Dr. David Lewis shares with us how he uses Historic Oregon Newspapers online for his many research projects!

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Can you tell us a little about your research and yourself?

I am a researcher in ethnohistory. I received my PhD from the UO in 2009 from the Department of Anthropology. I spent a long time in my education, 1988-2009, from 1994-2009 at UO, and studied Native American history and culture nearly the whole time. I am a member of the Grand Ronde tribe, in fact Kalapuya, Chinook and Takelma, and planned a long time ago to help the tribe restore parts of its culture after its restoration in 1983. I was the Cultural manager for 8 years at Grand Ronde and now I am an educator and independent researcher.  I teach at local colleges and conduct contract work for tribes.

The blog grew out of my interest to producE more accurate histories about the tribes of western Oregon. I have been collecting primary documents for years and now I get to use them by finding interesting and unknown subjects in the documents that need to be told so we can understand the history of the tribes. I began this research with the SWORP project collection, which I helped gather and bring to the UO and organize for Special Collections. I continued with my work at Grand Ronde, helping develop and plan the museum and archives for the tribe, which opened in 2014. The blog now has more than 280 history essays on it. I find that through the blog I can produce history fast and get it out to the people who need it and will appreciate it quickly and efficiently. I am now working to rewrite a number of my essays into a publishable book form  called Tribal Stories of the Willamette Valley. I have a following of some 900 people on various social media and have gotten over 67,000 views on my blog from some 30,000 people throughout the world. There literally is nothing else like my blog for Oregon Native history. Most of my attention is paid to western Oregon, but have numerous essays about northern California and eastern Oregon as well. The other benefit to the blog is that I am creating curriculum for public schools and universities. I have gotten many comments from educators who are actually using the blog posts in many areas of Oregon.

What interested you in this topic?

Its really an untouched subject, through my research I have found most of the “histories of Oregon” have ignored native history entirely, and so I am literally writing Native people back into their history. It is my heritage as well and I have found that as an educator, its easier to make a connection with native students if they see themselves and their heritage reflected in the history they are reading. Its really unconscionable that in this day and age there is almost nothing taught about Oregon tribes in our public schools when there is so much information available. This leads to a complete lack of understanding of Native peoples by the majority of Oregonians, a situation I would like to help remedy.

What resources did you use for your research?

I have extensive ethnographic information from anthropology, folklore, linguistics, and history studies, as well as extensive government records at my disposal, from some 25 years of collection such records. As well the digital age we are in makes it easy to find older texts fully available online in numerous sites, for free. Sites like Google books, Google scholar, the Internet Archive, Hathitrust, Southern Oregon University  Digital Archives, and the Oregon Digital Newspaper Project make it easy and efficient to find the information I need to write my histories. I have become an expert in online research.

What did you use in Historic Oregon Newspapers online? How did you use the site and which titles were useful to you?

I generally peruse a placename or persons name as a search term and find that Newspapers like the Oregon Spectator, Daily Oregonian,and Willamette Farmer are very useful for finding great newspaper articles about the subjects I am interested in. As the number of newspapers grows the site becomes important in new ways and in new areas of Oregon. I wish that some of the holes in the major titles would be completed soon as well.

Where can we access your work?

My blog is at https://ndnhistoryresearch.com/, and I post my articles on a Facebook site, Oregon Indian Territory, https://www.facebook.com/theoregonterritory/,  which I manage also. I do not have a pay site I am working on a plan for this, but I do ask for donations to help me pay some of the annual blog fees.

What’s your next project?!

At this time I am working on gathering tribal stories of the Missoula floods so that I can understand the floods of 12,000 to 14,000 years ago, from different tribal perspectives. At the same time I am editing my stories for my forthcoming book Tribal Stories of the Willamette Valley. I am also a co-editor on a volume to collect together various studies about the Kalapuyans.

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Thank you, David! If you want to get in touch with David, please refer to his links and contact information below:

David G. Lewis, PhD | Ethnohistory Research, LLC

1118 Lancaster Dr. NE #343, Salem, Oregon 97301
dgl.coyotez@gmail.com

Cell: 541.514.3275

Anthropologist, Ethno-historian, Archivist, Educator
Adjunct Professor, Chemeketa Community College
Oregon Heritage Commission

WordPress Blog ndnhistoryresearch
LinkedIn David G Lewis
Academia.com  https://chemeketa.academia.edu/DavidLewis
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/coyotez
Google+ https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DavidLewisNDN/about

Karin Morey, historian of Oregon City and avid researcher, discusses her recent projects and publications about Oregon City’s floods, pioneers, and Army service men and women.

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Can you tell us a little about your publication(s) and yourself?

