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.

Q – What were some typical Christmas gifts in Montavilla in the early 1900s?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Telephones, another newish technology, could make a thoughtful gift, according to the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company in a 1929 ad.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Q – Was Montavilla ever “a wild west” town?

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

Q – Why are there so many misaligned streets in Montavilla?

A – I understand your puzzlement. I wondered the same thing when I moved to Montavilla. It was confusing. As a driver, I’d have to make two turns instead of driving straight ahead on the same street. As a pedestrian, I could not cross from corner to corner. The map above shows one example of Montavilla’s many jig-joggy streets.

It would be easy to blame this on poor city planning. But it’s not. It’s one of those quirks of history. It’s because of how Montavilla developed, one subdivision at a time. There was no county plan to conform to, and the properties developers purchased were not of a uniform size.

What is now the Montavilla neighborhood was once Indigenous land, and then, with the arrival of Europeans, it became farmland. As the city of Portland grew, more housing was needed. To meet this demand, real estate developers bought up farm properties and created subdivisions.

The earliest subdivision in today’s Montavilla was Mount Tabor Villa Addition—which gave Montavilla its name. It was platted (or planned) in 1889 as a symmetrical grid of blocks divided into lots and streets. Base Line Road (now SE Stark Street) marked the south boundary, and the north boundary ended at the future Glisan Street. Since there were no other subdivisions in the area, street alignment was a non-issue.

In 1891, a new subdivision, Kinzel Park, was created immediately south of Mount Tabor Villa. It, too, is a symmetrical grid of blocks and streets. But the developers did not align the streets with those already established in Mount Tabor Villa and the adjacent subdivision, Mount Tabor Villa Annex of 1890.

Why didn’t the Kinzel Park developers just shift the grid a bit to align with the existing streets in Mt. Tabor Villa? If they had, the subdivision would consist of blocks of varying sizes and two more streets, resulting in reduced profit.

The layout of Mount Tabor Villa and Kinzel Park streets is one example of why some Montavilla streets do not line up. As developers continued subdividing Montavilla, it evolved into a patchwork of 101 tracts–by my count—with more misaligned streets. It’s just surprising that we don’t have even more jogging streets than we do.

~ Patricia Sanders ~

Correction: A previous version of this article referred to jaywalking to indicate crossing out of alignment with street corners. It is not against the law to cross at these intersections. Montavilla News regrets the implication that term implied.

By

Patricia Sanders

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.