Patricia Sanders is a retired art history professor and local historian. She is a regular contributor to villageportland.com with her Montavilla Memories column.
A –Montavilla was actually served by two separate lines, plus one very short-lived one. These routes were part of the expanding streetcar service east of the Willamette to provide transit for the Portland area’s rapidly growing population of the 1880s.
Montavilla’s first subdivision—and its namesake Mount Tabor Villa Addition—went on the market in 1889. Buyers probably assumed that rail service would soon arrive. After all, advertising for the Addition included a map that showed a streetcar line to and from downtown Portland on Villa Avenue (now NE Glisan Street) and going directly through the subdivision.
These details of the 1889 Hart-Royal Company broadside for Mount Tabor Villa Addition show an extension of the Morrison Street Bridge Motor Line going through the subdivision (the red rectangle on the right). Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society
A streetcar line did not reach Montavilla until 1892. It was an extension of the City and Suburban Railway’s East Ankeny line to Montavilla. It traveled east on Glisan to what is now 82nd Avenue, but it did not go south through the Mt. Tabor Villa subdivision. Service began on July 26, 1892. The fare was then five cents for residents or property owners who had contributed to the construction, and ten cents for everyone else.
Ticket for a Montavilla streetcar Courtesy of the City of Portland ArchivesThe Ankeny line to Montavilla was a convenient way for riders to get to downtown Portland. Montavilla car 472 is on the left. Courtesy of the City of Portland Archives
Motorman standing next to a Montavilla car. Courtesy of the City of Portland Archives
Streetcars can be powered in various ways. The type that came to Montavilla was electricity-powered and called a trolley. The name comes from the wheel that travels along an electrified overhead wire. The trolley collects electricity and transmits it down a pole to the car’s motor.
Left: a trolley wheel and pole. Right: a trolley wheel. Source: Wikipedia
The Glisan car line had one problem. It was a bit of a hike for commuters living south of Stark. They did have rail service briefly after the Mt. Tabor & Eastern Railroad Company built a 2.5-mile track from the Mount Tabor terminal at 69th and Belmont to 102nd and Stark in Russellville. The service was available only in 1892 and 1893. The Oregonian of June 29, 1900, explained that the railway failed because Mt. Tabor’s steep incline made it too expensive to operate. The iron tracks were then removed and sold.
This detail from the 1891 Atlas of the City of Portland shows the planned route for the Mount Tabor and Eastern Railroad line. Source: Portland City Archives
Montavilla’s south-of-Stark residents had to wait until 1900 for more convenient trolley service. Until then, traveling to downtown Portland meant either walking to Glisan Street or trudging up Mt. Tabor to the 69th Avenue terminal. In 1899, The Oregonian declared that Montavilla needed better trolley service and recommended that the City & Suburban Railway Company build an extension from Glisan to Stark along 80th Avenue (then known as Hibbard Street).
The railway company agreed to build an extension (called a spur) on 80th. To reduce costs, they took track from Glisan between 80th and 82nd and used this for part of the construction. (In 1911, operators extended the Glisan Street rail to NE 90th Avenue.) The 80th-Avenue spur opened in October 1900.
The new spur rail did not satisfy the south-of-Stark folks for long. In 1912, pressure mounted for easier access to downtown Portland. They wanted an extension of the Mount Tabor line, which then still ended at 69th and Belmont. On September 11, 1912, Father James B. Fitzpatrick told the Portland City Council the need was urgent. Hundreds of his parishioners, he said, had to walk great distances through mud and dust to get to a streetcar. The South Montavillans prevailed. In early December 1912, crews extended the Mount Tabor line from 69th Avenue to SE 88th Avenue and Yamhill. Property owners paid $14,000 for the extension, and the Portland Railway, Light & Power Company paid approximately the same amount.
Detail of a 1943 Trolley Map of Portland showing the two lines that once served Montavilla. At the top (marked MV) is the Glisan Street line, with its 80th Avenue spur and the extension to 90th Avenue. At the bottom is the Mount Tabor line (marked MT) extended to Yamhill and 88th. Source: Vintage Portland, May 4, 2010
In 1948, streetcar service ceased in Montavilla and other lines. Road crews covered rails with asphalt. Buses replaced trolleys. It was the end of Portland’s streetcar era. But if you look closely at the street on NE 80th between Glisan and Stark, you can detect where the tracks are buried. A small section of the rail used to be visible before the latest resurfacing of 80th Avenue.
By
Patricia Sanders
Main article image “East Ankeny Line Streetcar.” Photo courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society
This is part of Montavilla History Questions Answered, a series of history related articles. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post.
Q – Who is Montavilla’s Vestal School named after?
A –Vestal School is named after John L. Vestal (1852-1925). In 1925, he bequeathed the vast majority of his estate to the Portland public school district. It was the largest donation ever given to the district, according to The American School Board Journal of May 1925. Vestal left assets then valued at $200,000—equivalent to nearly $3,700,000 today and twice the size of Simon Benson’s $100,000 gift to Benson Polytechnic School.
Vestal‘s will did not stipulate how the school board should use his donation. He trusted the board of directors to put it to its best use. Portland’s population had been expanding for several years, and schools had become overcrowded. Montavilla School on SE 76th Avenue was one of these schools. So, the board decided to allocate the bulk of Vestal’s bequest to building a new school in Montavilla that would be larger and more centrally located.
The board also decided to name the new school after Vestal, in gratitude for his generosity. But this may not have been to John Vestal’s liking. According to the Oregon Journal of March 22, 1925, he was a “modest and retiring” man and would not have wanted a school to be named for him. Nevertheless, his name—in large letters—was inscribed atop the school’s east facade.
Photos of John L. Vestal School. Photo by Jacob Loeb
Today, John L. Vestal’s name is still an everyday sight in Montavilla. But who was he? What is his story? And why did he give almost his entire fortune to benefit generations of Portland school children?
Photo of John L. Vestal. Source: Portland Public Schools
Little is actually written about John Vestal. And it requires a lot of digging to gather just a few verifiable facts.
John Vestal first appears in public records in the 1860 U. S. census. At that time, John was nine and living with his mother, Elizabeth M. Fowler Vestal (1826-1874), in Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, Indiana. John was attending school. His mother was a seamstress. Both were born in Indiana. John’s father, Benjamin Elwood Vestal (1820-1892), was absent from the household. No other children appear in the 1860 census or in other records. John was apparently an only child.
While John and his mother were living in Lafayette, an event occurred that probably lodged in John’s memories. On February 11, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln stopped briefly in that town on his way to Washington, D. C. He gave a brief speech from the back of his railroad car before heading off to nearby Indianapolis. Maybe John and his mother were in the crowd — or, if not, surely heard about the exciting event. Later, when John registered to vote in Portland, he consistently identified as a Republican, then the party of Lincoln.
Proposed “Lincoln in Lafayette” plaque. Source: Lafayette Journal and Courier
Digging deeper into John’s family history, I found that he descended from a long line of Quakers. His father probably told his son about how he and his siblings joined the multitude of Quaker farmers who left North Carolina in the 1830s in opposition to slavery. Most of the Vestal family settled in Indiana.
Whether John was a practicing Quaker, I could not determine. I found only a few hints of an association. One is John’s relationship with his cousin, James Vestal, and his family. They were among many Quakers who moved to Newberg, Oregon, in the late 19th century. The James Vestal family arrived in 1889. From 1891, notices in the Newberg Graphic newspaper indicate that John was a frequent visitor. The Newberg Quaker church records show that John also made several small donations. Perhaps on his visits to Newberg, he was impressed by the community’s commitment to education. On his first visit in 1891, he probably noticed the recently built Pacific College. That college was later renamed George Fox University, in honor of the founder of the Society of Friends.
For his time, John Vestal was a well-educated man. Neither of his parents had attended school, and most people only attended elementary school. John, however, went to both elementary and high school. He attended elementary school in Lafayette, Indiana, and—for some unknown reason—went to high school in Decatur, Illinois. In 1870, John was one of only eight to receive his high school diploma.
By 1873, John and his mother had reunited with John’s father in Portland. Benjamin Vestal had been working there as a butcher since around 1865.
In Portland, John discovered another source of mental stimulation: the newly formed Philomathean Society. The Oregon Journal of October 9, 1923, described it as “a serious group of young men bent on self-improvement.” They met weekly to discuss challenging subjects, such as parliamentary law and current issues. Sometimes they debated other serious-minded groups. John was one of the surviving members who gathered to celebrate their 50th Anniversary in 1923.
By 1875, John was working as a clerk in Portland’s oldest drugstore, S. G. Skidmore. He worked there until 1886, when he opened his own drugstore on First Street in downtown Portland.
