Alfred M. Witham

 

This  muzzle-loading, double-barreled shotgun is on display in the Benton County Historical Society's Corvallis Museum  It was a made sometime between 1830 and 1847 but its maker cannot be traced as the original stock has been replaced and the information engraved does not correspond to any known gun-maker.

Alfred M. Witham's shotgun

The gun belonged to Alfred M. Witham (1822-1908).  In 1846, when he and wife Drucilla Allen Witham left Indiana for Oregon, he carried the gun along.  It would have been useful as they traveled the plains. Their son Edward told of how “a group of Indians followed them for two or three days and finally succeeded in running off the only two horses they had.  Two of the men pursued the thieves, wounded one of the, and recovered the horses.”  He also said that “the train was divided one time by a herd of stampeding buffalo.  Father said there must have been at least a thousand of them.  Their coming was indicated by the cloud of dust while they were miles away, and their course was evident in time to divide the train and let them pass.  Several of the animals were killed for meat.”

Alfred M. Witham

Drucilla Allen Witham

The Withams followed the Applegate trail to Oregon and after a brief stop in Roseburg, arrived  in Benton county in 1847.  After claiming land south of Philomath, Witham went off to California to search for gold.  He reportedly returned in 1849 with $1000 which is equivalent to about $30,000 today. He decided to abandon his former claim and instead claimed 640 acres which extended from what is now the OSU dairy farm along Harrison to 53 street and from Oak Creek north to the IOOF cemetery-- an area now known as Witham Hill. He used the money earned in California to buy additional land east to 36th Street. Eventually he owned over 1100 acres.  Edward explained that his father chose this land because he wanted to raise cattle and the hills offered better grazing. “He has often told me that in those days the hills were all covered with fine grass. Many times the grass would grow shoulder high to a man. He estimated that he used to see as many as a hundred deer on the place at one time.” The property also contained a stone quarry (located off what is now Fernwood Circle) which provided material for the Benton County Courthouse.

The farm was quite successful and Witham began to spend more time in civic activities. He served as Justice of the Peace and inspector of sheep. He donated land for the I.O. O. F Cemetery and contributed toward building the railroad to the coast. He was one of the original trustees of Philomath College and served as president of its board for many years.

Philomath College Articles of Incorporation, 1865

 In 1862, he was elected as to the Oregon state legislature. His photograph is on the left of the fourth row.  In 1874 he was elected to the state senate.

Alfred Witham lived in Benton County until his death in 1908. He is buried in the I.O.O.F. Cemetery on Witham Hill. At that time, five of the Witham's 8 children who survived to adulthood were living in Benton County.  Two of the sons built houses on the Witham Hill land, much of which remained in family hands until the 1950s. The Witham name lives on in the name of its prominent hill and of two nearby streets (Witham Drive and Witham Hill Drive).  

 By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon

 

Featuring the Woodcock's Settee

The settee in the photograph is on display at the Benton County's Historical Society's Corvallis Museum. 

Milton and Emma Woodcock's Eastlake Settee

The owners of this settee, Milton and Emma Woodcock, were community leaders in Corvallis. Milton Woodcock was born in Wisconsin in 1849 and came to Oregon by wagon train as a child in 1853.  In 1859, his father sold their donation land claim property west of Eugene and moved the family to Monroe to pursue his wagon manufacturing business with his brother.  Milton learned the trade from them and also helped out in their general store. From 1869 to 1874, he owned his own mercantile business.  He then sold his interest to his uncle and moved to Corvallis.  While running his business, he also studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1875.  He is shown here on the right, next to George Lilly.

Milton Woodcock and George Lilly, Corvallis, OR

In addition to practicing law, he bought an interest in the newspaper (The Corvallis Gazette) and served as editor in chief from 1881 until 1908.  In 1890, he established the First National Bank in Corvallis and served as its president until his death.  In this photograph of the interior of the bank, he is the man second from the left.

Woodcock used his influence to convince the legislature to locate the state agricultural college in Corvallis and served on the OAC (OSU) Board of Regents.  In addition, he served as Corvallis mayor (1901-1903), owned many city properties including a drugstore, the Corvallis hotel, and homes. When he died in 1925, his obituary described him as “energetic, an indefatigable worker, scrupulously honest, and an example of all Franklin's maxims regarding thrift.”

Emma Simpson was born in Philadelphia in 1858 and came to Oregon by ship.  The family's first ship capsized in the Caribbean but they were rescued and continued across Panama and then by boat to Portland. In 1867, the moved to Corvallis when Emma's father Presbyterian Church.  On May 5, 1879, Emma married Milton Woodcock. She was also active in the community as a leader of the Corvallis chapter of Eastern Star and as a president of the Corvallis Women's club.  She was also a member of the Corvallis's oldest club, the Tuesday Afternoon Reading Club.  She is in the middle of the bottom row in this 1913 photograph of the club.

The Woodcock's lived in an 1879 Italianate style house at Fifth and Jackson. The house, shown here in 1975, was moved in 1975 to make room for the new law enforcement building.

