Fifty Years in Oregon was written by Theodore T.
Geer, a grandson of Joseph Carey Geer and a shirttail ancestor of
ours.
I have put much of the book on
this website. I started because several
chapters describe the early roots of our family history in Oregon. I
kept going because
I found many of the chapters from this perspective on the early
settlers and the history of Oregon to be quite
interesting.
The campaign of 1876 will take its place
in the history of the United States as the most exciting, in the nature of
its final settlement, the country has known, to date, at least. Only by the
narrowest margin was an actual revolution averted, which good fortune was
due to the horse sense of the American people, to their real capacity for
self-government. Many questions arose for settlement which had never been
presented before, for which there was no precedent, and indeed for which
there was little excuse. Through a chance circumstance the personnel of the
Electoral Commission was Republican in its character, and all its findings
were for that reason favorable to that party. If the Commission had been
democratic in its majority, its decisions would have made Tilden President
of the United States, for they voted as solidly as did the Republicans –
partisanship ruling every move made by every member. When possible, most men
see things as they wish them to look, not as they really are – unless we
take the other end of the question and say that the aspect of most objects
is determined largely by the coloring our own vision furnishes. The world is
bright to one man and dark to another on the same day – though the world
really presented but one picture on that day!
Very few Republicans are today especially
proud of the way Hayes was seated; yet there seemed to be no other action
possible in that fearful crisis and they only did what the Democrats would
doubtless have done had conditions been reversed. And it is said, anyway,
that all’s well that ends well.
Locally, in Union County, in 1876, the
Republicans nominated John W. Norval and myself for Representatives in the
Legislature and W. J. Snodgrass, of La Grande, for State Senator. We made
such campaign as we could in the face of adverse conditions, but of course
came out of the contest snowed under by the normal Democratic majority in
that county, at that time about three hundred. Norval continued an active
force in Union County politics until 1888, when he was successful in his
campaign for a seat in the State Senate, serving through the sessions of
1889 and 1891. I was a member of the House from Marion County in both these
sessions, the latter year serving as Speaker. So, “after many years,” my old
comrade and I met in the legislative halls and exchanged many enjoyable
reminiscences of the early struggles in Union County. The time arrived when
Norval had some assistance in his local battles and his reward had come. His
home was about two miles from the railroad station on the line running from
La Grande to Elgin. One day, not long after the expiration of his service in
the State Senate, he was walking across country to catch a train, and,
hearing it in the distance, ran for a half mile. He reached the station just
as the train did, but was so exhausted that he sat down on a pile of lumber
and died within five minutes from heart failure.
J. W. Norval was a good man, endowed with
many splendid qualities, and his name will always be recalled by the
pioneers of Union County with a high regard for his active work as one of
the founders of that little empire which nestles so cozily in the heart of
the Blue Mountain Range.
After the campaign of 1876, W. J.
Snodgrass was several times a candidate for State Senator and once or twice
attempted to secure the Republican nomination for State Treasurer, but never
was successful. For several years, he was in the mercantile business in
Okanogan, near the British Columbia line, but afterward returned to his old
home in La Grande – where he died in the year 1910, after forty years of
great activity in business and political life in the Grand Ronde valley.
In the fall of 1876, I received an urgent
request from my mother’s people in the Willamette valley to return to the
scenes of my childhood and settle down among them. To look the situation
over, I went to that section after an absence of ten years, and
notwithstanding the ties I had formed in the Grand Ronde valley, the land of
my birth looked good to me and I decided to make the change the ensuing
spring. I made this trip immediately after the Presidential election in
November. The Hayes-Tilden difficulty had already taken form, and as we met
the stages while en route to Umatilla Landing I would anxiously inquire of
the driver the latest news. At Portland I stopped at the St. Charles Hotel,
then the leading hostelry in the city – George Coggan, formerly of La
Grande, was the proprietor – and I recall the excitement prevailing among
the people who assembled to learn the latest news from Washington and to
discuss the alarming situation.
I returned home within two weeks, sold my
farm and stock in the Cove and was prepared to leave for the Waldo Hills
when the weather would be suitable for the trip overland in the spring.
On May 26, 1877, therefore, with a
four-horse team, a wagon – with four wheels and a “bed” – a wife and four
children, one a step-daughter, I drove from the little town of Cove, never
to make it my home again. On June 16, 1870, I had married Mrs. Nancy Batte,
a young widow with a little girl, and in the subsequent years there had been
two girls and a boy added to the family, the latter being but four months
old at the time of our departure. About fifty people had assembled to “see
us off.” It was a sad parting, since the country was yet new enough to have
retained the pioneer spirit and the families were all closely bound together
in neighborly ties such as are never formed in older countries.
I shall never forget that day in May. It
was no indication of weakness that there were few, if any, dry eyes as the
last handshakes were given and the wheels began to roll toward western
Oregon. It was an ideal day in the Cove. The morning sun had come across the
old mountain which for thousands of years had stood guard over the changes
in the beautiful valley, and birds everywhere were giving forth their silver
melody, as if to mock the sadness of the occasion; the old mill was grinding
away just across the creek, utterly oblivious of the fact that it had been
my first bedroom in Grand Ronde valley, and that I regretted leaving it
almost as much as the people themselves. Then there was the “Morrison”
church, which I had painted as my contribution toward its building, and in
which, as an officer in the local Grange, I had partaken of many of its
famous “fourth degree” dinners, attended dances long to be remembered and
had led in the singing at occasional revivals held within its walls. “Dad”
Russell was pounding away on the anvil in his shop, but he had already been
to see us; “Johnny” Clark, from his shop, waved us his farewell; “Uncle”
Cowles, pipe in mouth, had come to wish us well, and a group of
school-children – bless their hearts! – whose teacher I had been the
previous winter but one, came along on their way to school and stopped to
say good-by.