I found out little about John’s life as a drugstore owner, just regular listings in Portland’s city directory. But I did come across his light-hearted contribution about a druggist’s life in The Spatula, a magazine for pharmacists. The February 1907 issue included six illustrations about an incident involving a bored pharmacist and a potential female customer. Readers were invited to provide appropriate captions. John sent in a few humorous, rhyming lines, and they appeared in the April issue.
Illustrations 1, 2 and 6 published in the February 1907 issue of The Spatula.
Above is a portion of John Vestal’s winning text published in The Spatula’s April 1907 edition.
The same year Vestal opened his drugstore, he married Ruth Almira Culver (1855-1889). Like John, she was a Decatur High School graduate. She received her diploma in 1873, but their attendance overlapped slightly since Decatur High required three years for a diploma in John’s time there and four years in Ruth’s.
After Ruth graduated, she taught third grade in Decatur for several years. Then, in 1882, she moved to Portland with her mother and brothers, where she taught at Failing and Couch elementary schools. Very likely, Ruth shared her teaching experiences and philosophy with her husband. Perhaps when she was teaching at the old Failing School, she described the school’s deplorable conditions, such as the dirt floor in the basement that served as a play area and the lack of ventilation requiring windows to be perpetually open to the elements.
Unfortunately, John and Ruth’s marriage was short-lived. Ruth died in childbirth on March 26, 1889, and John never remarried.
Grave marker for Ruth Almira Vestal in Riverview Cemetery, Portland, Oregon. Photo by Thomas Tilton
John experienced other close losses in Portland: his mother died in 1874 and his father in 1892. Perhaps John referred to these and other losses in his poem, “The First Violin.”
Excerpt from “The First Violin,” published in the May 30, 1920 Oregonian, one of several of his poems this newspaper published in 1920.
Vestal closed his drugstore in 1907, but he did not leave the pharmaceutical trade. He went on to build a fortune by operating a string of drugstores and augmenting his wealth by investing in real estate and tax-exempt securities.
John Vestal died at age 73 on March 18, 1925, in Portland’s Glen Haven Rest Home. He was buried next to his wife, his mother, and his father in Riverview Cemetery. As soon as his bequest to Portland’s public schools became known, it made headlines in the Portland press. The Oregon Journal of March 22, 1925, for example, declared that his magnanimous donation was likely to make his name “a perpetual landmark in Portland.”
Page-one headline in the Oregon Journal, March 20, 1925. The total value of Vestal’s gift is underestimated; it took some time to calculate the full value of his assets.
Vestal had no immediate heirs. He left a few small donations to friends and relatives, but most of his wealth went to the public-school board.
Vestal’s generous gift to public schools did not go unchallenged. Three of his second cousins claimed to be his rightful heirs. They filed a lawsuit in 1926, alleging that Portland’s school board could not legally receive real or personal property. They lost their suit and appealed. On May 22, 1928, the Supreme Court of Oregon ruled against the plaintiffs. Now, the Portland school district board was free to allocate the Vestal donation.
In 1928, the board proposed building a new school to replace the old Montavilla School and decided to name it the John L. Vestal School. In 1929, the board hired architect George Howell Jones (1887-1950) to design the school building. It was ready for students in April 1930. On April 4, the cornerstone was dedicated, and some 800 children marched to the music of the school orchestra from Montavilla School to the new Vestal School.
John L. Vestal School cornerstone, erected in 1929. Photo by Thomas Tilton
Within months, the old Montavilla School was demolished and the salvage offered for sale in local newspaper want ads.
In February 1929, the school board authorized a monument commemorating John Vestal and his generosity. It was erected next to his grave in Riverview Cemetery. The monument is inscribed “He loved children and for their education gave his fortune to the public schools of his city.”
Monument honoring John L. Vestal. Photo by Thomas Tilton
After the completion of Vestal School, John’s bequest was used for additional public-school needs. The school board set up an interest-bearing fund with the residuals of the original donation. This money was used periodically for other projects, such as the psychiatric clinic established in 1932 to assist school children.
One thing I never discovered in my research: what does the “L” in John L. Vestal’s name stand for?
This is part of Montavilla History Questions Answered, a series of history related articles. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post on this page.
In the days before Montavilla became a popular suburb in the early 1900s, it was largely farmland. Gradually, fruit, vegetables, nuts, and other crops were displaced by houses and commercial buildings. But as late as the 1920s, there were still pockets of arable land in sections of northeastern and southeastern Montavilla. I recently learned about the Newell and Matsen cut-flower farm on NE 87th Avenue that may deserve the distinction of being Montavilla’s last farm.
The Newell and Matsen floral nursery after a snowstorm with owners Harry Newell (left) and Hank Matsen (right) and long-term employee Mel Wilkinson (center). Photo courtesy of the Matsen Family Photo Archive
Harry L. Newell (1891-1976) and Hank F. Matsen (1894-1962) established the business in 1922. Hank’s son, Kenneth H. Matsen (1921-2024), continued it until 1973.
I learned about this business from two of Kenneth Matsen’s daughters, Nancy Palomino and Marje Rhine. They suggested that I speak with their mother, 100-year-old Janice Urquhart Matsen, who knew a great deal about it. So, I interviewed Janice, and she generously shared her memories and allowed me to use photos from the extensive family collection.
Janice Urquhart and Kenneth Matsen in a Newell and Matsen greenhouse shortly before their marriage in 1946.
Janice has a remarkable memory. She has stories to share about her life in Montavilla and about the flower business. She lived in Montavilla for most of her life, and her memories go back to her earliest years. She remembers, for example, entering Vestal School‘s first kindergarten class in 1930. In the 1930s, she walked to school along Glisan Street, and she can tell you stories about nearly every business on her route. She also told me about a Depression-era “shanty town” just west of NE 67th Avenue and how her father gave food to the men who knocked at the back door of their nearby home.
Janice’s memories of the Newell-Matsen flower farm date back to her marriage to Ken Matsen in 1946. At that time, he worked on the farm, and for a time, the newlyweds lived in his parents’ house located on the farm property. Ken worked on the farm until it closed in 1973. So even though Janice did not work in the business—although she lent a hand from time to time—she was in a position to know how it operated.
The business was founded by two young men, Harry Newell and Hank Matsen, just after their service in World War I. The two men had known each other for several years, and Newell married Matsen’s sister Rose in 1920. Newell had been employed in the floral business for several years, but Matsen had established himself as a dentist after the war. Somehow, Newell convinced his new brother-in-law that a flower business was worth trying.
Newell knew there was money to be made in this trade. He had worked for Rahn and Herbert, one of the largest nurseries in Oregon, with greenhouses in Clackamas. The flower trade was growing, according to the 1920 U.S. census. So, Matsen gave up his dental practice and purchased a large plot of land on 87th Avenue, just north of Glisan from his mother Christina Matsen Tranberg (1852-1934).
Christina Matsen Tranberg’s house and property before the Newell-Matsen greenhouses were built. Photo courtesy of the Matsen Family Photo Archive
Newell and Matsen glass greenhouses under construction. Photo courtesy of the Matsen Family Photo Archive
This 1922 plumbing permit establishes a beginning date for the Newell-Matsen business. It shows that the dry well and rain drains needed for the greenhouses had been approved on September 30, 1922. Source: Portlandmaps
The 1928 Sanborn map below indicates the location and scale of the Newell and Matsen greenhouses. It was opposite another farm, the Benedict Nursery, which grew shrubs and trees. The Benedict Nursery, by the way, is now the eastern portion of the Multnomah University campus.
The 1928 Sanborn map above shows the Newell and Matsen Nursery in the upper right
Detail of the 1928 Sanborn map
The Newell and Matsen nursery sold its flowers in a variety of ways. They supplied local florist shops. They did wholesale business through the Oregon Flower Growers Association warehouse on Grand Avenue. Some flowers were shipped by train to other locales. And they also created funeral sprays.
Ken Matsen continued working in the business after his father died in 1962, and he became the sole proprietor when Newell retired in 1967. He renamed the business Matsen Greenhouses.
Newell and Matsen grew yearly crops. In this photo, the crops are carnations (left) and snapdragons (right). Photo courtesy of the Matsen Family Photo Archive
In the early 1970s, Ken faced at least two significant challenges. One was the deadly tornado that swept through Portland and Vancouver on April 5, 1972. Vancouver suffered greater losses — in both lives and property — but the Matsen greenhouses were among Portland’s few damaged properties. When the Portland tornado touched down on his property, it struck the greenhouses, breaking so much glass that it took months to repair, and lifted a tree into the air.
The Oregon Journal, April 6, 1972, page 6
Janice told me about another challenge to the Matsen business: the increasing competition from California flower growers, who did not have the expense of oil heating required during Oregon’s colder winters. By 1973, petroleum prices had skyrocketed due to OPEC’s oil embargo against the U.S. Consequently, California growers could ship flowers by rail and undercut Oregon prices.
Ken Matsen closed the nursery business in 1973, but he stayed in the flower trade, working for flower wholesalers on Swan Island.
