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History talk planned on notable Southern Oregon women By Vickie Aldous Updated: Oct 31, 2022 01:03 PM A A Grocery store and restaurant owner Wong Sue Lue, from left, marble carver Ann Haseltine Hill Russell and midwife Sybil Harber were mothers and businesswomen in Southern Oregon. [Photos courtesy Southern Oregon Historical Society] Ann Haseltine Hill Russell was a businesswoman and accomplished marble carver specializing in headstones — all while raising 11 children as a widow. She and her husband settled in Ashland in 1854 and launched a marble shop and water-powered mill. “Mrs. Russell learned her trade from her husband in lettering and carving, and she finally surpassed her teacher. She has conducted the business since her husband's death and does all the lettering, carving and designing and attends personally to setting up each monument,” a Chicago trade journal said in praise of her skill and business acumen. Russell is just one of the remarkable Southern Oregon women who historian and anthropologist Anna Sloan will discuss during her “Windows in Time” presentation at noon Wednesday at the Medford library, 205 S. Central Ave. The program also will be screened live at the Ashland library, 410 Siskiyou Blvd. and online via the Zoom video conference service. The presentation is free but registration is required at jcls.libcal.com/calendar/jcls_event/WIT-Nov-2022 . Sloan will talk about Russell, as well as one of her daughters, Grace Fountain. “Russell became a sculptress and a marble cutter,” Sloan said. “Several of the headstones in Ashland Cemetery were carved by her. She made beautiful marble works. Grace was a painter of beautiful Western landscapes. They were multigenerational artists.” German immigrant Fredericka Wetterer was another woman who kept a business going after the death of her husband. She was the proprietess of Eagle Brewery and Saloon, which operated in Jacksonville from the mid-1850s to around 1890. Sloan’s presentation on Southern Oregon women will include photographs of objects from a Southern Oregon University archaeological dig that illuminate Wetterer’s life. At a time when Chinese people faced rampant discrimination, Wong Soo Lue helped her husband run a grocery store and restaurant complex in early Ashland’s Railroad District, Sloan said. “They wined and dined with Ashland’s elite. They were very well-respected,” she said. Sybil Harber, a Black woman who settled in Lakeview, was another woman who overcame discrimination to become a respected member of her community. “She was a widow with a young son. She became a prominent midwife and health care practitioner in Lakeview. She was a really community-minded woman,” Sloan said. Others featured in the upcoming talk include Impressionist painter Dorland Robinson and the women of the historical Hanley Farm outside Jacksonville. Sloan earned her doctorate in anthropology from University of Oregon. She is curator of collections for Southern Oregon Historical Society and an archaeologist at the Southern Oregon Laboratory of Anthropology. The monthly “Windows in Time” lunchtime lectures feature writers and historians who bring alive the people, values and events that shape Southern Oregon heritage. The lectures are jointly sponsored by Southern Oregon Historical Society and Jackson County Library Services. For more information, contact SOHS at 541-773-6536 or see sohs.org, and JCLS at 541-774-8679 or see jcls.org. Sloan’s presentation later will be posted on JCLS’s YouTube channel. To see “Windows in Time” video recordings, see youtube.com/c/JCLSBeyond . Reach Mail Tribune reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776-4486 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @VickieAldous.