneuf River flows into the Snake River in 1834, which he named Fort Hall. The Rev. Jason Lee (1803-1845), a Methodist missionary, preached a sermon there to Wyeth's men and the fur traders, while Lee was on his way to establish his mission in the Willamette Valley.

When Wyeth sold Fort Hall to Dr. John McLoughlin, James Craigie was sent there.

John Minto (1822-1915) of Salem, who was a pioneer of 1844, spent the winter here in the Ocean House in Newport some years ago. He told Mary Case that the first time he met her father was at Fort Hall in the autumn of 1844. Craigie was in charge of Fort Hall at the time, and sold Minto some flour. Minto drove an ox team across the plains for R. Q. Morrison for his board, and later he married Martha Morrison, R. Q.'s daughter.
Craigie helped build a trading post at the mouth of Boise River known as Fort Boise. He stayed there until 1852, when he moved to Waldo Hills, where he lived for six years and where he renewed his acquaintance with John Minto.
In 1845, Craigie married Indian Princes Mary Ann, the daughter of Bannock Chief Toya Pampe Boo. The name means "Mountain Head Road," and the non-indians often called him "Bloody Chief."
In their book, The Women's West, feminist historians Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson wrote it is significant that

the rituals for marriage à la facon du pays [according to the custom of the country] conforms more to Indian custom than to European. There were two basic steps to forming such a union. The first step was to secure the consent of the woman's relatives; it also appears that the wishes of the woman herself were respected, as there is ample evidence that Indian women actively sought for trade spouses. Once consent was secured, a bride price had then to be decided; this varied considerably among the tribes but could amount to several hundred dollars worth of trade goods. After these transactions, the couple were usually conducted ceremoniously to the post where they were now recognized as husband and wife. In the Canadian West, marriage àla facon du pays became the norm for Indian-white unions, being reinforced by mutual interest, tradition, and peer group pressure. Although ultimately "the custom of the country" was to be strongly denounced by the missionaries, it is significant that in 1867, when the legitimacy of the union between chief factor William Connally and his Cree wife was tried before a Canadian court, it was found to have constituted a lawful marriage. The judge declared a valid marriage existed because the wife had been married according to the customs and usages of her own people and because the consent of both parties, the essential element of "civilized marriage," had been proved by 28 years of repute, public acknowledgement, and cohabitation as husband and wife.

James and Princess Mary Ann were the parents of nine children—seven girls and two boys. Jane Craigie (Ms. Thomas Ferr), Rachel Craigie (Ms. George King) and Mary Craigie (Ms. Samuel Case) still survive.
The Craigie family moved to Yaquina Bay in October 1866, after living six years on a donation land claim in Waldo Hills. A record has been found in Salem, Marion County, Oregon, of their regularized (i.e. Christian) marriage vows to substantiate their claim to donation land and was without doubt a pleasure to Craigie who was a staunch Presbyterian church member.
In their book, Writing The Range: Race Class, and Culture In the Women's West, Armitage and Jameson comment that in the 1921 Oregon Supreme Court miscegenation case

decided after the death of Fred Paquet (a white male), Ophelia Paquet (his Indian wife), lost control of her husband's estate to her late husband's brother John (a white male), who challenged her for its control. The language of Oregon's miscegenation law was broad: it declared null and void marriages between "any white person" and "any Negro, Chinese, or any person having more than one half Indian blood." Under the provisions of this law, the Oregon Supreme Court declared the Paquet's 30 year marriage invalid. To do so, the court dismissed Paquet's claim that the miscegenation statute denied Indians the same rights as whites. Echoing state courts all over the country, the Oregon court held that the statute did not discriminate against Indians because, as the judge said, "It applies alike to all persons, either white, Negroes, Chinese, Kanakas (Hawaiians), or Indians."
The elements of this decision—the primacy of the issue of property, the tug-of-war between women of color and their white opponents for control of white men's estates, and the willingness of courts to invalidate long-term marriages in proceedings not directly related to the marriages themselves—were quite standard in miscegenation case law. The only unusual note in this decision was that, having deprived Ophelia Paquet of her inheritance, the court went out of its way to express "sympathy" for her, suggesting to the victorious John Paquet that because Ophelia had been "a good and faithful wife" to his brother "for more than 30 years," he should consider offering her "a fair and reasonable settlement."

The trip to Toledo was by horseback over the old trail. The couple first lived on Olalla Slough. Then the family moved to the spot by the dedication marker which is also near Mary Ann Craigie's grave.
For a time, this home was a dinner stop for the rowboat mail service to Elk City.
Princess Mary Ann died when the children were small. Violet Updike said the older, married sisters took the younger girls into their homes, which included her late mother, Rachel Craigie King.
Craigie cultivated soil at Fort Boise with great difficulty because of weather conditions, but he produced all the foods possible for his family, and, according to Lincoln County historian Steve Wyatt, he might even have been the first to plant Monterey cypress in the Yaquina Bay region.
James Craigie took a doctor or nurse's place caring for their injuries, met wagon trains of Americans and guided them safely through the dangerous stretches, then furnished the fort's large canoe for ferry. P. V. Crawford's journal, Journal of a Trip Across the Plains: 1851, tells more about his train assistance.
Historian Wells says, "Craigie's fort was a real haven. Fort Boise was famous for hospitality." Also summarized as "animated by a sense of Christian duty."
Lincoln County is most honored to be the last resting place for this family, the James Craigies.

Del: Tell me about your grandparents, Mary and James Craigie.
Violet: Both my dad and granddad were naturalized citizens. Grandpa Craigie came here when he was about 21 from the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland to work for the Hudson's Bay Company. That was the habit of the Hudson's Bay Company to recruit young men from there because there wasn't very much to do there except fish, and they were rather poor.
So he came and he signed a contract of which I have a copy. It shows he was a bonded slave. He made all of those commitments and he had to stay with them for the duration which I think was 20 or 25 years. They paid his passage and of course gave him the work he was promised. He was stationed at Fort Hall II in Idaho. Afterwards he assumed more authority and ran the place for a while. He worked up. He raised crops and sheep besides his office work. When his term was up he left.
He had been at Fort Hall II during the 1840s when people were going to Oregon Country (1542-1847) and thought he’d like to go there, too.
In the meantime, he married my grandmother, Mary, an Indian princess of the Shoshone tribe, and that was long before reservations, so he married her right from her father's home. I don't know anything about that at all, but I imagine he married her by the Shoshone ritual. It could have been he was married by Roman Catholics because they were coming through there at the time. Very few of the Protestant ministers were coming through until the Methodists who came a little bit later. Later on, they had to remarry in order to take out donation land claims in Salem.
So Grandpa Craigie took his family directly to Salem. They had a friend there, John Minto. He and his wife and his oldest son had donation land claims in the south of Salem. It used to be wonderful fruit country. She got her 360 acres and he got his 360 acres. The son and his wife also got theirs. They all worked hard and proved up on their land.
But in the meantime he contracted asthma or something of that sort, and he thought it was the dampness there. His health began to fail, so he thought he should get back to high country. He went to Walla Walla, and that’s where my mother was born in 1859. My mother, Rachel Craigie (1859-1954), was second from the youngest. My aunt, Cecilia Craigie (1866-?) was born there just before we moved to Lincoln County. While the family was in Walla Walla, he put my aunt, Jane (1851-? Idaho Territory) and my uncle, James Jr. (1854-? OR) in school.
Grandpa Craigie never forgot his love of the Oregon Coast and wanted to go back. This time he came directly to the coast when it was open for settlement in 1866 to the Robinson place on Olalla Slough.
He had this friend in Salem, John Minto, who would come over to fish. He offered the use of his shack to Grandpa while he looked for a place to homestead.
He went down the bay here to what is now Craigie Point on the opposite side of the Yaquina River and settled there.
Old George Luther Boone—I suspect you've read about him—was right across the river from him, and my grandparents befriended this family.
Grandma died of tuberculosis soon after they arrived, but Grandpa raised the younger children and taught them to cook and knit and keep house. And then when they got to the point where they had to go to school, he taught them French.
Connie: Tell me a little bit about your dad.
Violet: My father's name was George King (1844-1916). He was born in Yorkshire, England, and he was the third or fourth son down. You know what the caste system was like in England, I suppose, and the prospects were rather poor for a young man to make a living.
So, at the age of 21, he emigrated to America and settled in Michigan. I don't recall what drew him to Michigan, unless it was through friends. He acquired land for a peach orchard and became a
logger.
In those days logging was done by cold decking the logs in the winter, and when the spring freshets came, they floated the logs downriver to the mills.
Dad was a big man: six feet two inches tall and very sturdy. At the age of 21 he was doing the dangerous job of riding logs downriver.
He contracted rheumatism and was almost crippled in his hips after that. He decided he needed a change of climate and to leave the bitter cold of the Great Lakes region for the Sandwich Islands.
Well, he landed in Portland during the late 1860s, following the Civil War. In those days he wore quite a bit of money in a belt around his middle.
There was one building on the east side of Portland, and it was called Doctor Hawthorne's Insane Asylum. And of course the real estate guys got hold of him and wanted him to invest his hard-earned money in Portland interests like that and others. They told him Portland was going to be a major, world class port. Dad laughed at them and said it would not be a world port because it was 100 miles from the sea!
Although his destination was the Sandwich Islands, he was stuck in Portland because he couldn't get passage at the time. The vessels didn't run very regularly, and it would be a several month wait.
In the meantime, he heard about some government work going on in Newport. They were building a lighthouse and preparing to make jetties in Yaquina Bay in 1871. He immediately got a job superintending the masonry work on the foundation of the lighthouse. Later on, he was a steam engineer and superintended the building of the south jetty.
During the course of that government work he married my mother, had two children, and his younger brother arrived here from England.
Del: How did your family end up at Oyster City?
Violet: The oyster business was flourishing up the bay, and Oyster City was being platted, and his brother wanted him to move there and go into the oyster business with him.
So that's where Dad moved and that's where I was born, May 24, 1893. My sister, Mary Gladys Burgess, was also born there.
Connie: Do you carry the famous Craigie name?
Violet: No, but my older sister, Elizabeth Craigie King, and several of our cousins do. It's a beautiful name, one that I’m proud of. "Nellie" is also a family name and the one I inherited.
Connie: What was Oyster City like when you lived there?
Violet: Oyster City was a little community on the far side of the Yaquina River, and was established in 1865 by independent oystermen. It consisted of 13 plots of oyster grounds and is located directly across the river from Oysterville. It had about 20 families and included a daily newspaper, a school, but no post office. Later, a post office was built on the north side of the bay at the railroad tracks. People wanted to call it Oysterville, but there’s an Oysterville, Washington, that also shipped oysters. The government didn't think it was wise to have a second Oysterville, so they called our post office Winant. It was so complicated: We had the name Winant for the post office, Oysterville for the city itself—even though technically it wasn't legal—and Oyster City on the south side of the Bay!
Del: That's not much different than the situation we're in: We live on the Elk City-Harlan Road, the nearest community is Elk City, the post office is at Eddyville, and the telephone exchange is Chitwood!