Kenneth Matsen resting from greenhouse work. Photo courtesy of the Matsen Family Photo Archive
If you want to see a remnant of the Newell and Matsen flower farm, you can find the remodeled 1908 Matsen farmhouse at 750 NE 87th Avenue. Now it’s surrounded by mostly single and multifamily housing. But a bit of the more open, rural land is preserved in Montavilla Park and the Multnomah University campus.
The remodeled Matsen home at 750 NE 87th Avenue today. Photo by Thomas Tilton
Note:
Some of you may remember when Montavilla still had open spaces other than parks and school playgrounds. Please feel free to share your memories about remnants of Montavilla’s rural past. You can email them to me at history@montavilla.net.
Acknowledgements:
Much of the information in this story was generously supplied by Matsen family members. I want to thank Janice and her daughters for their help. Janice shared her invaluable memories with me in two interviews. Her daughter Marie Matsen sorted through thousands of family photos and selected most of the ones appearing in this article; she also provided additional details about the Newell-Matsen business. Janice’s daughters, Marje Rhine and Nancy Palomino, brought my attention to the Newell and Matsen flower business, setting me on this quest.
Correction: An earlier version of this article had Janice Urquhart Matsen’s first name typed at Joyce in several locations and Marje Rhine’s first name spelled as Marjae. The text is now corrected and Montavilla News regrets this error.
In the era of silent films, a beautiful face and expressive gestures could turn you into a matinee idol: enter Jewel Carmen. A 1916 edition of Moving Picture World magazine called her “a queen of blonds” and “the girl who photographs like a million dollars.” A year later, The Oregon Journal pronounced her “the belle of Montavilla.”
Jewel Carmen was one of three professional names adopted by Florence Lavina Quick (1897-1984). She was born on July 13, 1897, in the rural town of Blaine in Tillamook County, Oregon, the seventh child of Amos William Quick (1858-1932) and Minerva Gray Quick (1862-1934). (Sometimes, her birthplace is given incorrectly as Danville, Kentucky, or Portland, Oregon.) By 1901, her parents and siblings lived in Portland, a few blocks from Montavilla’s current western boundary. These boundaries were established in 1974 when the City of Portland created neighborhood associations. In earlier days, Montavilla boundaries were imprecise. So, we can accept the Journal’s designation and claim Jewel Carmen as a Montavilla notable.
William Farnum and Jewel Carmen in A Tale of Two Cities, 1917. Source: Wikimedia
In 1911, Vina completed her eighth-grade education at Mount Tabor School. The same year, her parents separated or divorced. By February 1912, her mother and four of her siblings—Alice, Fred, Vina, and Alberta—had moved to Los Angeles.
Why Los Angeles? They apparently had no relatives there. Was it the movie industry that drew them? In the 1910s, Los Angeles was the new center of the movie industry. Silent movies were exploding in popularity, drawing actor “wannabes” to southern California. Did Vina and her older sisters dream of getting into pictures? There are reasons to think that might be true.
There is evidence of family interest in the performing arts. Vina’s two older sisters, Alice and Edna, had attended Portland’s Western Academy of Dramatic Art, Elocution and Music. They performed in the Academy’s live productions. Edna may have had connections with the acting community since she married a British actor, William Henry Strong (born c.1870) in November 1911—which, of course, prevented her from going to L. A. in 1912. A few years later, Alice and Edna got acting jobs, but their younger sister, Vina—the one with no performance experience—quickly rose to stardom on the silver screen.
Movie fans attending an up-scale movie theater. Source: The Oregonian, November 1, 1908
This era was a time when movies were growing in popularity. Movie theaters were proliferating. They had grown from three in 1907 to 16 by 1908 in Portland alone. Getting to a downtown theater would have been easy for the Quicks. They lived close to the Glisan Street trolley, which could take them downtown, where they could go to a five-cent Nickelodeon or one of the bigger ten-cent theaters. The Quicks also had the option of two new movie theaters in Montavilla: the Scenic Theatre at Stark and SE 79th and the Idle Hour at SE 81st and Stark. (For more on Montavilla’s earliest movie theaters, see Village Portland:Montavilla Memories )
A Majestic Theatre ad in the Oregon Journal of November 26, 1911
Within months of the Quicks’ arrival in Los Angeles, Vina was making her first movies. While many women stormed movie offices daily looking for work as extras, Vina later related that she was discovered by movie producer Gaston Melies (1852-1915), the brother of the famous French filmmaker George Melies (1861-1938). According to Vina, she was sitting one day in a Los Angeles soda fountain when Gaston Melies approached her and handed her his card. He asked if she would like to be in motion pictures. Despite being under California’s legal adult employment age of 16, she said yes. She turned 15 in July 1912. But her family needed the money, so she accepted his offer of $25 a week.
For the Melies company, she adopted the professional name Florence La Vinci. She made at least two short films for Melies. In both, she played adult romantic roles. Her first Melies film, The Will of Destiny, was released on August 1, 1912. In this film, she plays Alice, who vies with her sister Mary for John’s love. Alice wins but then elopes with a millionaire. With this film, Vina (as Florence La Vinci) drew the attention of the movie press: a mention in The Moving Picture World of August 17, 1912, and a photograph in the August 1912 edition of The Motion Picture Story Magazine.
Vina Quick as Florence La Vinci (lower right) in the August, 1912 edition of The Motion Picture Story Magazine. Source: Internet Archive
Her work for Melies was short-lived. In July 1912, the Melies film company left California to make movies in the South Pacific. By February 1913, she worked for the new Keystone studio founded by Mack Sennett (1880-1960). Now, Vina has adopted a new professional name: Evelyn Quick. Sennett’s Keystone Studios specialized in comedies, and Evelyn Quick performed in at least eight of them.
Panoramic view of the Mack Sennett Keystone studios in Edendale near Los Angeles. Source: Wikipedia
In 1913, actress Evelyn Quick gained a new kind of notoriety when she was called to testify in a “white slavery” lawsuit in Los Angeles. Several wealthy men were accused of contributing to the delinquency of minors, including Quick. She testified under her professional name against William LaCasse (1884-1923) —a wealthy automobile salesman—who she accused of contributing to her delinquency. Newspapers across the country reported on the trial and Quick’s shocking testimony. She was, indeed, underage—15 at the time of the alleged abuse—but the defense attorney falsely claimed she was 23. The jury was deadlocked: two of the twelve voted against conviction. A new trial was set, but charges were later dropped when two witnesses, including Quick, failed to appear.
The Shreveport (Louisiana) Times of May 18, 1913 misidentifies Evelyn Quick as an orphan.
Despite the negative publicity of the investigation and the trial, Evelyn Quick continued to play leading roles in several short comedies released by Keystone and then the Nestor Film Company through November 1913. Then, her career seemed to stall. I found no record of her whereabouts or new movies until 1916. Then, her career restarted with Triangle Films. She created a new professional name: Jewel Carmen, the one she used until the end of her career and by which she is best known.
At Triangle, she began to play starring roles with the popular Douglas Fairbanks (1883-1939), including the five-reeler Flirting with Fate (1916) and The Half-Breed, a short comedy based on a Bret Harte story. (As of this writing, The Half-Breed is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_vdJyHZrR4 .)
Jewel Carmen and Douglas Fairbanks in “The Halfbreed.” Source: Photoplay Magazine, October,1916
In 1917, The Oregonian described Jewel Carmen as “one of the rapidly rising stars of the film firmament.” By this time, she was playing leading roles with super-star William Farnum (1876-1953)—including Manhattan Madness—for Triangle as well as Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities for Fox Vaudeville. In 1918, she starred in at least six movies for Fox.
Jewel Carmen as Alice Carter who is forced to marry a vicious criminal in “The Bride of Fear,” 1918, Fox Films. Source: Wikipedia
In mid-1918–while still under contract with Fox—Jewel signed on with Keeney Pictures, which offered her a much higher salary—$450 a week. When Frank A. Keeney learned about the Fox contracts, he voided his contract with Jewel. In late 1918, she sued Fox in the U. S. District Court of New York for interfering with her ability to find employment. She claimed the Fox contract was not legally binding since she was a minor, i.e., under the adult age of 21 in New York law. The lower court ruled in her favor, but Fox appealed. The litigation dragged on for years and ended in November 1926 with a victory for Carmen. The New York Court of Appeals awarded her $60,682 in lost salary plus interest to be paid by Fox Films.
Jewel may have won in the end, but the litigation hurt her career. She did not act in another movie until 1921. In late 1918, she married director and producer Roland West (1885-1952). She talked about giving up acting for good, but West persuaded her to return to the screen. She made three more movies, all for her husband’s company: The Silver Lining (1921), Nobody (1921), and The Bat (1926); all are suspenseful crime movies and all silent.
