Did you know that Alice Applegate Sargent was the first American woman to receive a full military funeral?  Her name should sound familiar. She was the daughter of Lindsey Applegate, who with his brother Jesse, created the Applegate Trail. 

Alice led an unconventional life.  After growing up in the toll house on the first toll road over the Siskiyous, she married Herbert Howland Sargent, a newly commissioned West Point graduate.  As a military wife, she accompanied Herbert on all his assignments–forts, teaching positions, and active war duty in Cuba and the Philippines during the Spanish American War.  Herbert by then was Col. Sargent.  He authored 3 highly acclaimed books on military science and became friends with Theodore Roosevelt.  Alice chronicled her experiences in a memoir, ‘Following the Flag.” 

In 1911 the Sargents temporarily retired to Medford and became active in civic affairs. Herbert served as a Medford City Councilor, Alice as head of the Republican Club.  Then World War 1 recalled Herbert to active duty, and Alice, of course, followed him.

After the War, the Sargents retired to Jacksonville, becoming the 2nd owners of the Nunan House.  They called it Casa Grande.  They again became involved in civic affairs.

In 1920, Herbert led the initial attempt to stop the Jackson County seat’s being moved from Jacksonville to Medford, but it proved to be a Pyrrhic victory.  He died in 1921 so did not live to see it come to pass in 1927.  Herbert was buried in the Jacksonville Cemetery with full military honors.  Alice had the stone wall along Cemetery Road built in his memory.

When Alice joined her husband in the Jacksonville Cemetery in 1934, her years of service were also recognized by the Army.  The Spanish American and “Great War” veterans gave her a full military funeral—the first such rites ever accorded a woman.

We knew that the Von Helms family, the original owners of Jacksonville’s 1860 Table Rock Billiard Saloon and the lovely 1878 Italianate style home at the corner of South Oregon and Pine streets, suffered several family tragedies.  Three daughters died in epidemics.  Another was murdered, but we’ve only recently come across more details.  Not that we would gossip, but….

It seems that daughter Anna had married Frederick B. Martin, a salesman for the Pacific Biscuit Company.  He was their Portland representative; she ran a fashionable Portland boarding house, the Ella, at the corner of Ella and Washington streets.  Anna’s older sister Emma helped run the boarding house. 

Reportedly, the Martins’ marriage was “stormy.”  When Martin was “discharged” from the biscuit company in 1906, he abandoned Anna and left for California.  When he returned to Portland at the end of the year, Anna refused to live with him or reconcile.  Martin blamed his sister-in-law Emma for interfering.

On January 6, 1907, Martin went to the Ella and gained admission to his wife’s apartments.  There he shot both Anna and Emma then went to the basement where he killed himself.  Anna was wounded; Emma died.  What transpired before the shooting is unknown since Anna was in hysterics.

Anna eventually remarried.  Both Anna and Emma are buried in the Helms family plot in the Odd Fellows section of Jacksonville’s Pioneer Cemetery.

“Some of us wait for a “Plan B.” Artenicia experienced a “Plan B” life becoming an unanticipated pioneer and an unexpected 85-year-old movie star.

In 1851, Artenicia Riddle was happily settled in Springfield, Illinois, married to John Chapman, boasting a 1-year-old son when her husband suddenly died—5 days before her parents were leaving for Oregon!  As a 21-year-old widow with a baby, she had few choices so scrambled to gather provisions and join them in the journey across the Oregon Trail.  Her father William Riddle settled what we know as Riddle, Oregon.

In 1854, Artenicia married widower William Merriman, a blacksmith, wagon maker, and agriculturalist.  Those skills were much in demand in Southern Oregon and the couple moved to the Rogue Valley in 1857, settling 2 miles north of Jacksonville, where they raised 15 more children. 

When the Medford Commercial Club learned that the Jackson County Exhibit at San Francisco’s 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition was considered “bland,” they commissioned a film to showcase the virtues of Southern Oregon. The story, highlighting the social and cultural life of the valley, starred Broadway actress, Grace Fiero, wife of wealthy local orchardist Conrad Fiero (owner of Mon Desir).  In the film, Grace visited some of the Valley’s pioneers.  Artenicia was one of them, and she bought a new bonnet for the occasion. 

The film, the first feature film made in Oregon, had a brief run in Medford before being shown at the Exposition to wild acclaim!

Artenicia died 2 years later having experienced gas cook stoves, electric lights, and automobiles—far cries from the dutch ovens, tallow candles, and wagons of the pioneer times she talked about in Grace’s “moving picture.” 

In 1896 a group of French settlers arrived in Jacksonville intent on establishing a large-scale grape and wine industry. One of these individuals, Francois Loran, was granted the parcel of land located at 860 Hill Street where he constructed the initial box house that still stands on the site. In 1918, the property was acquired by Auguste Petard, another Frenchman and winemaker. Petard had come to America in the late 1890s to make his fortune mining gold—only to find he was 50 years too late. He was headed for the Yukon when he stumbled across Jacksonville.

He purchased a claim at the head of Rich Gulch and again tried mining—constructing the irrigation ditch that bears his name. He mined enough gold to acquire additional property including the Hill Street site, and again turned to grape growing and winemaking. Petard, with his wife Marie and their sons, farmed about 20 acres, selling most of their grapes to other winemakers while producing enough vin ordinaire for the family. However, Petard was again a victim of timing. The 1919 Volstead Act prohibited the production and consumption of alcohol, and in 1922, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union accused the Petards of making and selling “bootleg wine.”

