WPA Interviews for Linn County Oregon

INTERVIEW

Interview with Mr. Redman "Red" Pearl, Halsey, Oregon.

My father's name was James Pearl, a native of Ohio. I cannot tell you when he was born, nor the dates of birth or deaths of many of my family since I have no family records at hand. These records exist but are in the hands of my sister, Mrs. Florence Stewart who lives at Oak Grove, Oregon.

My father, James Pearl, reached Oregon via ox team in the year 1851. His immediate starting point was Missouri, but father, born in Ohio, had also lived at various times in Ohio and Indiana.

My mother's name was Elizabeth Wiseman Pearl. She was born near Logansport, Indiana. Mother came to Oregon with her father and mother and in the same train with my father. (Note: It does not definitely appear from his words whether Mr. Pearl's father and mother were married before coming to Oregon, but this appears probable. L.H.) (handwritten note: married 6 July 1846 Holt Co. MO)

Before starting for Oregon father had been previously married. The children of this marriage, my half-brothers and sisters were:

Catherine Pearl, oldest of the family.

Isabell Pearl, she married Henry Kirk, son of Alexander Kirk of Brownsville. Henry Kirk's claim was on the "lower Brownsville road" a few miles southeast of Halsey. Wm Kirk now owns that place.

Elizabeth Pearl, she married Isaac Van Winkle. The Van Winkle claim was situated a mile or so east of Halsey on the banks of "Spoon River." To their marriage were born the following children. Attorney Van Winkle, now Attorney General of Oregon. Dr. Van Winkle of Jefferson, and Jas. Van Winkle who for many years was postmaster at Albany. Also two daughters, Bertha and Carey Van Winkle.

Joseph Pearl. He married Sarah Wiseman, my Mother's sister. Thus my father and my oldest half-brother married sister.

John Pearl. His wife's maiden name was Michael. One son, Elmer Pearl now lives near Brownsville.

All of these half brothers and sisters were, I believe, born in the east. The names of my full brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of James and Elizabeth (Wiseman) Pearl were:

Mary Pearl. Her maiden name was Robnett. Her husband was a member of the pioneer Robnett family of Crawfordsville. One of their sons, the late Dr. Robnett of Albany. Only one of that family is still living.

William Pearl. He was born on the plains coming west.

Minerva Pearl. Died at Jefferson where my parents first settled.

Silas Pearl. He has children now living at Seattle.

Martha Pearl. She died in her teens.

Anderson Pearl.

Redman Pearl. (Myself) born in 1858.

Addison Pearl. )

                   ) Were twins. They both died, when small, of Diphtheria.

Laura Pear.     )

Sherman Pearl. Four years younger than myself. He lives in the state of Washington.

Florence Pearl. Her married name is Stewart. She lives at Oak Grove, Oregon. Has five children.

Etta Pearl. Her married name was McDaniel. They had one child. Etta died last fall.

My parents upon reaching Oregon first settled near Jefferson, but soon after they moved to the Halsey neighborhood in Linn County. My father took up a claim about five miles south east of Halsey, near what is now called Bond's Butte. The schoolhouse of "Centre School" is situated on one corner of the claim. From there it extended eastward towards the low buttes at the east of the valley. Mr. Ben Schick now owns much of the land, but the house was further east than Mr. Schick's present residence. I believe the old barn which my father built is still standing.

My half-brother, James Pearl, took a claim about half-way between Halsey and Brownsville. His home was in a grove of large oak trees. The fine old house, which he built, is still standing on the north side of the Halsey-Brownsville road but is fast falling to ruins. When I was a very small boy that house was comparatively new but I do not know the exact date of its building. I used to like very much visiting my brother there when I was small and wander about under the trees picking up and eating the sweet acorns.

