Walla Walla County WA Archives Biographies.....Lemont, George H. August 25, 1853 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/wa/wafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com October 5, 2009, 11:37 pm Source: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. III, Published 1928, Pages 8-10 Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company Among the stanch and dependable citizens of St. Helens, Columbia county, Oregon, is George H. Lemont, whose family has been closely identified with this locality for more than eighty years. Mr. Lemont has for a number of years been connected as an employee with the St. Helens Lumber Company and is one of the most highly respected members of his community. A few years ago Fred Lockley interviewed Mr. Lemont and in the Oregon Daily Journal of October 29 and 30, 1925, printed the following interesting article: "St. Helens, county seat of Columbia county, was laid out on the land claim of H. M. Knighton in 1850. H. M. Knighton crossed the plains to Oregon in 1845. He served as sergeant-at-arms of the House of Representatives of the Oregon Provisional Legislature in 1846 and also served as marshal under the Oregon provisional government. In 1850 St. Helens was thought by many to be the future metropolis of Oregon and it was thought that Portland would never be a serious competitor of St. Helens. In fact, in 1850 plans were prepared to build a railroad from Lafayette to St. Helens, but the scarcity of money and the high cost of the project prevented the plans of H. M. Knighton and his fellow workers at St. Helens, Milton and Lafayette from being carried out. Among others who worked to create public sentiment for the proposed railroad was John Wilson, who was operating a sawmill at Milton, near St. Helens. Wilson, later, decided to cast his lot with the people of Portland, and started a store in Portland, the firm name of which is now Olds, Wortman & King. "St. Helens was named for Mount St. Helens, which was named by Vancouver in honor of his friend, Alleyne-Fitzherbert Baron St. Helens, British ambassador to Spain from 1781 to 1794 and the one most largely instrumental in negotiating the Nootka treaty. "One of the men who did much to put St. Helens on the map in the early days was Captain Francis A. Lemont, who first came to the coast in command of a brig in 1847. A day or so ago I visited his former home in St. Helens. He built his house in 1850. He brought the sills, joists and studding around the Horn from his home port of Bath, Maine. In 1850 he established a salmon preserving plant at St. Helens. He bought the salmon from the Indians and salted them and shipped them to the Sandwich islands and to the Orient in Jamaica rum barrels. His nephew, George H. Lemont, still lives at St. Helens. A day or so ago I visited him at his home on the river bluff and he told me of his uncle and of his father, who was also a sea captain. " 'I was born at Bath, Maine, August 25, 1853,' said Mr. Lemont. 'My father, George H. Lemont, for whom I am named, was also a native of Bath. My mother's maiden name was Sarah E. Philbrook. She was born in Maine and so were her people before her. My father's great-grandfather came from France to Maine in colonial days. I was their only child. Here is a picture of my mother and myself when I was a year old. When it comes to looks I haven't much to brag about now, but when I was a little chap I had curly red hair and was called a handsome boy. The girls kissed me so much they got my face all out of shape and spoiled my looks. " 'My father came to the coast during the gold excitement in 1849. For some years he was captain of the brig "Comet" that ran between San Francisco and Honolulu. He died at sea in 1863 while on his run from Honolulu to San Francisco. He died three days before the "Comet" reached port. Mother and I came to St. Helens to live with my father's brother, Captain Francis A. Lemont, who was born at Bath in 1813. We landed here December 17, 1863, and I have been here off and on ever since. I was ten years old when I came to St. Helens, sixty-two years ago. I attended school here for a while and then went to the old Portland Academy for several years. Among my schoolmates there were Ben Selling, Al Raleigh, Henry McGinn and Bill and Charley Ladd, Edward Holman, John Burke and several other well-known pioneers. Later I went to high school. Professor Johnson, who was later the first president of the University of Oregon, was principal. He had a wonderful knowledge of mathematics and a hair-trigger temper. I went out hunting pheasants with him once. He carried a rifle and wouldn't shoot except when the birds were flying. He was a fine wing shot and it takes good shooting to kill birds on the wing with a rifle. I also went to school to Professor T. M. Gatch for awhile. " 'I quit school to learn a trade. I went to work in W. W. Wilcox's sash and door factory in Portland. I later worked for John Walker. The big fire in Portland in August, 1873, burned the shop, so I landed a job in the Abernethy mill at Oak Point. Alex Abernethy, brother of George Abernethy, who was one of the early governors of Oregon, was running the mill. I worked there during 1873 and 1874 and then landed a job in Portland, where I worked until 1878, when I went to Walla Walla, Washington, and worked in the sash and door factory owned by Whitehouse & Crimmons. I was made salesman and given charge of their lumber yard. I saved my money and went into the cattle business, where I lost it. In the fall of 1889 I married Alma V. Weatherman, whose father had a place in the Hudson Bay country just across the state line, not far from Freewater, Oregon. In 1890 we came to St. Helens and for some years I was engaged in the wood business. For the past few years I have been working for the St. Helens Lumber