Document text
eetiers AtiiP
Accession no.
Date received
41/4 oAeo
Consignment no.
Shipped from
leas4,
Label
Amount
dizroins 91firS
WPA L. C. PROJECT UNIT
Form -3
Title 4",e
Oeseldrze- __Collection (or Type)
—111"0-e.
Place of origin4Wril
Project worker
Project editor
Remarks
Date1,1?//,
Form A Federal Writers' Project
Circumstances of Interview Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES
Name of worker
Address
Ardyth Gibbs
Project headquarters.
Date Winter, 1937-38.
Subject
Concerning Rhonda's): Ghost Town.
Name and address of informant Newton McDaniel
1413 SW 14th Avenue, Portland. Oregon.
Date and time of interview
Place of interview At his home.
Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant
"IND
Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
RIO.=
Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
Unobtainable, since the worker who made this interview is no longer on
the project and the informant is no longer living. For that reason Forms B
and D, for which information is lacking, have been omitted.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the proper heading
and the number to which the material refers).
W 13881
OAkciot
Form C Federal Writers' Project
Text of Interview (Unedited) Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES
Name of worker
Address
Ardyth Gibbs Date Winter, 1937-38
Project headquarters.
Subject
Concerning Ellendalet Ghost Town.
Name and address of informant Newton McDaniel.
1413 SW 14th Avenue, Portland, Oregon.
Text:
(see suooeeding pages)
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the heading given
above).
Ellendale was founded in 1845 by James O'Neal, in Polk County,
four miles vest, above Dallas. He went into the flour mill business and
chose, because of the water, the spot on which a little town flourished for
a few years and then died, and now is as if it had never been.
He ran the mill about four years and then sold it to Colonel
Nesmith and Harry Owens. They in turn sold it to the Hudson's Bay Company,
in 1854. A postoffice had been established there in 1850, and was named
O'Neal's Mills. There never at any time was more than a handfull of resi-
dents but that handfull accommodated a great many travelers with meals and
lodgings for the night.
Parties of miners in '48 and '49 used to come there to buy flour
for their pack trains.
Ellendale was named for Ellen Lyon. She married Judge R. P.
Boise, Circuit Judge in Polk County, and two, of their sons are Whitney
and Reuben Boise.
Most of the people thereabouts, the Hallocks, Lyles and Lyons,
were farmers. Ellendale probably perished because it was destined to perish,
and because folks started to take another road, and because the water failed.
They had some colorful murders, though if not right in Ellen
dale, at least in Polk County. A bartender killed a hot-headed fool of a
man in a fair fight, and later, also in a fair fight, he killed the man's
son, who had burst in, guns popping, to get revenge.
When the citizens, avid at the sight of all the spilled blood, and
hoping against hope for the ineffable thrill of another such sensation, went
to the only son left, a younger brother of the dead lad, and asked him if
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he was going to kill the bartender and "get even," he said, "Hell, no. I'm
not a very good shot anyway, and I'd be killed as sure as blazes, and besides
I don't want to get even, and Bub hadn't ought to have butted in to other
people's business. Pop had what was comin' to him." (Which indeed he had
had, being one of the most disagreeable men in the country).
He grew to be an honored and respected citizen, and was lauded as
a level-headed gentleman to the end of his long life. The bartender was
killed ten months after in a brawl over cards in Prineville.
Once an infuriated mob hanged a part -Indian because, in a drunken
frenzy, he had hacked his meek blonde wife and her unborn child to pieces.
His father, J. P. Kelty, a rich man, would not put up a cent for his defense,
which made little difference as an angry group took justice into their own
hands and the second day of the trial strung him up "higher than a kite,"
before nightfall.
When the Editors of a Polk County paper protested against such an
action, every single subscriber stopped takin-, the paper and they had to sell
out.
TWO items of no particular importances
"Lid" was the name given to a man's hat by the Indians and not by
the buckaroos, as some suppose.
And do you know where the names Big Nestucca and Little Nestucca
came from?
This is the story that was told in Portland:
General Grant, Sherman, and Colonel Nesmit'l went over into that
country. They thought some of taking Indian wives --temporarily, of course
and would have, only there was just one Indian squaw available. The rest
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were gone into the mountains, for herbs, or had passionately jealous
husbands.
They all tried to win her but the successful one was Colonel
Nesmith.
Nes' tuck ter. (Nestucca).
At any rate, that's the story that went the rounds in Oregon,
much to the merriment of the pioneers.