Connie: Wow! Life get's complicated! When did Oyster City get telephone?
Violet: Every little community eventually had its own little company phone. We got ours in 1912. We could call Newport but we couldn't call Toledo. The trees would fall over on the wires and the company wouldn't come and fix them. That's the kind of service we had.
Connie: Did you gravitate towards Toledo or Newport as your center of operation?
Violet: My family gravitated to Newport. But with the courthouse in Toledo, dad would get on the train when he had court business. But our pleasure place was Newport. My aunt owned the Ocean House in Newport where we stayed. We did most of our shopping at Yaquina City, and went to Toledo for business matters.
Connie: Did residents have other sources of income in addition to oyster farming?
Violet: The community's money crops were salmon and oysters. There was little logging done there except on Wright Creek and Beaver Creek.
The road from Oyster City goes all the way through to Poole Slough. A lot of the boys worked in Toledo and Newport and a lot of the girls attended Toledo High School.
Del: Did you go to school with my dad in Newport?
Violet: Yes, I did as a matter of fact. All my early life I went to little one room schools, and that's where I got the idea I wanted to be a teacher. I used to help my teachers out so much with the little fellows coming up through the grades. I'd read to them and have them read to me.
My married sister moved to Newport and she had two small children at the time, and they thought it was a good idea for me to move to Newport and attend a graded school. I think it was a four room school with two grades in each room. So I moved in with my sister when I was in the sixth grade.
By the way, it was the first time I got a ready made coat. I remember that so well; it was a gray. My mother always made our things; she'd turn old things over and make them out.
Connie: Was the store bought coat as nice as the things your mother made for you?
Violet: Well, I thought so! Anyway, I moved in with my sister and her family and Dell Hodges was living there, too. He was in the sixth grade and probably went through the same one room school routine that I had at Bear Creek. He moved to Newport and got a job at the Abbey House washing dishes for his board. You didn’t know that, Delbert?

Del: I just vaguely recall him saying he went to school in Newport. I never knew he washed dishes for his board.
Violet: Did you ever notice anything in particular about his gait? I think you’ve got a little bit of it.
Del: Kind of a little fast walk?
Violet: Yes! We called him Quick Step! And he was good in school.
Del: How old would he have been?
Violet: Well, I was a little bit old for sixth grade by today’s standards, about 13 or 14, and he was probably the same age. We didn't advance the way kids do now because we only attended three months of school out of the year.
Connie: How did you know when you were in the next grade? Was there a next book up or something?
Violet: Yes. Our readers were Reader One, Reader Two, and so on.
I have a theory I'd like to share with you. Today's school children don't handle the same amount of books we handled. Their work is transposed onto sheets of paper and work books. We used our books and we loved our books. We had to pay for them, just as parochial school students do today. So we valued and cherished them. They weren't furnished in those days like they are in modern public schools.
Connie: Did you write in your books?
Violet: No. We went to the board. And that's a good deal. There's a certain pride and incentive when you see yourself doing better than your neighbor at the board. There's a little healthy competition going on there too, which is good. The teacher can see at a glance what a student is doing and what her problem is. I don’t think we use the board like that now. For the most part, it’s the teacher at the board while the students passively look on.
Speaking of competition, I don't think my mother ever suffered from discrimination because she was a "half-blood." At least she never said so. But I had the feeling all the time. When I was in school I felt I had to excel to beat a certain white girl and I did. Of course, that made her angry anyway, whether I was a "quarter-blood" or not.
But getting back to this book idea. The next year the children would say, "I'll begin second grade with a new book." We had arithmetic and reading books. I think our language and health books were pretty general, pretty loose. Geography was pretty interesting. We had two geography books: a little one and a big broad one with maps. Lots of things could go one behind those books, and they did.
Anyway, children today lack incentive and they aren't learning their tables like I learned mine.
Connie: It appears as though children today aren't learning much of anything.
Del: They can't read or write when they get out of high school. How can they attend college?
Violet: This is my contention and you can apply it to any area of endeavor that you like. To become an expert at anything you have to drill—whether you like it or not.
Connie: It takes a lot of effort to learn how to do anything well.
Violet: The child has to be motivated, and if she isn't motivated she gets disinterested. I know something that will "motivate" students pretty well—right on the behind. If they get "motivated" often, they will sit up and take notice. I was a disciplinarian and I'm not ashamed of it.
Drill, drill, drill! And then I had a dad who had us recite our tables when we got home from school.
Del: When I was going to Bear Creek I was among the first ones paddled before the school district discontinued it. I also remember when Laura Mack was teaching, she had everyone at the chalk board. The older kids helped the younger kids. So there was a totally different feeling in the classroom. Today, if you spank a kid you can go to jail for it.

Slowly and patiently, with infinite care, the oyster builds upon the grain of sand—layer upon layer of a plastic milky substance that covers each sharp corner and coats every cutting edge ...and gradually ...slowly ...by and by a pearl is made ...a thing of wondrous beauty wrapped around trouble.

Connie: Tell me some more about the family oyster business.
Violet: My dad and my uncle were raising mostly native Yaquina Bay oysters. Their outlets were primarily Portland and San Francisco, and they were shipped in gunny sacks. At times, they sent oysters half way across the continent before there were refrigerator cars. The oyster in the shell would stay fresh for ten days. Once opened, outside, in cool conditions, they don’t need to be iced. But once they're opened, they don’t last very long.
My dad was the first person in Oyster City to be interested in importing the eastern oyster from Chesapeake Bay. He didn't finance the venture himself. A man in Portland financed it, and my dad donated ground for an oyster bed. They brought them in and planted them. They usually brought in a two-year-old oyster and figured it would grow and be on the market in another two years.
Del: Were oysters a staple of the coastal Indian diet?
Violet: Actually, there's an opinion that the Indians didn't eat oysters, but I disagree.
Connie: Then what are the kitchen middens?
Violet: That's the point! As I said, oysters don't preserve well, like some of the other shell fish do. Clam and mussel can be smoked, dried and used later. So can salmon and meats. But oyster is very delicate: it's very watery and small, and it takes extra rigs to dig them up out of the water. The oyster may not have been that attractive to Indians as a source of food.
The question arose why the oyster wouldn't propagate better in Yaquina Bay. So the University of Oregon Biology Department came over and undertook all sorts of projects in an attempt to determine if and how they could propagate. They still don't propagate to the extent that it's profitable.