Jewel Carme (left) with the cast of “The Bat,” her last film. Source: Wikipedia
Jewel never performed in a talkie, although she had a speaking role in a radio play based on West’s 1929 talking picture, Alibi. Sometime between 1930 and 1934, Jewel and Roland separated. For the remainder of the 1930s, they litigated over a settlement agreement. Finally, in December 1939, she was granted alimony of $170 a month and was awarded a $50,000 property settlement a year later.
The 1940 U.S. Census shows she lived in the Holly-Vista Apartments in Los Angeles. At some point, she moved to El Cajon in San Diego County, where she died in March 1984. She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered.
Jewel Carmon died in obscurity. I found no obituary honoring the Montavilla belle’s contribution to the world of silent film. However, she lives on in the writings about her and in her surviving films. Some of her films are currently available on YouTube and the Internet Archive.
Title image: William Farnum and Jewel Carmen in A Tale of Two Cities, 1917. Source: Wikimedia
This is part of Montavilla History Questions Answered, a series of history related articles. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post on this page.
Q – Did Montavilla help women get the right to vote?
A – Yes, there were both women and men in Montavilla who supported the effort to give women the right to vote. However, they entered the decades-long women’s suffrage campaign near its end. The battle commenced at the first American women’s rights convention in 1848. Oregon suffragists joined the effort in 1870. The first Montavilla suffrage group met for the first time in 1905. By then, an Oregon suffrage measure had been on the ballot in 1884 and 1900. It lost both times, although in 1900, by a mere 2,000 votes. Women could already vote in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado by this time. Western states were leading the way! Hopes were high that equal suffrage would succeed in the 1906 Oregon election.
In this hopeful moment, a group of Montavilla women came together in March 1905 to create a local chapter of the Equal Suffrage Association. They elected Rachel C. Ring (1850-1932), a seamstress and former teacher, as their president.
The Oregon Journal of April 18, 1905 announces the recent formation of a Montavilla Equal Suffrage group.
The events and strategies leading up to the 1906 ballot were described by Abigail Scott Duniway (1834-1915) in her autobiography, Path Breaking (1914). She founded the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association in 1873 and published the New Northwest newspaper from 1871 to 1887 to champion the cause. Ironically, Duniway’s brother Harvey W. Scott (1838-1910), the editor of The Oregonian, was an opponent of women’s suffrage.
Abigail Scott Duniway, President of the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association. Source: Wikipedia
In 1904, the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association (OESA) was already strategizing about how to win on the 1906 ballot. Its leaders saw an opportunity to promote the suffrage cause during the Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905, where a huge crowd was expected—in fact, it drew over 2.5 million people. At first, they had just planned to have space in the YMCA building. Then they had a more ambitious idea: why not invite the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to hold its annual convention in Portland during the Fair? They asked, and the NAWSA agreed.
Entrance gate to the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, held from June 1 to October 15, 1905. Source: Wikimedia.
Before the Fair opened in June, the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association was devising ways to draw attention to their cause. On May 27, 1905, the OESA decorating committee reported that Portland’s large stores would decorate their windows with the suffrage color–yellow–during the suffragist convention. Two representatives of the Montavilla suffrage group–Rachel Ring, president, and Maud C. Gilman (1866-1957), treasurer, attended. Perhaps the Montavilla group could persuade Montavilla business owners to do the same. Perhaps their own member, Winnifred Burdett King (1857-1918), who operated a grocery store on Stark Street with her husband, Francis, would display the suffrage color. And maybe Olive Tolls (1863-1934) would persuade her husband to decorate their shoe store. Perhaps other businesses would follow suit. Unfortunately, if there was such an effort, it was not mentioned in the press.
It’s also unknown whether members of the Montavilla suffrage club attended the national suffragist convention held in Portland from June 28 to July 5 at the First Congregational Church, just a short streetcar ride away. Perhaps they stood in the long reception line to shake hands with the famous suffragist, 85-year-old Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), or maybe they attended some of the rousing speeches by notable suffragists.
Susan B. Anthony. Source: Wikipedia
Suffragist leaders at the convention were pleasantly surprised by how warmly they were received by politicians and clerics, which was so different from past “welcomes.” Oregon’s Governor, George E. Chamberlain (1854-1928), spoke at the convention and declared himself an advocate of equal suffrage. Portland’s Mayor, Harry Lane (1855-1917), was also in favor.
After their convention, NAWSA organizers stayed on to take charge of the Oregon suffrage campaign for the 1906 ballot, much to the chagrin of Duniway, who resigned as president of the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association in protest but was soon re-elected to that post.
One member of the NAWSA who remained in Oregon to help with the 1906 ballot campaign was Laura Clay (1840-1941), president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. She was the daughter of Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810-1903), a Kentucky abolitionist and Abraham Lincoln’s ambassador to Russia during the Civil War. In 1905 and 1906, Laura traveled around Oregon promoting yes-votes for the suffrage ballot issue. The Montavilla suffrage group was lucky to be addressed by this speaker who was described by the press as gifted, logical, and brilliant. She spoke to the Montavilla suffrage group at Grace Baptist Church on December 2, 1905.
Photograph of Laura Clay by the Gerhard Sisters, 1916. Source: Wikipedia
Oregon Journal, January 18, 1906
Miss Clay spoke to the Montavilla suffrage group at Grace Baptist Church on December 2, 1905. I wonder if she shared her belief that someday a woman might occupy the White House?
After the December 2, 1905 meeting, I found no further mention in the press of additional activities of the Montavilla suffrage group. Did they disband? Did more exciting issues attract the press?
Despite intensive campaigning, equal suffrage lost again on the 1906 Oregon ballot. It captured only 43.9% of the vote. The no-vote dropped even lower—38.6%– in 1908 (only 38.6%) and slightly lower still in 1910 (37.4%). Abigail Scott Duniway blamed the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union–which supported women’s suffrage but also wanted prohibition–for the losses. Duniway long thought that the two issues—prohibition and suffrage—should be kept separate in order to win the suffrage vote. She believed that alcohol consumption was up to the individual. The fear of potential women voters favoring a prohibition law was, in fact, one argument that deterred some men from voting for equal suffrage.
If the Montavilla suffrage group did cease to exist, that does not mean the issue lost support in that community. Several Montavillans were members of the nearby Russellville Grange, a farming and social organization open to men and women. There, the woman’s vote was a frequent topic.
Furthermore, The Beaver State Herald, a Montavilla and Gresham newspaper, kept its readers apprised of the current status of the woman’s vote in the U.S. and abroad. Harper’s Magazine’s “Woman-Suffrage Map of the World” in its April 25, 1908 issue graphically shows explicitly how slow the international pace of equal suffrage was.
Harper’s Magazine, April 25, 1908 Source: Wikimedia
Despite the losing campaign of 1910 and the slow rate of global progress, Oregon’s suffragists did not give up. So high was their enthusiasm on the eve of the 1912 ballot that a throng turned out on August 11 for a College Equal Suffrage League event in Oaks Amusement Park. Newspaper estimates of attendance ranged from 10,000 to 25,000. Surely at least some Montavilla suffragists were among these numbers. The event was just a short streetcar ride away. The women and men who attended heard impassioned speeches and stirring anthems. The suffrage color, yellow, appeared everywhere: in bouquets, decorations, banners, and campaign cards.
Suffragist gathering in Oaks Amusement Park, August 11, 1912. Source: The Morning Oregonian, August 12, 1912
Perhaps to show their support for women’s rights, the Montavilla Board of Trade opened membership to Montavilla women in August 1912.
On election day, November 5, 1912, it was raining all over Oregon, yet voter turnout was heavy. Multnomah County had the largest number of registered voters in its history. By the time all the votes were counted, it was clear that the suffrage measure had passed. In Montavilla (Precinct 74), 105 men voted yes, and 81 voted no.
In 1920, women’s right to vote became the law of the land with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, Native American, Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian men and women had to wait for the repeal of U.S. exclusion laws to gain their right to vote.
Oregon suffragist leader, Abigail Scott Duniway, is the first woman to registers to vote in Multnomah County. Source: Wikimedia
PBS has a documentary on Abigail Scott Duniway available at www.pbs.org.
By
Patricia Sanders
Title image “The Awakening” illustration by Henry Mayer in the Puck Magazine of February 20, 1915 identifies the states that had already legalized women’s right to vote. Source: Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/98502844/
This is an installment of Montavilla History Questions Answered. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post.
A — Yes. One truly admirable example is the eminent physician and civil rights champion Dr. DeNorval Unthank (1899-1977).
Dr. Unthank lived in Portland from 1930 until his death in 1977. For a short time, in the early 1930s, he and his family made Montavilla their home.