The sheriff confiscated 600+ gallons of wine (over $4,000 worth) and poured it out. The 79-year-old Auguste was fined $75 and barely escaped a jail sentence. The Petards had to content themselves with growing table grapes—although there may have been a barrel or 2 of wine produced on the side….

Did you know that Ben Johnson Mountain in the Applegate is named for a Black pioneer?  Historically, Southern Oregon has had only a small population of Black residents so it’s remarkable that a local mountain landmark is named for a Black man!  In fact, when Ben Johnson lived near Ruch in the 1860s, the state’s “exclusion laws” made it technically illegal for a Black to reside in Oregon.

Johnson had been born into slavery in Alabama in 1834. In 1853, he had crossed the plains with an ox team, making his way to Uniontown, Oregon as a freed slave. Uniontown, founded by Theodoric Cameron, was at the mouth of the Little Applegate River during Southern Oregon’s 1800s mining era.  Johnson worked for Cameron but by 1868-69 he was also prospecting and had built his own blacksmith shop at the base of the mountain that now bears his name. Johnson was known as a skilled blacksmith and accommodated miners by sharpening their tools. He could read and write and was respected by the community.

It appears that part of the West’s attraction for Johnson was another freed slave, Amanda Gardner.  She had also come west in 1853 with a Deckard family who had settled in the Albany area.  Although freed, Amanda had cared for her former mistress until her death. By 1870 Johnson had married Amanda and moved to Albany where he continued his blacksmith trade.  

Johnson’s history, and that of the mountain that bears his name, had been lost for over 100 years.  Dedicated research by Jan Wright, Southern Oregon Historical Society Archivist, uncovered Ben Johnson’s story. Today you can hike Ben Johnson Mountain, a 4,500 foot peak in the Rogue River National Forest portion of the Siskiyous, about 10 miles southwest of Jacksonville.  A trail head that can be reached from the Applegate’s Cantrall-Buckley Park leads to a steep 1.1-mile trail with aerial views of the Rogue Valley and eye-catching cityscapes.

We would like to thank Jan Wright, Southern Oregon Historical Society Archivist, for the research that uncovered Ben Johnson’s history. 

The Italianate style home at 475 N. 5th Street was built for Benjamin Franklin Dowell, named for his grandmother’s uncle, Benjamin Franklin. Dowell served as prosecuting attorney for Oregon’s 1st Judicial District and as U.S. District Attorney. For 14 years he owned the Oregon Sentinel newspaper, the first newspaper in the Pacific Northwest to support the abolition of slavery and the first to nominate Ulysses S. Grant for president. The is one of the earliest Italianate style homes built in Oregon. Constructed in 1861, it may also have been the first home in Jacksonville to be built of brick. Most homes of the period had wood burning stoves for heat, but this distinctive home has 4 fireplaces—one of black onyx and 3 of marble. The marble probably came from Dowell’s own marble quarry on Williams Creek. That same marble was also used for the porch steps and all the window sills.

Did you know that Oregon had the nation’s first female governor? And it was 3 ½ years before Oregon women gained the right to vote? The woman was Carrie (aka Carolyn/Caralyn) B. Shelton. She was acting governor of Oregon for one weekend – 9 a.m. Saturday, February 27, through 10 a.m. Monday, March 1, 1909. It seems that the outgoing governor, George Earle Chamberlain, had been elected to the Senate and had to leave for Washington, D.C., before his term was over if he was to make it to D.C. in time to be sworn in with the rest of the freshman class of senators. Arriving late would make him the last man on the roster in terms of seniority. The incoming governor, Frank W. Benson, had gotten sick and couldn’t assume office early. So Chamberlain left his 32-year-old secretary in charge. For a weekend, Shelton, a woman who couldn’t legally cast a ballot, possessed the power to issue pardons, veto bills and sign executive orders. And in another wrinkle to the story, in 1926 Shelton married Chamberlain, her longtime boss and mentor, making them the first and only pair of former governors in U.S. history to wed.

You may be aware that Cornelius Beekman, Jacksonville’s wealthiest and most prominent pioneer, was a philanthropist, but did you know that his daughter Carrie followed in his footsteps?  March is Women’s History Month so Historic Jacksonville, Inc. is sharing the stories of local women, many of them previously untold. 

You may have heard how Cornelius gave money to build schools and churches.  Carrie initially did things on a more personal level, even after she moved to Portland in 1931.  For example, she financially cared for those who worked for the Beekman family until her death in 1959; she funded a “heating plant,” “pew cushions,” “well repair,” and periodically the minister’s salary at Jacksonville’s historic Presbyterian Church.  

But Carrie Beekman is also the one who preserved the family history.  While her brother Ben saw that the 1863 Beekman Bank remained intact as a museum during his lifetime, it was Carrie who deeded the Bank and all its contents to the Oregon Historical Society following Ben’s death, along with $10,000 in Ben’s memory.  It was Carrie who donated the Jacksonville Reservoir to the City of Jacksonville and the property between the Presbyterian Church and the manse to the Church.  It was Carrie who set aside the bulk of her estate for the University of Oregon to establish the Beekman Professorship of Pacific and Northwest and History in honor of her father and brother.  It was the first endowed chair at the University.  And it was Carrie who deeded the Beekman House and its contents to the University of Oregon upon her own passing. 

