Q – What are the metal rings in old Montavilla curbs?

A – Ringbolts, as these were originally called, were placed in Portland sidewalk curbs in the early 20th century as hitches for horses to stop them from running off. Individual horse owners needed hitches for private use. Merchants needed them even more for home deliveries of fuel supplies, ice, groceries, etc.

The iron ringbolts had the advantage of being more durable than the old wooden hitching posts and racks, which could decay. They also offered alternatives to the unfortunate use of trees as tethers. Tree-tethered horses liked to snack on tree bark, often damaging valued shade trees. Tree-hitching became illegal in Portland in 1877, yet as the Oregonian article below shows, it was still a problem in 1889.

And still a problem in 1905, despite the threat of arrest or fines.

Ringbolts became mandatory in new sidewalk curbs in 1902 when Portland City Engineer William B. Chase ordered concrete contractors to embed one ringbolt for every 25 feet of curb. Portland ordinances specified the exact dimensions and form of the ringbolts. (This law would apply in Montavilla after it was annexed to Portland in 1906.)

Today, we can see only the top portion of the ring bolts, as the lower part is embedded in concrete.

As a means of secure attachments, ringbolts have a long history. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies 1599 as the earliest written example of the term ringbolt used to describe a means of fastening ships to walls.

Ringbolts, by the way, are still manufactured today for nautical uses.

When automobiles replaced horses and hitching rings were no longer needed, they came to be seen by some as a public nuisance. In August 1938, for example, a man stumbled over a hitching ring in Portland and fractured his ankle bone. Portland City Attorney Lyman E. Lattourette told the City Council that these relics posed a public safety hazard and should be removed. He advised homeowners to bid their rusty hitching rings farewell and to chisel them away. One Oregonian reader, Spencer Akers, objected. To him, they were priceless antiques and links to the past.

But others saw them as useless. Oregon Journal columnist Dick Fagan, for example, ridiculed ringbolts in his “Mill Ends” columns of the 1960s. He called them “the most useless things in the city.” In 1967, he came across a jeep and a motorboat hitched to the rings.

As Fagan was proclaiming ringbolts useless, Portland contractors were removing the hitching rings when replacing or repairing curbs. The tide of destruction shifted in 1978 when a Ladd’s Addition homeowner, Paul C. Paulsen, objected to the removal of his horse ring. To him, they were not useless. They were pleasant reminders of the past.

City Commissioner Connie McCready was also alarmed to learn about the ringbolt removals. She created a policy allowing homeowners to request replacement of the rings after curb work was completed, with a $5 fee to cover the additional labor. Thanks to Paulse and McCready, Portland is one of the few cities with an abundance of antique ringbolts.

Portland’s reputation as a city of many ringbolts was augmented by Scott Wayne Indiana’s  Portland Horse Project, launched in 2005. At that time, he began attaching miniature toy horses to ringbolts in Portland’s older neighborhoods, where embedded ringbolts in curbs abounded. The idea caught on, and individual Portlanders began attaching toy animals of various sorts to their own ringbolts. It became a signature Portland idiosyncrasy. Today, Indiana’s Portland Horse Project Facebook page has 5.1 thousand followers. He even has a short video on his website showing you how to tether your own small creature to a ring (https://www.facebook.com/PortlandHorseProject). For more examples, you can find them in Scott’s book, Portland Horse Project.

End note: Do you have a miniature toy animal hitched to your ring bolt? If so, please share a photo of it with us.

By

Patricia Sanders

Title image of Toy horses tethered to a ringbolt in Montavilla Photo by Thomas Tilton

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.

Q – Did Montavilla ever have streetcar service?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 – 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.