And the old “Dixie” schoolhouse – I was to
be a frequenter of social gatherings within its walls no more. How the old
times filled my memory as I recalled the debates we had had there; the
singing schools, with the different teachers who had since gone their way;
the writing school, where L. J. Rouse taught us the principles of the
“Spencerian” system and other “practical foolishness”; the Union
Sunday-school, with its summer Sunday afternoons; the day-school I had
taught there, and how the children had “turned me out” on the day before
Christmas, at the noon hour, for a joke, and how I returned the joke by
going home and leaving them to dismiss the school as they saw fit – all
these incidents came to my mind while bidding farewell to the place, as well
as to the people. A last glance at “Dixie” brought to view, in imagination,
“Jack” Gallagher and Lambert, two of the earlier teachers there; Revs.
Koger, Booth and Lewis, three Baptist preachers who believed in
foreordination and predestination, and earnestly urged all sinners to accept
their faith in order that they might be saved – regardless of
predestination, it is presumed; and “Uncle” Dan Elledge, popular and jolly
Christian minister who had no doubt that he was preaching the Gospel
“according to the faith once delivered to the saints.”
Finally, however, we were on our way and
that night camped on the Grand Ronde River, a few miles above Oro Dell. As
we made the turn around a point which gave us the last glimpse of the old
home, I stopped the team while we discussed the situation with saddened
hearts, and wondered if we should ever regret the move, when we should ever
see the familiar scenes again, if ever, and why we had not “let well enough
alone,” anyway. There was no joy in the camp that night.
I did not see the Cove again for six
years, when I made a visit there and had a wonderfully cordial reception,
remaining two weeks. In the succeeding years I returned nearly every year,
sometimes oftener, until the death of my father. One day in August, 1903,
while standing in the doorway of my home in Salem, I received a
long-distance call telling me of his sudden illness and that he had
requested that I come at once. As I had been to his home on a visit two
months before, on which occasion he and I had spent three days in calling at
the homes of many of the old friends, this request of his was alarming. It
was Saturday afternoon, but I took a train for Portland and reached the Cove
on Sunday afternoon at one o’clock, only to find my father unconscious. An
effort was made to arouse him by the announcement of my arrival, but without
success. When asked if he knew what was said, he gave a slight nod of his
head, but no other evidence of consciousness. He passed away within an hour,
at the age of seventy-five years.
In his delirium he frequently inquired if
I had arrived – even within a half-hour after the message was sent and asked
that I should write his obituary notice in case he should not survive to
make the request in person. This I did, publishing it in the Oregonian,
giving an outline of his life, as detailed in a preceding chapter, and
closing with these two paragraphs:
In 1866, Union County having been recently
established, he served for a few months as deputy sheriff, and, being
attracted by the marvelous beauty of the Grand Ronde valley, decided to
locate there permanently and again engage in horticultural pursuits. He
carried his decision into effect and for thirty-seven and one-half years,
exactly half his lifetime, he cultivated one of the most successful and
best-kept fruit farms in eastern Oregon. He was actively in the harness when
the summons came announcing that his work was done. He lived a very active
life and died with the highest respect of everybody.
A short time before his demise, when asked
if he wanted anything, he replied, “Only death,” and when asked if he was
ready to die, he said he had always been ready. Just before losing
consciousness for the last time he asked if I had arrived, and his last
earthly request was that I should write his obituary. This I have done,
lovingly as a son, and on these closing lines my pen lingers, as, sitting
under the whispering pines, just above the old home, whose branches
sheltered me so many times during my boyhood days, and confronted on every
hand by the countless familiar objects which were my companions and his
during the struggles of my early manhood, I bid my father goodby until we
meet in that “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
I may be pardoned for adding that my
father and I were more like two brothers than parent and child, and many
people not intimately acquainted with us or the family supposed we were
brothers. My first wife was a younger sister to his second wife, thus making
us brothers-in-law, and the children of the two sisters, as well as their
parents, were frequently puzzled to figure out the precise relationship
which they bore to one another. My father was the uncle to my children, as
well as their grandfather, and their aunt, who was my stepmother, was their
grandmother! Also, my wife was not only the aunt of my father’s children –
by his second wife – but was their sister-in-law, as well. My little
stepdaughter came nearer than any other member of either family to a plain
title, and even she was the niece of her sister’s grandfather and her mother
was her grandmother’s sister! Yet the two families “got along” splendidly!
My father was one of the jolliest of men,
counted the best of companions and his home was always a popular resort,
even for young people, or perhaps I should say especially for young people.
I have been to the Cove but once since his death, as the old place seems not
the same without him. His remains are resting in the cemetery on the
hillside overlooking the beautiful little section which he chose for himself
in middle life, by the side of the wife who preceded him by two years.
Next Chapter -
Geer leaves the Grande Ronde Valley to return to the Willamette; notes from the
journey including details of their brief stay in Pendleton
If you are interested in finding this book, Fifty
Years in Oregon, it can
often be located at Powell's Books in Portland
which is one of the largest used book stores in the United States or, through the
Alibris service
which catalogs used books from stores across the country. For more information on the Geer Family, visit the Geer Family website. Other resources
and references include:
