Salem in 1881

World Events

• Alexander II is assassinated near his St. Petersburg palace by a bomb, falsely blamed on Russian Jews. He is succeeded by his son, Alexander III. The ornate, Medieval-Russia styled Church of the Savior on Blood was built on the spot where the Tsar was mortally wounded.
• James Garfield is wounded by an assassin four months after his inauguration, but due to unsanitary medical practices, died 11 after weeks.  Chester Arthur becomes president of the United States. He made significant reforms in government practices, but, due to ill health retired at the end of his term.
• Kansas becomes the first state to prohibit all alcohol beverages.
• Clara Barton, pioneering nurse of the Civil War, establishes the American Red Cross.
• Tuskegee Institute and Spellman College, both for African-American students, are founded.
• Gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurs in Tombstone, Arizona.
• New American Books: Portrait of a Lady, Henry James and Uncle Remus, Joel Chandler Harris.

Mrs. Chloe Willson's home in 1858

The same residence as Lausanne Hall in early 1900s.

Images courtesy of Willamette University Archives and Special Collections

In Salem 
Almost thirty years before, Chloe Willson and her husband William, the founder of our city, had built their home on the northeast corner of Court and Capitol Streets. The property was part of their land grant, actually their allotment from the mission properties. Since the property was in both names, Chloe fought to retain her half after William's death ~ she won.  The image above was published in 1858 when Chloe lived there as a widow. By 1871 she had moved to her daughter's home in Portland. She died there in 1874.
In this year of 1881, Willamette University President Thomas Van Scoy purchases her "English Cottage" and has it moved to the campus as the Woman's College. Over the years it was enlarged, heightened, given a Mansard roof and, finally, a tower. In 1919 it was demolished for the construction of the present Lausanne Hall. The Chronicles of Willamette states, "The original of unit of this outworn old building...was the beautiful old Willson mansion but the numerous additions to it had long before made it into an architectural monstrosity and there was general rejoicing when it could be blotted out of the landscape."
The name Lausanne, given to this university building, recalls the ship that brought missionaries to the Oregon settlement in 1843: Chloe was one of these. She became one of the first teachers at the school that is now Willamette University.

When you visit
After the Willson house was moved to the Willamette campus, H. B. Theilsen and his wife Jennie purchased the property on Court Street where her house had stood. They built a home where they lived with their three children. In the 1930s, after possibly forty years, the house was demolished, although the family continued to own the land. For approximately seventy-five years, an automobile service station has occupied this historic location at the northeast corner of Capitol and Court Street.

Other events

• W. Crawford is elected mayor this year.

Thomas Cronise photograph of Sung Lung Chinese Laundry at 105 Court Street, 1889

• Chinese came to the Salem area in the 1870s and early 1880s with the Chinese population at its peak at 300. The First Baptist Church in Salem opened a Chinese mission school in Salem in 1877 and enrolled up to 40 at various times. Jeung Gwoon Jeu was made city missionary. The mission school was continued through this summer of 1881, but Reverend C. H. Mattoon, editor of the Baptist Annals of Oregon, sorrowfully notes: "Doubtless the only object of the pupils was to learn the language for personal and pecuniary benefits". The school may have closed when the pastor’s wife began conducting evening classes for the Chinese community. Forty pupils were learning about Christianity and to read and write English for a monthly tuition of one dollar.
• Lucyanna Lee Grubbs, the only child of Jason Lee, died this year at the age of 39. Lucyanna was the daughter of Lee's second wife, Lucy Thompson Lee, who sailed to Oregon in 1839 on the Lausanne with the reinforcement of missionaries. Lucyanna was three weeks old when her mother died, and three years old when her lost her father. Adopted by Lydia and Gustavus Hines, she graduated from Willamette University in 1863, becoming a teacher, and then became Governess of Women when Chloe Willson resigned. Lucyanna married a classmate, Francis H. Grubbs, who also became a teacher. Lucyanne's students described her as being tall, with a slender, and stately appearance, her hair braided and wound around her head. A woman of superior knowledge, she was reserved and dignified, and a most devout Christian. A gifted teacher in many disciplines, her students recalled how they sat around a fire on winter days, eating their lunch while Mrs. Grubbs read aloud her favorite poem, "Evangeline." Exacting in her instruction and her expectations of her students, they also recalled she could be amusing, even slightly sarcastic at times, when calling a student’s attention back to the lesson.
  Professor Grubbs raised their daughter Ethel after her mother's death. Professor Grubbs taught at Willamette University for six years  and then in several other schools in the Pacific Northwest until poor health forced him out of his profession. Grubbs took part in various enterprises, finally going into a printing business in Portland. He died in 1911 when Ethel was in her thirties. Since Ethel did not marry, the Jason Lee family line did not survive into another generation.
• Funds had been allocated for the Oregon State Insane Asylum the year before; the site selected was north of the state prison on a slight rise just east of Salem, its present location. Groundbreaking takes place in May of this year with much of the labor force and brick building material coming from the penitentiary. The Kirkbride Building, later known as the "J" Building because of its configuration, was completed two years after.