Since then, the idea grew of importing foreign oysters, the "Jap" oyster in particular. The native oyster suffered even more from this because the Jap oyster is large—shelled. The oystermen were so greedy to plant this area with Jap oysters, they dumped them in the Bay on top of our native oyster because the native oyster wasn't plentiful enough to be profitable.
As I said, the native oyster is very delicate! It has to breathe and has to be cultivated and managed just about like a vegetable garden!
Connie: How do the oystermen take care of their crop?
Violet: Well, you stir them up. The oystermen in those days had long tongs with hooks on the inside. They would stick that down into the water and bring the oysters up into their floats and cull them on board. They would take out all the debris, but couldn't keep the debris on the floats very long because it had baby oysters in it that couldn't take the heat.
Del: Were the floats steam operated?
Violet: No, they were hand powered.
Connie: Do oysters do better in warm or cold water? Is there a rule of thumb about this?
Violet: I haven't heard that was the problem. But if they're in an area like Lincoln County that has excessive rainfall and too much fresh water runs into the bay, that was bad for the oyster.
Also, silt, mud, and industry, like the big mills, have been blamed for the oyster's failure to thrive. Environmentalists said it was the sawdust and the bark, because when that gets wet, it falls to the bottom of the bay, and covers and smothers the oyster.
Another factor added to the decline: the old-fashioned oystermen and the young people particularly found other things to do that were more profitable.
There's a young Indian man, Joe Lewis, and his wife, who are raising oysters on the bay, has his own bed, and is operating according to "old scripture." ("I think he's making a nice living. Wouldn't it be! What is it now? $15 a gallon?")
Connie: More than anything we can afford. Definitely a delicacy.
Violet: I think a little pint jar is $10 to $12 these days.)
Connie: Was there an oyster packing plant or cannery at Oyster City?
Violet: No, but there was a salmon cannery at Oysterville. My father's markets were all high class restaurants and they were transported daily on trains going to Portland in 12 hours and to San Francisco in one and a half days.
Connie: How does the oyster breathe?
Violet: Well, I don't know anything about their love life, honey! I think that's all done within the shell. What do you call that? You've really started something, Connie!
Connie: I didn't say "breed" I said "breathe!" You said earlier the oyster had to breathe or it would smother!
Violet: Oh, I thought you said breed!
Connie: No, that was going to be my next question!
Violet: Well, I don't know. They open their little mouths to take in air, and that's the way they eat, too.
Connie: But you don't know anything about their love life?
Violet: I know they weren't loving very much when they wouldn't propagate!
Connie: When did they quit loving and the industry die out?
Violet: I think the industry reached its peak in the early 1920s.
Connie: What are your memories of Yaquina City ?
Violet: My memories were of a flourishing little place. We'd go across the river by boat and walk down the railroad tracks to town. We had friends there. We had heavy shopping to do, since there were some really nice dry goods stores. They didn't have a bank there nor in Oyster City.
But It had one hotel and six saloons! During the time of "local option," people had to vote about being "wet" or "dry." They passed a law that the city could only have so many saloons per capita.
Anyway, someone wanted to build another saloon in Yaquina City, so he built a walk out to a float that rose and fell with the tide, and that was his saloon! They had to walk out to the saloon when the tide was right. People came over on the train with empty suitcases from Corvallis and Philomath which were "dry" towns. They would get their liquor and take it back on the train in their suitcases.
As I recall, Philomath just passes a liquor ordinance a few years ago. They had the "high" religions that just wouldn't let it in.
Connie: What was the religious life of the community like during your childhood?
Violet: In those days we didn't have organized churches. Circuit riders came and preached to us. This was kind of wonderful! When They'd come in, regardless of their faith—Presbyterian, Methodist or Episcopalian—they would hold service in some hall or big home and everybody went. Of course, the Catholics didn't do much to speak of. And if it was summertime we'd hold a picnic and everybody would go, men, women and children, Catholics, Protestants or what have you.
Then they'd preach the sermon and everybody would sing hymns and wait until the next minister. Families had to wait to have their babies baptized until the next minister came. And marriages—if lovers could wait that long!—were put off until the next preacher came along too.
Connie: How often did the ministers come through?
Violet: Oh, every three or four months, depending on the weather. Not much in the wintertime. They'd stay on a week and go around to different little communities and visit.
The Episcopal church in Toledo, which was built in 1883, was one of the very early churches here, and so was the Catholic church. The Methodist church came in a little bit later. There were church services at the Siletz Reservation too, you know, but they were just like ours—mostly Protestant.
Del: What are your earliest recollections of the Bateman family's funeral business?
Violet: We had many morticians before Leo Bateman. One of our very earliest ones was a woman, Clarinda Copeland, who owned a general store in Siletz. She afterwards moved to Newport.
Bob Bateman bought the funeral home from Frank Parker, and there were several owners before him.
In the olden days there was no embalming. Everything was done by neighbors. My dad was efficient on that. He prepared bodies.
Connie: How did he prepare them?
Violet: Bathing and dressing mostly. I can remember what happened to my own dad. I don't think he went through the hands of a mortician. That was in 1860. They had poultices they put on their faces to cover up discoloration and things like that. They didn't draw the blood but there was a certain amount of fumigation that went on. Neighbors would build a casket for the grieving family and sit up with the body, which was retained at home, until the time of the funeral.
It was a long time that Frank got over the fact that he couldn't assist at the grave side—dig the hole, fill in the dirt.
Connie: Was that a cathartic type of thing to do?
Violet: It was the last thing you could do for your neighbor.
That’s what disturbs me about cremation. I'm not opposed to it at all, but it's so incomplete. I think it's sensible and the time is coming when more of it will have to be done. Burial is just more natural. Dust to dust. Go through the process all life goes through.
Del: Do you remember anything about there being a Ku Klux Klan in Toledo?
Violet: Vaguely. I must not have paid much attention to it at the time. There were crosses burned, I think.
Of course, You've got the "Jap" story, but you're not going to do anything about it, are you?
Del: I’d love to hear a complete version of it. I've heard they were trucked out, shipped out in box cars, and what have you. What do you recall about it?
Violet: My version is very opinionated. First off, they were American citizens [sic]. C. D. Johnson when out and hired them and brought them in to work on the green chain. If you know what the green chain is, you know it was a man killer.
The Jap was a very small man. He brought his family along. There were no other Japs around here to build community. I don’t think it would have ever worked out. The importation of Jap laborers definitely would have increased. I think that under the circumstances, that, as an ethnic group, they would have become very unhappy and just move on. And, because of their small stature, they wouldn't be very efficient on the green chain.
Connie: Was it like California's farm program—the Mexicans nationals were going to work in the fields for a season and then they were going back to Mexico?
Violet: I don't know what the motive was. I just don't know if they were using them at the other mills, or if they were successful, or if it was a trial, or what.
Connie: You'd think with something like that, there would have been a plan or a program to successfully integrate them into the community.
Violet: Well, there probably was. They may have had ideas the "Japs" would branch off into other jobs, too.
In those days, Ethnics were not very popular in Lincoln County. I don't think we were racists. We had Chinese laborers who came in here and worked on the railroad. They were always ignored. Nobody made an issue of their being here. They worked in our salmon canneries in Waldport and Oysterville. But they lived off to themselves. They were here during the pack season and then they were gone.
But my remembrance of the Jap incident was a sad, sad thing. I'd never seen anything like that before, and of course they took a suit on it.
The people who shouldn't have had to have paid—and took the brunt—was a married couple, Rosemary and George Schenck, and they were quite old at the time.
It was a riot plain and simple. Those kids that entered that riot didn't have a nickel in their pocket, but you couldn’t do anything with them in court.
Del: Was the actual physical moving them out done by a younger group?
Violet: Practically.
Del: Did the mob put them in box cars?
Violet: I think they used cars.
Del: But it was more or less headed by some influential people who were racial bigots?
Violet: The couple that went in with this group were very strong politicians. But I don't know what their politics were. They may have had feelings about ethnics coming in and taking jobs away from whites. I don't know why "mature people" like that would behave that way. I don't think they promoted the riot per se; I'd like to think they didn't. But they’re the ones who got "abused" for it.
Connie: Was there a problem getting pallid people to work on the green chain?
Violet: Oh, yes!
Connie: Well, then the mill might have been acting out of self-defense.
Violet: That's what I thought. My contention was that the mill had a right to take care of its own business. I didn't see why anybody else had to butt in.
We were boycotted. Frank and I were in the wholesale business at the time. We were handling grain, hay, coal and building materials, and we had a big old building in Toledo where this building sits.
We were also handling chicken feed. There was a certain man who had a very profitable plant on the Olalla where he was making lots of money on eggs and chickens, and he was one of our best customers. He got more results from our food than any he had. He was one of the fellows who boycotted us. We had a lot of them that boycotted us, because they knew where we stood on it. But, you know, in about two weeks this guy was back! His chickens cut down on their production and back he came.
Everything smoothed over but it was a disgraceful thing; it really was.
Del: It must have been brewing quite a while to get every one so involved in it.
Violet: Well, it doesn't take very long. We've got race riots today right in our midst and we'd probably find that there's more of that than we think there is. All it takes is a drop of a hat. It's like throwing a match in a hay stack. One little thing will ignite it.
Connie: What happened to some of your siblings later in life? Were any of them oystermen?
Violet: My oldest sister, who is 13 years older than I, married Don Shirmer quite early in life. She had four children, three of which lived to maturity.
My brother, like a lot of young fellows, left home when he was about 16 and got a job on the ferry to Newport. He worked on that passenger service ferry for quite a while. Then he joined the coast guard and he made that his career. I think he was in the coast guard for 30 years. He was living in Santa Rosa when he retired.
There’s an interesting story surrounding his career. He continued to advance in the coast guard and was shipped to California and had several stations there. Finally he ended up at Fort Point at the Presidio of San Francisco. He had gone as high as he could as a noncommissioned officer. He stayed there until his term ended in March 1941.
When he was separated from the service, he wasn't entirely released from duty. The coast guard kept him on reserve. The second world war was brewing and they had ideas. So, the next day after Pearl Harbor (August 14, 1941) the coast guard called him into active duty again. They did compensate him, however. He was promoted to the commissioned rank of lieutenant and had an office right next to the admiral—the big guy—at the Port of San Francisco. He was the assistant there for the rest of the war. Five years in all.
He paid for it. Those extra years of service were quite a drain on him, and he had a heart attack when he got out. Up until then he'd always been a very healthy man, so the family always attributed it to his wartime service.
The responsibility was tremendous. Night after night he rarely slept. He had to make important decisions by himself if the captain or major happened to be away. And there was so much sabotage going on that every boat that entered or left the harbor had to be scrutinized to the "unth" degree.
After he was released he went back to Santa Rosa and lived there until his death in 1974. He was 88 years old.
My youngest sister, Mary Gladys, married Dr. Burgess, and moved to Toledo.
And, as you know, I married Frank Updike. You know him, don't you Delbert?
Del: I remember my dad talking about him from time to time.
Violet: Well, his dad, who was from Colorado, had a little place across from the Bear Creek School.
Frank was quite a guy. I guess he'd visited every state in the Midwest. So, his dad wanted him to come out West to live. He fell in love with the country, and he thought Frank would like it too.
Well, Frank was working at the sugar beet processing plant in Colorado, but he did come out and visit his dad. Then he went back. I don't know exactly what year. I met him in 1912. He got the place on Bear Creek after his dad moved away.
Del: Where was it from Mary and Walter Parks' place?
Violet: Do you know where the Bear Creek Falls are?
Del: Let me think...
Violet: It had a great big barn on it. The Updike place isn't very far from there.
Del: Maybe pretty close to where Dick and Judy Parks are living now...
Violet: Maybe. I don't know for sure. They call that end of it the Updike Road. Frank was there until WWI. His mother was living with him. He made arrangement to send her back to Arkansas where her daughter was living.
Then he sold his place and got property in Portland, and eventually we sold that. We married just before he went into the service. Think of it. He was one of those fellows who wasn't going to get married!
I was teaching school by then and there was sickness in the family, and I had all the obligation I thought I could handle.
Connie: What changed your mind?
Violet: I don't know. Love at first sight? Mama thought it was foolish.
Del: So you met him while you were teaching at Bear Creek?
Violet: Yes. He was chairman of the school board, if you please! Twenty years old!
Del: That's hard to believe.
Violet: Remember the young couple in the area that had the big family—Anton Jung and his wife? They were German immigrants. My students were Jungs.
Del: Tell me about your teaching career. Which schools did you teach at besides Bear Creek?
Violet: I taught ten years in one room schools. My first term was at Bear Creek School in 1912. I was just out of high school, so I went back to college in Salem. I did my practice teaching there. That was the time when you could teach with a two year certificate.
Connie: Normal School?
Violet: Yes. Normal School. And I was really lucky to get my practice teaching in Salem. I was offered a contract there, but at the time my family was sick. I had a sister who had become an invalid. My dad was old and still had his rheumatism. I finished at the Normal School in 1915, and he died the following year.
I came back to Lincoln County and taught in one room schools. I had to be near the folks. Wherever I taught I tried to spend weekends with them. I taught at Moody and Storrs, which is the Evelyn (1906-1994) Glen Parry place. There was a school there in 1918. Frank came home from the war in 1919.
Anyway, I was still in the Toledo area and that's what mattered. By then mother had left Oyster City and moved to Toledo. Frank was in the service, and I lived with my mother.
Then we bought a little ranch down at Rocky Point. We had about 60 acres down there, and he logged off the timber and supplied the fuel for the old electric light plant in Toledo. He had a crew of 12 men working for him, cutting timber with a drag saw, and I taught school at Moody and Oysterville and walked the railroad tracks back and forth to work, and he got out the wood. He used to transport about 20 cords of wood to Toledo in big barges about three times a week. That's how great the demand was.