One piece of furniture from this house is this Eastlake settee Eastlake style furniture is named after Charles Eastlake (1833-1906) who wrote a popular book, “Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, upholstery, and Other Details” that advocated for “simple, sturdy furniture.” His style avoided the curves and highly carved designs of earlier periods in favor of rectilinear shapes with modest curves.  Ornamentation was also geometric and included notches, trestles, turnings and lightly-incised designs.

Manufacturers in the United States used the drawings and ideas in the book to create mass-produced furniture is a similar style. The straight lines made the designs adaptable to production by the steam-driven machines of the era. The result was a wide range of furniture of differing quality.  But there was also a fair amount of moderately priced, well-constructed furniture that was affordable by the middle class. The style was especially popular from 1870-1890.

Eastlake's book was so popular that 6 editions were printed in 11 years after its introduction in 1872. It became the decorating bible for upper middle class American housewives. These women had more leisure time (including time for book groups as in the photograph) and entertaining.  Decorating the public spaces (such as the formal parlor) in their homes became important.

The Milton Woodcocks fit the above demographic.

 By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon

 

Note: Here is the Woodcock settee in the "Hats & Chairs" exhibition at the Corvallis Museum:

Descendants of Milton and Emma Woodcock continue to support Benton County Historical Society and contributed to the construction of the Corvallis Museum.

Librarian Ida Kidder

 

The item below, which is in the "A College Town" exhibition in Gallery 3 of the Benton County Historical Society's Corvallis Museum, fits into the exhibit theme in two ways:  it was made by an Oregon State University professor and it depicts a subject who played a major role in the transformation of the school to a full-fledged university. 

Sculpture maquette study of a proposed memorial statue
of Ida Kidder created by J. Leo Fairbanks in 1924.

 

Painter and sculptor J. Leo Fairbanks taught and served as art department chair at Oregon State University from 1923 to 1946.   In 1926, he used white Buena Vista clay to make this maquette, or scale model, to show the school's Board of Regents what a  proposed memorial to Ida Kidder would look like.  Although the Board approved the idea for a 3/4 life size statue, it was never made.

The subject, Ida Kidder, is depicted seated amid piles a books, an appropriate pose for OSU's head librarian. 

Ida Clarke was born in 1857 in Auburn, New York. She graduated from high school, worked as an elementary teacher (1878-1885), completed a two-year program at New York State College for Teachers (now SUNY-Albany), and became a high school teacher and principal. In 1896, at age 39, she married Lorenzo Kidder and stopped teaching, as was then customary.

After Lorenzo died, she enrolled in the University of Illinois Library School, graduating with a B. L. S. degree in 1906. She worked as a state documents cataloger for the Washington State Library from 1906 to 1907 and then for the Oregon State Library Commission. 

In 1908, she was hired as the first professionally-trained librarian by Oregon State Agricultural College. She moved into accommodations on the second floor of the woman's dorm (Waldo Hall) and took a lively interest in the activities of the students.  Her interest, enthusiasm, and thoughtful advice soon led students to call her “Mother Kidder.” She is on the right in the sole photograph of her in the museum's collection.

Ida A. Kidder (1855-1920)

A formal portrait of her can be viewed at  https://oregondigital.org/catalog/oregondigital:df70c223n.

At the time she was hired, the library was a haphazard collection of about 22,000 items (books, government documents, pamphlets and brochures) with a single reading room that could only hold 108 students and two rooms for materials storage. Kidder set out to increase the collection to provide students and faculty with the research materials they needed.  She succeeded in adding 37,000 items, more than doubling the collection, and developed particular strengths in agriculture, home economics, and the history of horticulture. In addition, she

·instituted a Library Practice course required of all freshmen

·added subscriptions to professional journals

·increased staff from one to nine, enabling an increase in library hours

·began issuing a list of newly acquired books to the faculty

·gave many talks on poetry, literature and ethics to groups on and off campus

Her biggest accomplishment, however, was in advocating for an adequately-sized  library. In 1917 the state appropriated $158.000 for construction of a 57,000 square foot building. The brick building, designed by Portland architect John Bennes after Kidder's specifications, was completed in 1918.  The whole campus helped to move books utilizing a wooden walkway between the new library and the old quarters in the Administration Building (now known as Community Hall). The new library had more space for its collection of books, a much larger reading room, office space, and room for the college museum.  As the Gazette-Times noted in her obituary, “it was largely though her contagious and persistent enthusiasm that the new Library Building was erected.” So, in 1963, following construction of a new and even larger library (the Valley Library), the building was renamed Kidder Hall in her honor.

Oregon Agricultural College Library
(now Kidder Hall at Oregon State University)

In 1918, as the last of the books were being moved into the new library, Ida Kidder suffered a heart attack.  As her health deteriorated, she traveled around campus in an electric vehicle which the engineering students built for her. Alas, the museum does not have a photograph of this remarkable vehicle known as the Wickermobile, but fortunately, one is available on-line at  https://oregondigital.org/catalog/oregondigital:df70cp65w .

She died in her campus room on February 28, 1920 attended by her niece, a student at OAC.

At the request of the students, her body lay in state in the library and classes meeting between 10 and 2 were canceled.  So many floral tributes arrived that an additional table had to be brought in to hold them all.

Though it is often the presidents, deans, and regents who are credited with building the university, librarian Ida Kidder was also instrumental, for a college cannot become a noted institution without a good library.

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon