Oregon Research Trip June 18 – 21th

For me, departing on a trip always begins with the vision of coming home, just to make sure I’m safe while venturing in the Pacific Northwest.  There I sat, in my little grey Toyota RAV 4 with misty eyes, staring at my backyard through the iron gate thinking about driving back into my parking space and once more seeing the lush green of the yard, letting the peace of my home wash over me, taking that memory for stressful times on the journey.

After a quick breakfast in Abbotsford, while waiting for the bank to open, so I could obtain US currency, and a short wait in a border line-up, I was off for my first stop at Fort Nisqually, now located at Defiance Park in Tacoma Washington.  It was originally located on the Nisqually River south of its current location, but has been accurately recreated at Defiance Park.  I was the only visitor, just before lunch, and was provided with an excellent tour, which was made even more interesting by the fact that I had just finished reading the book by Vanessa Winn, “The Chief Factor’s Daughter” in which, she talks about the main character, Margaret’s older sister being married to Dr. Tolmie and stationed at Fort Nisqually.  I was able to see the “big house” or the Factor’s (man in charge) residence, where numerous Tolmie children were born and raised.   The highlight of the tour was Mrs. Tolmie’s sewing cabinet, that looked more like a cabinet for storing umbrellas, made out a beautiful dark wood.  I also saw Mrs. McLoughlin’s sewing cabinet, done in a Chinese motif, which is much larger, located in Oregon City at the McLouglin residence.  Unfortunately, pictures are rarely allowed within the historical buildings for insurance purposes.  Fort Nisqually is much smaller than Fort Langley, it is more on the size of Fort St. James.  I’m not sure if this is because of the park allotment for the Fort Nisqually or if it was the original size.  When I do more of the research for the book I will need to make a trip to the original site of the fort.

I did not leave enough time, as I had planned, to visit Fort Vancouver on this day, which turned out to be rather unfortunate, as on the Saturday when I did visit, it was in the pouring rain.  So I drove on to my hotel, south of Portland, unloaded my vehicle and dumped everything in the room and made quick trip to a nearby grocery store for a few provisions.  Okay it was milk for my tea, a bit of fruit and yogurt.  I found that when I am doing research meals are often forgotten.  I doubt anyone would believe me going for 12-14 hours without eating.  An evening apple and yogurt is always welcome after a long day of driving through the countryside to visit historical sites.

The second day, found me making a fifteen minute trip into the centre of Portland, (there is no traffic) I could have left much later.  I drove in circles looking for a parking spot figuring it would turn out that I was blocks from the Oregon Historical Society (OHS), but as I exited the parkade there was OHS in front of me.  Portland is not the land of coffee, there was only one Starbuck within walking distance of the OHS, but unfortunately there was a jackhammer eating up the sidewalk.  I ended up at the Art Gallery, which had just opened a small (really small) coffee shop, an excellent source for a good cup of coffee and pastry.  I managed to sit there, watching the seniors awaiting the opening of the gallery, which was displaying car memorabilia. I gather that Portland has quite the racing history.  The OHS also had a display on the history of racing in Portland, with a number of old lovingly preserved racing cars, historical pictures with a number of individual stories on how racing was started in Portland.  I do remember driving by, on the Interstate 5 freeway, the raceway, thinking it was strange to have a raceway so close to the city.  But, I wasn’t there to research racing and wandered through the display quickly in order to reach the gift shop. I was looking for books on the early history of Oregon.  What I found was a very helpful young man, who had studied the local history in-depth, better yet he was related to one of the early families of Champoeg, the Blanchards.  He was able to assist me in finding articles in the Oregon Historical Quarterly without my having to browse each issue.  He also provided me with a book “Children of the Fur Trade” by John C. Jackson (more to follow on the book at a later date).  It was the discussion about the different families and the settlements that most intrigued me.  My advice to anyone doing research is to arrive early on a weekday, when the organization is not busy, you will receive far more assistance and make good friends.

