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| Volume XXXVI, Number 4 |
Winter, 2001
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| Hangman's Park
Musical Chairs at the Courthouse |
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| Volume XXXVI, Number 4 |
Winter, 2001
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| Hangman's Park
Musical Chairs at the Courthouse |
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| The
Sou'wester |
| ISSN #0038-4984
Copyright, 2002, by the Pacific County Historical Society. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the Society's Editorial Board. The Sou'wester is a quarterly publication of the Pacific
County Historical Society and Museum. The Pacific County Historical
Society is a non-profit 501(C)(3) organization in South Bend, Washington.
In addition to the Sou'wester, the Society publishes a monthly newsletter for its members and operates the Pacific County Historical Society Museum in South Bend, Washington.
Design and electronic page layout by Charles B. Summers,
South Bend, Washington.
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| The
Sou'wester Winter Issue, 2001
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Ida Dalton Leonard. PCHS #5-2-72-3 (4). |
Introduction
In this issue of The Sou’wester we present two stories about people prominent in Pacific County politics and public life. In discussing ideas for these stories with the authors, I encouraged a somewhat lighter approach to character and history than the reader might expect to find for such topics. Knowing both authors as I do, I would like to suggest to the reader that profound ideas can sometimes hide behind a less than reverent surface. Rod Bunnell graciously shares with us some stories about his grandparents handed down in the family. The fact that some of the incidents mentioned in the story occurred at the site of our future museum proved to be the catalyst for setting these stories down in print. Law enforcement is an important subject, however, deserving more attention in these pages. The topic of Asian immigration also surfaces in Rod’s story. A not uncommon subject in local oral history. I can guarantee you will be seeing more on these topics in future issues. Those who want to know more about the Lum You (pronounced “Lum e-ow”) hanging should consult Ruth Dixon’s account of the event in Volume 6, No. 1 (Spring 1971) of The Sou’wester. |
| Bob Bailey has once
again prepared an interesting historical account touching on current issues;
namely, term limits. Those who think this is a new idea should read
on. Bob also introduces us to one of the first women in local public
office, Ida Dalton Leonard. Women’s history will also receive more
attention in The Sou’wester than it has in the past.
Women are also prominently featured in the photo story, which rounds out this issue. Lucy Johnson and her daughter Stella were captured on film enjoying life in early North Cove. The amateur-shot photos we publish here for the first time provide a glimpse into the more casual side of Victorian life on the Pacific Coast. They also provide a preview of the subject for our next Sou’wester issue. The final page might be titled “what might have been,” or possibly “think and grin.” The possible relevance to current news I will leave up to the reader. I would like to thank Lois and Del Brown, and Betty Miller for helping with photos for this issue. I would also like to thank Jim and Shirley Poage for help in illustrating Bob’s story. Bruce Weilepp, Editor |
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Zack Brown. PCHS #2002.91.1. |
Hangman’s Park
By Rod Bunnell Editor’s note: Zack, and May Bullard Brown were prominent Pacific County pioneers, being active in community life and politics during the late Nineteenth and early 20 Centuries. Their successful lives seem almost written for a great American novel. Born January 12, 1863 in Randolph Center, Vermont, May Bullard Brown grew up in Illinois, returning to Middlebury College in Vermont to finish her education. Traveling west for a teaching position in Washington Territory in 1885, she met and married Zack Brown in 1886. In addition to raising six children, May served as Deputy County Commissioner for 20 years. She passed away June 26, 1950. Zack Brown was born February 26, 1850, Oramuzto , New Brunswick, Canada, and died at South Bend Washington in May of 1941 at 92 years of age. Brown represents a surprisingly large number of English Canadians that crossed the border and headed west during the last half of the Nineteenth Century to become prominent in development of the American West. Zack moved to the United States, established his citizenship as a young man, and immigrated to Northern California, where he served as a constable. Zack came to Washington Territory in 1880, to join his brother, J. Box Brown, who had just completed his enlistment in the regular army at Fort Canby. Zack’s first job in Pacific County was as Deputy Sheriff under J. H. Turner. Elected Sheriff of Pacific County in the 1890s, Zack served a total of 18 years in public office. He served two terms each as Sheriff, Assessor, and County Clerk. Sources: Obituaries for May and Zack Brown provided by the Brown Family. |
| It was on Memorial
Day, perhaps 1970 or a year or two one way or the other. My wife
and I took our two sons, then in the elementary grades, and my mother to
Pacific County for the day. We attended the Veterans Service at Fern
Hill Cemetery near Menlo, then had our picnic lunch at the site of the
first Pacific County Courthouse in South Bend. The location is now
called “Hangman’s Park” relating to the fact that a Chinese cannery worker
named Lum You (rhymes with “hum - how”) had been convicted of murder and
was executed by hanging in the airshaft of the old Courthouse.