Company. " 'All six of our children live here in St. Helens. Four of them are married. My uncle, Captain Francis A. Lemont, started a store here in St. Helens in 1850, which he ran for many years. Before the death of his first wife, whose maiden name was Emma Marie Rose Barthelemi Marden, he married a widow, Mrs. Caples, of Columbia City, near here. He had no children by either wife. For many years prior to his death he was a lighthouse tender. He died in 1895.' "Romance, like gold, is where you find it. A day or so ago my wife and I drove up a steep and rocky road leading off the main highway between Houlton and St. Helens and drew up at a large weather-worn frame house by the side of the roadway. We went in, she to visit Mrs. Lemont and I to interview Mr. George H. Lemont about early days in St. Helens. Mr. Lemont comes of seafaring stock. His father was an old-time sea captain and died in 1863 en route from Honolulu to San Francisco. His uncle, Captain Francis A. Lemont, who was born at Bath, Maine, in 1813, sailed the seven seas as a boy and in 1850, when he was thirty-seven, quit the sea and settled at St. Helens, where he ran a store and put up salt salmon in Jamaica rum barrels for shipment to the Sandwich islands and the Orient. After we had talked for a while, Mr. Lemont brought down from an upper room two huge rolls of maps left him by his father and his uncle. The maps were dated from 1767 to 1848, the latter being a map of the harbor of San Francisco. We looked over the maps and he told me of voyages made by his father and uncle to little known ports in the '30s and '40s — to Otaheite, Heuahine, Ulietea, Tangataboo and the isles of Hapaee; to Navigator's archipelago, New Caledonia and New Holland, to the Mangeea islands, the Sandwich islands, the Moluccas, the Carolines, the Pelews and many another little known tree-fringed coral dot in the southern seas. Mr. Lemont opened drawer after drawer in an old-fashioned chest and showed me ancient documents — letters and receipts from H. M. Knighton, the man on whose claim St. Helens is located; from D. P. Thompson; shipping receipts dated at San Francisco in 1849; clearance papers from foreign ports and other interesting relics of long gone days. While I was looking over old documents my wife was looking with equal interest at old silver spoons and ancient daguerreotypes, old love letters and similar souvenirs of the past. " 'My uncle was married at Antwerp, July 19, 1837,' said Mr. Lemont, 'and a year later they were married at Port Royal, in the island of Martinique. His wife's people were Catholics, and it seems she could not inherit their property unless she was married by a priest. Here are the original documents, the latter written, as you will see, in both French and English. It is an official copy of the record and is the same as a marriage certificate.' I copied the two documents, which read as follows: " 'I, S. Locke, D. D., chaplain of the English church of Antwerp, do hereby certify that Francis Adams Lemont, bachelor, and Emma Marden, spinster, both resident in the city of Antwerp in the kingdom of Belgium, were married in the house of Sir Hamilton Seymour, G. C. G., envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary from Her Britanic Majesty to His Majesty of Belgium, according to the rites of the Church of England, at Brussels, this 19th day of July, in the year of our Lord 1837. By me, S. Locke, in the presence of J. H. Seymour, Her Majesty's envoy extraordinary to Belgium.' "And here is the extract from the register of the Catholic acts of baptism and marriage of the parish of St. Louis, Port Royal, island of Martinique: " 'On the 15th day of July, in the year of our Our Lord 1838, before men, Barthelmi Beilheliere, apostolic missionary and parish priest of Port Royal, in the Island of Martinique, being present Francis Lemont, the master of a vessel now lying at anchor in this port, Pini Roche, merchant, one of the government privy council in this island, and the abbott, Chantiles, apostolic missionary and vicar of this church, all being requested to witness this act and deed, appeared Emma Marie Rose Barthelmi Marden, aged twenty-one years, who said and declared that out of the true church no salvation can be expected, that from her own conviction, free from all constraint, she spontaneously declares that she adopts and solemnly professes the Roman Catholic and apostolic faith, and renounces the heresy of the Church of England, abiding by the formula prescribed by the Roman ritual. After this profession of faith, which she declares to be sincere, I give her publicly the absolution and forgiveness for the past heresy, being authorized thereto from a superior ecclesiastical authority. In faith whereof I, the parson of this parish of Port Royal, in the Island of Martinique aforesaid, have granted this present act to Emma Marie Rose Barthelmi, wife to Francis A. Lemont, of Bath, Maine, in the United States, at Port Royal, master of a vessel lying in this port, which she has signed and also the witnesses. Done in the parish church at Port Royal aforesaid, the day and year above written.' " Mr. and Mrs. George H. Lemont had six children: Zina H., who is the owner of a garage in West St. Helens, was married to Miss Mary McDonald; Esther is the wife of Esther Minott Heglee, of Warrenton, Oregon, and they have five children, Pearl, Mildred, Charles Gilbert, Vernon and Mark Leonard; Mrs. Louise Ruth Reese is the mother of five children, Orville, George, Leland, Emola and Francis; Mrs. Georgia Viola Hillmick, of St. Helens, is the mother of two children, Lionel and Louise Hope; Francis Henry and Susan Elizabeth are at home. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/wa/wallawalla/bios/lemont96gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/wafiles/ File size: 12.0 Kb