He kept this up for several years. He was involved in other enterprises too. Finally, his health began to fail, so he wanted to get into something less physically taxing. That's how he got into selling life insurance.
Although he sold other types of insurance, Frank started with life insurance, and I think it was his first love. He felt as though he were really serving people when he's go to their homes. His companies were marvelous in helping him. People were pretty independent in those days—not very much insurance minded at all. The pat answer was, "I can save my own money and take care of my family's future." But how many really can? Not very many. It's pretty hard. I think people are a little more insurance minded today than they were then, even though I don't think there's the service there used to be.
Franks’s mother died in 1954 and Frank died in 1956. We had already acquired this building in 1926, which is called the Updike Building. After I quit teaching I went into the insurance business and continued until about five or six years after his death.
Del: What were thing like when you were principal of Burgess School in Toledo?
Violet: I already had a reputation for being a strict disciplinarian when I accepted the job as principal of Burgess Grade School. I loved my superintendent, I loved my own teaching and I had wonderful teachers.
But I found the tendency growing from year to year of teachers not wanting to assume their own disciplinary measures. One teacher in particular would way, "I'll sent you to the principal's office," and that was not a good image to hold up to a child—that she had done something bad enough that she had to be sent to somebody higher up to be corrected. I firmly believe the time to make the correction is while its fresh and the incident is clear and the child knows exactly what's what. By the time they got to me, I didn't know the particulars. I used to ask teachers, "Couldn't you have taken care of this," but so many of them didn't want to do it themselves.
Connie: What was the issue? Was it timidity?
Violet: No, it was political. They were thinking about their jobs. This way, I had to take the brunt from higher ups.
Do you remember the Kosydars, Delbert? They had a big family in Siletz. They were a very frank and outspoken family. They called a spade a spade. Well, Carrie Kosydar was my fifth grade teacher. On Fridays we always tried to relax a little bit. I let my pupils chew gum in class. Of course, it wasn't nearly as much fun to chew gum in class with permission as it was without.
Carrie would have her students tell riddles during that same Friday afternoon relaxation period. Fifth graders are beginning to get wise pretty quick. She came into my room during our relaxation session and she said, "A boy just told an "off-colored" riddle in my room." Her face was flaming and she continued, "I know darned well his dad put him up to it." I said, "I bet his dad did it too." Of course, the kid didn't know what the riddle meant. So I told Carrie, "You just go back and change the subject; do something else for a while."
Del: I started school in Toledo in the seventh grade. Wayne was in the fifth grade. I graduated In 1958. And that was at a time people believed that if you were born and raised in Big Elk Valley you'd never amount to a damn. I remember hearing those painful undertones.
Violet: Burgess kind of had that reputation too. You see, the professional people in Toledo all lived around here—doctors, lawyers and what have you. Their kids all went to Stanton School. Burgess was isolated. When they started bussing kids from the country they picked up all those little schools like Bear Creek that were up the Siletz Road and down the Newport Road. We had at one time an enrollment of 360 students. We had to take part of our basement and put in an extra first grade. Our classes were big. It wasn't anything unusual to have a class of 35 all through the grades. But in the first grade we did split them; we didn't overload the 1st grade. As principal, I always taught 7th and eighth grade.
So the Stanton kids kin of looked down on those Burgess kids because most of them were from the country, and they considered themselves the elite. But our superintendent had to make some changes, so he moved some of the Stanton kids to Burgess.
Connie: Were the kids from the snob school feeling bent out of shape?
Violet: Oh, yes! The girls cried and the boys threw their weight around. The boys were a little bit harder to handle, but I finally got some of them in and said, "Just look at that playground out there. You don't have anything like that over at Stanton School." And I said, "Get with it! Why don't you start a couple of baseball teams?" After all, we had plenty of kids. We could start two baseball teams. After that they changed their attitude. They got out there and they played everything you could think of on that wonderful playground. We didn’t have any equipment to speak of. Not for the little folks either. In fact, had the little folks portioned off. The playground was big enough that we could put the little girls in one place and the boys could have the big area. That was the beautiful thing about it; that had all this space to play during recess.
But the situation with the busses was bad. We didn't have the busses we have now that pick up the small ones first then pick up the big ones on the second run. We had to wait until the big kids were dismissed after school. And in the morning, the poor little 1st graders would have to get up so early to catch that bus.
Del: That's where I was at! I had the longest bus ride in the county!
Connie: We'll be dealing with that next year with Heather when she enters first grade.
Del: The way transportation is now we'll run her in in the morning so we don't have to get up so early and let her come home on the bus in the evening. But when Wayne and I were milking cattle, hell, we'd get up at 4am. In the morning, go out and find those cows, get them milked, and catch the bus by 6:45am.
Violet: We used to have teachers taking turns watching those little children who arrived so early in the morning.
We had a soup kitchen. In fact, we had the first soup kitchen in Lincoln County because we needed it. There again, the circumstances were wonderful because we supported our own soup kitchen; we were never in the red. People, when they butchered, would provide part of their meat for the program.
Connie: Was this lunch?
Violet: Yes. This was hot lunch. We always had one hot dish and some kind of fruit. Sometimes merchants would be overstocked on oranges or something else and would bring it out by the crate to the school and donate it.
If there was a road kill or a deer killed in season, people would dress it out and hang it in the cooler and we'd have that.
Connie: If that was an innovative idea at the time, what did most schools do for lunch?
Violet: It wasn't necessary at Stanton because they all lived near enough they could either go home for lunch or carry their own cold lunch. But coming distances like the country children were made it seem advisable to have a hot dish. And the little folks had to have a glass of milk.
Connie: Considering it was the Great Depression (1929-1939), it sounds like they had things better over at the "poor" school than they did at the "rich" school.
Violet: They did! And I'm not opinionated!
Del: How far back were they establishing the hot lunch program?
Violet: I started teaching at Burgess in 1927 and they had it immediately.
Del: Right now in the news there's the big ballyhoo about the government's hot lunch program. They're making a big spectacle of the original idea now.
Connie: Some schools are serving breakfast now, and cooks resent the extra burden.
Violet: You know, Dr. Callendar wasn't in favor of those fancy lunches at Burgess. It was almost a three course meal. Do you ever read the menu for the week in the Lincoln County Leader?
Connie: I do, and it's quite elaborate.
Violet: Dr. Callendar said it's a detriment to their study.
Connie: You mean the food going to their stomachs would make them too tired?
Violet: Yes. What we did at Burgess—I'm proud to tell it on every occasion was this: We were more or less isolated, as I said before; we were a brand new school; we were right in the middle of the Depression; and we just made due with lot of things. We had entertainment at the school; we had a beautiful PTA with 200 members. We had 75 to 80 coming to every meeting. Now there is no PTA.
Connie: My mother was president of the PTA on several occasions while I was attending grade school in Grants Pass. It was certainly big when I was in grade school. Parents supplied elaborate classroom parties for the various holidays, we put on school programs, had picnics at our teachers’ homes, and there was a much, much greater sense of community than there is now. You could go home for lunch, bring a cold lunch, or have a hot lunch prepared by school cooks.
I’m curious, Violet. During the Depression was the hot lunch at Burgess the only meal the kids were being fed? I ask this because my mother, who lived on a farm and attended a one room school, spoke of children walking long distances to school with gunny sacks wrapped around their feet for shoes and potato peelings in a bag for lunch. Do you remember any real "hard luck" stories?
Violet: Yes, many. We sent letters to the service clubs down town asking if they'd buy meal tickets for indigent children. And almost every service club in town would agree to buy at least three months worth of tickets.
Connie: Then the kids were paying a little something for their lunch every day?
Violet: Yes, we had to hire a cook, and she had to be paid. It was very, very reasonable. The older girls who couldn't pay helped clean up the kitchen. We had about three shifts of children eating, and we had to clean and change the tables. Having students help now is taboo now because of health regulations.
Connie: I'm 32 and I'm already starting to feel the generation gap because when I was attending Notre Dame High School for Girls in Salinas, California I worked in the kitchen and got free burritos and what have you. I know that was parochial school and there were slightly different standards, but probably not that much.
Violet: I just don't know what things are coming to!
Connie: They're going to h-e-l-l!
Violet: I guess so. I don't know if we had any reports of food poisoning.
Salmonella is the big thing now. "Salmonella bugs are goanna come and git ya!"
Violet: The food was hot, the milk was sealed, the fruit was fresh. If they wanted sandwiches, they brought their own. Considering better than 50 percent of our people were bussed in from outlying areas, we strongly felt they needed a hot meal.
Connie: Did you apply for the position of principal at Burgess or did the school district seek you out?
I’ll tell you how I came to teach in Toledo. I got a letter from the city superintendent who was, of course, working under the county superintendent. The letter was direct and to the point. It said, "We would like very much to have you come to Toledo as we need a teacher who is a strong disciplinarian. We just kicked out one who wasn't." It wasn't just those words, but that was the gist of it. That's a funny way to invite a teacher to come and take over.
Connie: Then you already had a reputation for being a strong disciplinarian?
Violet: I guess I did. But I didn't have to use it much out in the sticks. Kids were better behaved in the sticks than they were in town. They had more responsibility on the farm, more things to do, and were accustomed to hard work and settling down.
Connie: I think Del would probably tell you he thinks that's still true.
Violet: I think two thirds of our youth problems are because they don't have anything to do.
Connie: I believe it's a form of apathy. Our youth have no hope for the future, no direction, to meaning to their lives. They are alienated from their communities, their homes and themselves.
Violet: Yes. You can't curb a child and tell her she can't do this and she can't do that, and then turn around and offer her nothing constructive to do.
On a farm, children have responsibilities according to age and ability. I don't imagine you were "killed," Delbert, because you had to go get the cows, even though you thought you were!
Del: Yes, sometimes. However, I think my brother Wayne was the one who always though that he was "killed," whereas I usually took everything in stride.
Violet: You've come a long way—from farm boy to MFA. When did you make up your mind you were going to go to college and do something, Delbert?
Del: Well, I never had that much orientation towards higher education. However, I do recall my dad telling me that if he'd had the education he'd have wanted to become a teacher. But it was not until my senior year in high school when I was in Mr. Kaiser's class that I understood there were possibilities beyond working at the mill. He wrote in a survey, "There are three tracks of vocational training. What do you want to do?" Because I was always woods oriented, I put down "I want to be a game warden." So in the course of following through on that I wrote to OSC in Corvallis and decided to study Fish & Game Management. Oregon State University has one of the best schools in the nation for that. That really got me into possibility thinking. At that time, only rich people went to college.
About that time I got a couple of little scholarships. One was through the Oregon State Grange, and the other one was from the Sears-Roebuck Foundation. They weren't enough to stick in your eye, but they were enough to get me motivated.

