Salem in 1910

World Events

• George V becomes King of Great Britain and Ireland on the death of his father, Edward VII, Victoria's son.
• Asia: Slavery is abolished in China. The Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty gives Japan control over that country and the Korean Emperor abdicates. (The treaty is not formally declared void until 1965.)
•  Neon lighting is displayed by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.
• Haley's Comet is observed. (In Salem it was seen above Court Street from the upper balcony of the Cooke-Patton mansion.)
• The first public radio broadcast is a live opera performance from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. NOTE: Charles Herrold of San Jose, California is considered as the first radio broadcaster. Beginning in 1909, he was on air daily, transmitting from his Wireless College to friends listening on their crystal radios. He is credited with being a pioneer in recognizing radio for entertainment.
• African-American boxer Jack Johnson defeats white boxer James J. Jeffries in a heavyweight match. Race riots broke out across the U.S.
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is released in a horror film version by Edison Films. Notable new books: Twenty Years at Hull House, Jane Addams and Howards End, E.M. Forster

In Salem
Forty years after his death, a memorial to one of Salem's most important early pioneers, David Leslie, was created this year with the Leslie Methodist Church, built south of the city limits at the corner of Commercial and Myers Streets, near the site of the present St. Paul Episcopal Church. The parsonage (seen above in a 2008 photograph) was also constructed in 1910.
The Reverend David Leslie was prominent in the small pioneer settlement that would become Salem. In 1845, he was elected president of the board of trustees for the Oregon Institute, a school for settlers' children. He held this position through the Institute's transition into Willamette University and, in 1867, laid the cornerstone of Waller Hall. Leslie also was one of the founders of Salem's Masonic Order chapter and the first chaplain of the territorial legislature. He received a sizeable portion of the Mission land claim, a section stretching between Mission and McGilchrist Streets. From Pringle Creek, the Leslie land grant extended to the Willamette Slough.

The 100 acres that included his home, barn and orchard were sold to Asahel Bush in 1860, nine years before his death. Leslie's former home was moved to Mission and Cottage streets for the construction of the Bush house in 1877-8, but his barn was preserved. Reverend Leslie's family life was punctuated by tragedy. His first wife, Mary Leslie, died in 1842 and was the first to be buried in a cemetery that was part of his land claim. Four of his five daughters by this marriage preceded him in death ~ two by drowning in a canoe accident. Rev. Leslie married a widow, Adelia Judson Olley, and had two more daughters, but both died in childhood.

The Leslie name is now remembered with a residential street near his property and Leslie Middle School, relocated from its original site on Howard Street to 3850 Pringle Road South.

When you visit
In 1981, the Leslie church closed and was demolished a few years later, making space for commercial buildings we see today as we drive south. However, in 1984, the parsonage was moved to 1305 Cannon Street SE to serve as a doctor's office. Across Cannon Street is another relocated historic residence, the former home of Dr. Carleton Smith, moved here from 1153 Oak Street in the former University residential area. Dr. Smith served in WW I, was our first City Physician, a professor at Willamette University and was a state legislator. Both of these beautifully maintained Local Landmarks are in the present Morningside neighborhood.

The Leslie family is buried with Mary Leslie near her original grave in what is now Pioneer Cemetery.

It is possible that the original home, after it was moved, became the first building of the Oregon School for the Blind. It was demolished many years ago. The Leslie barn burned, but was rebuilt to continue being the offices, gift shop and galleries of the Salem Art Association.

Leslie Street is now only a fraction of its original length from the Willamette River to 12th Street, a major central section having been vacated for the Salem Hospital.

Other Events

• Census records show the Salem population at 14,094.
• Two schools are built in developing residential neighborhoods of North Salem, annexed to the city in 1903: Englewood School was constructed south of Garden Road (Market Street) and east of 17th Street, just north of the historic Jason Lee Cemetery. The Oregon School for the Deaf (in far grander buildings than are on the campus today) was established on Locust Street north of the present Market Street.
• Construction began for the Jason Lee Memorial Church at the intersection of Fairgrounds Road and Jefferson Street.
• A modest farmhouse is built on the narrow road leading to the Wallace property in West Salem now numbered 1340 Wallace Road, it is a Local Landmark, known as the Quarry House. There is no information about the original owner.
• At 905 5th Street, along Mill Creek in the new Grant section of Salem, an English cottage was built for Fred and Nellie Broer who lived there for more than twenty years. Its architecture resembles that of the Douglas Minto house at 831 Saginaw and may have been designed by the same person.
• The Endicott House is built at 675 Church Street, next door to the elegant D'Arcy House, twenty years its senior. This house was built for attorney Samuel M. Endicott who lived here with wife Emma until 1934. In 1945 the property was sold to Lenore Park who divided the house into two apartments calling it the Park Apartments. These houses are both in CAN-DO neighborhood have been designated as Local Landmarks.