Cornelius C. Beekman came to Jacksonviille in 1853 as an express rider for Cram Rogers & Company, carrying gold, mail, and newspapers over the Siskiyous to Yreka 2 to 3 times a week—a 67 mile journey by horse or mule. When Cram Rogers went belly up in 1856, he purchased their horses and corral and opened Beekman’s Express at the southwest corner of California and 3rd streets in Jacksonville, a site he shared with Dr. Charles Brooks’ Drugstore.

A large safe that he bought to store the miners’ gold made his office the oldest financial institution north of San Francisco and the oldest bank in the Pacific Northwest. When he became a Wells Fargo agent in 1863, he constructed his second bank building cattycornered across the street. Shortly thereafter, his old building became the Express Saloon until 1868, then the Pioneer Bit House which was subsequently renamed The Eagle Sample Rooms. The original building was destroyed in the fire of 1874. The “Express Office” now at that location is a reconstruction.

Did you know that Cornelius C. Beekman, probably Jacksonville’s wealthiest and most prominent pioneer, was also a benevolent Santa Claus? 

You may know that Beekman was a prominent businessman and public servant. He had banking, mining, and real estate interests, as well as multiple other investments. He also served on the town’s school board; was a town trustee and mayor; donated land for churches, schools, and a library; was drafted as a candidate for Governor of Oregon; and served as a Regent of the University of Oregon. 

But Beekman looked at the “smaller picture” as well as the bigger one. When two local boys wanted to be part of the Presbyterian Church’s Christmas Eve celebration but lacked appropriate attire, a 1913 newspaper noted that Banker Beekman bought both of them new suits so that they could participate in the Christmas pageant.  We can’t speak for their recitations, but they certainly looked “spiffy”!

Today we’re using our imagination to visit a residence no longer on the map—the home of David Linn, one of the town’s most prolific early builders.  Born in Guernsey County, Ohio, in 1826, Linn was a self-supporting carpenter and cabinet-maker at age 14 and an active contractor and builder by 25.  Arriving in Jacksonville in the spring of 1852, Linn was instrumental in transforming the mining camp of Table Rock into the town of Jacksonville. During his active career, he built a fort, public and commercial buildings, 2 churches, houses, staircases, furniture, mining equipment, and coffins.  Linn also served as Jackson County Treasurer for 14 years; was a member of the Jacksonville City Council and served as Mayor; and was on the school board. 

Around 1866, Linn constructed a 1-story house at the corner of West F Street, across North Oregon Street from the home of his father-in-law, Squire William Hoffman. It’s possible that Hoffman gave the land to Linn or his wife, Ann Sophia, as a wedding present.  Linn added a second story to the family home in 1881.  In its May 14th edition, the Oregon Sentinel reported, “David Linn has just finished adding an upper story to his residence. The improvement sets off the structure handsomely.”  It also created the elegant Italianate style home featured in an 1883 West Shore Magazine, a style that had become popular in the U.S. prior to the Civil War.

Linn died in 1912.  The house outlasted him by 42 years, when it was razed to make way for contemporary housing.

The location of Jacksonville’s first schoolhouse may be open to debate, but surely we know who was the town’s first teacher. Or do we?  Rev. Thomas Fletcher Royal is credited with having established the first school in Jacksonville in 1853, albeit we’re not sure where. 

One source says the school was organized by Royal’s sister, Mary Elizabeth Royal, and that Jane McCully, a trained schoolteacher who was the 3rd “proper” white woman to arrive in Jacksonville, was the first instructor.  Another source says that Mary Elizabeth Royal was the teacher.  However, Rev. Royal, in his journals, records renting a house from Col. John Ross “for a school and church purposes” where Rev. Royal’s brother, James Henry Bascom Royal, taught school one winter and spring (1854).

The following year the Oregon Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church accepted J. H. B. Royal as a member and assigned him the principalship of the newly formed Umpqua Academy at Wilbur, Oregon. Then Rev. Royal bought another house and turned the front room into a school.  His sister, Miss Mary E. Royal (later Mrs. John Flinn), took over the teaching duties in Jacksonville and taught that summer and winter (1854-5).  We’ll note that Jane McCully did open the first private academy in Jacksonville, but that was not until 1862.  And John Merritt, another individual sometimes listed as the first teacher, became Jacksonville’s schoolteacher and principal in 1875.  Who knew?

We’re eating crow.  As noted when we started on the subject of “firsts,” claims can be unreliable since “firsts” are usually awarded in retrospect and memories can be unreliable.  Information can also be missing.  And we just came across information that restores the title of “first white child born in Jacksonville” to Cornelius Jasper Armstrong! 

When Robert and Minerva Armstrong arrived in Jacksonville in October of 1852, Robert built a “pole cabin” on the site of what is now known as the “Judge Hanna House” at 285 South 1st Street.  That’s where Cornelius Jasper Armstrong was born on February 24, 1853.  It was later that spring that the Armstrongs traded the pole cabin and a hack to a Mr. Rogers for the donation land claim about 4 miles north of town that the Armstrong family occupied for the next 37 years.

So Cornelius Jasper was indeed born in Jacksonville! 

