WPA Interviews

INTERVIEW.

Interview with Perry Ross, Brownsville, Oregon. "My name is Perry Ross and I am one of the descendants of the pioneer family of Brownsville which is so mingled and "doubled and twisted" that I hardly know how to name them. They might be called the Belieu-Jack-Averill family for those are the names of the three men whom my grandmother married at different times. I cannot tell but a little of this family history but perhaps with what I give and what others may give you when you interview them you may be able to piece together some of the family history.

To begin with, my grandfather was Rev. Newton Belieu. He was a pioneer Methodist missionary and came to Oregon in 1849. He settled in Polk County and preached in various parts of the valley. Among the points where he held services was Corvallis, then called Marysville, where it is said he preached the first Christian sermon. The place of meeting was a low log cabin with a dirt floor.

The same year that grand father Belieu arrived in Oregon he was sent to San Francisco by the church. He went from Portland to San Francisco by boat and on the voyage he was stricken with cholera and died. My grandmother begged of the captain that he should not be buried at sea and because, no doubt, of grandmother's own condition, the captain consented and sent a boat ashore to bury him on Angel Island near San Francisco. Angel Island is what I have always heard the place called, but in an obituary published at the time of my mother's death it is stated to have been Alcatraz Island. I have never been able to learn the name of the boat, which took them from Portland and I very much wish that I could learn its name.

In the last paragraph I mentioned my grandmother's "condition". She was about to give birth to a child. As soon as she reached San Francisco she returned immediately to Portland and to her home in Polk County and there my mother, Julia Belieu was born, just three weeks after her father's death. (1850).

My grandmother was Sarah Liggett. She was born in 1816. She died November 9, 1894. She came to Oregon with her husband in 1849. There is a family tradition, which I have frequently heard repeated by the older members of the family to the effect that Grandmother's sister married someone in the Garfield family. I have forgotten the exact facts but it was either that she was James A. Garfield's wife or mother. It does not matter much, which for none of the rest of us has lived up to such a tradition.

I cannot tell you how many children there were in the Belieu family before my grandfather's death. The family is so scattered and so tangled that without records I cannot repeat the date with any accuracy. One sister of my mother was named Angela. She was born in Missouri and was eleven years old when the family came to Oregon. She married Talbert Carter and they resided in Benton County near Wells Station. She was born in 1838; came to Oregon in 1849 at the age of eleven, married in 1854 at the age of sixteen years and died in 1939 soon after passing her one hundred and second birthday.

Altogether my grandmother had fourteen children but I will not even attempt to name them all of to tell how many were Belieus, How many Jacks and how many Averills.

In 1857 my grandmother married Rev. Nathaniel Jack, another Methodist preacher. At the time he was a widower, his first wife having died on March 7oth, 1851. Her name, by the way, was "Senna Jack" and her tombstone in the Brownsville Cemetery is the oldest one there. It is the second burial ever made in that plot, the first one having been Eliza Hart Spalding, wife of the Missionary H. H. Spalding. Mrs. Spalding's body, however, has been removed and taken to Idaho to lie beside that of her husband, thus leaving Mrs. Jack the first burial there.

Rev. Jack died and my grandmother was married a third time, this time to Mr. H. J. C. Averill. Averill was not a preacher as her first two husbands were but he was a very active Baptist layman. Averill was also a pioneer surveyor and laid out many of the early Linn County reads. He came to Oregon in 1852 and first took up a donation claim west of Albany. He lived there for several years but the malaria was bad so he first moved to the Halsey neighborhood and later to Brownsville. The Averill home at Brownsville was situated on the north banks of the Calapooia about two miles north of town. Averill, like Jack, was a widower and had four sons. After her third marriage my grandmother had one daughter. This was Olive Averill who married Edd Stannard a pioneer Brownsville Merchant.

I should state here that another of my grandmother's sons in the Belieu section of the family was Ben. Belieu. His home was in California.

This Belieu-Jack-Averill mixture is very complicated. So much so that members of the family cannot straighten it all out. At the time that grandmother married Averill there was an Averill step-son named Perm Averill who was trying to explain to some of his friends just the different grades of relationship but even then it was so difficult that he got completely confused and had to confess that it was altogether too much for him.

Still another member of the Belieu branch of the family was Asbury Belieu. He has just come into my mind. There is a long row of large maple trees growing on the east side of North Main Street in Brownsville. Formerly this row of trees extended all the way down Main Street and then east on the old road leading out of Brownsville. That old road beside the river has long since been washed away by the river current but the maple trees extended clear to the east end of Brownsville. All those trees were planted by my father and his brother-in-law Asbury Belieu. Those that now remain on the higher ground are now very large trees.

My mother's name was Julia Ann Newton (Belieu) Ross. I have already told of the circumstances of her birth. My father's name was William Freeman Ross. My mother and father were married in the year 1864 when mother was only fourteen years old. I think that my father was a very persistent lover for I have heard him say that the "Old Man Jack" drove him off many times because he though my mother, his step-daughter was too young to marry. But in the end, as is mostly the case, the young people won out.