 

Hinges-Kimball Home on Summer Street 1910

In the present location on Capitol Street 2010

• Nearby on Summer Street, the Hinges family moved into a new home. Mrs. Hinges was the daughter of pioneer Josiah Parrish, mother of Hallie Parris Hinges, a noted local vocalist. Moved for the construction of the North Capitol Mall, it is now located on Capitol Street. It is remarkable that the house exterior is so unchanged after more than a hundred years. (It has been painted since this photograph.) An aerial photograph taken this year shows the Piety Hill neighborhood of the Hinges home and so many other prominent Salem families of that time.
• South of downtown in the Fairmount area of the present SCAN neighborhood, the Cusick House is built at 415 Lincoln Street (See 1978 photo). This is a white, Edwardian-era mansion with wrought iron fencing and a large circular porch with square columns. Built by Dr. William A. Cusick, a prominent physician of the 1920s, it was occupied by his widow, Maria, for many years after his death. One of Salem's outstanding residences, it is a National Register property.
• In the present SESNA neighborhood, the modest Martin House is built at 1548 Lee Street. This property and surrounding lots were sold to J. W. Roork in 1891 and then, in the same year, this lot was sold to F. M. Rinehart. These were the first of many quick transactions over the next twenty years when the house had nine different owners. Jessie Martin bought the property in 1921 and continued to live here into the 1950s. Miss Martin was a teacher at the Park School. This is also designated Local Landmark.
• Further south, at the present 230 Hrubetz Road in the Faye Wright neighborhood, there is built a house that is now associated with the name Townsend, but most was probably the home of Frederick and Jeanette Kuebler. That family owned property in this rural area south of Salem and there is now a busy suburban road named for them.
• A remarkable photograph from this year shows stern-wheeler ships in the Salem harbor.

Salem in 1860

World Events

• The first Japanese ambassadors to the U.S. arrive in San Francisco. The Chief minister of Japan is assassinated by Ronin samurai to protest opening Japan to foreign powers.
• After defeating Neapolitan forces, Garibaldi gives Naples to Victor Emmanuel II, naming him King of Italy.
• Abraham Lincoln is elected as first Republican U.S. President in November. South Carolina secedes from the Union the next month. (Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin, 2006)
• In San Francisco, organized baseball played for the first time.
• "Pony Express" begins mail service from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California with riders carrying a small Bible.
• Idaho white settlement begins at Franklin.
• Joseph Jefferson stars in "Rip Van Winkle" in New York City.
• In England, Wilkie Collins's Woman in White, an early detective novel, as well as George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, are published. New American Books: The first "Dime novel" is published: Malaseka, The Indian Wife of the White Hunter.  Not even Walt Whitman's sensitive Leaves of Grass, can surpass the most-read  book (except the Bible) in America, which is Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

• .

In Salem 
Residents of Salem are more interested in state politics than anything happening in Japan or Italy: Oregon had become the nation's 33rd state the year before with John Whiteaker as Governor, Lucien Heath as Secretary of State and John Boon as Treasurer. Because Salem is the capitol city, John Boon, a local merchant, builds this store at 888 Liberty Street. It will also serve as the first State Treasury. A favorite trading place in Salem's early history, the next owner, William Lincoln Wade, who built his residence on the same block, opened the building's upper story to serve as a community hall. With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, Fred Karr transformed into a "beer parlor". A 1940 photograph shows John and Martha Boon's house next door, now relocated to Willamette Heritage Center. After 1976, the commercial building was sold and reopened as "Boon's Treasury". Purchased by the McMenamins in 1988, it is perhaps the oldest Salem business building in its original location.

When You Visit: Boon's Treasury
 Boon's Treasury offers food, drinks, and live music.
While you're there, check out the 1960 historic marker at Mill Creek, across High Street behind Boon's Treasury, to read about Salem's founding at this location along Mill Creek in 1842.