When we think of early Jacksonville photographers, we automatically think of Peter Britt.  However, Britt was not the only local photographer.  In 1876-7 and again in 1883, Frank G. Abell, who, according to Jacksonville’s “Oregon Sentinel,” was “acknowledged to be the finest photographic artist in Portland,” was resident in Jacksonville.  In 1877, in partnership with J.O. Welsh, he “put up a building on the corner of California Street, opposite Wells, Fargo & Co.’s express office.” 
Abell was in many respects an itinerant photographer, living and working at various times in San Francisco, Stockton, Grass Valley, Red Bluff, Yreka, Ashland, Roseburg, Eugene, Corvallis, Portland, Tacoma, and of course Jacksonville.  He specialized in “outdoor work”—”residences, businesses, horses, cattle, etc.”—and children’s photos, using “an instantaneous dry plate process” for the latter.

In 1883, Abell leased Peter Britt’s photograph gallery.  The “Democratic Times” declared that Abell had “a reputation second to no artist on the coast” and that citizens could have their photographs taken in “the highest style of the art.”

Abell’s work was respected by his peers.  Over the years he won numerous first place awards for entries to the Oregon Mechanic’s Fair, was vice president of the Oregon delegation to the National Convention of Photographers in 1880, and was elected president of the Photographers Association of the Pacific Northwest in 1909.  Abell died in 1910 in Tacoma, Washington, and is buried in Portland.

The wood frame 1880s farmhouse at 820 North 5th Street that currently houses Pioneer Financial Planning was originally built for Peter N. Fick (known as “Nicholas”) and his wife Henrietta Richtor. Both were born in Germany, meeting and marrying in Jacksonville in 1875. Nicholas first worked as a butcher with John Orth before acquiring land in the “east end of town.” By 1910 he was raising grains and livestock on some 150 acres that extended to Shafer Lane and had constructed a large family home on the current site of Wine Country Inn.

Nicholas died in 1913. Henrietta outlived him by 29 years and by 1922 had reduced the family’s active holdings to 40 acres, renting out the remainder. The Fick’s younger son, Peter J. Fick born in 1883, apparently managed the property, operating a small-scale dairy. Peter J. also served on the Jacksonville City Council for 14 years and captained the town’s Volunteer Fire Department. Over the years, most of the original Fick holdings were divided and sold by the family’s heirs, however, Peter J. and his wife Zola retained ownership of the existing 820 North 5th Street parcel until their deaths.

The Nicholas Fick farmhouse was demolished in the late 1880s, but the office of the Wine Country Inn is supposedly a replica. The Peter and Zola Fick house remains the only original property associated with the Fick family farm.

Jacksonville’s Calvary Church at 520 North 5th Street was originally the site of George “Bum” Neuber’s home. Bum kept a petting zoo for children in his back yard. However, he was known more for being a “sporting man.” He owned a downtown saloon and card parlor, owned the Jacksonville Gold Bricks baseball team, speculated in copper mining, and was a founding member of the Gold Ray Rod and Gun Club. As noted in last week’s trivia, he was also a prankster. By the late 1880s, that newfangled invention, the bicycle, had become a popular mode of transportation and exercise.

According to an April 1897 Medford Mail, when a party of cyclists stopped to rest in Jacksonville one Sunday afternoon, Neuber and a pal “borrowed” a couple of the “wheels”, presumably to take a spin around the block. Apparently Neuber wasn’t good at navigating turns. Although he fell at least once, tearing his pants and scraping his knee, he didn’t stop until he reached Medford…just in time to take the train back to Jacksonville.

The 2022 Chinese New Year continues through February 15, so Historic Jacksonville, Inc. is again highlighting Jacksonville’s early Chinese population.  Did you know that a Chinese labor boss, Gin Lin, was probably one of the wealthiest men in town during his time here? 

Gin apparently left China shortly after gold was discovered in California in 1849. He was one of the Chinese men who came by the thousands, lured by tales of “Gold Mountain.” 

By the 1860s, Gin was in Oregon. Despite state laws prohibiting Chinese property ownership, Gin was able to purchase a claim in 1864 on the Little Applegate River at the mouth of Sterling Creek for $900. He subsequently leased or purchased other “played out” placer mines in the vicinity from white men who had already taken out the easy gold.  He was able to hire other Chinese laborers, using them to work his own claims and hiring them out to other mine owners.

Gin was honest and fair, even helping some of his men purchase their own claims, ensuring they were legally recorded and the proper taxes paid. As a result, Lin’s crew was willing to work hard for him and many of the laborers Gin had previously contracted to other mine owners came to work for him.  Local legend credits him with founding the old mining ghost town of Buncom to house his Sterling Creek mining crew.

When the placer gold was depleted, they began excavating for gold in old stream beds long since buried in adjacent hillsides. To make the effort profitable, Gin is credited with introducing hydraulic mining to Southern Oregon. A remnant of this is the Applegate’s Gin Lin hiking trail.

Through industry and ingenuity, Gin Lin and his mining company began to play an important role in Southern Oregon’s economy. It also helped Gin amass a fortune. When he returned to China in the 1890s, he reportedly was worth over $2 million in gold from his various mining claims. 

All of those 1852 gold miners had to eat, and, according to A.G. Walling, Jacksonville’s first butcher shop had opened within the year.  Described as “one of the finest” (although we can’t imagine there was that much competition), it was owned by Henry Blecher, a native of Prussia.  Born in 1822, he had immigrated to the U.S. in 1848.  Undoubtedly, like many others, he followed the promise of riches to the West Coast.  By the beginning of 1854, he was carrying “a heavy stock.”  That undoubtedly included venison, chicken, pork, rabbit, beef, and probably sausage—common staples of the time. 