Dr. Unthank with children in Unthank City Park, Portland, Oregon. Photo courtesy of Multnomah County Library
Dr. Unthank was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the son of a railroad and hotel cook and the grandson of North Carolina enslaved people. When his mother died in 1909, he was sent to live with his uncle, Dr. Thomas Unthank (1867-1932), a prominent doctor and civil rights advocate in Kansas City, Missouri. DeNorval would follow in his uncle’s footsteps. He chose a career in medicine and graduated from his uncle’s alma mater, the Howard University School of Medicine. He then set up his own practice in Kansas City in 1927. And in Portland, DeNorval Unthank would also be a major civil rights champion.
Sometime in 1929, the young and newly married Dr. Unthank learned that Portland’s Black community was losing its only physician, Dr. James A. Merriman (1870-1946), who was relocating to Phoenix. So, Dr. Unthank decided to move his practice, his nurse wife, Thelma Shipman (1906-1959), and his two-month-old son, DeNorval Unthank Jr., to Portland. He arrived alone the first week of January 1930, and The Advocate, Portland’s African American weekly newspaper, gave Dr. Unthank a page-one welcome.
The Advocate of January 11, 1930, p. 1. Source: Historic Oregon Newspapers
Before he decided to relocate, Dr. Unthank wanted to know if he would be welcome in Portland. To find out, he wrote to the Portland Chamber of Commerce and was assured he and his family would be welcome.
While Portland’s Black community was grateful for Dr. Unthank’s presence, the doctor soon found that renting office space was another matter. At first, this seemed assured. Dentist Elbert L. Booker agreed to share offices with him in the Panama Building downtown. Dr. Booker had been a tenant there since 1928. But in 1927, as a Black man seeking office space, it took months to find a landlord willing to rent to him. He was turned down 15 times. Unthank and Booker announced the opening of their shared offices in the February 1, 1930 edition of The Advocate. However, when Panama Building tenants protested, Dr. Unthank had to move out, although Dr. Booker was allowed to return to his previous office suite in the Panama Building. Dr. Unthank moved to the nearby Commonwealth Building, then had to move again twice before settling in the downtown Arata Building in 1931.
Announcement of the opening of offices shared by Dr. E. L. Booker and Dr. DeNorval Unthank in the Panama Building in The Advocate, February 1, 1930, p. 1. Source: Historic Oregon Newspapers
Because of the Depression, at first, Dr. Unthank had few patients, and many of these, he later said, were loggers, who were among the few with paying jobs. Income may have been lean, but that did not slow down Dr. Unthank. Within weeks of stepping foot on Portland soil, he spoke on health topics at the Bethel A. M. E. and the Mount Olivet Baptist churches. Dr. Unthank was committed not just to helping people with ailments, he wanted everyone to be healthier. Besides giving speeches, he began publishing a column in The Advocate called “Keeping Fit” in March 1931. In 1932, he organized a Health Week event.
Dr. Unthank published a column called “Keeping Fit” in The Advocate for several months in 1932. Source: The Advocate, March 14, 1931, page 4
Besides his medical practice and health advocacy, he was soon involved in civil rights efforts. He was elected to the local NAACP chapter board of directors in December 1930, then vice president in November 1931, and finally president in 1940. In 1931, he helped to prevent yet another Portland screening of the racist movie “Birth of the Nation.”
Just after arriving in Portland, the Unthank family lodged with Urskin S. Reed, a railroad mail clerk and NAACP member. By June 1930, the Unthanks had moved to Montavilla.
The Unthanks lived in this 1902 house at 212 NE 76th Avenue in Montavilla for several months in 1930. Photo by Thomas Tilton
Although Montavilla was a mostly White community, there had been a small Black population there since at least 1900. The Unthank home had been owned by a Black couple, Prestin and Laura Claybourne, since at least 1920. There were several Black couples in the immediate neighborhood as well as the majority-Black Shiloh Baptist Church just a block away. Many Portland neighborhoods east of the Willamette had similar communities with just a few Black residents in contrast to the denser population of Albina, as shown in the 1936 map below.
This 1936 Portland map shows the distribution of Black-occupied dwellings. The detail on the right shows the distribution in the Montavilla area. The densest population of Albina is in the center of the large map. Source: Portland City Archives
The Unthanks did not stay long in their first Montavilla home. In the spring of 1931, they bought a house in Westmoreland. Although this was an all-White neighborhood, their realtor assured them they would be welcome. Instead of a welcome, however, the neighborhood presented the Unthanks with a petition asking them to leave. The Unthanks refused. And when they arrived at their new home, all the windows were broken.
The local press covered the Unthank-Westmoreland story blow-by-blow.
The Advocate expressed outrage:
The Advocate, April 25, 1931, page 1
The Oregon Journal was baffled:
Source: The Oregon Journal, April 26,1931, page 10
Things calmed down for a while in Westmoreland until another window-stoning occurred at the end of June. The Unthanks thought the Jones couple next door was responsible, and a shouting match ensued between the two couples. Mrs. Jones accused Mrs. Unthank of threatening to shoot her. The issue ended up in court on July 17. Mrs. Unthank was acquitted.
But enough of Westmoreland was enough. By August 1931, the Unthanks were living with friends, and Mrs. Unthank left for an extended visit with relatives in the Midwest.
For a little over a year, the Unthank family lived in this 1923 house at 221 NE 76th Avenue in Montavilla. Photo by Thomas Tilton
By August 1932, the Unthanks were back in Montavilla and living in a house just across the street from their previous residence. They lived there until at least September 1933. By March 1934, they lived in a rental house on Division Street.
This detail from Portlandmaps shows the locations of the two Unthank Montavilla residences on NE 76th Avenue, first at 212 and later at 221.
In the 1930s, Dr. Unthank’s practice continued to grow. He was so busy, reported The Northwest Enterprise of December 9, 1938, that he wouldn’t even stop for a sprained ankle. Still, he was blocked from practicing at local hospitals and joining medical societies for many years. He was finally admitted to the Emanuel Hospital staff in 1955 and joined its board of directors in 1971.
Despite his busy practice, he still had time for charitable and civic work. In 1940, he opened a day nursery and health clinic for the children of Black workers in collaboration with the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Portland. From 1970-1976, he was the medical consultant to Oregon’s workmen’s compensation board, commuting daily to Salem even though he had retired from practice.
In the 1940s, Dr. Unthank was a major civil rights advocate, drawing attention to racial discrimination in jobs and housing. As head of the Emergency Advisory Council, he advocated for equal opportunities for wartime employees. As the first Black member of Portland’s City Club in 1943, he drew attention to Portland’s discriminatory practices. He co-founded the Portland Urban League, a civil rights and social services organization, in 1945. In 1953, Unthank played a substantial role in the passage of Oregon’s Civil Rights Bill, overturning the Oregon law banning interracial marriages.
Dr. DeNorval Unthank at the time of his retirement. Source: The Oregonian, November 30, 1970
The Oregonian of July 16, 2018, quoted Dr. Unthank’s personal philosophy: “I have always felt in my life that a person should set his own goals and then head toward them. You may have some bad experiences along the way, but if you’re determined you can make it.”
Some of Dr. Unthank Awards 1945-1975
1945 Progressive Democratic Club’s First Citizen award
1958 Doctor of the Year, Oregon Medical Society
1962 Citizen of the Year, Portland chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews
1969 dedication of Unthank Park
1971 University of Oregon distinguished citizen award; Metropolitan Human Relations Commissions plaque
1973 B’nai B’rith (Portland Chapter) Brotherhood Award
1975 Concordia College Citizenship Award
The extraordinary life of Dr. DeNorval Unthank deserves a book-length biography. But alas, this does not yet exist.
By
Patricia Sanders
Title image: Dr. DeNorval Unthank, 1950. Courtesy OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Oregon State University. “Portrait of DeNorval Unthank” Oregon Digital
This is part of Montavilla History Questions Answered, a series of history related articles. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post on this page.
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A — Actually, several notable people have lived in Montavilla, and I will introduce them in several articles, beginning with Annie Miner Peterson.
Photo of Annie Miner Peterson. Source: Iola Larson Collection, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians
Annie Peterson (1860-1939) is remembered for her contribution to our knowledge of Northwestern indigenous cultures. She was the last living speaker of the Miluk and Hanis languages. She also remembered and shared her memories of tribal history and lore of the indigenous peoples of the southern Oregon coast. Although she lived in the Coos Bay area most of her life, she resided in Montavilla for about a dozen years. Several accounts of her life have been published, most notably Lionel Youst’s 307-page biography. His title, She’s Tricky Like Coyote, is a translation of her Hanis name, ts’mii-xwn. (Luckily, the Multnomah County Library has copies.)
