Saturday, Saturday...

Yes, I was singing the song when I got up. I listened to that hard, gusty rain early this morning fully aware of how lucky I felt that I did not have to drag myself out of bed, suit up, and go down to the Park Blocks for the day. I so love the sensible people who decided we would not sell during the winter months. I know some of the farmers do (starting in February) but weather is tough on people. It definitely puts the lie to the concept of "homeless by choice" in Oregon. That's just the way some people try to make themselves more comfortable about the overwhelming abundance of their lives. It is not a fun adventure to live outside permanently.

That cute little Yellow-rumped warbler was the first bird I saw this morning on the suet, and I saw the Bewick's Wren yesterday. I love my simple life of watching birds, reading about the pioneers, and looking around online to see what directions I can take my research. Yesterday I was cruising through the online listings for the Special Collections at UO, and I see that they have three folders of James Huddleston's papers!!! This got me so excited there are not enough exclamation points. I will rush over there early next week and see what they have. It may be disappointing (I counsel myself) as they think his wife's name is Jane, and I know better. There may be little trace of Samantha, who interests me much more than her husband, but considering that he died in 1890, these relics will be thrilling no matter the content. Apparently there is a ledger book from his storekeeping (he had the first couple of trading-post stores in Eugene City in the early 1850's) and some letters, presumably hand-written. I want to see Samantha's handwriting. I thought I had her signature but as it turns out, most of the county records were written and signed by the clerks, not the principals in the transactions. Maybe she put some notes on Jim's letters.

I don't know what else I will find there. I spent the day looking through the photos in their digital collection and they are wonderful. John Baugess's collection of the donut shop and tavern that were urban-renewed from next to the Smeede Hotel in the 70's are cool, reminding me how long some of us have known some of the rest of us. There are many photos of important houses during restoration, including the Daniel Christian house which is one of the oldest. I found more evidence of my theories about this place. I didn't even get halfway through the archive. Is it arrogant to think I can add to the research on Eugene's early days?

I applied for a grant from the Historical Society to publish my book, to finish the research and write at least one book of it. I am actually thinking that two might be necessary to avoid the one being too personal and not relevant enough. To quell my self-doubt as I wait a month to hear if I got the grant, I have thrown myself into pinning down details and gathering a lot of background knowledge so I don't say too many stupid things in print. The grant money doesn't really matter so much, it's more the motivation of it, as it is so easy to put the project aside to focus on one of my other projects, of which I have far too many, all a bit too large. I am so passionate about this research, and I know passion fades, so I am trying to really get something on paper and make some tangible progress. I have been filling out the family group sheets for the families I am studying, and it's fun, kind of takes the place of crosswords or sudoku in keeping my brain pliable.

Meanwhile I am getting no physical exercise and have to bring that one higher on the priority list. I couldn't sleep after a day online, started doing that self-recrimination of the late night, which I got out of my brain by thinking about the yellow-rumped and the Bewick's. I love birds, and plants, so that makes things all right in the world. It worked last night, anyway.

So if we get some breaks in the rain today I will get out and look at something, some buildings or some trees. I constantly speculate about what plants Samantha, Miranda, and Grace might have put in this neighborhood. I know Catherine Davis so loved a couple of large firs she insisted they be saved, and I wonder if they could possibly still be there, only 150 years down the road. They were in the River Road area, just off the road, apparently. They'd be huge, so they ought to be visible in the skyline. I could bike out there and try again to pinpoint the boundaries of the Davis land and see. I also have to go to the Creswell cemetery and find Tillie Van Harkin. I realized that she is the person who divided the property into three (or four, depending on where 200 feet from the corner is) so I have to learn more about her. She may get the credit for a lot of the improvements. She lived here (or owned it) for 18 years, until she died in 1942, but she was old, and she certainly didn't do the work herself. It's another effort to check directories and figure out who actually lived in the places, and I want (obsessively) to fully document every year of this place. I want to know exactly where all my people of interest lived, and I even want to know all of the first owners of the Huddleston lots.

I have plenty of directions to keep going, and plenty of ways to distract myself from the main points. The digressions are fascinating. I discovered three of the Vaughan brothers had married women with the last name of Briggs, and it turns out that two were mother and daughter, and the mother's previous husband had been killed for his gold after selling some cattle to the miners, near the Barlow trail. We had a murderous past, Oregon, as most people may know. There's a tombstone in the Coburg cemetery that says "hung by mistake." I think the notorious criminal Hank Vaughan was related to the Vaughans I'm studying...his problem was mostly alcohol. Probably lots of the problems were alcohol. But dead is dead and everyone had rifles, and six guns, and big pieces of wood to club each other with. Not to mention winter fever (pneumonia), cholera, snakebite, and all those other things in that game you maybe played in school. You could trade a set of clothes for food, if there was food. Mules, horses or oxen? I found one person who was maybe the first child buried in our area, Jesse Haskett, son of Jesse Haskett and Miranda Vaughan, who died from a rattlesnake bite, and a report of a time when 7000 rattlers were killed on Rattlesnake Hill (so they could build an early-day subdivision and name it for what they covered up with houses. That went on then just as now. No, most likely they were just trying to protect lives, still an excuse for lots of crimes though.)

There was also a huge problem with racism, and I seem to be uncovering some. The Davises were Quakers, who were often persecuted for their anti-slavery stance, which may be one of the reasons they came here, but I don't know if I will be able to write about it. The attitude toward the native people and any people who were not white was abhorrent, more than criminal, but it's pretty hard to pin attitude down in dead people, unless they wrote about it. I can quote them if they did, so maybe James had some tidbits in his papers. I know there was some scandal with one of Samantha's sisters, and maybe they will shed some light on that. Who knows how many scandals I can uncover? I can link Vaughans to known racists, but I can't call them out from here. It turns out both of the families did have descendants, and it may not be too late to contact them, though people don't always want to talk about charged family secrets. Clearly the history of Oregon was shaped by the issues of slavery and human rights.


So, yes, I am loving the Saturdays off, don't miss Market a bit, and am working hard on the things that make me smile. I mixed up some gelatin, though I didn't make anything from it yet. Maybe that is today's big project. It beats cleaning the bathroom by a long shot. But saying *long shot* makes me want to pick up that book about pioneer women...