Delbert Hodges, son of Claudine and Dell Hodges of Elk City, has been named winner of one of the top awards in agriculture at Oregon State College.
Hodges has been picked to receive a $250 scholarship offered annually by the Sears-Roebuck Foundation to an outstanding student in agriculture. Selection is based on high scholastic [achievement] and promise of future achievement.
Hodges is a freshman this year.

A $200 college scholarship was awarded to a Lincoln County student recently by the Oregon State Grange in Portland. Winner was Delbert L. Hodges of Elk City.
Each year the State Grange gives six such awards to college students, whose names are drawn at random, during the annual convention each June. This year additional money made it possible to draw the seventh name. Hodges' name was drawn. The awards are reserved for Grange member students who have previously had at least one term of college.

So the last semester of my senior year I took college prep English, but by that time it was too late to learn much.
Of course, the folks were behind me on anything I wanted to do. They never discouraged me in the things I had chosen to do. I was always a very self-reliant individual, and I always did what I felt I needed to do. And I was always fairly active socially, so I wasn't too timid or bashful to try college, even though it would be a brand new experience for me.
So I went to Corvallis during the summer and lined up a job working at the dairy barns.
That autumn, I moved to Corvallis just totally blind and knowing absolutely nothing. Zero. I had no preparation whatsoever, and just blundered my way through.
Then I found out Fish & Game Management was really not my bag. At least, I wasn't "academically orientated" enough. It was a highly technical curriculum, and I wasn't prepared for it. It almost would have been premed, and now I wish I had the aptitude for medicine. We had Ichthyology—all the "ologies"—and every thing to do with plants. The first couple of years all you learned to do was identify everything by its Latin name.
I was taking some art courses and it soon became apparent that that was where my aptitude was. Those were the classes I was getting good grades in—not all that "ology" stuff. So finally, after a couple of years, I wanted to build up my GPA because I haven't developed the savvy to figure out the system of being in college where it's so political.
One experiment I heard of was about an English teacher who wrote a paper and then secretly turned it in to another English teacher who gave the first teacher a "D."
So while I was in the Art Department instructors came along and talked me into going to the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles.

Delbert Hodges, local art student, will leave Saturday for the Los Angeles Art Center School of Design where he will attend college for the next year or more. Hodges has been employed for the past several months with Georgia-Pacific Corporation. He has finished three years at Oregon State University. He will l spend one week with relatives in the bay region en route South.

Not giving it any more thought than that I said I would try it, so I laid out a year, worked and saved up the money, and went down there. After running out of money in Los Angeles, I came back here and worked another year and went back to Los Angeles again.
I had a mental block towards learning foreign languages. I had always heard that in order to earn a degree in art from the University of Oregon you had to have two years of a foreign language because it was humanities. I didn't have brains enough to know I could get a BS instead of a BA in art.
Connie: You didn't have brains enough to look it up in the catalog?
Del: I just recently started getting smart.
Connie: The man's he's describing, Violet, is not the man I know!
Del: But you can see where my environment had such a strong influence on me. I have always finished what I started. I remember way back when telling myself: "If you don't get out of school by the time you are 30 you’re going to have to flick it all in and go to work."
To make a long story short, I finally got my MFA degree on my 30th birthday, June 14, 1970.
Violet: That's unreal! I watched your progress; I knew what you were doing over the years. And I always asked your mother about you.
Del: My dad was a little skeptical about my going into art. He couldn't relate to that until I sold my first painting and brought home a few bucks from it, and then it was okay. He could relate to that.
Violet: Yes, that was quite a switch from the old thinking.
Del: Still, there are an awful lot of people right around here who cannot relate to art as a profession. They have no idea how I'm staying alive; making a living.
There are those who can understand working at the pulpmill or farming or messing with their cows and horses or whatever, but every time I see some of those folks they want to know if I'm really making it.
Connie: Our lifestyle is a mystery to most people.
Del: You mentioned earlier that you didn't think your mother suffered from racial discrimination but that you yourself felt a twinge of it from time to time.
Violet: All of this in your childhood comes from the father and mother. It doesn't come from the child herself. Racism, stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination is injected into the children through the parents.
One of mother's sister's, Jane, married an Italian, Thomas Ferr, so of course my cousins were more dark complexioned than I am.
Connie: I'm Italian and I'm certainly darker than you are.
Violet: They lied and said they were Spanish.
Del: They preferred Spanish to Italian?
Violet: To Indian! But I never lied! They told Frank, "Did you know Violet is a "quarter-blood?" "Well," he told them, "I've been going to her house for over a year, so I guess I would know."
Del: Well, my mom said when she was getting ready to marry my dad that people came up to her to tell her all the family scuttlebutt. She said, ":He's 46 years old, so he's bound to have done something in that length of time!"
Violet: I've done a lot of reading about cultural assimilation versus separatism.
Connie: This is true today, because there are those who want to retain their ethnic ways and there are those so anxious to jump into the melding pot they completely abandon their old ways. My grandparents were that way. They spoke Italian in front of the children when they didn't want to be understood, but they didn't teach them to speak it, so my dad and his siblings can't speak.
Violet: Do you think it's going to get back to middle ground?
Connie: With everyone's interest in their roots it will be interesting to see what happens.
Violet: I think communication and education have a lot to do with it. People read and see a lot about this issue and they make up their minds. One thing I know is people can be very unkind to one another.
Connie: Looking at the broader scope of things, I don't think we can have every ethnic group in America living separately on communes or reservations. There has to be some cohesiveness in order for us to even claim to be a nation.
Violet: I was the one who was interested in my father's past and he didn't want to talk about it. He told me, "You're more of an Englishman than I am Violet," because he was trying to forget some things, I guess. He left all his family in England. He went back after he'd been here about 40 years with the intentions of staying six months. He came back home in six weeks.
Connie: He had become an American.
Violet: Yes, He was one hundred percent American.

Yaquina City, now a ghost town, was situated on the southeastern shore of Yaquina Bay, about four miles from its mouth, and was the terminus of the Willamette Valley & Coast Railroad, where the company had a large dock and two warehouses, and a great amount of material, giving employment to many workmen. At Yaquina City wheat, and much other produce, would be shipped to the San Francisco market, en route to the wide world. The history of town is the history of railroading and tourism in Lincoln County and the development of the greater Newport area. Yaquina City, now only a memory of its boom town days of the late 19th and early 20th Century was in its heyday the largest population center in Lincoln County with almost 2,000 citizens. It was also a thriving tourist center. Although first platted just a brief seven years earlier, in 1889 Yaquina City boasted of:

Good school and church privileges, a fine hotel, a sawmill, three salmon canneries, the only banking house in the county outside of Corvallis, a shipyard, custom house, telephone office, large warehouses and docks with equipment for handling freight, railway depot and yard with the company's machine shops and a number of other business establishments.