My mother, Lulu Brown Bunnell, was born and grew up in Pacific County. Her father, Zack B. Brown, came to the area as a logger and later served as Deputy Sheriff, Sheriff and County Assessor. While we were eating lunch, Mom reminisced about a family picnic on the same site when she was a small girl, which was interrupted by a jailbreak. |
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May Bullard Brown. PCHS #2002.91.2. |
As Mom told the story, the whole
family had walked down to the Courthouse grounds from their home beside
the Congregational Church for a Fourth of July picnic. She didn’t
mention a year, but it must have been between 1895 and 1900. While
her parents were setting up the meal, the children started a game of hide-and-go-seek.
Suddenly Floyd, her next younger brother, came running from behind the
jail yelling “Papa, Papa, the prisoners are getting away!” They all
ran around the jail in time to see one prisoner running for the woods while
another was squeezing through the gap where one of the bars had been cut
away from a window.
Her father was Deputy Sheriff at the time and responsible for seeing that prisoners stayed in jail. He had a bad leg, the result of an old logging injury, so he couldn’t chase the man already on the run. Instead, he pulled his revolver out of his hip pocket and ordered the man in the window to stay where he was. He handed the gun to my grandmother and told her to hold the prisoner in place while he went for help. (“If he tries to get away, shoot him, Mother.”) Then he left for the nearest tavern to drum up a posse to go after the escapee. |
| Grandma was the
prototype New England schoolteacher who came west and found adventure.
She was small, dainty, and completely unfamiliar with firearms. Mom
said her hand was shaking and her aim was wandering all over the side of
the jail, but her face had an expression of absolute determination.
The prisoner became concerned and asked, “You wouldn’t shoot me, would
you Mrs. Brown?” Grandma gave him to understand that he had better
stay where he was. He apparently believed her because he was still
there, half in and half out of the window, when Grandpa came back with
the posse and returned him to his cell.
I don’t know if it was this same occasion, but I recall Grandpa telling about chasing a prisoner who had escaped from the old Courthouse. A posse had been assembled and Grandpa was leading it through the woods following the prisoner’s tracks. They lost the trail, but decided there were only two possible routes for the escapee to go. Grandpa divided the posse and sent half of them on each course. He had been having trouble keeping up because of his bad leg, so he said he would stay at the junction point until one group or the other sent back word that they needed him. One of the men complained that he was unarmed and wouldn’t be able to stop the criminal if he met him. Grandpa said, “Here, take my pistol. I won’t need it back here.” The two groups were no sooner out of earshot than Grandpa heard a noise above him in the tree he was leaning against. He looked up and saw the prisoner standing on a branch above his head. Grandpa knew the man and heard the conversation about the gun, but he said, “Hadn’t you better come down and go back to jail?” The escapee agreed and went back without incident. Another of Grandpa’s stories related to smugglers bringing in illegal immigrants. This apparently took place after he and Tom Roney traded places. Mr. Roney was elected sheriff and hired Grandpa as Deputy. Later when Grandpa became Sheriff Mr. Roney stayed in the office as the Deputy. The name, incidentally, is pronounced “Rooney”, the unique spelling notwithstanding. Grandpa said someone had reported to the Sheriff’s office that there was a smuggler’s boat in the harbor. “I got a skiff and went out to look for it. Found this low, black schooner behind Stony Point, up against the shore so its masts wouldn’t show against the trees. When I got on board I could see that the crew was a bunch of water front riff-raff from San Francisco and the hold was full of illegal Chinamen for some cannery.” I was wrapped up in the story by this time and burst in “But what did you do, Grandpa?” “Told them to get the hell out of there.” “And then what happened?” “They did it, of course.” |
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| 1890-1920: When They Played “Musical Chairs”
at the Courthouse
By Bob Bailey County elections come and go with regularity every four years, usually with very little fanfare. Occasionally an issue of the day; usually soon to be forgotten; would see opposition to a county official but, by and large, county voters have dealt kindly with incumbents at election time. 
