Portland Research

Lycurgus, Catherine and Melancthon in 1852

Made it to Portland, specifically to the Oregon Historical Society which had some artifacts I wanted to see. If there are more, I didn't find them, but there were two items that contained some great secrets. The medical bag that belonged to Catherine Sluyter Davis was really worn out, languishing in storage, foxed with white on the dark brown leather. The strap that held it closed was in need of repair, the handle had split open to reveal that it was a simple leather-covered wire, and the whole showed decades of use. This indicates to me that it was Mother Davis's ("the ministering angel") original bag that she brought from home and never replaced with a newer one. Inside it was, sadly, empty, but there were eight loops built to hold bottles and it was overall quite small. I didn't think to measure it but I'd guess it was maybe 10" by 8" by 6", not including the handle. It was compact, as you would expect for someone traveling by foot and by horseback. If she had more instruments they could have been carried separately, but it's unlikely she had much more than a spoon and a cup, perhaps. She wasn't actually trained as a doctor, because as a woman in the 1830's that wouldn't have been likely, but I've read that she was trained by a brother-in-law in nursing. Medical science in those days relied on herbal remedies and she would no doubt have collected and processed many types of plant material from her farm and the woods and fields, and bought the items that were available at the time for pain and infection. I'll have to research that. I think of her as someone who prepared meticulously for the trip west and was prepared to live independently of society, a pragmatist despite her origins of wealth in New York. I read somewhere that one of her sisters married Alexander Hamilton but I haven't checked out that rumor yet. In the photos she looks very determined, always, as if she had to be strong and unassailable as the family matriarch.

Her coverlet was not a quilt, as I suspected, but a woven coverlet in the fashion of the time, and she had to have brought it with her from the east. She could have woven it, but in any case she had embroidered her initials in one corner, just a C and an S, indicating that she acquired it before her marriage in 1831. If she embroidered a date, it wasn't still there, but there was a smaller part of maybe a zero hidden under the facing that had been sewed on to enable hanging the cover. The edges and even parts of the body of it were very worn. No doubt it got heavy use in the overland trip, and was on her bed for most of her life. She died in 1898, and I'd expect that she had made or bought finer coverings in that time, so at some point it was put into storage or given to a relative who hung it on the wall. I don't know when the Historical Society received it or from whom. One of the staff people promised to look and see if there were any more details in the records.

In the Museum itself was an excellent Oregon History exhibit which was full of fascinating detail. In fact I saw an identical coverlet inside their wagon replica scene. It makes sense that these would have lasted much longer than quilts, as they would have been washed less often and prized more. The internet indicated that sometimes weavers traveled through making these for hire, but a professionally-made one would probably have had a woven label in the corner. I thought that the blue yarn seemed positively to be wool, which was dyed with indigo at the time, quite deeply, and wasn't faded. The natural yarn might well have included flax for a different type of yarn that might have added strength or some other aspect to the mix. I know they grew flax both back east and here in Oregon.

The files on Lycurgus and Iantha were very disappointing, almost empty, but there was a long typewritten letter from Merritt Davis that shed a little light on a few things. Apparently Catherine never charged for her medical services. There was a little more of her history as a child, when she moved from NY to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. These areas were the frontier in those days and as Quakers it is likely they moved to get away from slavery and it's politics, and to live undisturbed, and were farmers by necessity although they were well educated. Benjamin served as one of the first judges of the Lane County Court system. Racism was a very real force in the westward expansion and Oregon has a rich history of white privilege and it helps to untangle what each group might have been thinking. I know from the Huddleston effects that someone voted for Grant, so we expect that they were not racists themselves (within the narrow confines of white thinking at the time) and we know from the family stories that the children had native playmates in their early days in Eugene and presumably believed in some level of equality. So I speculate that they attempted to honor an inclusive view of humanity although there were no doubt many ways they lived that would not gain approval today.