Other business establishments included Jacob's & Neugass' General Store as well as a drug store and a meat market. The grade school at one time reached an enrollment of 35 students, and a teacher daily crossed the bay to teach at the rapidly growing school. The Custom House, erected in 1881, was presided over by custom's collector Collins Van Cleve and was situated about a quarter of a mile to the north of the dock of Yaquina City. The interests of the place being ably kept before the public by the Yaquina Post, a newspaper originally established in Newport by Van Cleve in April 1882, and was moved to Yaquina City a month later. The paper consisted of eight pages, each with five columns, and its force was directed chiefly to "the benefit of the bay country."
Van Cleve was born in Morgan County, Illinois, August 26, 1833. His father, Dr. John Van Cleve, was a Methodist minister. At the age of 14, Van Cleve apprenticed for the printer's trade until the Civil War. Following the war, he worked for the Oregonian and Portland Times. In 1868, Van Cleve founded the Albany Register, which he edited until 1882.
Directly across the Bay from Yaquina City was the town of South Yaquina, but this area apparently was never developed to the extent of its sister city to the north. Fagan is quoted as saying: South Yaquina is "a town that as yet has only its name to boast of."
Yaquina post office, located about three miles miles southeast of Newport, was established July 14, 1868, with William Wallace Carr first postmaster. The post office was discontinued October 25, 1869, and reestablished July 24, 1882. The office was discontinued again May 10, 1883, and reestablished once more on December 30, 1885. The office became a rural station of Newport on July 31, 1961.
Yaquina Bay and Yaquina River, which heads near the Benton-Lincoln county line, and flows into the bay, bear the name of the Yaquina, a small tribe of the Yakonan family, formerly living about Yaquina Bay. Hale gives the the name as Yakon and Yakone, in Ethnology and Philology, 1846, p. 218; Lewis and Clark give Youikeones and Youone; Wilkes' Western America, 1849, gives Yacone. Another form of the word is Acona.
Yaquina John Point is on the south side of the entrance to Alsea Bay just southwest of Waldport. It was named for Yaquina John, a chief or councillor of the Yaquina, who lived in the vicinity of Alsea Bay. Yahal was a Yaquina Village on the north side of the Yaquina. In 1912, there were a few survivors, for the greater part are of mixed blood, on the Siletz Reservation.
Located at Toledo, the world's largest spruce sawmill was built by the US government in 1918 to cut spruce lumber for airplane manufacture. The mill was later sold to C. D. Johnson Lumber Company (now Georgia-Pacific Corporation). The 1,500 soldiers of the Spruce Division who were stationed here were headquartered at Yaquina City.

Oneatta is a ghost town on the northeast bank of the Yaquina, a mile and a half upstream from Yaquina City, and about a mile west of Winant.
There are few names indelibly connected with the history of Yaquina Bay than Capt James J. Winant (1838-1895), who was born in upstate New York, April 12, 1838. In the fall of 1856 he followed his brother Mark to California where they began dealing in oysters in San Francisco Bay; they were the real pioneers of the oyster trade on the Pacific Coast. Winant was master of vessels on the Pacific Coast for nearly a third of a century. He had command of the schooner Anna G. Doyle, running between Shoalwater Bay and Oysterville, Washington, and San Francisco in the 1860s. In 1862 or 1863, they began the oyster trade on Yaquina Bay. In June, 1882, Winant married Amy A. Peck in Alameda County, CA. They had one child, Anita. Winant was located at Oysterville Station on the Corvallis & Eastern Railway, about two miles due south of Yaquina City, on the north bank of the Yaquina. The post office was established November 17, 1902, with Emma Leabo first postmaster. The office closed to Yaquina City November 30, 1946.
The first schooner was built by Peck & Company, and named the Oneatta, by Kellogg Brothers, but the first steamer to ply on the Bay was the Pioneer, in charge of George Kellogg, MD. The first sermon was preached by elder Gilmore Callison of Lane County, his audience being seated on the driftwood opposite the present site of Newport.
On the completion of the Central Railroad, they brought from the East several car loads of eastern oysters, planting one car load in San Francisco Bay and the other in Yaquina Bay, and reaped a harvest from both beds. He traded pearls in the South Pacific and hunted walrus and whales along the shore of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and the coast of Siberia. A salvage voyage to the coast of Mexico, where he explored the sunken steamship City of San Francisco and recovered $22,000 of her treasure, was the climax of his legendary career.
A little hamlet of about 60 people, Oneatta was located on land owned by Judge Allen Parker, who was born in Ross County, Ohio, in 1828. His family crossed the plains in 1852, first settling in Linn County. In 1872, Parker was elected sheriff of Linn County and mayor of Albany in 1876. He moved to Benton County in 1878, and purchased considerable property in Oneatta, on Yaquina Bay, where he owned a large sawmill. In 1880 and again in 1882, Parker was elected to the house of representatives.
The town was first settled and named by Siletz Indian agent Ben Simpson in 1871, and consisted of a furniture store, two saloons, a book and shoe store and the post office, which was established May 17, 1876, with John. E. Peterson first postmaster. The Oneatta Sawmill, owned and operated by Parker, was originally built in Simpson. It was driven by steam and had a capacity of 20,000 board feet per day, and gave employment to 14 men—most of the time—the timber cut being chiefly fir.
In 1893, the Lincoln County Leader wrote:

Owen C. Simpson is making his parents in Elk City a visit during lay off of Parker Mill at Oneatta on lower bay near Yaquina City.

The post office was discontinued July 13, 1877, and reestablished January 24, 1879. The office closed to Toledo on September 29, 1886.
Charles Schmidt, one of the 60 inhabitants of Oneatta, was born in Seidelinghousen, Westphalia, Prussia, in 1843. He emigrated to America in 1867, and spent his first year in Galena, Illinois. From there he moved to Sioux City, Iowa. Smith relocated San Francisco in 1872, where he owned a popular resort called Saint Ann's Rest, located on Eddy Street. In 1880, he settled in Oregon. After a short stay in Portland, he settled at Oneatta on Yaquina Bay.
Moses Gregson, another Oneatta settler, was born in Lancashire, England, March 4, 1836. At an early age, he learned the trade of carpenter and joiner, which he mastered. At the age of 20, he emigrated to America, first settling in Lockport, New York, where he resided until 1863 when he moved to Michigan. In the spring of 1877, Gregson moved to Benton County, Oregon, and first took up a claim near Mary's Peak. In 1880, he purchased 35 acres of land near the Custom House at Yaquina City and opened a carpenter's shop is at Oneatta. The Custom House is situated about a quarter of a mile north of the dock at Yaquina City, and was erected in 1881. The port collector was Collins Van Cleve.
In 1873, the trip from Corvallis took from early morning till dusk at night by stage (drawn by four horses, changed at noon for a fresh double team) which bumped and climbed over the 49 miles to Elk City where the mail boat waited for the 25 mile trip down the river and bay to Newport; leaving the next morning on the first of the ebb tide. Twelve miles down, the boat stopped at Toledo, then at Oneatta, and finally at Newport, at a rickety wharf in front of Bay View Hotel (latter renamed the Abbey). At the other end of town was Ocean House, which is the Coast Guard station now. In between were four saloons, a store, over which was a hall used for dances, political meetings, and—more rarely—church services whenever a minister of the Gospel happened along. Near the sand path up the hill to the beach of land occupied by the Ocean House, took a building quite imposing when compared to the rest of the town. The community was named for an Indian princess of legendary beauty and virtue, described by Alfred B. Meacham, in Wigwam and Warpath. A possible candidate for Princess Oneatta is Oneatta Reynolds Jones (1885-1912) who is buried at Toledo Cemetery. She was the wife of Everett Jones and the grandmother of Julia A. Parker. Col. Meacham was a member of the Modoc Peace Commission. In 1863, he established the Blue Mountain in the Eastern Oregon town that bears his name, just outside the borders of the Umatilla Reservation. In 1873, he was wounded when he and fellow peace commissioners, Canby and Thomas, were advancing under a flag of truce in an effort to reach peaceful settlement to the bloody and costly Modoc War. His life was saved by the intervention of the peace loving Winema, at the risk of her own. Married at an early age to a non-indian, Winema mastered the English language and became an interpreter and intermediary in negotiations between her people and their conquerors. For her devotion to th cause of peace, Congress later voted her a life pension. The Klamath Falls chapter of the DAR has erected over her grave in Schonchin Cemetery a tablet bearing the inscription, "Winema—The Strong Heart."

The railroad from Corvallis made this bustling population center possible—and 500 Chinese laborers working for minimal wages made the railroad possible. Construction of the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad, which had its eastern terminus in Corvallis, but with eventual plans to extend it east of the Cascades, was begun in 1877. It was built by a corporation called the Willamette Valley & Coast Railroad—later changed to the Oregon Pacific Railroad—and was directed by Colonel T. Egenton Hogg and his brother, William Hoag. While the two brothers had convinced the population of the feasibility of eventually extending the railroad to Newport, they apparently had no intention of ever extending the track beyond Yaquina City. By platting and subdividing the city for themselves, it appears that they probably expected or hoped to make a fortune on real estate sales.
After considerable difficulties involving mismanagement of funds, striking workmen and natural disasters such as land slides, as well as tunnel cave-ins, the railroad was finally completed in 1884. Not until 1885, however, did a train complete the trip over the whole line.

Financial problems continued to plague the venture in 1892. In 1894, A. B. Hammond purchased the railroad as the highest bidder of $100,000. He renamed it the Oregon Central & Eastern Railroad. However, in 1897, when he gave up the idea of extending the railroad east of the Cascades, he once again renamed it as it was originally known—the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad.
John Henry Penn was the first mail clerk on the train and was assisted by Charles L. Litchfield (1867-1950) whose son, George Kenneth (1906-2000), is a prominent Newport attorney today (1976).
Among the early residents of Yaquina City were the parents and grandparents of Lucy Blue, who has written much of the history of this area.
With the advent of the railroad, tourism in Lincoln County became an established fact which has lasted as an important industry to the present time. On July 4, 1895, the Oregon Pacific announced its first grand excursion from Corvallis to the coast. On many weekends for years thereafter the steamer meeting the train at Yaquina City could not carry all the tourists down the Bay to Newport where it docked directly across the street from the old Abbey Hotel. Small launches, and even rowboats, would take up the overflow of tourists heading for Newport. Also, the steamer meeting passengers at the end of the railroad in Yaquina City eventually made connections in Newport with a coastal steamer to San Francisco.
The revolution in the transportation industry with the coming of the automobile brought about the decline of Yaquina City. In the 1950s, the post office, located for many years in "Yaquina Pete" Rasmussen's general store, was finally phased out; and later the store itself was closed. This weathered old building still stands.
Yaquina City was situated behind where Sawyer's Landing is located, and near Fairline Marine, where 500 ton vessels are lifted out of the bay for maintenance and repairs.