Salem in 1865

World Events

• The Civil War ends with General Lee's Surrender April 9 and, within a week, President Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth who died in a barn fire April 26. Four of his conspirators were hanged in July. ("Lincoln" film 2012)
• Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat, becomes president, clashing politically with the Radical Republicans in Congress.
• The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits slavery.
• Christian Mission, later renamed the Salvation Army, is founded in London by William Booth who instituted the military structure it retains today.
• Standard Oil Company opens.
• A fire near Silverton, Oregon destroyed more than one million acres of timber.
• Best Reading: Mark Twain publishes The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Walt Whitman writes Drum Taps in memory of fallen soldiers of the Civil War. Young readers are enjoying Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Mary Mapes Dodge's Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates.

In Salem

With the end of war, the assassination of a president and the end of slavery, our nation begins to consider its future course in governance and prosperity. Salem's future continues to rely on water power. An imposing Willamette Flouring Mill is constructed on the north bank of Pringle Creek where it cascades into the Willamette River just south of Trade Street. The mill was financed by owners of the Willamette Woolen Mill that had been built a decade earlier in North Salem. This mill was sold in 1870 to the Kinney Brothers of San Francisco and, at the time, was described as the largest mill of its kind in Oregon and Salem's leading industry; it could turn out 400 barrels of flour a day. The mill was destroyed by fire in 1899 or 1904 ~ there is conflicting information.

When You Visit: Boise Cascade site

The site continues to be important for local industry and was most recently occupied by Boise Cascade. That business relocated and the property has been sold to local investors. It is now being redeveloped, with the first steps being the demolition of the existing buildings along Front and Commercial streets. One of the most interesting aspects of the project is the "daylighting" of Pringle Creek. It will pass under the Commercial Street Bridge, as it does now, but will be open on the west side. With completion of the enterprise, pedestrians will be able to walk along the waterway for the length of its passage from Leffelle Street (south of Bush's Pasture Park) through Salem's downtown to the creek's entrance into the Willamette River. A self-guided walking tour slide show of Pringle Creek and its companion, Shelton Creek, is found on this website.

Other Events

• John H. Moores is mayor of Salem in 1865.
• Near Marion Square Park, David McCully, a pioneer Salem merchant who had been successful in the California Gold Rush, builds a home at 891 Front Street. The house was damaged in the 1962 windstorm. It was moved and renovated at 1365 John Street. It is in the SCAN neighborhood and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1978).
• 

  
  How often we pass this scene at southeast corner of Trade and Church streets (on the south side of the creek on the Robert Lindsey Tower property) without a thought, except how beautiful it is. Few realize a double hanging took place here in 1856.
   Daniel Delaney was murdered in January and his murderers, George Beale and George Baker, were convicted by Judge Reuben Boise. A witness to the murder was a young black boy, Jack, son of Rachel Belden Brooks. His testimony was at first refused on the grounds that negroes could not understand the law in a criminal trail of a white man, but was later allowed. The well-attended double public hanging took place in May at this location.  It attracted families, bringing picnic baskets for lunch, from as far as 20 miles away. After this public execution, there were no murders in Marion County for twenty years.
• The Watkins-Dearborn Building is erected at the northeast corner of State and Commercial Streets. Part of the original facade can be seen at 110 Commercial Street. R. H. Dearborn, a harness-maker, purchased this property on 1875 and occupied it until 1910. Afterward it housed the Holland Bakery. In 1931 it became the location of the Real Estate and General Insurance offices of Edward Rothstein and Samuel Adolph, prominent Salem businessmen. Mr. Rothstein was also chairman of the city's first water commission. Mr. Adolph was son of one of Salem's first brewers and is remembered today for the beautiful home he built in 1878 at 2493 State Street. This NEN neighborhood property was listed on the National Register in 1978.
• Lucyanna Grubbs, Jason Lee's daughter and a graduate of Willamette University, follows Mrs. Chloe Willson as "Governess of the Ladies Department" of that institution.