The shop appears to have been located on South Oregon between California and Main streets, probably where the Orth building now stands.  In fact, he may have joined or sold out to John Orth in the butcher business.  We do know that he regularly provisioned the Jackson County jail, and in December 1875, he delivered 70,000 pounds of beef at $4.49 per hundred pounds to the Indian agent at Yainax, Oregon.  He was regularly listed as one of Jackson County’s heaviest taxpayers. 

We’re not sure who his suppliers were, but Blecher did own 1283 acres of land on Poorman’s Creek, 3 miles south of Jacksonville on the road to Sterling.  We don’t know if he farmed or ranched the property, but 90 acres housed a dwelling, barn, and orchard.  A fair amount of the acreage appears to have been forested since in 1891 he was hauling wood for the Rogue River Valley Railway between Jacksonville and Medford.  Blecher passed away in 1900 at the age of 77.  His property was inherited by his half brother and sister and by 1902 the Jacksonville Lumber Company had established a sawmill on the “old Blecher place.”

A few hard facts and a lot of “probablies and maybes.”  Keep in mind there was no newspaper in Jacksonville until 1854 and earlier accounts rely on personal diaries, hearsay published in Portland or Yreka papers, and memoirs from much later years.  Such are the basis of much of our early history….

Stone mason J.C. Whipp is responsible for many of the marble monuments in Jacksonville’s pioneer cemetery as well as cemeteries throughout southern Oregon and northern California. He opened his Jacksonville Marble Works around 1885. They were originally located “just north of town,” but after the 1888 fire destroyed David Linn’s furniture factory, he moved them to the corner of California and Oregon streets. Whipp was described as “doing the best of work,” and having “no peer in this part of the state…. A visit to the Jacksonville cemetery will bear out this assertion.”

James Cronemiller was born in 1863 a year before his father, blacksmith David Cronemiler, moved the family to Jacksonville. James initially followed in his father footsteps, working in the family smithy at the northeast corner of California and 3rd streets. An ambitious young man, James soon went out on his own.

In partnership with George Love, he operated Cronemiller & Love from at least 1896 to 1899, offering dry goods and groceries. It was one of the many businesses that occupied the 1872 Orth Building on South Oregon Street. In this historic photo, you can see John Orth on the far left, James Cronemiller (3rd man from the left), and George Love (2nd man from the right). More on James next week as he becomes a notable public servant.

Colonel

James Napper Tandy Miller is remembered most often for setting aside the original acreage for Jacksonville’s Pioneer Cemetery around 1859, which he subsequently sold to the City, four fraternal orders, and two religions for amounts ranging from $1 to $100. The cemetery acreage was originally part of Miller’s 320 acre Donation Land Claim. Under a Donation Land Claim, a settler could claim 160 acres of free land if single, 320 if married, provided he farmed it for four years.

Miller emigrated from Kentucky to Oregon in 1846 and to Jacksonville in 1854. He was a renowned fighter in the Indian wars, he planted some of the valley’s earliest vineyards, and he was a well-known figure in state politics, serving as both State Assemblyman and State Senator. Miller also began publication of Jacksonville’s second newspaper, the Democratic Times.

The historic brick portion of the Bella Union Restaurant and Saloon at 170 W. California Street was constructed in 1874 by pioneer woodworker and builder David Linn after an April fire destroyed many of the original buildings in the western end of Jacksonville. That summer, John Boyer announced the opening of his “new store in Linn’s brick building.” Boyer, born in 1836 in Pennsylvania, had arrived in Jacksonville around 1871. Apparently, he soon became an active part of the community, opening a general store and joining the local chapter of the International Order of Odd Fellows.

By 1876 Boyer had been named a Grand Marshall of the IOOF of Oregon, representing Jacksonville around the state. A general store remained at the Bella Union location into the 1880s and 90s, but in 1879 Boyer accepted the position of confidential clerk at the Cornelius C. Beekman Bank, the oldest financial institution in the Pacific Northwest located at 110 W. California. For some years, Boyer even lodged in the back room of the Bank.

At some point Boyer also became the resident agent for the Fire Marine Insurance Company of San Francisco, possibly handling Beekman’s insurance business. Boyer died in January 1902, received a full ceremonial IOOF funeral, and is buried in the IOOF section of Jacksonville’s pioneer cemetery.

The building that is now the Blue Door Garden Store at 130 West California Street in Jacksonville was built around 1862 by German-born John Neuber to house his jewelry store. Neuber was Jacksonville’s first goldsmith and silversmith. He specialized in solid gold buckles for women’s belts. While running to fight one of the periodic fires that broke out in the town’s early wooden structures, Neuber incurred severe head injuries. In 1874 he was declared insane by the Jackson County commissioners and ordered to the state insane asylum where he died a year later.

Josephine Martin Plymale, a Jacksonville suffragette, was in many ways a product of her time.  She crossed the Oregon Trail with her family in a covered wagon, came to Jacksonville at age 17 as a teacher, and a year later married William Plymale. However, Josephine also defied the standards of her day.