The Chitwood area was a primeval wilderness in the 1860s when Meeky M. (1846-? IA) and Mathias L. Trapp (1838-? MO) settled on a land claim a short distance below where the town was located. Life was lonely for Meeky Trapp until the Barney Morrisons settled nearby. In the years to come, more hardy pioneers came to cut the trees and till the soil. Some already had families and more children were born after they settled. The need for a schoolhouse soon became evident. A house with one large room half a mile west of Chitwood was used for that purpose. It had a fireplace at one end, which served as the only source of heat. Because nobody had time to cut firewood the approximate length to fit the fireplace, the teacher, Thomas J. Brannan, poked the ends of large branches into the blaze and moved them farther in as they burned, much like a Yule log. There were no desks or work tables. The students sat on benches and did their schoolwork on slates propped in their laps.
Hardships caused some of the settlers to move out of the area; and the student population dropped. Trapp offered the use of a room in his home and hired a teacher who lived in.
In 1887 a schoolhouse was built. It was located near Chitwood, and was built by volunteer labor. The building became a community center where box socials, committee meetings, formal group get-togethers, Christmas parties and weddings were held. Evangelists held revival meetings in the schoolhouse. A collection of books donated by residents became the nucleus of a growing library shortly after the turn of the century. Grace Davis served as librarian.
During the early years, Seventh Day Adventists wanted a church which could double as a school. Lumber was scarce, and the dream had to be postponed. Then the old church at Storrs was dismantled and the material was hauled to Chitwood by a sturdy pair of oxen owned by Flora May Akey (1864-1948) and Lafe F. Pepin (1850-1917)—Lep and Lion—which were best for hauling on the deeply rutted, muddy roads. That is, until the railroad came, bringing Paer A. Miller (1854-1915 Sweden) with it.

He had been Paer Anderson in Sweden, but for the sake of simplification in America, he became Paer A. Miller for the rest of his life.
He lived at Chitwood while the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad was being built, but was soon transferred to Mill City, a lumber camp near Albany in the Willamette Valley and helped build some of the bridges crossing Santiam River. He became dissatisfied with this job because it kept him away from home where his wife was expecting their first child. He applied for a job of track maintenance on the Chitwood line. His request was granted six months after his daughter was born. P. A. Miller and his family moved to a train stop called Morrison Station, located below Chitwood. It was close enough for Lillie Miller to go to school.
Miller did well on his job and improved his small home. When his family expanded with the birth of two sons, he built a larger house.
The wagon road was a mud hole in winter, and a dust bowl in summer. When the first automobiles began to filter in, one car would raise so much dust that another couldn't follow behind it. But the mud in the winter didn’t stop the section foreman. He had access to a handcar, which was a tiny, four-wheeled platform that ran on rails, powered by a handle bar worked up and down like a see-saw. For one man, the see-sawing was backbreaking; for two men, it was a breeze.

It was P. A. Miller's job to take care of any emergencies. When called upon for illness or birth, he would jump on the handcar and pump madly to Elk City where the doctor, Franklin M. Carter, lived. Then he and the doctor would see-saw back to the crisis center. Most of these calls came at night, so there was little danger on the rails from trains. When Elk City no longer could support a doctor, Miller had to pump the handcar all the way to Toledo.
When Lillie Miller started school in Chitwood, she and other children walked the railroad ties to avoid the muddy road.
Coming home from school one day, the children came upon a pile of glowing embers where the section crew had been burning old ties. The children put more wood on the dying fire and fanned it to a blaze. As Lillie stooped low over the flames, her dress caught on fire. She ran back to school in a panic. It was fortunate the teacher was still there. She tore off the little girl's clothing and rolled her in a coat. Lillie's recovery from the severe burns was slow.

Around that time, a San Francisco prospector discovered a fine vein of sandstone at Pioneer Quarry near Elk City. The material was deemed most suitable for construction of the mint and post office in the bay area city. The Corvallis & Eastern Railroad ran a spur line into the quarry. The sandstone was cut and loaded by hand on flat cars and hauled to Yaquina City. From there, it was transshipped on vessels to San Francisco. The sandstone industry caused quite an influx of workers for a time.

In 1905 a movement was started for a telephone line to serve Chitwood, as the telegraph was felt to be inadequate. It was P. A. Miller's responsibility to see that the long stretch of track was kept in good repair. In order to do his job well, Miller needed better communications with those who lived along the route. So on December 14, 1905, the Rural Telephone Company was organized. The list of members included P. A. Miller, Lafe F. Pepin, Charles S. (1857-1941), Dudley Trapp, and Willmore N. Cook (1864-1946). The office and switchboard was set up in the W. E. Durkee house. Grace Davis took over the switchboard as operator. At first the line went only to Morrison Station. Soon it expanded and connected to the outside world for long distance calls.
For years, the Chitwood post office was in the store was owned by Hattie A. (1838-1890) W. E. Durkee (1838-1928 WI), a crippled Civil War veteran. George T. Smith (1864-1942) was postmaster and general store manager. Later the post office was transferred to a little building. The post office is no longer there, but the pigeon-hole racks still hang on the walls where they held letters.

More than any other factor, the coming of the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad changed things for Chitwood, which was named after Joshua B. Chitwood, who lived near the site where the railroad was built between 1881 and 1885.
In 1879, Chitwood, a widower, bought 160 acres and his son Albert filed on a nearby homestead. Chitwood became the first postmaster, railroad station agent, and started the first grocery store facing the tracks. He sold this store to Laura A. Parker (1855-1900 IL) and Marion T. Whitney (1846-1927 IN) whose daughter, Maude (1879-1954), married George T. Smith. The store was bought by the Smiths and moved to the end of the bridge. It is now closed to business but is trying to tell stories.
Chitwood's daughter, Alisa married David Turnicliff (1812-1885) who lived in or near Chitwood. Turnicliff, a Civil War veteran from Illinois, died and was buried in the Elk City Cemetery. By 1885, Albert's wife, Nancy, had died. Their children, Frank and Bertha V., were taken to Alisa Turnicliff who was running a boardinghouse in Chitwood.
In 1892, Albert married Onie Allphin, the sister of Emma A. McBride (1862-1952). They moved to a homestead on Simpson Creek, now the home of Mabel Parker and Ernest Cook. They had the misfortune of a fire that destroyed the entire household and Albert was burned. In a letter, Onie tells of the help she received from the Cook family, Hattie and Ed Durkee, her aunt, Margaret Lewis (1838-1910 Wales), Emma McBride, Sarah Barnes (1846-1913), P. A. Miller and the Whitneys. Pioneers cared for the unfortunate though it may have been a sacrifice to their needs.
When travel was confined to the wagon road, the stagecoaches sometimes got through and sometimes they didn’t, all depending, of course, on the weather.
When the stages did get through, they were useful. A man with a freshly killed deer carcass who lacked flour could wrap up a hind quarter in a sack, take the stage to Corvallis, make a trade in the store for flour, and return home by stage.
In his October 11, 1977 letter to the author, Ernest E. Chitwood of Sylmar, California, wrote:

I spent my childhood in this area. I was born on his fathers homestead near the hamlet of Chitwood in 1894. Franklin M. Carter, the Siletz Reservation doctor, was "master-of-ceremonies" at my birth, and also facilitated my sister's birth. My father was the first Chitwood to locate on Yaquina River. My grandfather, Joshua B. Chitwood—for whom the settlement was named—followed him there shortly afterwards. When the Southern Pacific Railroad began operations, he was the first general store owner, railroad station agent, and postmaster. My paternal uncle and aunt also moved to Chitwood, and later my grandfather's brother, James Chitwood, and his son, Delman J. Chitwood, who was both a carpenter and a teacher, made their homes there. He and his family lived there until 1905, at which time they moved to Eddyville, where they lived until 1909.

Ira O. Chitwood of Corbin, Kentucky has prepared records on all four Chitwood brothers who came to the US. He plans to publish one huge or four smaller books on the four branches of the family. The Lincoln County branch, according to Ira Chitwood, descends from Joshua Chitwood's brother James T. (1825-1902 IN).

When the railroad from Corvallis to Yaquina City was completed, Chitwood became an important stop. The little depot was close by the general store and the post office. Train time was always the highlight of the townspeople’s day. Outgoing mail sacks were thrown on board, and the incoming ones were taken off.
Since George Smith was a butcher as well as a grocer, there was always a smelly bale of cowhides ready for shipping. Sacks of dried and crushed cascara bark and cords of wood were stacked beside the tracks for train crews to load as fuel for the boiler. Cutters got 90 cents a cord. And trains brought large shipments of good for the store.
Most of the items were available at George Smith's general store. If he didn’t have a particular item, he would send for it, and it would come in on the train from Corvallis.

Like so many early settlers, bee keeping was an important part of the economy of Chitwood. George Smith owned an apiary and sold a complete line of supplies—hives, supers and Queen bees—to his neighbors, all of whom had orchards like the Eddys, Grants, Hodges and Millers.
He sold meat, but allowed customers to use his facilities for their own slaughtering.

Smith's son, Morris, grew up and went to school at Chitwood. When he was old enough to work, he did odd jobs. At the age of 24, he got a steady job at another, later stone quarry, where the stone was regularly blasted out of a solid vein.
One day, Morris Smith went to the cook shack for lunch which had been delayed for the scheduled noon blast. This time a shower of badly placed rocks overhead came hurtling down through the mess hall roof. His leg was pinned to the floor, and was crushed from the ankle to above the knee, which was left rigid, and the ankle almost as after a year of hospitalization.
When Morris Smith left the hospital, he found the Great Depression (1929-1939) in full swing. He was happy to accept his father's offer to take him into the store business, while his leg gradually improved. He cultivated berries and orchard fruit near the store. The produce was sold locally or—with honey—sold to the coast resort at Newport.