Father's old home where I lived was east of Centre School up near the hills. The old barn is still standing there. The road from our home reached Brownsville eastward over the hills. It took that route to escape the wet, low lands, which is the early days made winter travel almost impossible. That old road came out to the "Big Gap" road south of Brownsville at, or near the present Union Point Schoolhouse. In those early days there was a small town called Union Point at that place. Our nearest neighbors in those days were Eli Michael and a Mr. Ettleman. The Keeney farm also joined that of my father, and east of our place was my brother John's place. My brother John married one of the Michael girls. He died on that place one autumn at harvest time. They were stacking grain and just completing a stack. John pitched up the last sheaf for the top of the stack and then died of heart failure. His son, Elmer Pearl still lives near Brownsville.

East of Halsey about a mile or so is what is now known as Spoon River. My brother-in-law, Isaac Van Winkle had his claim on Spoon River. At that time there was only a big slough there and no stream. The settlers got in a ditching crew and opened up a channel to drain the land. That channel has washed wider and deeper until now it carries off all water of the old slough except at the very highest winter stages. Now the old slough is all gone and the drainage ditch bears the name of Spoon River.

Next east of the Van Winkle place was a Robnett farm. East of that was my brother Joseph Pearl's claim. North of the Van Winkle claim was the Penland claim. On the Penland claim, about a mile or less north of the present Halsey-Brownsville highway there was a Methodist meetinghouse called Wesley Chapel.

Wesley Chapel was one of the most active pioneer churches in the Halsey region. I have often been there, for my people were all active Methodists. My father, James Pearl, was a Methodist Local Preacher. My half-brothers, Joseph and John Pearl, were also local preachers or exhorters as was also my brother-in-law Isaac Van Winkle. You see we were a very Methodistical family. Another relative who preached was Eli Michael, but he belonged to the South Methodist faction. Often the local circuits of the Methodist church would be without a regular preacher and my father would supply for a time. He preached at Brownsville, Lake Creek, Centre Chapel, Harrisburg, and Wesley Chapel. Wesley Chapel was finally burned down and the Methodist work of the community later centered at Halsey after the town was platted and the railroad came. At Methodist services in those days it was customary for a preacher to deliver his address to the people and then sit down, after which a local exhorter would arise and exhort, often calling the penitent to come forward and kneel at the altar for prayer. My brothers were such exhorters for many years (John and Joseph Jr.). I have stated that my twin brother and sister died of Diphtheria. In those times that was a terrible and dreaded disease. Few recovered who became seriously sick with it. It often spread through the whole community and killed many, especially children. The family of my sister, Mary Pearl Robnett had the Diphtheria and I cared for them during their sickness. Years later my nephew, Dr. Robnett of Albany, often declared that I saved his life on that occasion.

When I and my brothers became big enough to hunt we often went out after deer. Hunting with hounds was the usual manner. No restrictions were put upon hunting then. The white tailed deer were then common all through the valley. White tailed deer are more an animal of the open valley than the smaller black-tailed deer. On the Penland farm just east of Halsey they would come up to a lick and were frequently seen. At a much later date the whitetails were still common in the groves along the Willamette west of Halsey. Now I assume they are all gone, though it may be possible that there are still a very few of them in the woods and among the small wooded islands there.

Bears used to wander down upon our claim frequently. I remember that at one time the dogs chased a bear across our home place. It finally came to bay in a spring up next to the hills. Father saw the dogs baying it. He was on horseback, so he rode out that way. The bear was in the spring and the dogs were all about it. The spring had been fenced to keep the cattle from bogging down and smothering in the soft mud, but the fence had mostly fallen down. Father got down and took one of the old fence rails and killed the bear.