The old Pacific County Courthouse, 1892 - 1911, located in the East end of South Bend on Alta Vista Hill. The site, comprising 22 city lots, was donated to the County by the Northern Pacific Railroad. PCHS #5-28-81-1 (2) 5 |
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| Swapping offices
During the period of 1890 to about 1920, it would not be surprising for one to go to the polls and find their favorite county auditor running for county clerk, or the clerk for auditor, or the assessor for treasurer and perhaps the treasurer for assessor. All these switches would not happen in any one election, but was a regular happening for one or two county offices every two years during this period. This game of “musical chairs” at the Courthouse was being played in every one of the state’s 39 counties, a result of a provision in the state constitution of 1889 which had noble intentions of term limits, and restricted county elected officials to no more than two consecutive terms in any one office. Since county offices were for two-year terms, it meant that four years was the limit and saw each official looking about for another office to run for at the end of four years on their current job. Newspaper files for the years 1890 to 1920 fail to find any editorial or public criticism of this process of job shuffling. While candidates were sometimes questioned about other matters, the process of swapping offices never seemed to be in question except for one outburst by Editor Edwin M. Connor of the South Bend Willapa Harbor Pilot in 1913. “The Regular Boarders Club”
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E. A. Seaborg pictured as a candidate for County Auditor in the South Bend Journal, 1912. PCHS #2002-93.1. |
Zack Brown and E. A. Seaborg in race for first place
If blue ribbons were awarded for years in county elective offices under the old switcheroo system, it would have to be declared a tie between Zack Brown and Ernest A. Seaborg, each with sixteen years in elective office. Some might give the edge to Brown because it is known that he served years as deputy sheriff under J. H. Turner before taking over the office himself. Others might think Seaborg be given the nod because he served continuously in one elective office or another from 1902 election until 1918. Zack Brown was well known and popular in the county. A real pioneer, he came to Washington Territory in 1876 and to Pacific county in 1880. He married May Bullard of the pioneer Willapa Valley family and raised a large family, many descendants living in Pacific county today. Brown was elected sheriff of Pacific county for four years (two terms) serving from 1897 to 1901. In 1910 he was elected county auditor, serving until 1914 when he was elected county clerk, and in 1918 was elected county assessor for two two-year terms ending in 1922, after serving 16 years in elective office. |
| Ernest A. Seaborg
was characterized by the Journal as one of the most popular public
officials in the state. He was a from a pioneer family in the Ilwaco
area, his father, B. A. Seaborg, being owner of the Aberdeen Packing Company
there.
Seaborg was elected in 1902, as county clerk serving from 1903-07; auditor, 1907-11; clerk 1911-15; and assessor from 1915-18. |
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E. A. Seaborg home, which (from about 1990 to about 2003) was Maring's Bed and Breakfast on Second Street in South Bend. Photo courtesy of Ed and Frances Maring. |
In July, 1918, Seaborg joined
the U. S. Army Tank Corps and when discharged from service was appointed
by the governor to be state supervisor of fisheries. When leaving
his home in Seattle one day in 1925 for a meeting in Olympia, he failed
to appear. His car was later found at an abandoned dock in the Seattle
area. Eventually his body was found in the waters nearby and it was
never known whether the blows he had suffered about his head were the result
of slipping and hitting his head or whether he had surprised bootleggers
or illegal fishermen in an illegal act. The state department felt
it was the latter and whiles it was decided it probably was not a homicide,
friends ever questioned the decision.
Walter Lovering and Oren C. Wilson come by their sixteen years of service under slightly different circumstances. Wilson served as county clerk for two terms, 1906-1910, was then elected auditor twice, in 1910 and 1912. In 1914, before the end of his second |
Ida Dalton-Leonard. PCHS #5-2-72-3. |
term, he resigned and his deputy, Walter E. Lovering
was appointed to serve the few months left of his term. Lovering
served that and his own for four years, 1915-1919 as auditor when Wilson
came back on the scene and once again was elected auditor in 1918 and 1920,
resigning again in the last year of his second term and his deputy, J.
Frank Miller, was appointed and subsequently elected in his own right.
Lovering, having served his four years as auditor, was elected to two 2-year terms as county treasurer, serving in that job 1919 to 1923. He was the last of the old switcheroos and extended himself into a new era. The election of 1922 saw the law changed and county officials were elected to four-year terms instead of two. He was elected county clerk for two four-year terms serving from 1923 to 1931. Strictly a man’s game Men were the only actors in these early office charades. Women did not have the right to vote in the State of Washington until the election of 1912. They were allowed to run for county superintendent of schools but couldn’t even vote for themselves. Nevertheless, they were frequently elected to that office. Ida Dalton-Leonard was 16 when she first went to work in the office of her father, J. H. Dalton, county clerk. She married A. P. (Bert) Leonard, sometimes a fellow worker in the office. Dalton, her father, served as county clerk 1895-99, auditor from 1899 to 1903. Her husband, A. P. Leonard, served as auditor, 1895 to 1899, and after his father-in-law completed his maximum of four years, was elected auditor again, serving from 1903 to 1907. |
| Ida Leonard was
said to have worked at one time or another in practically every office
in the Courthouse and was credited with being named the first woman to
serve as a chief deputy. She became the first woman elected to county
office except school superintendent when she ran for county clerk, serving
two four-year terms, 1931 to 1939, when she retired.