I have had an interest in Oregon City history for over 60 years, having grown up hearing the stories of the city’s history from Wilmer Gardner, one of the founders of the Clackamas County Historical Society. After retiring 15 years ago I was able to spend more time on research and to look for ways to share the city’s history.

       

What interested you in this/these topic(s)?

For several years I volunteered at the Museum of the Oregon Territory and was able to make use of the documents and photographs in their collection, as well as those maintained by the Clackamas County Family History Society. The first book I worked on was a reproduction of Wilmer Gardner’s “Old Oregon City” with minor corrections to his original text and new scans of the photographs he had chosen to illustrate the city’s history. With the help of Adrian Wegner, a volunteer who was very adept at scanning and bringing out the best in the photos from the 19th and early 20th century, we were able to reproduce the long out of print book. Our next project was an “Images of America” book for Arcadia Publishing  focusing on the various floods in Oregon City. Preparing the book involved researching newspapers from the 1840s through 1996 as well as other print sources and choosing photographs to go with the narrative of each major flood.

After leaving my volunteer position at the museum I began to focus my time on the Mountain View Cemetery, a city owned pioneer cemetery with burials dating back to 1848. I started a blog to share the stories of the early settlers of Oregon City and their descendants. In the process, I was asked by city staff to help identify Civil War veterans buried in the cemetery. A friend of mine had started this project and had located 80 veterans. Through further research in the Oregon City newspapers and online Civil War records I have been able to identify over 150 Civil War veterans in Mountain View Cemetery and am still discovering one ones while working through each burial lot in the old portions of the cemetery.

While learning more about these veterans, I noticed that many of them were members of the Oregon City Grand Army of the Republic Post, Meade Post No. 2. Knowing little about the G. A. R. I began to research the organization and to look for more information on our local Post. During the search I located the first two rosters of the Post mixed in with material from the Women’s Relief Corps, the women’s auxiliary of the G. A. R. Post. In comparing a previous transcription of the rosters I noticed several differences in the typed copy from what I had found so far on the veterans at Mountain View.

What resources did you use for your research?

Having the “modern amenities” of digitized newspapers, online genealogy sites and sites such as Find A Grave and Billion Graves, I was able to compare the original handwritten rosters to other sources to more easily decipher the spellings of their names and companies they served in as well as locating where almost all of the 400+ members of the Post were buried. This resulted in a book to help preserve the information from the rosters, Meade Post No. 2, G. A. R. The book includes information on each member as well as the activities of the Post, a great deal of which came from local newspapers.

What did you use in Historic Oregon Newspapers online? How did you use the site and which titles were useful to you?

The digitized newspapers from U of O have made it possible to do a large portion of my research from the comfort of home rather than long hours on microfilm readers at a local library or museum. The ability to search for a specific name or term instead of advancing frame by frame, reading every word on every page, has cut down my time by 100s of hours. In my research I have also found the newspapers from other cities very useful as families moved around the region, people died while out of town and were returned to Oregon City for burial, or if a copy of local paper is missing, the news may have been reprinted in another newspaper in the state. The digitized newspapers have made it possible to complete more in less time and are greatly appreciated!

Where can we purchase/access your book(s)?

All three books I have worked on are available through Amazon and other booksellers.

Purchases of the two Oregon City books benefit the Clackamas County Historical Society. The titles are:

Old Oregon City, by Wilmer Gardner
Oregon City Floods, Clackamas County Historical Society

My self-published book is Meade Post No. 2 G. A. R. by Karin D. Morey

To read my current blogs:

theweekthatwasoc.wordpress.com
livesfromthecemeteries.wordpress.com

Updates are also posted on the corresponding Facebook pages:

Weekly news blog: OCWeek
Cemetery stories: FriendsMountainViewCemetery

What’s your next project!

I am currently working on two projects. One is the municipal history of Oregon City, beginning with the elected and appointed officials for each year from 1844 through 1923 when the city changed from a Council to a Commission system. To make my research easier, I had transcribed the handwritten City Council minutes from 1850 through 1911 when they converted to typewritten minutes, which had then been shared with our City Recorder. In doing the transcriptions I found many facts about the city I had never seen in print and decided to further research the various municipal activities and compile them into a book for easier access. This is a work in progress and is greatly aided by access to the digitized newspapers from Oregon City when confirming elections and the text of city ordinances as well as the editorial content when the local newspaper editor was, or was not, in support of the direction the City Council was moving. The final book will list the city officers, a few of the “highlights” of the term, a sample of ordinances passed and a summary of major construction projects for each of the years.

The other project is a more organized summary of every burial, lot by lot, in the oldest portions of Mountain View Cemetery. This includes brief biographical information, whether the individual is a veteran and/or an Oregon Trail pioneer, occupational information and family relations in family lots. A large part of this research is done through obituaries and “social notes” in the digitized newspapers.