At another time, I remember, we looked out one day and saw a bear and two cubs going up the butte just back of our home. It was Sunday, and my father would allow no hunting on that day so we could do nothing about it. The next day we went out with hounds but were never able to run them down. There were no grizzly bears in this region since I can remember, but they were plentiful here at an earlier date. The White family of Diamond Hill reported that they sometimes used to see them. That was the family of the old pioneer surveyor Luther White, and one of his sons Robert "Bob" White. Late in my life I went up into Washington, and there I frequently saw Grizzly bear tracks, and sometimes the bears themselves. At one time I was riding over a divide near Lake Chelan. I was riding a horse and leading a packhorse. A companion was walking along the trail ahead. All at once my friend said, "What are those things? Goats?" He was a newcomer and knew nothing about bears. I looked and saw that it was a big mother grizzly and two cubs. They were very light colored. Almost white. They did look about the color of a soiled white goat, or a mountain goat. When my companion learned what they were he asked what we should do. I said, "We'll just follow on slowly, and as soon as the old one gets her cubs cuffed into the trail ahead of us she will run off and leave us." We walked on slowly. The old bear saw us and got into the trail. Then she got her cubs behind her and stood up on her hind legs and came walking down the trail towards us, her fare paws held up and out on either side and the white hair on her neck and shoulders standing out like a wide collar. She certainly did look fierce. After a while, when she got quite close she stopped, still standing up on her hind legs. Her cubs followed on close behind her and when she stopped they stood up and peeped at us from behind their mother. After a time the old bear got down and cuffed the cubs before her up the trail. We followed on soon, and again she went through the whole performance. She stood up on her hind legs and came walking back towards us. The second time that she turned back we gave her a little more time before following. She passed on around a curve in the trail and we did not see her anymore, but we could tell from her tracks that she was running. When she came to where a strip of woods intersected the trail she left it and went on up the mountain. We measured her footprints and they were fourteen inches long.

Here about Halsey the geese and ducks were so abundant when I was a boy that they were a great detriment to the farmers. On the old slough which is now drained by Spoon River the ducks used to come so think that you could not hear yourself talk for their sound. It was necessary in those days to "twine" all of the grain fields to protect them from ducks and geese. "Twining" a field was done by driving stakes, perhaps twelve or fifteen feet tall, in rows all across the field. These rows of stakes were in squares or "Checks", perhaps one hundred feet or one hundred and fifty feet apart each way. Across the tops of these stakes twine was stretched. When the birds attempted alight on the grain fields their wings would strike the stretched twine and it would scare them away. It was very effective for geese, but less so for ducks, for the ducks would fly down in between the lines of twine. However, if a duck happened to strike the stretched twine with its wings it was very likely to become twisted in the cord and hang helpless and trapped. I remember a boy at Halsey who had no gun to hunt with, who used to go out along the farmers "twined" fields and gather up these entangled ducks. Often, in winter, he would have no difficulty in bringing in a whole gunnysack full. If too many ducks became entangled upon the same length of twine it would break, and they would escape.

I have often seen a field covered with grain four or five inches tall, which, after a flock of ducks had pastured upon it for a single night, would look black and bare as though no grain had ever grown. The ducks usually came upon the fields to eat at night. You could go out to a field at sunset and there would not be a duck in sight, but you could hear them coming. There were too high to be seen, but all at once they would come dropping down out of the sky in endless numbers. There was never any trouble in going out at evening and shooting all the ducks we could possibly want.

Geese were so abundant in those days that when a flock of geese would be startled from their feeding grounds their wings sounded exactly like deep rolling thunder. It is unbelievable how great a distance the sound could be heard.

The geese were really more injurious than the ducks. I can remember when I could look out over this valley and see great patches, acre on acre, some black and some white. The black patches were the black, or Canadian geese. The white patches were the white or snow geese. The two kinds usually stayed separate in their flights. The geese usually ate by daylight unless it was a moonlight night. If the moon was shining brightly they would come out to the fields to eat the grain in numberless flocks, millions! When the migrations were on I could stand and look upwards and there was not a place in the sky where geese were not passing. At such time they always flew very high, almost beyond human sight. You could see geese anywhere you looked.

In the winter when the geese were feeding on the grain they would eat in one place for a time and then rise up and pass on to the next field. In this feeding flight they would go only a few feet above the ground. You could see them coming, a perfect level sheet of black or white, and when they came to a fence between the fields they would rise just enough to clear it. They would gain the height to clear the obstructing fence and then seem to pause there almost motionless for an instant before gliding down almost to ground level above the next field. When the geese came into the fields at night we used often to take our guns out and go to drive them off. I still have the first old gun that I owned when I was only a boy. It is a muzzle-loading rifle. Later I got a breech loading double-barreled gun. With that second gun I have killed as many as eight geese with one shot, at another time six. I once killed ten "black" geese by shooting both barrels into a flock.