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Frank Neander and A. P. (Bert) Leonard, circa. 1895. PCHS #12-31-77-1 (1). |
Tired old men?
About 1920, the game of office-hopping and swapping seemed to die off quite a bit. Perhaps the players were getting too old for the game, but more likely the law, which went into effect in the 1922 elections making county offices four-year terms, also had a lot to do with it. Walter Lovering was the last of the old players, having played in both leagues. Changing offices went on as always, but on a more limited basis and because elections were distanced further apart; eight years; they probably were not as noticeable. The practice came to an end with the election of 1948, when state voters repealed the two-term limit for county officials. Confusing, you say? |
| All of this hopping
and skipping from one office to another was the result of a well-intentioned
effort of Washington’s Founding Fathers to establish term limits that went
awry. Even though it is somewhat humorous and even confusing to read
about today, it did not seem to confuse the voters very much. After
all they knew the names of their friends and they probably didn’t look
too hard at the office they sought.
The players were all good, substantial citizens and looked on favorably by voters of their day. Sources: South Bend Journal, Willapa Harbor Pilot, Personal election notes. |
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| A Kodak Summer at North Cove
By Bruce Weilepp In 1888, George Eastman revolutionized the photography business with a new camera designed for amateur use. Until that time photography had been the exclusive province of professionals. Heavy, cumbersome cameras and film turned out beautiful pictures, but were too inconvenient for a wider consumer market. Eastman designed and marketing a small, lightweight camera, preloaded with film. Consumers could purchase the camera, snap a roll of images, and return the camera to a processor for development and printing. The new camera had a crude lens, unsuited for taking rectangular images. Brownie photos are characteristically round, with uneven focus. The flexible film tends to curl with age. Images, which come down to us in this format, are, however, truly candid shots, taken by the same people who appear in the photos. Their informality reveals aspects of life in the late 19th Century, which would otherwise remain unknown. Previously unidentified, the early Kodak photos on the following pages waited in the Society’s museum collection until research into the Raymond family suggested their history. Pictured are mother and daughter, Stella and Lucy Johnson, as well as a man who may be Tom Roney, later to become Lucy’s second husband. The location is the Johnson home and nearby surroundings of North Cove, probably in the early 1890s. We may never know who was behind the camera. It is tempting to think it might be Stella’s future husband, Leslie Raymond, but if my dating is correct, the two had not yet met. The impression one gets from studying the images is one of an endless summer, shared with friends, in the idyllic community of North Cove. Probably not 100% accurate, but a nice counterbalance to the stern formal portraits which otherwise represent these historical figures. Our forefathers and mothers really did know how to enjoy themselves. For Stella, and her future husband Leslie, the camera was a comfortable companion. In the photographic field, as in many other endeavors, the Raymonds were truly pioneers. I would like to thank Betty Miller for saving these images and donating the original photographic negatives. Harbor Community Bank and the Raymond Foundation provided funding which made it possible to print the images. Allen Richard Curtis carefully unrolled each ancient negative, and created the prints you see reproduced here. |
Stella, Lucy, and a female friend enjoy a hand of cards indoors. A portrait of the young Lucy hangs on the wall. PCHS #1994.105.391. |
Sunshine, a camera, and pretty girl. Isn't there some work to do? PCHS #1994.105.414. |
Lucy and Stella Johnson enjoy a canoe float on the warm, calm waters of North Cove. The canoe appears to be a dugout of Indian design. PCHS #1994.105.406. |
Lucy Johnson paddles her daughter Stella in the same dugout canoe as above. PCHS #1994.105.394. |
A woman, probably Stella, prepares to milk the family cow. She is standing in front of the family home / hotel, The Norwood, in North Cove. PCHS #1994.105.401. |
Lucy Johnson is ready to go for a drive in the family buggy. The only towns accessible by land were Tokeland, and Westport. PCHS #1994.105.411. |
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A page from the 1940 Pacific County Directory, published by the South Bend Journal. PCHS #1-8-81-1, a gift from Martha Fykerud. |
The "new" Pacific County Courthouse under construction; finished in 1911. PCHS #5-14-82-1.36. |