My father built what is now known as the "Gustafson" confectionery here in Brownsville. In that building he ran a saddle shop there for many years. (Note: This is the fourth building south of the present Brownsville City Hall. One of the very old buildings in Brownsville.) My father was also janitor at the Brownsville Baptist Church for many years. When the present building was first put up the belfry was not finished for some time. When the church bell arrived there was no proper place to install it. It was hoisted up in one end of the church attic and there used for a long time. When my father wished to ring the bell he would climb up into the attic and turn the bell with a crank. He always made me go away before he began ringing because he was afraid that the sound in that close confined space would injure my ears.

Before I leave the older generations and come down to my own recollections I should say that my grandfather Ross was a Scotchman. I have no record of his coming to America or of his coming to Oregon but it was at a very early date. He was the first shoemaker in Brownsville and the first Masonic Master here. His name was Guy Ross. He was a Scotch Presbyterian and very strict in his religious beliefs. I remember at one time he offended my mother very much by quoting some passage from scriptures supposed to forbid a woman from whistling. (Mother had been whistling at her work at the time.)

I was born at Brownsville, April, 1869. I will be seventy-one years old next month. I was raised in Brownsville and remember the town when it was much different than now. The first bridge across the Calapooia was situated near the west point of the Butte on which the Christian Church and City Reservoir now stand. I cannot remember that first bridge but I do remember the second one. It was a covered wooden bridge with cylindrical cement piers. Some of those old piers still stand in the bed of the river and may be seen straight north of the Presbyterian Church. That old bridge is connected with several vivid memories. For one thing, it was the spot where I made my first acquaintance with playing cards. It happened in this way:

All the walk between north and south Brownsville was a narrow wooden one scarcely two feet wide which led to this bridge. Everyone who traveled that walk must needs go single file. It was a Sunday morning and I was going to church to the old Methodist Church which stood at the south end of the bridge and just opposite the present Presbyterian Church. I was about six or seven years old. Boy,-like I was running on ahead of my father and mother and when I got to about the center of the bridge I found a scattered deck of cards which some late Saturday night roisterer had dropped on his way home. I had never seen playing cards before-had no idea what they were, but the face cards, the king and queens caught my eye and I gathered them up. Waving them high in the air I ran back through the crowd of churchgoers to show my father and mother what I had found. It seemed to humiliate them greatly that a boy of theirs should be brandishing cards about and they quickly hushed me and threw the cards away. Later I got a sound thrashing for what I had done. My mother objected to the punishment and said, "He didn't know what it was. He did not know it was wrong," but father's only reply was, "Well, he'll know after this."

I can remember when that old bridge went down for I was there and saw it go. I was about eighteen years old then, and working in the Woolen Mills. There was a high water and we went from the mill to see the flood. It took the old bridge out completely. The third bridge was built just a few rods further upstream. It was of steel and is still standing although no longer used. It was built sometime in the 1880's. The fourth bridge is the one now used, built a year ago.

When my grandmother married H.J.C. Averill they were both getting old and my parents loaned me to them to do chores and help them about the place. I thereafter lived with them for a number of years. I was just getting to the age when a boy wants a gun to shoot. In the attic at "granddads" there was a big old muzzle-loading rifle and I used to look at it and wish it were mine. Finally, one day, "granddad" set a trap for some rats which were troublesome. Instead of catching a rat he caught a little skunk. At first he was going to kill it with a rake and then decided that if he shot it, it would smell less. He sent me up the stairs to get the old rifle. It had been up there so long that is was rusty and when he started to load it the bullet stuck about half way down. First "granddad" tried to force it down by hand-then he took a hatchet and tried to drive the ramrod down but only bent it. Then he gave it up and set the gun away half loaded. A long time after that "granddad" said that if I would saw up a cord of wood for him, one cut to the stick so that it would go into the fireplace, he would give me the old gun. I sawed the wood and got the gun and "two bits" with instructions to take it to the gunsmith and have the stuck bullet drilled out. The gunsmith's shop was near the north end of the present Calapooia bridge. To get there I had to pass the Riley Kirk house at the corner of Spalding Avenue and Averill Street. Alex Kirk was playing in the yard and wanted to know what I had. I told him the story and he said, "Two bits!" "Say, come into our back yard and we'll shoot the bullet out and spend the two-bits for candy. I was quite willing to agree. Alex took the old gun and shook a few grains of powder into the tube; then he put on a cap. He wanted to shoot the bun but it was my gun and I insisted on doing the honors. I laid the heavy barrel across a fork in a plum tree and pulled the trigger. First it hissed and sputtered a bit and then went "Bang" and Whee-ee-ee!" The gun went off and blew the nipple backward from the barrel right past my ear. (Note: Shooting a gun with clogged barrel! Extremely dangerous!) Well, we were in a fix then. The bullet was still fast in the barrel and the nipple was now gone requiring another two-bits to replace. Alex Kirk said, "well, lets take it to the smith anyway. Maybe he'll put in a new nipple and not charge us. We got there and the gunsmith drilled out the bullet and then put in a second-hand nipple without charge. I never told "Grandad" what we had done. I knew he would thrash me good if he knew. (Grandad, in this narrative, is H. J. C. Averill.)

