WPA Interviews

Smith, Margaret (Blakley)

INTERVIEW, Oct.3, 1938 (Margaret Blakley Smith.)

DLC #752 OC

My name is Margaret (Blakley) Smith. I was born here at Brownsville, Oregon. There were six girls in my family and I am the only one now living. One of my sisters was Harriet Blakley who became the wife of G. C. Cooley, one of the past owners of the store now known as Cooley and Company, here at Brownsville. That store was founded by my father, Captain James Blakley, and by my father's uncle, Hugh L. Brown about the year 1850 or 1851. The exact date I cannot tell. The present senior partner of the firm is W. C. Cooley, my sister Harriet's son. He has been operating the store for many years, probably fifty or more. The store has been in the possession of my father, or my father's descendents since it's very beginning, nearly ninety years.

My father, Captain James Blakley was born in Knox County, Tennessee in 1812. He died here at Brownsville in 1913, being just under 101 years of age. My mother, Sarah Dick Blakley was also born in Knox County, Tennessee in 1815 and died at Brownsville, Ore., in 1888. They came to Oregon with the emigration of 1846, being already married and having a considerable family even then.

My father's life was a most remarkable one. His years covered such a great stretch of time, from the days when canal boats were considered a wonderful means to travel, through all the changes until the coming of the automobile, even to the coming of the airplanes, although I am not certain whether he ever saw one. He was a man of rugged, active disposition and took active part in everything that was going on in the community, so his life was really a full and satisfying one.

My father was a soldier in the Mexican war before coming to Oregon. When the Indian troubles broke out in 1847 at the Whitman Mission my father helped to organize a company of Volunteers, and in the Rogue River Indian war this company (previously not sent into active service) was sent to southern Oregon. Jonathan Keeney, I believe, was the first Captain of this company, but when it came to actual service there was some misunderstanding or dissention and Keeney resigned. My father was made captain in his place. He served throughout the Rogue Indian War.

(Here Mrs. Smith repeated a long poem written by one of the Rogue River Volunteers. It was a very interesting and colorful poem, but repeated very rapidly, and when the writer requested that she repeat it slowly so that he might record it she became confused and could not again repeat it.) It began:

"In Meadown Fort, of hard report,
As fancy leads my story ****
Our Captain was a brave a man
As ere commission bore.
In fight he always led his men
And wait till all was o'er.

***

McBride the next in order stands,
With Walt and Curry Moore. ***.

Our Captain now was in the field,
And Major Smith his man.
While John surrounded them, you know,
And brought them to a stand."

(The author of this poem was supposed to be the above-mentioned McBride. The writer was much disappointed that the entire poem could not be obtained.)

I was born in 1846, and am now 90 years of age. I can remember when Brownsville consisted of only a few houses on the south side of the River. There was no town whatever on the north of the river. That was only a wild swale then. About the only house over there was that of W. R. (Riley) Kirk. He lived well to the eastward, really outside of the present town.

The land on the north side of the river where North Brownsville now stands belonged mostly to Rev. H.H. Spalding. Spalding came to Brownsville in 1847 or 1848. My people and the other settlers wanted a school here. When they heard that Spalding had come down from the upper country after the Whitman massacre they went to see him and urged that he make his home on the Calapooia. He came down to look over the land and liked the place, but he told my father and Uncle Hugh Brown. "If I come here where can I settle? You have already taken up all of the best Land." My Father and Uncle Hugh Brown talked it over. They wanted very badly to have a capable teacher who would settle here, so finally they agreed to move their claim lines apart and let Spalding take up the land between them. This they did, but Spalding extended his claim lines northward across the river and took up the land now occupied by the Brownsville Woolen Mills.

Spalding had three daughters and one son. The daughters were Eliza who married Andrew Warren, Martha, who married William Wigle, and Amelia who married John Brown, oldest son of Hugh L. Brown. The son was named Henry Hart Spalding. He was the youngest of the family. After Spaldings came to live here at Brownsville Mrs. Spalding was not well. She soon died. The first dead person that I ever saw was Mrs. Spalding. I remember just how she looked lying on the cooling board in the Spalding cabin. That was the way they prepared dead persons in those days. They had no way of embalming the bodies, and if it was necessary to keep them even a few days it was necessary to keep them as cool as possible, so they were laid out on a cooling board with nothing about them to retain the bodily heat, and only a sheet over them. Mrs. Spalding was the first person to die in this settlement and the first person to be buried in the Brownsville cemetery. Later her body was taken up and removed to lie beside her husbands at his burial place in Idaho.

After Mrs. Spalding died Mr. Spalding felt that he needed someone to help conduct the raising of his children. He wrote to the Mission Board in the East and requested them to send out some virtuous woman to be a second wife. The woman that was sent was entirely inexperienced in housekeeping and very eccentric in many ways. One time she was eating at our house and asked my mother how she made such clear, good coffee. Mother said, "I put an egg in it to settle it." Later she spoke to mother again and said that her coffee was not good. After a time we went to the Spaldings for a meal and found out the reason. She put a whole egg, shell and all into the coffee.