Like Morris Smith, the tragedy that struck Lillie Miller took a long time to heal.
She attended Toledo High School, 13 miles away, when she graduated from the Chitwood Grade School. After the fist lonely year, she took courses at home. Later on, she taught in several of the small area schools. She saved her money and took a summer course at Oregon Agricultural Collage at Corvallis. Later, she taught school at West Linn across the Willamette from Oregon City, and graduated from the University of Oregon at Eugene. A few years later she married Charles A. Nutt and moved to Portland.

When the old wagon road was rerouted and paved, the improvement was welcomed in Chitwood. Cars used the new, shorter route to the Pacific Coast, and soon nobody was riding the train. With increasingly large tonnage of freight shipped by truck, the railroad reduced service to a minimum and completely discontinued passenger service. The depot at Chitwood was torn down. Many people moved away. Now the larger stores and markets were readily reached by automobile, and the general store owners were forced to close their doors. The general stores at Blodgett, Burnt Woods and Elk City are still open, offering gasoline and alcoholic beverages for the tourists who pass by—in automobiles.
Although a few faithful residents remain, Chitwood is virtually a ghost town.

Lillie and Dudley Trapp, descendent of pioneer settlers, were married December 16, 1889, in a farmhouse by a Methodist minister named Smith.
Lillie's parents crossed the plains in 1846. She was born February 25, 1867 at Mount View near Corvallis.
The pioneers of 1847 who eventually staked claims currently encompassed, wholly or partially, by the Corvallis city limits included Dudley's grandfather, John Trapp, J. P. Freidly and David Butterfield. John Trapp settled his claim in 1847. Dudley was born January 17, 1864, on his grandfather's donation land claim.
Dudley Trapp grew up on a ranch In Lincoln County near Chitwood. The stream running through their place, called Trapp Creek, was named for his family. It is located in the Coast Range a little over one mile west of Chitwood.

In 1881, Dudley left home and worked farms and other jobs.
In the summer of 1884, he drove stagecoach over the main route between Corvallis and Pioneer, near Elk City. He drove a spring wagon—a two-horse rig—which tipped over easily.
There were plenty of Indians along the route, and they were friendly and peaceable.

On his fourth trip, he had five men and an Indian woman as passengers. The coach hit a bump and the passengers and mail bags were thrown in one heap on the road. By the time Dudley got straightened out on the ground, the Indian woman was sitting right smack dab on Charley Hogue. They loaded up mr Hogue, the Oregon Pacific's paymaster, who swapped seats and got a gentleman for a partner.
Charley Hogue was not related to the promoters of the railroad company, but it reminds one that two of them were Colonel T. Egenton Hogg and his brother, William Hoag, who changed his name to Hoag to avoid embarrassment. The colonel wouldn’t consider such an alteration, stating emphatically that "I was born a Hogg and will die a Hogg!"

After three years driving the stagecoach, Trapp went to Philomath College. Although their families knew one another, Lillie and Dudley never met until they attended college together.
Dudley was employed as a logger during the summers. He worked for the Oregon Pacific Railroad for five years, following three years of work in Roseburg for the Southern Pacific Bridges & Buildings Department. He homesteaded 35 years at Chitwood where he ran a Roan Durham dairy. In 1931 he went to Orlando, Washington, and worked a fruit orchard with his brother for six years.
The couple moved to Portland in 1937. They both loved gardening: Dudley raised vegetables, and Lillie raised flowers.
The Trapps were avid followers of world events. They remembered Grover Cleveland (1885-1889; 1893-1897) and Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) as good presidents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945), who they considered an average, run-of-the-mill president, did not impress them.
The couple's children, Della and Walter, were employed as eighth grade teacher and locomotive engineer respectively, until their retirement.

The homestead of early pioneers Meekey and Mathias Trapp is located where the Macombers live now, and their son Dudley lived across the Yaquina. Later on, there was a barn where the stagecoach stopped and brought passengers and mail. I remember the barn. It was later torn down and a big dairy barn was built in its place.
Trapp knew the value of having a teacher for his children, Dudley (1864-? OR), Effie (1868-? OR), and Chauncy, but no school district had been organized. There was no schoolhouse in Chitwood, so he hired a teacher from town who lived right there at the house to teach them. Eventually the neighbors decided they'd like to have their children take advantage of this opportunity too. They made an agreement with Trapp that, for a small fee to help out with board and room and wages for the teacher, their children could be educated too.

Near Chitwood where Harringtons raise garlic now, there was a one-room house with a fireplace that wasn't occupied at the time. In the meantime, more families moved to the area with grade school children, and the little house was converted into a community schoolhouse.
In the wintertime when they needed fire for heat, nearby farmers cut wood for the school. Fallen fir trees, vine maple, alder and wild cherry was loaded up in wagons and taken to the school. In the morning they'd start the fire. Then they'd drag a long log in and stick an end in the fireplace. When that was burned off and they needed more heat, they'd push the log in further.
There used to be a planing mill near the railroad. There's still an old metal coal-type burner there. That's where the first schoolhouse sat. My mother, whose name was Maude Whitney, was in the first eighth grade that graduated from Chitwood.
When she came there in 1892, she was nine years old. My mother, one or two of her sisters, and some of the Pepin boys all went to school together.
This is interesting. I've got an autograph book made in Germany that belonged to my mother. The first entry reads:

My dear daughter, if anyone speaks evil of you let your life be so that no one will believe him. Your dad, Marion T. Whitney, Chitwood, Oregon, February 23, 1896

Dear schoolmate, may your life be full of sunshine or just enough alloy to teach you to appreciate the blessings you enjoy. Your friend, Iva Rogers

This one was written by Elijah Gaither, the grandfather of Terrance Gaither who operates the Ford Motor Company in Newport. He was a Lincoln County judge for a long time:

This one was written by Maggie Hampton, one of the very first primary schoolteachers in Lincoln County. She passed away within the past two or three years:

If you meet with one pursuing ways the wrong have entered in working out its own undoing with sin, think to this sinful disposition would a kind word be in vein? Will you look with cold suspicion, will you back the truth again? Maggie L. Hampton, Rocca, Oregon, July 17, 1899

Rocca isn't even written up in the book, Western Ghost Town Shadows, because it didn't last very long as a post office, and there isn't very much information about it. If you're coming from Siletz it's located east towards Logsden on Rock Creek just before Valsetz in Polk County.

What I do know is that when the office was first proposed it was planned to have Sam Center act as postmaster, but as he was moving from the neighborhood, other arrange, Mary Rocca Center. This girl had been named for a friend of her mother who had married an Italian. The office was established April 30, 1895. It closed to Nortons on August 31, 1918. It was one of the many offices to serve an isolated group of homes with mail three times a week. Gertrude Chamberlain Phillips said her grandfather, Richard James Robinson, carried the mail from Nortons to Rocca on horseback during the winter and by buggy during the summer. Maggie Hampton was the postmaster for several years.

Pictured is one of the last remaining buildings in Rocca, Polk County, Oregon, in 1950, if not the last. Rocca was in the extreme SW corner of Polk County, and the post office was established there in 1895. It was named after the daughter of the man who was expected to be the first postmaster. The office was closed in 1918. The entire time of its existence it was in the home of a Maggie Hampton on Rock Creek. The photo is of a wooden building with a decidedly sagging roof. It is two story with probably four rooms and a roofed front porch. Windows are all missing and you can see clear through the missing front door and out the opposite side window. It appears to be only 8-10 inches off the ground and simply set on beams. There is a separate shed or other wooden structure in back. The building is in a small clearing with tall fir trees beside

Maggie Hampton and her sister lived there in their parents' old home. She hauled the lumber for the house from Nortons.
I remember an orchard on the Hampton with all varieties of apples, filberts and hickory nuts. There was a chicken yard up on the hill. I went deer hunting up there one time with a friend of mine.
This is a good one:

We shall part but not forever. There'll be a glorious bond. We shall meet to part no never on the resurrection morn. From the darkest peaks of ocean, from the mountain and the plain, from the hillside and the valley, countless storms shall rise again. Yours truly, Lulu Harrington, 1898

When the golden sun is setting and your mind from care is free, when of others you are thinking, will you sometimes think of me? Your Schoolmate, Elsie Logsden, April 22, 1893

I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was beauty. Your sister, Neva J. Whitney

My sister, Neva, taught one or two years. She went to school at Monmouth and got a job teaching grade school in Tillamook. The first year there she got sick and passed away. She's buried along with my parents, Maude and George Smith, my grandparents, and my brother at Chitwood Cemetery.
M. L. Trapp had two sons. One was Chauncy. In later years, he was the conductor on the freight train. He operated a steam locomotive and every day I'd see him go by. The oldest son was Dudley. When he was 14 or 15 years old, he rode a saddle horse and delivered the mail from Corvallis to various stations in the area. The line didn't come by way of Burnt Woods so it didn't pass through Summit, Nashville and Nortons. Chitwood wasn't a mail station then. We got our mail at Eddyville, Elk City, or perhaps Toledo. Later on, Dudley delivered the mail by stagecoach.
The old stagecoach crossed the river at the Raymond Kinion place and from there to Trapp Creek. It followed a southeasterly course up over the hill past the old Larsen place, and from there on to Elk City. Before it came down the ridge by Elk City Cemetery which located on a hill above the home now owned by Evelyn Schriver. It turned up another ridge at the Seymour Scoville place, three miles up the Yaquina from Elk City. Down at the river bottom were two hotels at a place called Pioneer and that was the end of the stagecoach line.
Pioneer is also the head of tidewater. Finally, Elk City replaced it as the end of the stagecoach line because many times people would have to wait there. Boats couldn't pick them up because of low tide. At Elk City you could get out with boat service just about any time, because the Yaquina is deeper there.