Annie was born in 1860 in a traditional village on Coos Bay’s South Slough. Her mother was of Hanis and Miluk (aka Coos) blood. The father Annie never knew was British. As White settlers started moving onto tribal lands, the U. S. government forced local indigenous peoples to relocate to the Yachats and then to the Siletz reservations. This is where Annie spent her early years. Conditions on the reservations were harsh. Many died from starvation and diseases. Annie did not attend school. She never learned to read or write. But she was a gifted linguist, and she picked up additional indigenous languages spoken on the reservation. She also learned many traditional crafts, such as basketry. She acquired survival skills such as foraging for local food. And, unlike many young people, she loved listening to the elders reciting their tribal histories and traditional stories. When she reached adolescence, she was sold, according to tribal custom, to her first husband.
Annie left the Siletz reservation in 1877. In 1880, she began living and working in White communities in the Coos Bay area. After enduring decades of poverty and traumatic marriages, her recently widowed friend Ida Wasson (1870-1966) convinced Annie that they should start anew in Portland. They took the new railroad line to the metropolis and found lodging in a boarding house somewhere in Portland. Annie, who was broke, was able to pay for her food and board by doing laundry for the owner. It was here that she met her fifth and final husband, the kindly Carl Peterson (1871-1939), a naturalized Swede.
Carl worked in a logging camp near Kelso, Washington, during the week, and, like other loggers, he liked to go to Portland on weekends to relax. There, he met Annie, fell in love, and asked her to be his wife. She said yes, but first, she needed to divorce her current husband, Charles Baker. She returned to Coos Bay and began the divorce process. Her ex-husband’s situation probably strengthened her case. He was in jail for smuggling alcohol into Oregon, which was then a dry state. Annie was granted a divorce on the grounds of cruelty. Oregon newspapers had followed the landmark Baker case; The Oregonian even reported the divorce.
The Morning Oregonian, January 7, 1918, page 7. Source: Historic Oregon Newspapers
Annie and Carl married in Vancouver, Washington, on October 15, 1918. Carl had bought a modest house in Montavilla on 74th Street (now 74th Avenue) between Glisan and Everett. The house has been replaced by a modern residence. At this time, Annie had not been discovered by anthropologists, so she and Carl lived a quiet life until at least April 1930, when they appeared in the 1930 census.
What was Annie’s and Carl’s life like in Montavilla? Fortunately, Annie’s granddaughter, Iola Aasen Larsen, lived with the couple from 1921 to 1923, and she described aspects of their lives to Annie’s biographer, Lionel Youst. Carl continued working at the lumber camp during the week and came home on weekends. On weekends, they would go for drives in Carl’s car and to movies, very likely at the Granada Theatre, which was just a block away from their home.
During the week, Annie often occupied herself with traditional skills she’d learned early in life. She was skilled at basketry, beadwork, and sewing. She also applied her foraging knowledge in the new suburban environment, foraging for serviceberries, blackberry shoots, salmonberries, nettles, and wild tubers in nearby Sullivan’s Gulch—where I-84 runs now—and other nearby locations. Her favorite food was fish, a coastal indigenous staple. For this, she had to find a local market. In the 1920s, there were two stores on Glisan Street that offered fish: Rupert’s Grocery Store and the Montavilla Meat Market, both an easy walk from her home. On weekdays Annie and Iola liked to go to vaudeville matinees downtown. Since Annie could not read, Iola said she read her newspapers cover-to-cover, and when attending movies, then still the silent type, Iola whispered the captions in Annie’s ear.
While still living in Montavilla, Annie and Carl liked to spend their brief summer vacations in Charleston on Coos Bay’s South Slough, the area where Annie was born. They moved to Charleston permanently at the beginning of the Great Depression when Carl had lost his job. They sold their Montavilla house and made their summer cabin their new permanent and final home. On the South Slough, Annie could gather seafood galore for free, and Carl found employment as a deep-sea fisherman.
Annie and Carl Peterson beside their Charleston house. Photo source: Iola Larson Collection, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians
On November 11, 1931, Annie testified in hearings held in North Bend regarding reparations for the lands taken from Coos County Indians and given to White settlers in the 1850s. Annie was then the second or third-oldest Coos Native still alive. She testified in the Hanis tongue about the boundaries of the Coos tribal land. She also described the harsh conditions of life on the reservations where she grew up. The food shortages. The public beatings of those who left and were captured. Annie broke down on the stand, and proceedings had to be halted. She did not live to see the partial restoration of Siletz tribal lands in 1980.
Annie’s life changed in the summer of 1933 when Professor Melville Jacobs of the University of Washington came knocking at her door.
Since the early twentieth century, anthropologists had been trying to understand the culture of Oregon’s indigenous peoples. Jacobs himself had been doing field research to document the language, culture, music, and oral traditions of the indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, there were few people by then who remembered the old ways or the old languages. Professor Jacobs must have been ecstatic when a group of Hanis Natives told him of a Miluk speaker in southern Oregon. He would discover that Annie Peterson, besides speaking Miluk and Hanis, was also a treasure trove of traditional lore.
Article about Annie Petersen in The Kennewick (Washington) Courier-Reporter, October 19, 1933 Source: Chronicling America
In 1933, Jacobs began recording Annie as she sang tribal songs and recited tribal stories she remembered in abundance. In 1934, he returned to Annie’s home in Charleston to continue recording Annie’s recitations, now using the portable electric recorder just invented by two University of Washington colleagues. The new recorder was battery-powered, allowing Jacobs to play back what Annie had just recorded.
Annie Miner Peterson reciting Coos stories for Melville Jacobs in 1934. Source Cascadia Weekly, April 16, 2008
Jacobs published many of the stories and songs in 1939 and 1940. Below is an example.
“Bluejay shaman,” a Coos myth as recited by Annie Peterson. Source: Coos Myth Texts (1940)
Annie Peterson was 73 and 74 when she recited the traditional stories. Because she retained them without the assistance of written records and because she was willing to share them, she saved them for posterity. PSU anthropology professor Douglas Deur called Peterson “the foremost source of ethnographic and linguistic information on the Coos and Coquille tribes” of southern Oregon. Annie had escaped the diseases that took many lives on the reservations, but she died of tuberculosis at age 83 on May 19, 1939, in her Charleston home. She was buried in the white buckskin dress that she had tanned, trimmed, and sewed. Her husband Carl died a few months later, also of tuberculosis.
By
Patricia Sanders
Acknowledgment: I am grateful to Peter Sv-gvs (Black Bear) Hatch, History & Archaeology Specialist, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, for sharing information with me about Annie Miner Peterson. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians website includes a short biography of Annie Miner Peterson.
Note: If you know of other Montavilla notables, please send me an email, and I’ll see what I can discover. ~Patricia Sanders~
Disclaimer: This article includes historical texts with terms for Native people that are considered derogatory. Its use here is necessary to provide the reader direct references and is not indicative of this publications use of language. Please direct any concerns around terms used in an article to editor@montavilla.net.
This is an installment of Montavilla History Questions Answered. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post.
Q – What were some typical Christmas gifts in Montavilla in the early 1900s?
Illustration from The Montavilla Times of December 19, 1929. Source: University of Oregon Knight Library, microfilm
A – With Christmas and Hanukkah just around the corner, the spirit of generosity is in the air, just as it was a hundred or more years ago in Montavilla. But where to find just the right item for the friends and relatives on your gift list? Luckily, Montavilla merchants ran ads in local newspapers with a myriad of suggestions.
In 1906, a shopper could head to Dan McMillan’s dry goods store on SE Stark Street (then Base Line Road) and find a variety of inexpensive gifts for all ages: toys and games for the tots, handkerchiefs, fancy collars, purses, and stationery for the ladies, hats, shirts, ties and suspenders for the gents, and fancy holiday candies and nuts for anyone, just to name a few.
Dan McMillan’s ad in the Beaver State Herald, December 21, 1906. Source: Historical Oregon Newspapers
Stark Street was not the only place to shop for gifts. Merchants on NE Glisan Street also advertised a variety of suggestions. Grocery store owner Frank Sperger, of course, stocked food and confectionaries for holiday meals, but in the 1906 ad below, he boldfaced a Perfection Oil Heater as a useful present. Did this new store owner get a deal on heaters?
Frank Sperger’s ad and a photo of his grocery store appeared in the Beaver State Herald of December 21, 1906. The store was at the corner of NE Glisan Street and NE 79th Avenue (then Villa Avenue and Ebey Street).
In the 1920s, Montavilla merchants advertised a wide array of gift suggestions, from the luxurious to the practical, from high prices to low. They were also recommending products of modern technologies, such as cameras, record players, and radios.
The Dickson drugstore at the corner of Stark and 80th was a Montavilla institution run by members of the Dickson family from 1910 until 2004. In 1920, owner Leland V. Dickson ran a Christmas ad in the Oregon Daily Journal with gift suggestions ranging from perfume to flashlights to Kodak cameras and phonograph records.
Dickson Drug Company ad in The Oregon Daily Journal, December 11, 1920. Source: Historic Oregon Newspapers
For a wide array of inexpensive gifts, Montavilla shoppers could head for Gertrude Hamlin’s Montavilla Variety Store on Glisan Street near 80th. Toys, for example, cost only 5 to 98 cents.