I once heard my Uncle Hugh L. Brown speaking to Spalding about his second marriage. He asked, "Henry, how did you know that you would like her when she came?" The reply was, "Hugh, I had to like her."

I went to school to Henry Harmon Spalding in the old schoolhouse on the Calapooia which has since become so famous. I think that perhaps I am the only person living who was a scholar there. The schoolhouse was just simply a plain log cabin. It had puncheon or split-log floors and the benches were simply split logs with pegs set in them for legs. The benches had no backs and there were no desks whatever for us to use. That was my first school, and Spalding was my first teacher. Spalding was a good teacher for his time but very strict. Henry Hart Spalding was the teacher's only son, and he went to school at the same time. I will tell you how I saw Spalding punish his own son one day at school. We were playing outside and Henry Spalding made one of the girls cry. His father called him in and cut a heavy hazel stick. He split it about half way up and put it on Henry's nose like a pair of pincers. It pinched so tight that it made the boy's nose bleed, and in that state his father sent him off home, crying as he went.

All of my teachers were very strict. One of them, George Benjamin used to whip so hard that he made the blood flow. One of the school patrons finally objected and there was a big lawsuit over it. All of the teachers kept whips or switches ready in the schoolhouse and used them freely.

Our school studies were very simple. We had a spelling book, First Reader, Second Reader, Third Reader, Fourth Reader and Arithmetic. After that we graduated!

The pupils who attended school with me at the old Spalding Schoolhouse were Henry, Martha and Millie (Amelia) Spalding, some of my own brothers and sisters, the Courtney children and the Griffith children.

In the early days the teachers were paid by the school patrons. Each family paid according to the number of the pupils, which it sent, but usually the well-to-do families paid more than their share so that the poor people could have school advantages also. One of our teachers had been "boarding around" which was another way schools were financed. The teacher spent a few weeks or a month at the home of each scholar. This teacher had spent his time at every home save one. He had stayed a month at my Sister Ellen Montgomery's (Ellen Blakley Montgomery) who was a very good housekeeper and cook. Then, at the end of the year only the Griffith family remained, but instead of going there the teacher went back again to sister Ellen's. There was a spring near the Griffith's house, and on the way past we often stopped there for a drink. One day I was there and the teacher passed. Mrs. Griffith said, "I wonder why the teacher is going past here. It is our turn to have him to board but he never stops." One of the small scholars spoke up and said, "I know why he don't ever come here. It's because you've all got the itch." To that a Griffeth child replied, "Damn him, he's got just as much time to scratch as the rest of us."

I forgot to mention about the old Spalding schoolhouse that it had just two small window in each side of the building and the door of the house faced the west. It was situated on the Spalding Claim which is about one mile east of Brownsville. Father and Hugh L. Brown were the men who went to Portland, or to some place down the valley where Spalding was staying and persuaded him to come up here to settle. They built him a house and all of the neighbors helped to put up the schoolhouse.

When I was small housekeeping outfits were very simple. We did not even have washboards or tubs, but took the clothes down to the slough and "beetled" them, that is, pounded them in the water with a heavy maul or "beetle" made especially for that purpose. As a small girl one of my tasks was to help care for some of the neighbors children. Among others I took care of the Moody children. Mr. Z.F. Moody was a near neighbor of ours. He later became Governor of Oregon. Z.F. Moody and G.F. Colbert were married at a surprise double wedding in the old McKinney Meeting House. Rev. Father McKinney performed the ceremony. Moody's bride was an orphan girl who worked her way across the plains herding cattle for a Crawford family. Another orphan girl who came at the same time was Harriet Snyder who married a man named Helm. Later, after Helm's death she married James Balch and became the mother of F. H. Balch, author of the Bridge of the Gods.

Some of the familiar names and customs of the very early days are gone forever. Brownsville was first called simply "The Calapooia" and later it was known as "Kirk's Ferry". Finally my father platted a town site here and named it Brownsville in honor of his uncle, Hugh Leeper Brown. One old name, which few people remember, was that of "Cougar Neck" which was given to the neighborhood now known as "Pleasant Valley".

My father's claim was in what is now the eastern part of South Brownsville. The dividing line between the Blakley claim and that of Alexander Kirk, next west, was at what is now South Main Street, the street that leads directly south from the Calapooia River Bridge. (Note: A new bridge in course of construction (1928) carries the road one block further east, so that in the future this description will not exactly apply. L. Haskin, Field Worker.) The original store building was situated on what is now the corner of South Main Street and Blakley Avenue. That site is now occupied by the memorial monument which we erected in Father's honor.

My father's old house, built in the early 1850's is still standing although no longer occupied and fast falling into decay. It is situated about 1/2 mile east of the present South Side School House and back from the road (south of the road) almost 1/8 of a mile. As it now stands it has no fireplace in it, but when I was young there was a large fireplace there.

I have one brother still living here at Brownsville. He is Henry Blakley with whom I am now visiting. He is somewhat younger than I, but poor Henry, his mind is fast going. I also have a brother James who lives near Pendleton. His wife's name, like my own, is Margaret.

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.