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Collection (or Type)
Place of of originffnegazal- Date
Project worker./a.A.4, 621./.
Project editor
Remarks
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Form A
Federal Writers' Project
Circumstances of Interview Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES
Name of worker Sara B. Wrenn
Date January 13, 19sg
Address 505 Elks Building, Portland,, Oregon
Subject Pioneer reminiscences.
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, Up pir Drive, Lake Grove, Oswego, Ore.
Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant
Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
The informant was a guest of the interviewer on this date.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the proper heading
and the number to which the material refers).
Form B Federal Writers' Project
Personal History of Informant Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES
Name of worker
Address
Subject
Sara B. Wrenn
Date January 13, 1939.
Project office, 505 Elks Building, Portland, Oregon.
Pioneer reminiscences.
Name and address of informant Mrs. Laura Minto Irwin
Multnomah Hotel, Portland, Oregon.
Information obtained should supply the following facts:
1. An,;astry 6. Oc:cupc.tiuns c,nd accomplishments with dates
2. F'_a3e and date of birth 7, Spec:IrL arc. im,erests
3. Family 8, Commun:'.Ty and rol-igous activities
4. PiRC3S lived in, with dates 9. Doscn'ptio2-i cf
5. Education, with dates 10. Other points galred in interview
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 mould call intellectual. Too busy socially and
with business affairs, for books.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the proper heading
and the number to which the material refers).
Form C Federal Writers' Project
Text of Interview (Unedited) Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIRS
Name of worker Sara B. Wrenn Date December 13, 1939.
Address 505 Elks Building, Portland, Oregon.
Subject Pioneer reminiscences.
Name and address of informant Mrs. Laura Minto Irwin
Multnomah Hotel, Portland, Oregon.
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. Be VIVA 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 Santiam route across the mountains, into Eastern Oregon.
Grandmother, under such conditions, was naturally alone a great deal, except for
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the heading given
above).
Laura Minto Irwin Form C 2.
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 came, 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 came 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 get 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 thanl Now than! Now thane" 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. Be 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
Laura Minto Irwin Form C 3.
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, vine -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 haw 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 where 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 rove and rows of these lanes; with
their tents and prize stock pens not too close, of course.
Form D Federal Writers' Project
Extra Comment Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES
Name of worker Sara B. Wrenn ,Date January 13, 1939.
Address 505 Elks Building, Portland, Oregon.
Subject Pioneer reminiscences
Name and address of informant Mrs. Laura Minto Irwin
Multnomah Hotel, Portland, Oregon.
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 Irwin, at Salem. She is under the
impression that somewhere, possibly not in this collection, there is an auto-
biography 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.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the heading given
above).