Montavilla Variety Store ad in The Montavilla Times of December 16, 1926. Source: University of Oregon Knight Library, microfilm
In 1926, Louis H. Balsiger, owner of the Jonesmore Pharmacy at Glisan and 71st, ran a short but eclectic list of gift ideas: stationery, toilet sets, candy, and leather goods.
Jonesmore Pharmacy ad (left) from the December 16, 1926 edition of the Montavilla Times includes toilet sets referring to a popular grooming item. An example of this item appeared in a Klamath Falls Evening Herald ad of December 8, 1938. Sources: University of Oregon Knight Library microfilm and Historic Oregon Newspapers
Balsiger ended his gift suggestions with radios, a new technology in the 1920s. Radio broadcasting had only recently arrived in Portland, with radio stations launched by the Oregonian and the Oregon Journal in 1922. (Earlier radio broadcasts had been available by telephone.) With broadcast radio, owners could listen to news and entertainment on radio sets in their own homes. In 1927, a store specializing in radios opened in Montavilla. There was no guessing about its merchandise since the store took the form of a 1927 radio.
The Hall Spiral Antenna Company radio-shaped store (left) and an ad for a console radio (right) in The Montavilla Times of November 3, 1927. Source: Historic Oregon Newspapers
Telephones, another newish technology, could make a thoughtful gift, according to the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company in a 1929 ad.
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph ad in The Montavilla Times of December 5, 1929. Source: University of Oregon Knight Library, microfilm. Montavilla Variety Store ad in The Montavilla Times of December 16, 1926. Source: University of Oregon Knight Library, microfilm
Frederick L. Howard, owner of The Howard Hardware and Paint Company at the corner of 76th and Glisan, thought an Electrical Christmas was perfect. He recommended electrical utensils, which would “save housewives many hours of work.”
Howard Hardware and Paint Company ad in The Montavilla Times of December 16, 1926. Source: University of Oregon Knight Library, microfilm
The Montavilla Times reported in its December 22, 1927 edition that money was tight at that moment, yet Christmas shopping was greater than ever before. Why? Well, there was more advertising. But was it also because that year, every store featured beautiful lights and decorations?
For those who could afford expensive gifts following the stock-market crash of October 28, 1929, jeweler Gottlieb Brugger stocked “gifts that last.” He had one-of-a-kind items—like the $50 watch a customer bought for her husband. But he also offered inexpensive New Haven Alarm Clocks.
Gottlieb Brugger ad in The Montavilla Times of December 19, 1929. Source: University of Oregon Knight Library, microfilm
As the U.S. headed into the Depression, newspaper ads more often highlighted inexpensive gifts, like the items in this 1931 Christmas ad by Leland Dickson. He boldfaced mostly low-cost items and listed “popularly priced” items—such as clocks, watches, and purses—in smaller type at the bottom of the ad.
Dickson Drug Company ad in The Montavilla Times of December 18, 1931. Source: University of Oregon Knight Library, microfilm
Should a husband not know what to give his wife, Santa—or rather Amy Bauer, owner of Bauer’s Beauty Shop at Glisan and 78th— had the answer: a permanent wave, which was quite the rage at this time.
Bauer’s Beauty Shop ad in The Montavilla Times of December 18, 1931 and an example of a popular permed style in a Lipman, Wolfe and Company ad in The Sunday Oregonian of December 4, 1932. Sources: University of Oregon Knight Library microfilm and Historical Oregon Newspapers.
If a $3.95 permanent was too expensive, how about a three-pound box of hand-dipped chocolates offered at the Granada Sweet Shop on Glisan for only $1.00? Or hosiery from Herman R. Rothenberger’s Stark Street shoe store for 50 cents to $1.00.
Shoe store owner H. R. Rothenberger’s ad in the December 18, 1931 edition of The Montavilla Times. Source: University of Oregon Knight Library microfilm
Here ends the story of Montavilla merchants’ suggestions for appropriate gifts between 1906 and 1931. The editions of The Montavilla Times available on the Knight Library microfilm end with the December 25, 1931 publication, even though this newspaper continued until 1937. However, this sampling of Montavilla newspapers’ Christmas ads from 1906 until 1931 shows what local merchants thought would appeal to their customers. By the 1920s, products of recent technologies, like radio, telephone, and electrical kitchen appliances, made it into the Christmas gift mix.
By
Patricia Sanders
This is an installment of Montavilla History Questions Answered. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post.
Promotion: Saturday, December 21st is the Merry Montavilla Soiree with many holiday shopping options and events. There is still time to find your holiday gifts in a Montavilla shop, no shipping required.
A – On the eve of Montavilla’s 100-year-anniversary celebration in 1989, Marguerite O’Donnell-Barnes told Oregonian reporter Suzanne Richards that her grandfather said, “No God-fearing man would go to Montavilla on a Saturday night.” It’s true that in Montavilla’s early days, the 1890s and the early 20th century, it may have looked like something from a Wild West movie. It still had dirt roads, plank sidewalks, saloons (until Montavilla finally went dry in 1905), blacksmith shops, and horse-drawn vehicles. But was it as rowdy as the O’Donnell-Barnes statement implies?
In the early days, Montavillans worked to meet the community’s basic needs, such as a school, community meeting spaces, churches, a steady water supply, and better streetcar service. They also advocated for road and sidewalk upgrades. By 1901, they also sought help maintaining law and order. So, that year, the Montavilla Sub-Board of Trade campaigned for a Justice of the Peace and a Constable.
What kinds of crimes might have been on their minds? We can get some answers from Portland newspapers since they reported on neighborhood crimes. The Oregonian of August 13, 1896, for example, reported that in Montavilla burglaries were so frequent that residents had to sleep “with one eye open, and a shotgun within easy reach.” The thieves came at night with buggies for the loot. William DeVeny (1852-1918), Montavilla’s Buffalo-Bill-look-alike, was determined to stop the thievery. Although he was just a foot doctor by trade, he billed himself as a law-and-order man. (In his 1915 autobiography, he would describe his earlier peace-keeping efforts in the Midwest.) So, one night, he stood watch and caught a pair of thieves in the act. He let them go with an order to leave Montavilla at once and never come back.
Illustration of William DeVeny (the man with the long hair) apprehending a criminal in Cincinnati, Kansas in 1887 from DeVeny’s autobiography, “The Establishment of Law and Order on the Western Plains.”
Besides thefts, Montavilla also had a counterfeiter. In 1900, fake coins—more valuable back then, of course—were circulating in Montavilla. The Oregonian of April 30, 1901, reported that Secret Service officers had found dies for making fake half-dollars, quarters, and nickels under a loose board in a building on Base Line Road (now Stark Street). The current occupant, H. W. Lang, publisher of the Villa Observer newspaper, said he knew nothing about the equipment, and the Oregonian did not mention an arrest.
Thefts continued to be reported in the Portland press in 1905 and 1906: J. J. Herman’s stump-removal machine, L. Scott’s Jersey cow, and several house burglaries. Still, Montavilla did not have its own police officer until about 1909, when William W. Post (1867-1948) was appointed. Police Captain Joseph F. Keller (1880-1945) considered the Montavilla beat a dull one, but on June 30, 1912, Officer Post noticed three men holding up automobile passengers at gunpoint and had already shot a woman passenger. Post apprehended one of the three thieves, Don Brundridge, at gunpoint, but the two others fled. They were tracked to downtown Portland and later arrested. Captain Keller recommended that Patrolman Post receive an award for bravery. I found no report on whether he actually received it, but he did get his photo in the Oregonian.
Patrol Officer W. W. Post is recommended for a medal. Source: The Oregonian, July 3, 1912
Of course, having a police officer on duty did not end criminal activity in Montavilla. Portland newspapers continued to report crimes there. Dickson Drug Store, for example, endured periodic merchandise thefts: cameras worth $200 in 1914, 600 cigars in 1918, and copious quantities of tobacco and cigars in 1921. Even the Montavilla School was targeted by thieves who ransacked the building and stole about $10 in change.
Sometimes, criminal activities were thwarted by police or citizens. On April 30, 1917, for example, robbers broke into the West Oregon Lumber Company on Stark Street. When trying to break into a safe, the thieves’ nitroglycerine failed, so they could not open the safe door. When Patrolman Post heard the explosion, he hurried to the scene, but by this time, the burglars had fled.
Another robbery failed again on September 3, 1919. Two armed men entered the Montavilla Savings Bank at the corner of Stark and 80th and demanded cash. The teller and cashier refused. When the bank’s bookkeeper threatened them with a gun, the robbers fled in their getaway car.
Besides thefts, speeding automobiles also aroused Montavilla’s ire as they gradually replaced horses in the early 20th century. In October 1902, for example, a car was clocked at an amazing 40 miles an hour. After speed limits were passed, police officers were sometimes assigned to arrest violators speeding on Base Line Road.
