OREGON FOLKLORE - WORK PROJECT ADMINISTRATION
Title: Pioneer Reminiscences

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OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES

Name of worker Sara B. Wrenn Date
Name and address of informant: Mrs. Laura Minto Irwin Multnomah Hotel,
Portland, Oregon.
Date and time of interview: January 8, 1939.
Place of interview: Home of interviewer, Upper Drive, Lake Grove, Oswego,
[Ore.?]
Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.: The informant was a guest of
the interviewer on this date.

1. English and Scotch.
2. Salem, Oregon. 1872.
3. Father, John W. Minto.- Once Portland postmaster; in the early 1900's
warden of State Penitentiary, Salem, and various other public offices.
Mother, Rebecca Yocum Minto.
4. Salem 1872-1891. Portland, 1891 till present time.
5. Public schools, Mills College, 1890.
6. Accountant and office manager. More than 30 years at Bushong Co., Portland.
7. "No time for anything but the above."
8. Some social activities. No religious affiliations.
9. Petite, dark-eyed and white-haired. Well-groomed and modish dresser.
Clever, but not what one would call intellectual. Too busy socially and with
business affairs, for books.

Text:

My recollection and knowledge of grandfather are more limited than they
should be, and that is all the connection I have with Oregon folklore.
Grandfather was a visionary and romantic sort of person for his time. He
dearly loved the solitudes and would yield to any sudden impulse in seeking
them. He might be plowing out in the field, when he would suddenly put his
team up, as they called it, get his coffee pot and frying pan, and with a
saddlebag of flour, bacon and coffee, his gun, and anything in the way of
fishing tackle then available, go off to the mountains. He might stay a few
days and he might stay for weeks. Grandmother never knew until he
reappeared. He was much given to writing, putting down on paper not only
his thoughts and ideas, but writing detailed reports on Oregon conditions,
needs and agricultural possibilities, which he sent to Washington.
Sometimes he wrote poetry. He was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson. Among
his manuscripts there must be a lot of imaginative writing.

Grandfather, on his pony, White Prince, blazed the Minto Trail, across the
Cascades, clear through to Prineville. I'm not sure but I think the Minto
Trail was the forerunner of the [Santism?] route across the mountains, into
Eastern Oregon. Grandmother, under such conditions, was naturally alone a
great deal, except for her children, who at that time were young. That she
should have been frightened by the Indians once in a while was inevitable.
There was a tree -I suppose it has long since disappeared- on the old donation
land claim, that she used to point to, saying she had once shot and killed an
Indian there. Another time, when she and her children were alone, four Indians
come, acting in a very ugly and threatening manner, and just then an old man
appeared, apparently from out the blue. His presence lent her courage to defy
the Indians, and he, a white man, helped in driving them away. There were no
roads, only trails, in those days, and where the old man come from or where he
went to - so sudden was his appearance and disappearance - she never knew.

Grandfather, with the mood of inspiration on him, would often got up in the
night and write for hours at a time, going out to the kitchen maybe, to
brew himself a pot of coffee, two or three times before morning. Perhaps he
wrote then so as not to be interrupted, for when grandmother came sweeping
with her broom about him, he would stand it just so long, and then get up
in a temper, exclaiming in a rising crescendo, "Now then! Now then! Now
then!" I can hear him now.

But grandfather never grew too old for the charm of a pretty woman. I don't
mean by that, however, that he was in any sense a philanderer. He simply
admired beauty.

The Yocum family, near Sheridan, my mother's people, had more money and
consequently more luxurious living than the Mintos, but my memories there
are vague. They had a comfortable big square house of the period, out in
front of which was the mounting block. A mounting block was a section of a
tree, two or three feet in diameter, with carved steps in its side, for the
convenience of women in mounting a horse. No country home was without one,
any more than the old time scraper for muddy feet at front and rear doors.
My aunts of the Yocum family were all great horsewomen. I can remember the
stunning picture Aunt Rita made in her long black velvet riding habit, and her
hat with the long blue plume. She used to ride at the State Fair, I believe,
along with the other, of what I suppose were the society girls of the country
round about. They always got new clothes for the State Fair - the great event
of the year. Aunt Eva comes to memory in a brocaded, wine-colored velvet, in
which she out a very dashing figure. Out at their big farm there was a huge
watering trough, where all the stock came to drink, that created quite an
impression on me, as I always lived in town. The Yocum men all liked to hunt,
and there was always a big pack of long-eared "hound dogs" about. The State
Fair, as I said, was the big event of the year. Everybody who was anybody as
well as those who were not would come from all the country round about, within
a radius of a hundred miles or more, depending on what and how much they had
to exhibit in stock and products. They would come, whole families and clans,
with their camping paraphernalia - several tents for the family and such
servants as there might be - hired men and girls, I should say. That included
tents for all purposes, living room, kitchen and sleeping tents, with old
carpets laid on the ground, and stoves, both heating and cooking. The camp
ground was in a grove of scrub oaks, and much of the firewood was oak - it
must have been: for the smoke from the fires those early autumn days was so
blue and odorous - like no other blue or smell of my recollection. There would
be lanes, with pens for the prize sheep, and other lanes or alleys with pens
for the prize goats - that's inhere my mother's people, the [Yocums?], held
forth; and still other lanes for the prize cattle. The big clan of Looneys
always had prize cattle. There were rows and rows of these lanes; with their
tents and prize stock pens not too close, of course.

Comment:

Mrs. Irwin in her interview, gave the information that an old fashioned
valise, packed tightly with old letters and manuscripts of her grandfather
Minto, is in the possession of her son, Clifton Irvin, at Salem. She is
under the impression that somewhere, possibly not in this collection, there
is an autobiography written and prepared for publication by John Minto,
just prior to his death.

Since Mr. Minto was a writer and a close observer. His papers should be of
considerable historic and folklore value, and the interviewer is intent on
following the clue to these papers.