Iantha and her husband Phillip F. Castleman left a few letters behind in the UO Special Collections and one, from P.F. to Samantha shows that most of the family did not approve of him or Iantha's marriage. In Iantha's obituary there is a line I hadn't seen: "Mrs. Castleman for years had been a great sufferer. A devoted wife, mother and friend, she bore with patience and fortitude affliction as it gathered around her, dying as she had lived in quiet resignation." We know some of what she suffered, as she had a brief marriage from 1850 to 1853 to George W. Evans, who died leaving her with two children. There is a letter to her mother describing how she struggled to keep half of the land grant property for her children, though her father-in-law took her husband's half in exchange for supporting her children. Apparently he did a poor job of it, and her father went to court in Lane County to be appointed guardian. He won, but a few years later she married Castleman and appealed to get them back. It seems so impossible that you wouldn't by law own your own children, but even letting women get their name on the deed for their half of the land grants was quite revolutionary in those times. You had to petition the court to keep your kids if your husband died, not to mention all of your property. I'll write more about that sometime.

At any rate, you rarely read anything that revealing in an obit, and the photos of her do seem to echo this. I still did not find any photos of Samantha, so she remains a mystery with only the one supposed photo of her in 1858. I'm just sure there have to be some, just not labeled, although it could have been the case that she refused. As Castleman was the first photographer, as well as the first sawmill owner, and later enlisted to go fight Indians, I imagine that she was part of the family who did not like him, and it could have soured her on photographs. She seems like she had firm convictions. His letter petitioned for her friendship, though we have no indication that she extended it.

There are still so many mysteries keeping me interested. I am determined to find more, and there are a few more newspapers to locate and I can take another look at the Huddleston collection now that I know more. I believe I read somewhere that they passed through the Whitman mission a few days before the "massacre" when the missionaries were killed. There's are two or three stories about encounters with natives that make me think that while the Davis family was strongly nonviolent, but were definitely in danger of dying several times. At one point Benjamin convinced some potential attackers that a small stove in the wagon was a cannon, and saved the whole wagon train. Other members of their group did kill people on their way here, but there are no reports of anyone in the family being violent except Castleman, and he was grievously wounded in his service. I'll need to pin down a few more details before I write much about him. Because he had so many accomplishments it may be that he didn't stick with anything long, and that is why his photos are lost. On the other hand, they may be in the hands of his descendants and not lost at all. Wish I knew.

So, I got a few tantalizing details of these lives and a photo of Lemuel, the one who lived in Newport. He has a very pleasant appearance, and to me he resembles Samantha. Sure wish we had a photo of Benjamin himself. I imagine he was a very important force in their lives, as well as in Lane County in those early days, and really should not be forgotten.

I also learned a little about Melancthon M. Davis, whose house in Eugene is still right there on Jefferson, that he was one of the first to bring Japanese oysters to the Newport area, and he still owned extensive oyster beds when he died. That helps explain a few of the references to fisheries I read earlier. A couple of the brothers went to the coast when it opened up to whites (more sad stories for natives) and profited from fishing and ferries and the shellfish in the first exploitations of that area. Money was certainly part of their story. Tax records show that Samantha paid a lot of them, and indeed when Benjamin died after only a decade here, his wealth had increased from the 75 cents he arrived with to over $12,000 in property, livestock and possessions. Samantha left over $20,000 to the children's home, as she had no living descendants, and only nieces and nephews that she must have felt were well provided for.

So that was it, for Portland archives, as far as I know. I'll keep looking but I may have found what there is to find. The good news is that in preparing for the trip I organized all of the people-oriented research and now have a much better idea of what I do know and where to find it. I have a few small leads to follow still and will continue to sift through what I have to put together stories. The Lane County Historical society is having an exhibit right now about early medicine and I'll bet I can get some ideas on what potions Catherine might have had in that bag. I'm also watching the PBS series Mercy Street which is about nursing during the Civil War, extremely relevant history. I'm loving all the details about what people wore, and how they moved around. Those hoopskirted dresses caused a lot of accidents, it seems. I'm grateful for sweatpants and birkenstocks today!