In a time when anti-suffragists claimed women had no time to vote, Josephine raised 12 children and worked in the family livery business; became an orchardist and was a frequent speaker at Granges and agricultural societies; and was a journalist and served as Vice President of the Oregon Press Association.  She was Vice President of the Oregon State Women’s Suffrage Association, described as “one of the most active workers in the Women Suffrage field…anywhere.”  She was such an active suffragist that she once had an angry mob outside her Jacksonville home.

In 1892 Josephine officially filed for the position of Jackson County Recorder, but her name never appeared on the ballot.  Not to be denied a role in politics, she obtained the position of committee clerk for the Oregon State Legislature and 2 years later clerked for the senate chamber.  Josephine took her 2 youngest daughters with her to Salem to give them a taste of politics and to learn how laws were made. 

Josephine died in 1899 at the age of 54.  She never realized her political ambitions or the right to vote.  But her daughters did.  Oregon gave women the right to vote in 1912—8 years before the U.S. afforded them that privilege.

Not only did Mary Ann Harris Chambers hold off an Indian attack that cost the lives of her first husband and son, she took in her daughter and 4 young grandchildren after her son-in-law died from tuberculosis in 1867. To accommodate 3 generations, she razed her old home and constructed what we know as the Harris Chambers house on Jacksonville’s North 3rd Street. When her daughter and a granddaughter died in a smallpox epidemic in 1869, she raised her 3 surviving grandchildren.

Following her second husband’s death 6 months later, she moved with all the grandchildren to his farm, located 1 ½ miles outside of Jacksonville next to the J. Herbert Stone Forest Service tree farm on what we now call Hanley Road. Mary Ann Harris Chambers picked up the pieces and went on with her life. After all, that’s what she had learned to do—she was a survivor.

We’re back to our series of Jacksonville “firsts.”  This time Historic Jacksonville, Inc. is highlighting one of the Valley’s earliest pioneers, Mathew G. Kennedy.  Kennedy had arrived in “Table Rock City” in 1852—at the time little more than a rowdy mining camp.  In early 1853, he was appointed town constable at the ripe old age of 23 and became the first elected Sheriff of Jackson County later that year.

However, that was not the only “first” to Kennedy’s credit.  Kennedy was the first Jacksonville settler to record his claim to a 100-foot frontage on the north side of California Street.  Around 1854, he constructed 1 or 2 wood frame buildings that housed an “assemblage of shops” known as “Kennedy’s Row.”  That site now houses The Pot Rack, The Blue Door Garden Store, Farmhouse Treasures, and the historic Beekman Bank Museum.  Early newspapers carry advertisements for Kennedy Tinware (a hardware store) at what is now 150 W. California (The Pot Rack). 

Kennedy sold his tin shop to Love and Bilger in 1856, and a year later left Jacksonville to build a hotel called the Metropolitan House Hotel in Yreka.  By 1863, he had moved on to San Francisco.

However, Kennedy’s house still stands at 240 North 3rd Street.  Constructed in 1855, it’s the oldest Jacksonville residence still standing!

Minerva Plymale Armstrong and her husband Robert traveled with her parents and siblings from Illinois to Oregon in 1852 along the Oregon Trail. They settled on a farm 4 miles north of Jacksonville at the base of the western hills overlooking the beautiful valley to the east of Old Stage Road. One of their 11 children, Cornelius Jasper Armstrong, born February 24, 1853, is a contender for the title of “first child born in Jacksonville.”

In 1890 the Armstrongs moved to town, purchasing the small “saltbox” style home at 375 E. California Street, historically known as the G.W. Cool house after the individual who constructed it around 1858. Cool had received his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the Baltimore College of Dentistry. He came to the West Coast in 1850, practicing first in British Columbia and then in Washington before settling in Oregon.

The house was both residence and dental office. However, his practice appears to have been lackluster since a mechanic’s lien for construction costs was attached against the property. By 1861 Cool had moved on to Portland. The next decade saw him in San Francisco where he did experience success and was one of the first members of the California State Dental Association.

Morris Mensor was “well known as one of the enterprising businessmen” in early Jacksonville. A native of Prussia, he left home at age 19 and became a laborer in an oil factory in Hamburg, Germany. Within 6 months he was clerk and a year later foreman, supervising 1200 men. Accumulating a few thousand dollars, he returned home and gave the money to his parents to care for his younger siblings.

When he sailed for America a year or so later, he could barely pay his passage, but on-board ship earned over $600 as an amateur musician—which he again sent home. In New York, he worked as a glazier and painter for a few years. Then in 1854, at age 42, he married 16-year-old Matilda Fisher. A year later, the couple came to San Francisco. With the gold rush over, they soon moved on to Jacksonville, where Morris became co-partner with his wife’s cousins in the Fisher Brothers mercantile. Within a few years he went out on his own, opening a mercantile in Phoenix.

When health problems arose in 1876, he returned to Jacksonville and opened Morris Mensor’s New York Store at 170 S. Oregon in the old Brunner Building. Mensor operated his New York Store general merchandise business until his death in 1887, one of the handful of merchants to remain in Jacksonville after the railroad by-passed the town.

Someone recently asked us about the building at 125 South 3rd Street in Jacksonville that now houses South Stage Cellars.  It’s sometimes known as the B.F. Dowell Law Office but that’s a misnomer—Dowell’s office was next door.  The building was originally P.J. Ryan’s “Dwelling House.”  