Lincoln Wade's Gothic-style 1870 home, formerly next door to Boon's Store, is now located at 1305 John Street S. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Other events in Salem this year

• With the passage of the City Charter, Lucian Heath, who had been our first state Secretary of State in 1859, was now elected our first mayor and took office on Nov. 22. Realizing the shallow wells used by residents and businesses were unhealthy, he initiated a committee of aldermen to discuss diverting water from Willamette Woolen Mill's Salem Ditch (itself a diversion from Santiam River) to Mill Creek. Negotiations with John Force, who owned the water right, failed.
• Edward Dickinson Baker, one of Abraham Lincoln's closest friends, is invited to Salem. He leaves his law practice in San Francisco, to establish residence here and become a US Senator from Oregon. 
  
• Drake's Iron Works is established on Front Street, beginning industrial use of our Salem downtown riverfront. Further north at Mill Creek and Liberty Street, Lucian Pratt and Joseph Watt build the successful Willamette Wooden Mill. B.M. Durelle moves his lumber mill machinery from a floating steamboat to a plant on the riverbank just north of Trade Street, but fire destroys his first plant and the replacement is washed away in a flood with in a year.
• Asahel Bush II, prominent pioneer newspaper publisher and banker, purchases 100 acres, farmhouse and barn from Dr. David Leslie, a pioneer Methodist missionary at the Willamette Mission, who held a Salem donation land claim, for $4,000. (Mary Kinney Leslie and Rachael Beardsley Beers were among the five wives who had accompanied the missionaries to the 1837 settlement abandoned in 1841.)  The Bush family will live in the former Leslie home for the next 17 years.
  
• The Rural Gothic Waller-Chamberlain house (above)  is built on State Street, probably in the present 1600 block. It was the home of Alvin Waller, a pioneer Methodist minister and supporter of the school that became Willamette University. He raised funds and oversaw construction of the First Methodist Church. In 1901, after a move to 1658 Court Street, the Chamberlain family was photographed on the front steps. This is the earliest home now in the Court-Chemeketa Historic Residential District. The present owners house remodeled the house in 1982. A few blocks away, on the northeast corner of Chemeketa and 14th streets, Joseph Holman built his log home and the first bridge across Mill Creek.
• At 738 North Front Street, John Webster Huntington, Superintendent of Indian Affairs builds a home. In this neighborhood, bordering Marion Square Park, other notables live including E. N. Cooke, our second mayor, and Obed Dickinson, first minister of the Congregational Church. The only residence to survive is the rebuilt 1861 Wilson-Durbin House on Water Street.
• This year, Chemeketa Lodge No. 1, Oddfellows (IOOF), established as the "Mother Lodge of Oregon". It moves to the Holman Buildin for the next 30 years. Members of the Lodge at this time include many prominent Salem names: B. F. Harding, E. N. Cooke, Joel Palmer, Cyrus Reed and Albert Zieber.
• Charles I. Roe becomes the second man hanged in Salem: he confessed to the murder of his (second) wife, Angelica, the motive being he "loved his wife better than life, and killed her to prevent others from enjoying her." The hanging was 150 feet east of Church Street toward near Trade Street, adjacent to the present Lindsay Towers. Roe's first marriage, to Nancy McKay, was part of the 1838 wedding festivities that also united Jason Lee and Anna Maria Putman at the original Willamette mission.
• John Phillips farm is already established in Polk County by this year. This historic 1853 vernacular Greek Revival house was built for pioneer John Phillips, who came to Oregon via the Oregon Trail in 1845. He finished his journey to Oregon on the Meek Cutoff as part of Stephen Meek's "lost wagon train". Phillips was a native of Wiltshire England who arrived in the U.S. in 1834 and married Elizabeth Hibbard in 1839. He came to Oregon and bought the Turner donation land claim in Polk County for $100. The locale was once known as Spring Valley Ranch. John Phillips' daughter Hannah married Samuel Barker. The grandson, Samuel E. Barker and his wife Velma were the last occupants. Their niece remembers stories that the local Native Americans would come in the back door to warm themselves by the pot-bellied stove. In 1976 the house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2014 it is the oldest residence in Polk County and was owned for 156 years by the same family. This National Register property on Spring Valley Road has been unoccupied since 2002.