After the geese had been feeding over the valley for the day they would fly eastward to a "slash" to roost for the night. The "slash" was a low tract, which in winter was covered with from six inches to three feet of water. Sometimes we would go out to the "slash" at night to hunt geese. There was no trouble whatever in securing all the geese that a horse could carry in a very short time. In those days we seldom ate a goose-sometimes, of course,--but we had all the venison and pork and beef and mutton that we needed and did not bother much with goose meat. The geese, which we killed, were picked for the feathers and then thrown out for hog feed.

There used to be great flocks of sandhill cranes in the valley also. They could be easily known from the geese in flight by their greater size and their loud, quavering call. Sandhill cranes were never used for food, though since then I have learned that they are quite good. The geese and ducks are almost gone from the valley. Part of them now pass over to the wheat fields of eastern Oregon, but most of them have been killed off. It has not all been from shooting, however. The draining of the lakes and swamps has had much to do with their disappearance. Then, too, the poisoning of ducks by shallow, polluted waters in the swamps of the eastern regions has had much to do with it. I have seen sick and dying geese by thousands on the eastern Oregon marshes. When the water becomes low, thousands and thousands of them died there each day. The cure is to reflood the marshes which have been robbed of their waters for irrigation. The remedy is well known, but no one does anything about it.

My first school was at the Centre School which was situated on the corner of my father's claim. At that time the school building was made of slabs, and the benches on which we sat were merely heavy slabs with pegs driven in from below for legs. We had no backs to our seats, and no desks. We just sat there on those slab benches and studied. There were also slab benches arranged around the stove, and when the weather was cold we would move up on the benches around the stove to keep warm. Our school in those days was known as the "Slab Schoolhouse". It is now known as the "Centre School". My first teacher was named Guess. I do not know his first name. He was a very severe man and was kicking someone nearly all the time. However, I never got whipped. One day I was sitting on my bench studying and not noticing what was taking place, when all at once a switch began to curl around my legs. Guess was shipping the boy who sat on the bench just next to me, and the tip of his switch was wrapping about my calves. That was the nearest that I ever came to getting whipped. Later (probably about 187_) the present schoolhouse was built. Most of the boys rode or drove to school. There was an old stable built near the schoolhouse to stable our horses in. One season some rats got into the school well and then we had no water except what was carried from a spring up on the Butte, quite a long ways away.

Recreations were rather scarce in my boyhood days. Even hunting was not often allowed, for we were so busy on the farm that we had little time to hunt. The grown people seemed to have few recreations. These were house-raisings, and house-warmings and log-rollings, however, but these were more work than play. A logrolling would be called when a man had land cleared. He would cut down the trees on his land, trim them up, and burn the brush. Then he would have the neighbors in to help roll the remaining great logs together into piles to burn. House were first framed on the grounds, and then the framed "bents" would be raised, all the neighbors coming together to help lift the heavy frame. Camp meetings were a sort of vacation in the summer. There was a campground at the old town of Union Point. That must have been after the old Presbyterian Church there had died, for I do not remember that church at all. There was little left at Union Point since my memory can tell. Only a gun shop ran by a man named "Gunger" Wilson. Wilson was an old bachelor and made and stocked guns. Also, he would take the old muzzle-loading rifles that had become "leaded" and rebore them to a slightly larger bore. To make the balls fit the new bore he would also rebore the bullet mold.

Appendix to Mrs. Peterson's interview. A published life of Asa Peterson. From Edgar Williams

Illustrated Atlas Map of Marion & Linn Counties".

Asa H. Peterson." San Francisco, 1878.

Was born in Lewis County, West Virginia, on the Buchanan River, in 1822. His ancestors were Swedish. His great grandfather came from Sweden just before the Revolution. He married Miss Susanna Jones, who was the sister of the heroic Commodore Paul Jones. Mr. Peterson's father was born in Virginia in 1800, he was raised in the same state and was quite a prominent citizen, having a fine home on the west fork of the Kanawha. He was also connected with the United States Military service holding the rank of Major.