A 23-year-old Ryan, a native of Ireland, had arrived in Jacksonville no later than 1853.  That same year he purchased the Palmetto Bowling Saloon, marking the dawning of a career as one of the town’s earliest and longest-term commercial property investors.  His specialty became “fire proof” brick buildings.  He had acquired title to this lot by 1865 and probably constructed the current building that same year. 

There is no indication that Ryan actually “dwelled” here, but the term may refer to the use of the building as a hotel.  It appears to have been such from 1868 to 1871, and again from 1873 to 1883.  In other years it was a doctor’s office, a butcher shop, and an ice cream parlor.   In the 1960s it became the home of Robertson Collins, the individual credited with preventing Highway 238 from taking out 11 of Jacksonville’s historical homes and the leader of the organization that established the city’s National Historic Landmark status.

It’s Britt music festival season in Jacksonville! The Britt Festival grounds, the Britt Gardens, and portions of Jacksonville’s Woodlands Trail System were the homestead of Swiss-born pioneer Peter Britt who arrived in Jacksonville in 1852. Britt is perhaps best known as the pioneer photographer who documented Southern Oregon’s people, activities, and landscapes from the 1850s to 1900. However, he was also an avid gardener and is considered to be the father of Southern Oregon’s commercial orchard, wine, and ornamental horticulture industries. Britt Park, now the Britt Festival grounds and the City-owned lower Britt Gardens, was the focal point of many of these efforts.

Have you been enjoying Britt Festival’s fabulous summer season?  If you’re a Jacksonville resident you may know that the Festival grounds are part of the estate of Swiss-born Peter Britt, Oregon’s first photographer.  He arrived in Jacksonville in the fall of 1852 with a 2-wheeled cart of photographic equipment, a yoke of oxen, a mule, and $5 in his pocket.  He filed a donation land claim on acreage that is now the Festival grounds, the lower Britt gardens, and a portion of the Jacksonville Woodlands. 

Today we would call Britt a “Renaissance Man.” Not only did he photographically document a half century of Southern Oregon people and places, he is also credited with founding the region’s commercial orchard, wine, and ornamental horticulture industries. 

However, Britt is most famous for his photography.  After trying his hand at gold mining and running a pack train, he opened “P. Britt’s Photograph and Daguerreotype Room” in 1856 and people came from all parts of Southern Oregon to have their photographs taken.  Britt became the best-known and most popular photographer in the southwestern Oregon and northern California area, photographing almost all of the prominent citizens as well as farmers, miners, Chinese workers and Native Americans.

Britt may have been indiscriminate in terms of his subjects, but he did have an ego when it came to his work.  When ladies were displeased with their likeness and laid fault on the photographer, he is reported to have bluntly told them, “If you want a pretty picture, you must bring a pretty face.” Many of the pretty…and not so pretty… are depicted in his studio gallery shown here.

Did you know that Sarah Ish was one of the richest women in the Rogue Valley? 

The Ish family plot is the most photographed plot in Jacksonville’s Pioneer Cemetery. Sarah’s husband, Jacob Ish, son of a Virginia plantation owner, had come west in 1861 to escape the Civil War.  He purchased 320 acres about three miles from Jacksonville and started a ranch, now the site of Ish Ranch Estates off West McAndrews.  When opportunity arose, Ish added to his holdings.  He eventually became one of the largest landowners in Jackson County with over 5,000 acres, including the site of the Medford Airport.  His fields were some of the most productive in the Valley, and his ranch became known for its “broad fertile acres, sturdy stock and immaculately maintained buildings.”  Ish’s holdings supplied government troops at Fort Klamath and stage stations from Grants Pass to San Francisco.

Sarah was actually Jacob’s 2nd wife.  He had originally married her sister Ellen.  In 1877, when Ellen was dying of cancer, Sarah had left Virginia and sailed around the horn to care for her, arriving 2 weeks too late.  Sarah stayed on to care for Jacob and Ellen’s daughter, Sophia, and her niece, Phenie.  A year later, Jacob and Sarah were married.

The marriage lasted 3 years.  In 1881, Jacob Ish died from bronchitis, leaving his wife Sarah one of the wealthiest women in the county.  A “woman of strong character and rare business ability,” Sarah managed the Ish ranch for the next 25 years until her death in 1906.

Did you know that Stonewall Jackson helped build the 1883 Jackson County Courthouse (now Jacksonville’s New City Hall)?  No, not the Confederate general.  This Stonewall Jackson was a half breed Indian.  His father, a native of Tennessee, had come soon after the Mexican American War to part of the Oregon Territory (now Washington) where he married a Yakima Indian girl.  Stonewall came to Jacksonville with a relative, obtained a job with George Holt, a building contractor, and became a trained carpenter and brick mason.

In a 1929 Medford Mail Tribune article, he recalled his time in Jacksonville.  According to Jackson, he helped build the first old Jacksonville jail, laid brick for the Pat Ryan building and Fisher’s store; erected the brick building for Gunsmith Miller; and practically built the courthouse.  “And there was a French lady by the name of [DeRoboam] who ran a hotel. Well, I cut every stone in that building alone.”

Stonewall married a member of the Klamath tribe and was adopted into the tribe.  He later lived out his life on the Klamath reservation with his wife, children, and grandchildren.