Averill Street in Brownsville is named after "Grandad" his house is still standing, the third north of Spalding Avenue on the east side of the road.

The old Arlington Hotel, one of the first hotels in North Brownsville stood at the northeast corner of North Main and Spalding Avenue. I can remember when it was being built. When the foundation was completed and the ground floor laid the people of the town celebrated and hired a lot of Indian hop-pickers to come and hold a war dance on the new floor. They painted up and put on their full dress and howled and danced for hours. I can remember my sister Josie and I hanging on to our mother's dress and watching the, scared to death of the yelling savages.

Speaking of hotels, there was one still earlier than the Arlington House. It was called Kees Hotel and was really a boarding house for mill workers. (Spelling of name uncertain). It was situated at the southwest corner of Race and Pine Streets in the old town of Amelia, now a part of Brownsville. (The Pine Street mentioned is not the present Brownsville Pine Street but was situated in Amelia, one block east of the Woolen Mill Grounds.) The old town of Amelia was named after Mrs. John Brown whose maiden name was Amelia Spalding. She was a daughter of Rev. Henry Harmon Spalding, Indian Missionary.

The first real saloon in Brownsville was situated in the old Thomas Kay house, which is still standing. It was across the street from the Kees Hotel and the next lot south. One part of the building still shows a straight "false front" and that room is where the saloon was situated. The building is now owned by Mrs. Connie White but occupied by Ernest Cochell.

The Kay family later became prominent on Oregon public life. Thomas Kay who ran the saloon was an Englishman who came to Brownsville to superintend certain work in the woolen mill. At that time he was a hard drinker and his family were very poor. Tom Kay and Tommy Ryan used to take a keg of beer on Sundays and go up on the hill where the old Brownsville school was located. (The hill to the northeast of Brownsville business section.) There they would set up the beer for sale and would give boxing exhibitions.

One of the first big fires in Brownsville was the burning of the old Coshow-Powell Store. It was at the head of Spalding Avenue and on the west side of Main Street. The volunteer firemen wished to the loft and began to get out the goods. They rolled barrels of sugar down the stairs to the street and they kept on rolling for a whole block-clear to Averill Street. Many of the barrels burst open and scattered sugar over the street. The next morning when I went down town there were great heaps of eggs in the basement and the men were standing about eating roasted eggs.

Joseph Sage, (Pronounced with two syllables. Sa'-ge, accent on the first syllable. L.H.) Was an old German who was Brownsville's first furniture maker. Many of his pieces are still in existence about Brownsville. It is very expert work in well-finished native maple. Sage's house was situated on the river south of the Woolen Mill. All of that section of the town has now been washed into the river together with the public road where Sage lived but his old house is still standing having been moved up on Kirk Avenue. It is the first house west of the Egglestone residence. (Present owner not learned).

When I was just a small boy-perhaps six years old-we moved from Brownsville to Spokane. We went by ox team and the trip took three months. Spokane then consisted of perhaps seven cabins and there were mostly soldiers and Indians there. At that place we lived in a log cabin with a dirt floor and there were no windows in the cabin. On the trip, near Walla Walla the folks traded their oxen for horses but that proved to be an unprofitable deal. The Indians were constantly stealing the horses. Then they would come around and offer to find them for us for $1.50 a head. We would pay and get the horses back and then in a few days they would be stolen again. Then be Indians bothered in other ways. They would come at any time and stick their heads in the door and bother generally. Father had 160 acres of land there but the trouble and bother with Indians and other things became so great that he sold it all for $20.00 and pulled out. There is now a park in Spokane on part of that land and it is named "Ross Park".

I was the leader of one of Brownsville's first brass bands. We played at the first pioneer picnic in Brownsville almost fifty years ago. That picnic was in a grove on the south side of the river near where the Hedlund Hatchery is now located. One of our first public attempts was at the funeral of Amelia Spalding Brown, wife of John Brown and the woman for which the old town of Amelia was named. It was in winter and the roads were deep in mud. We marched and played all the way from the Brown Home to the Cemetery. We had just three funeral marches and we played them alternately all the way. Some of the boys wore rubber boots, some had none. We were a sorry, muddy crowd by the time we got there-nearly three miles.

My father and mother had three children. They were:

Perry Ross. (Narrator) The oldest.

Josie Ross. She married Edd Starr who was Post Master of Brownsville for over thirty years. She still lives here.

Cassie Ethel Ross. She married a man name Schick.

My mother and father separated. My mother continued to live at Brownsville. Later she married Rev. J. W. Craig, a pioneer South Methodist circuit rider. He came to Oregon in 1852. His parents died on the plains from the cholera. He was raised by an uncle and commenced preaching when he was but seventeen years old. Mother died on May 16, 1926. Rev. Craig died in 1933. He was eighty-nine years old at the time of death and had preached for over seventy-two years.

My father made his home in California where he died about 1930.

I am now living in the house formerly occupied by my mother and Rev. Craig. For many years I was an engineer on the Santa Fe Railroad but am now retired on pension."

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.