The three Montavilla Savings Bank employees who foiled an attempted robbery. Photo source: The Oregonian, Sept. 4, 1919
Montavilla Savings Bank (now the Ya Hala restaurant). Photo courtesy of the Architectural Heritage Center
Any crime is deplorable, of course, but when Montavilla was just three years old, the community was truly shocked by a murder that took place on a Montavilla street. The victim was the beautiful 18-year-old Birdie Morton, who was shot by her former sweetheart, Martin Burdette Wolfe (often misspelled “Wolf”). The murder set off a manhunt that lasted for nearly 20 years. The deed and the efforts to find Wolfe and bring him to justice were reported in detail in Portland and other Oregon newspapers. The deed took place on October 13, 1892. Birdie and her younger sister had just left their family’s home and were walking to a prayer meeting. Burdette, as he was usually called in the press, had learned that Birdie was going out with other men. He approached Birdie and demanded that she walk with him. When she refused, he grabbed her arm, but she pulled back. Enraged, he pulled a revolver from his pocket and shot her in the chest.
“In Arms Against Autos” proclaimed this headline in the October 6, 1902 The Oregonian.
Seeing what was happening, Birdie’s sister ran back home to get her father. By the time he got to Birdie, she had been shot and was lying on the street. He carried Birdie home and called a doctor. The bullet had just missed Birdie’s heart, and at first, there was hope she might live. Believing this, the Morton family did not intend to press charges. The two families were friends and had approved of the former Birdie-Burdette relationship. On October 21, however, Birdie died of sepsis. Family and friends mourned her death, and she was buried in Montavilla’s Brainard Cemetery.
The Morton and Wolfe families must have been shocked by the deadly deed. So was attorney Clarence S. Hannum, who until recently had been training Wolfe to be a lawyer. When interviewed by an Oregonian reporter, Hannum described Wolfe as industrious and reliable “with no bad habits of any sort.” At the beginning of 1892, Wolfe was a young man with promise. By October, he was wanted for murder and reportedly on the run.
Portrait of Burdette Wolfe (here spelled Wolf). Source: Oregonian, October 19, 1892
The search for Wolfe lasted nearly 20 years and was tracked in the press. Rewards offered for his capture prompted the continued search. Early on, he was reportedly sighted in the Blue Mountains, then in Klamath County. In March 1893, a search party tracked him near Coos Bay. In 1896, he was reportedly killed by a posse. Then, in 1897, he was spotted alive in Arizona. In 1901, he was supposedly in Peru. The last reported sighting was in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. This report was page-one news in the Oregon Journal of February 25, 1911. The informant was an unnamed man who said he had worked with Wolfe in Brazil and then traveled with him to Calcutta. Portland authorities believed they would be able to extradite Wolfe. I found no articles showing they succeeded. Finally, the search was at an end.
So, was Montavilla a wild-west town? I guess that depends on your definition.
By
Patricia Sanders
Title Illustration from W. C. Tuttle’s “The Loot of the Lazy A” in Short Stories Magazine, 1926. Source: Wikimedia
This is an installment of Montavilla History Questions Answered. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post.
A – This is a tricky question and one I’ve puzzled over for several years. When you look closely at the 8600 SE Stark Street building, you can see it was built in stages.
I haven’t been able to date all the components, but the earliest one is the two-story building at the corner of Stark and 86th Avenue. If you enter the Marketplace here, you are standing in what was the Dehen Knitting Mills company, a manufacturer of knitted clothing. Just imagine this space filled with busy workers and the clattering of knitting and sewing machines.
Delving into the history of the Dehen company, a fascinating story of a German immigrant and his American family unfolded. The story began with Wilhelm Peter Isenberg (1879-1955), later known as William P. Dehen.
He was born in the beautiful southern German city of Trier, where wool textile production dates back to Roman times. Both his paternal and maternal families were engaged in the manufacturing and sale of knitted wool garments. In 1920, Dehen told a reporter for Olympia’s Washington Standard that, as a youth, he had worked in his father’s knit-goods factory and had studied textile technology at Germany’s prestigious Reutlingen University.
He immigrated to the U.S. in 1903 and—again, according to the Standard—brought the first fully automatic knitting machine to the National Knitting Mills in Milwaukee. By 1905, he had Anglicized his first name to William, but he kept his surname until about 1914. Then, perhaps because of building anti-German sentiment on the eve of World War I, he adopted his mother’s family name, Dehen.
According to Dehen’s grandchildren, Liz Artaiz and Mike Dehen, someone encouraged William to seek his fortune on the West Coast. By 1906, he was working for a knitting mill in San Francisco, but shortly after he arrived, it was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. In 1907, he and his brother Mathias established their own knitting company in southern California. By 1909, he was back in San Francisco working as a superintendent for the Acme Knitting Company.
William Dehen (foreground) working at a knitting machine at an unknown location. Source: TEDX talk by Benjamin Dehen-Artaiz
In San Francisco, William met Celia A. Schmitt (1885-1970), the daughter of a German immigrant born near Trier. Celia helped run the knitting companies they established in Seattle and Portland between 1915 and 1920. The couple had four children: Henry (b. 1910), Rosemary (b. 1912), Alvira (b. 1914), and William (b. 1922). All except Rosemary, who died tragically in a fire in 1915, would work in the Montavilla factory.
1925 Dehen Knitting Mills building at the corner of Stark and 86th. Photo source: Kelli Vinther, Monticello Antique Marketplace owner
According to Dehen family descendants, William and Celia were destitute when they moved to Portland (probably in 1921), so William had to work as a night watchman at Jantzen Knitting Mills. By 1922, they had opened Dehen Knitting Mills on Stark Street, probably in a preexisting building. In 1925, they commissioned a purpose-built, two-story factory at the corner of Stark and 86th Avenue (which is now the northwest end of the Monticello marketplace). The Oregon Daily Journal of May 9, 1925, reported that the new mill had two floors for production and a basement for storing yarn and other knitting supplies. The five employees produced sports sweaters and bathing suits on German knitting machines.
The Dehen family (Celia, William, and Henry, back; Alvira and Bill) standing in front of the 1925 Dehen building at Stark and SE 86th. Photo courtesy of Dehen 1920
The Dehen mill produced a variety of knitted wool garments––sweaters, bathing suits, underwear, dresses, skirts, and jackets––and sold them to wholesale and retail customers. By 1928, the Dehen company had 15 employees.
In 1927, the company acquired a Jacquard circular knitting machine specifically designed for wool bathing suits.
Dehen ad for a worsted sweater coat. Source: The Sunday Oregonian, February 21, 1926
Woolen bathing suits were popular in the 1920s. Photo source: ad in the Roseburg New Review, July 1, 1926
The Dehen business continued to grow. In 1927, they added a one-story building behind the 1925 mill. (This still exists on the south side of the antique mall.) By this time, the Dehen mill had 26 knitting machines and 24 sewing machines to produce sweaters, bathing suits, underwear, dresses, skirts, athletic suits, and shirts.
1927 addition to the Dehen Knitting Mill. Photo source: The Sunday Oregonian, January 1, 1928
After the stock-market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression, the Dehen company fell on challenging times. Customers were unable to pay for products. The bank foreclosed. But the business would continue. According to William’s son Bill, his father and a few friends liberated some knitting machines and yarn. With these supplies, the family continued to produce knit goods in the basement of their new home in Portland’s Goose Hollow neighborhood. They sold them in a storefront at 730 SW 10th Avenue (now the Galleria building). At one point, they even had to sell their goods door-to-door in Gresham, sometimes trading for food.
Despite the lean Depression years, the business survived and ultimately thrived. William and Celia lived to see the company turn around and succeed. Today, Jim Artaiz, husband of Dehen’s granddaughter Liz, runs the Dehen 1920 in Portland, producing high-quality knit goods. For more on the company’s history, you can watch the Portland TEDX talk by Benjamin Dehen-Artaiz, great-grandson of William Dehen, on YouTube. You can also see the current line of knit products on the Dehen 1920 website. Additionally, you can visit their retail store at 1040 NE 44th Avenue to see some of their knit goods and even see the current mill with its knitting and sewing machines.
So, what happened to the Dehen Mill Building? When the Dehens left in 1934, the Coast Printing Company (later the Coast Salesbook Company) moved in. This company was purchased in 1968 by Ennis Business Forms, a national corporation. In 1999, Kelli Vinther purchased the building and transformed it into the Monticello Antique Marketplace. At some point during these decades, the owners built additions to the Dehen Knitting Mill to create the antique mall and Monti’s restaurant complex that is the Montavilla institution of today.
This is part of a new segment at Montavilla News called Montavilla History Questions Answered. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post on this page.
Neighborhood news site focused on buildings and changing businesses