Thomas Joseph Kenney (also Kinney or Kenny) was described in the 1904 publication, Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon, as “a worthy representative of the esteemed and valued citizens of Jacksonville” who by “persistent energy and foresight became established among the successful business men of the city while he was yet a comparatively young man.”

In many respects, he followed in his father’s footsteps. Tom was the older son of Daniel Kenney who, with a man named Appler, opened the area’s first “house of commerce” in the spring of 1852–a trading post at the northeast corner of Oregon and California streets. It was known for years as “the old Kenney and Appler corner” so in 1906 it was a fitting place for Tom to locate his hardware and grocery business, one of his many enterprises. Tom’s business occupied the oldest portion of the current Bella Union Restaurant & Saloon at 170 W. California, but it was still the “Kenney corner”—Tom owned the entire business block!

In the block next to the Interpretive Center in Jacksonville’s Pioneer Cemetery there is a marker shaped like an open book, a Victorian symbol for immortality. It reads William Green T’Vault, 1809-1869. T’Vault was a brilliant writer and journalist.

He published the first newspaper in the Pacific Northwest, The Oregon Spectator¸ and the first newspaper in Southern Oregon, the Table Rock Sentinel. T’Vault was also a lawyer and a politician, at different times serving as provisional legislator, state legislator, Speaker of the House, and District Attorney.

He co-authored with Joseph Lane the laws that governed the Territory until Oregon became a state in 1859. He was the last victim of the 1869 smallpox epidemic, a disease so feared that not a single mourner attended his burial.

Did a Confederate flag once fly over Jacksonville?  And did Zany Ganung have the audacity to chop it down?

Lewis and Zany Ganung had traveled west from Ohio, arriving in Jacksonville in 1854.  Lewis Ganung was a doctor, and Zany frequently acted as his nurse.  On June 11, 1861, so the story goes, Zany returned home tired and exhausted after spending the past 24 hours with a very sick patient.  Overnight, someone had erected a flagpole flying the Confederate “palmetto and rattleshake flag” across the street from her house at 160 E. California Street.  No one knew who had raised it, and no one ventured to remove it for fear of starting a local civil war.  Without a word to anyone, Zany entered her house, returned with a hatchet, crossed the street, and chopped the pole down.  She then untied the flag, returned home, and used the flag to stoke the stove.  The Confederate flag never again flew over Jacksonville.

However, the story may have been confused with an 1855 incident, when town women protested their menfolk leaving them unprotected during the Indian Wars.  Local “wags” ridiculed them by hoisting a petticoat at half-mast on the post office flagpole.  The women were greatly incensed but had no means of getting the petticoat down.  A neighbor came to the rescue, hauling it down and allowing the women to march off with it in triumph.  Zany was in Jacksonville at the time, but no one knows if she was involved. 

The Ganung house was razed in 1965, and the site is now home to Pico’s Worldwide.

It’s perfect weather for hiking one of the Jacksonville Woodlands most popular trails—the Sarah Zigler Trail along Jackson Creek.  But who was Sarah Zigler and why does she have a trail as a namesake? 

Well, the first part is easy.  Sarah Plymale Zigler was the daughter of Gabriel Plymale, one of the “first comers” to the new mining camp.  He died from typhoid fever 3 weeks after his arrival in October 1852 and has the distinction of being the first person to be buried in Jacksonville.  In 1854, a 15-year-old Sarah married Louis Zigler, miner, blacksmith, proprietor of the Adams Hotel, and at one time the County Sheriff. 

Now for the second part.  In 1878, Peter Britt sold Sarah 8 acres of his property for $1.  Although no one really knows why, it could be because Britt and Louis Zigler had been partners in mining that 200-foot wide and 3/8 of a mile long stretch of land along Jackson Creek.  At the height of their mine’s production, Zigler and Britt were taking out about $1280 in gold per day.

Sarah’s granddaughter donated the property to the Jacksonville Woodlands Association, and you can now explore it via the 0.7-mile Zigler trail that begins in the lower Britt Gardens.  If you hike the Trail within the next few weeks, you can experience riches of a different kind—a wealth of spring wildflowers including Wake Robin, Bleeding Heart, and the rare Gentner’s Fritillaria, found only in this region!

We knew that the Von Helms family, the original owners of Jacksonville’s 1860 Table Rock Billiard Saloon and the lovely 1878 Italianate style home at the corner of South Oregon and Pine streets, suffered several family tragedies.  Three daughters died in epidemics.  Another was murdered, but we’ve only recently come across more details.  Not that we would gossip, but….

It seems that daughter Anna had married Frederick B. Martin, a salesman for the Pacific Biscuit Company.  He was their Portland representative; she ran a fashionable Portland boarding house, the Ella, at the corner of Ella and Washington streets.  Anna’s older sister Emma helped run the boarding house. 

Reportedly, the Martins’ marriage was “stormy.”  When Martin was “discharged” from the biscuit company in 1906, he abandoned Anna and left for California.  When he returned to Portland at the end of the year, Anna refused to live with him or reconcile.  Martin blamed his sister-in-law Emma for interfering.

On January 6, 1907, Martin went to the Ella and gained admission to his wife’s apartments.  There he shot both Anna and Emma then went to the basement where he killed himself.  Anna was wounded; Emma died.  What transpired before the shooting is unknown since Anna was in hysterics.

Anna eventually remarried.  Both Anna and Emma are buried in the Helms family plot in the Odd Fellows section of Jacksonville’s Pioneer Cemetery.