I cannot say enough about the friendly staff at OHS library.  They were very helpful, but there was far too much information for me to review in four hours, so I selectively looked at a few pieces on Peter Skene Ogden (PSO) and on Donald Manson.  I choose to read the will of PSO, some in his original hand writing, but I did switch to a typewritten copy for the remainder of the will.  In his will PSO acknowledges his son Peter Ogden (adopted), but then in a couple of lines below this, he acknowledges his grandson, Peter Skene Ogden, son of Peter Ogden as his grandson.  There has been a great deal of confusion surrounding the descendants of PSO, but that is for yet another discussion.

For the research on Donald Manson, I choose a piece from the Oregonian (a letter written to the editor) by Willard H. Rees  “The Oldest Pioneers”, January 31, 1976, which was four years before Manson’s death in 1880.  Mr. Rees facts on Donald Manson are not completely accurate, first off Donald Manson was baptised (we don’t know when he was born) in 1798, not April 6^th 1800.  His father was not a farmer, but a steward on an estate, probably one step up from being a farmer.  My research of historical documents on Thurso, Scotland is still on going at this time.  Developing a timeline for Ogden and Manson is going to take me a bit of time digging through the Hudson Bay Company’s records.

What would a trip to Portland be without a stop to Powell’s Bookstore?  First, give yourself more than two hours, more than two hundred dollars to spend, and for heaven sakes, don’t go at the end of a day of research.  You will end up walking back and forth between the different subject areas and the one you want next is always on the opposite side of the store.  Good walking shoes are advised.  The store is actually made up of a number of old buildings that have had doorways cut between them on several different levels.  I believe, Michael Powell started off in one section of the block and just kept expanding. The parking garage is the funkiest place I’ve ever left my RAV 4, you have to honk, in order to go down the long, practically perpendicular ramp, to the exit and that’s after you have backed up a couple of times in order to go straight down, hitting the brakes quickly at the end of the ramp before coming to stop on the sidewalk. I had been reading my oldest niece Kate’s blog and she was interested in a few books that I thought I would surprise her with later in the summer.  So there I found myself in the poetry section of Powell’s thinking that this was about as close to Kate as I had been in a couple years.  You see Kate made her first visit to Powell’s back in the early spring and she lives in Halifax.  Here I was only five hours from Portland and it took me ten years to make my first trip to Powell’s, since first discovering the bookstore online.  Sore feet, no food for eighteen hours, I headed home with a pile of books nestled in the seat beside me with a huge smile on face, it had been an extraordinary day for a librarian.  The best was yet to come, in my adventure out to the area of Champoeg and French Prairie, the following day.

This trip was about PSO and Manson and I found myself at every turn of the road wondering what they saw.  The park interpreters, at Nisqually, had assured me that I5 basically followed the trail of the fur traders in the 1800s and was probably a trail that the natives had used for centuries before the arrival of first explorers.  I wished that just of a few moments I could see the landscape through the eyes of the earlier settlers.  That would have to wait for Saturday at Fort Vancouver.

A quick breakfast, at the Holiday Inn, and I was off for the major part of this research trip—Champoeg and to see the barn that Donald Manson had built.  What I found, when I got there was an empty state park, I had the place to myself.  I wandered from the interpretive centre to the accurately reconstructed 1870s vegetable garden.  It was when I stood, with one hand on the timbers of the Manson barn, that I began to understand the breathe of the distance between my first ancestor in Canada and myself.  Six generations and I could no more understand why someone would travel across the vast continent of North America.  I longed for him to come through the doors of the barn and explain to me how he could leave his homeland and face the hardships of daily living traversing the Pacific Northwest from Fort St. James to Fort Vancouver with upwards of 30 men and their families, with 100 pack horses.  I don’t think many of us understand how long it takes to break camp and saddle huge numbers of pack animals, never mind trying to cover the territory.

When I went back inside the interpretative centre two of the interpreters where dressed in costume playing the role of Donald and Felicite Manson and I have to say that I was just a little more than stunned by the appearance of  Mark Hinds, he looked very much like Donald Manson.  I don’t think he realized just how stunned I was talking to him.  And I wasn’t brought to my senses until he suggested the likeness.  If I had wanted to talk to Donald Manson, outside of the barn, here I was talking to him, albeit in more modern surroundings, about what it was like to live in Champoeg.  The loss of his home to a flood on the plains below, his wedeling more land from Mr. Newell next door.

More of the trip to come, from French Prairie to Fort Vancouver.