I also compile a weekly blog called “The Week That Was OC.” The blog is a selection of newspaper articles for the current week in each year ending in the same digit as the present year, such as 1848, 1858 etc. now that we are in 2018, from 1846 through 1922. It gives a little history, a little scandal and a little humor from the past of our city.

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Thank you for your contributions to the history of Oregon City, Karin! If you use Historic Oregon Newspapers online and would like to share your work with us, please contact us!

Guest blog post by University of Oregon School of Planning, Public Policy and Management graduate student Jes Sokolowski:

For the last few semesters I have been assisting a professor with a research project on inequality and taxes. Most of my involvement with this project has been with data collection— analyzing tax forms to uncover charitable giving information, and eventually extrapolating enough information to design visuals.

During the project, our team would occasionally talk about the rhetoric involved with a partisan issue, such as taxes. These thoughts on taxes, inequality, and rhetoric, lead me to ask the question “I wonder how tax talk has transformed over time”? Shortly after I posed this question, the new Historic Oregon Newspapers website was released, and historic newspapers seemed like the perfect place to search to discover how tax talk had evolved over the years. Not only would Historic Oregon Newspapers allow me to learn more about the history of taxes in Oregon, but it would allow me to search for tax-related keywords and phrases.

Thus, I proceeded to search through Oregon Digital Newspapers using terms such as “taxation”, “tax policy”, and “tax reform”. This was an exciting search process! I had never read about early 20th century tax reform before this Digital Newspaper search, so it was particularly exciting to read early opinion articles, editorials, and local advertisements either for or against a tax measure. Fun fact: it was common for the list of local tax evaders to be published on the front page of the newspaper— that way everyone knew who wasn’t paying their fair share.

The most important find for my newspaper search project, showed up in the January 24th, 1909 Sunday Oregonian. From this newspaper, it was clear that, for more than 100 years, there has been concern with issues of inequality and taxes in Oregon. The article, titled Procedure for Tax Reform in Oregon, was written by F.G. Young, Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Oregon. According to Young, “An equitable system of taxation is necessary not only for social health and mutual good will, but also for internal peace and general prosperity.” Young’s call for equitable taxes is as timeless as his comment on tax evasion: “Classes or interests, who under existing practices are escaping their rightful share of the public burdens, see to it that all the confusion possible is created…”.

Thanks to the Historic Oregon Newspapers website, I began to better understand the history of taxes, and Oregonian’s attitudes towards taxation. Though the people discussing taxes change, people’s polarizing views and writing on taxes seem to be ageless.

Scott Stursa, author of the recently published book Distilled in Oregon, shares his interests and processes for researching with local historic resources, including Historic Oregon Newspapers online!

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Can you tell us a little about your publication and yourself?

Distilled in Oregon  details the history of spirits distillation in the state, beginning with the “Blue Ruin” being manufactured by fur traders during the 1830s and 1840s. It traces the development of commercial distilling during the nineteenth century as well as the prohibition movement that ended alcohol production in 1916. The Prohibition period was rife with moonshining, and the operations of a couple of practitioners is described. A history of Hood River Distillers (opened 1934) is followed by one of Clear Creek Distillery (1985). The final portion of the book covers the rise of the craft distilling movement in Oregon, with a number of notable distilleries described in detail.

During a 40 year career in Information Technology, writing was a hobby until my retirement in early 2016. I’m now able to devote more time to it.

What interested you in this topic?

I’ve had an interest in gourmet food and drink since my late twenties (early 1980s) and the interest in craft distilling is a facet of that. After arriving in Oregon in 2007 I became acquainted with a local craft distiller and decided to write a book on the topic.

What resources did you use for your research?

The World Wide Web was instrumental in not only finding the content of primary source accounts (digitized books [both old and new], newspaper articles, online media reports, etc.), but also provided the names of out-of-print books (which I could find and buy via Amazon), and catalogs of the contents of historical archives. These last allowed me to visit historical archives (from Medford to Seattle to The Dalles) with a list of requested resources.

What did you use in Historic Oregon Newspapers online? How did you use the site and which newspaper titles were useful to you?

Old articles describing the construction, operation, and fate of various distilleries around the state, along with advertisements placed by distillers and liquor retailers. Google Advanced Search was used, restricting the domain to oregonnews.uoregon.edu and inputting various relevant keywords such as distillery, moonshine, whiskey, etc.* Probably the one most useful title was The Oregonian.

Where can we purchase/access your book?

It was available at a number of retail outlets around the state (ranging from Powells to Costco). Most of these have sold out, but it can be ordered from Amazon or from the publisher (Arcadia/History Press).

What’s your next project?

Currently working on a book about the history of wine making in Oregon.

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Thank you for sharing, Scott! We are looking forward to your next publication.

*The Historic Oregon Newspapers website also features advanced search functionality!