Mr. Peterson, the subject of this sketch, lived in Lewis County but two years, when his parents removed to the Kanawha, where they stayed until he was thirteen years old, when they moved to a place on the west fork of the Monongahela, there they resided until Asa H. was fifteen years old, when they went to Indiana.

Mr. Peterson senior was Sheriff of the County in which he lived and, being averse to slavery, he gave up his office. When Asa H. was eighteen years of age, they went to Ohio where they lived about two years. From Ohio they went west to Henry County Iowa. Before leaving Ohio he had learned the trade of carpenter and joiner, but did not follow it much. He then learned the trade of watch-making, under Richard Richards.

In 1843, when he was 21 years of age, he married Miss Susanna Johnson, daughter of Eli Johnson of Iowa.

After marriage Mr. Peterson settled down on a farm, but sold it soon after. He then pre-empted a piece of land, but lost it, and the money too, on account of some irregularity in the land office.

Mr. P. was now left without any of this world's goods, but was not disheartened. He managed to raise an outfit, and started for Oregon in 1845. This trip was a trying one; the train, in trying to cut off some of the distance, got lost and ran out of provisions, so that they came near starving. This, together with the constant danger from the Indians, made their trip one of the most severe on record.

Between Crooked River and the Deschutes, Mr. Peterson left the train and pushed on to The Dalles for supplies for the sick. At last the train arrived at The Dalles, where they mad a raft on which to descend the Columbia. They landed at a little place called Linton, which was laid out by General McCarver. It was located a short distance below where Portland now stands. From Linton they moved to the Tualatin Plains. He remained there during the first part of the winter, when he moved up the Luckiamute and put in a crop, but sold it before harvest time. He then moved to the east side of the Willamette River, where he took up a claim which was situated at the foot of Knox Butte. Here he built a cabin and made a garden but shortly after, abandoning this place, he took up the one he now owns.

The country being to a great extent unfenced, Mr. Peterson raised stock, and also started a gunsmith's shop. He improved his place and continued so to do, until at length it has become one of the finest and most beautiful places in the County.

In 1852 he built a mill at Soda Springs, which he sold in about a year, and purchased the Albany Hotel, in Albany for $1,800. This was the first hotel in Albany. He shortly after rented it out for $50 per month. After two years he sold it and returned to the farm, where he remained until 1871. He took his family and stock and went east of the mountains, where he lived about one year, and then came back to the valley, where he purchased property in Lebanon and started his old business of watch-making, etc.

He has been a hard-working and successful man, and has fully merited the success he has gained. He now has two very pleasant homes, one in Lebanon and the other at the foot of Peterson's Butte. It is very gratifying to the old pioneers of today, who have succeeded in life to look back at those old times when they endured all kinds of hardships, living principally on boiled wheat, going one hundred miles or so to a mill, having no luxuries and but few of the necessaries of life, and then at the smiling prosperity and abundance by which they are now surrounded. Mr. P. started with nothing, and by persevering frugality, he finally owned about 600 acres of fine farm and pasture lands, besides a fine herd of stock.

Mr. P. is the father of seven children, five of whom are living, four of these being grown, the eldest is Daniel H. (David H.?), born in Iowa in 1844, resides near Lebanon, Melissa, born in Oregon in 1849, is married to Mr. Henry Khun. (Note: an evident mistake here. This should be Henry Klum.), and now lives near her father's farm; Garrison J., born in Oregon in 1851, now lives near Lebanon; Walter C., born in Oregon in 1860, is a jeweler, and in business with his father, and, like him, is a natural mechanic. He has received a good business education, and has a natural leaning towards this business; Frank O., born in Oregon in 1869 is at school.

Mr. Peterson may be classed as among our most substantial citizens, and he possesses the confidence and respect of the community."

Copyright © 2000 Patricia Dunn. All rights reserved. This transcription may not be reproduced in any media without the express written permission by the author. Permission has been given by the Transcriber to publish on the LGS web site.