Salem in 1959

World Events 

• The Tibetan government is abolished by China's Zhou Enlai. A puppet ruler replaces the Dalai Lama who granted asylum in India.
•  Fidel Castro's new, revolutionary Communist government in Cuba is recognized by the US and the Soviet Union.
• Alaska and Hawaii  become states this year.
• NASA selects seven military pilots as the first US  astronauts. Two monkeys are first living beings to successfully return to earth from space flight. Explorer 6 sends back first pictures of earth from orbit.
• The St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic,  is opened by President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II.
• Buddy Holly, the musician considered a creator of  rock-and-roll and who influenced many other pop artists, died in the crash of a chartered plane. 
• Frank Lloyd Wright's eye-catching, cylindrical building, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, opens to the public in NYC.
• Mattel's Barbie doll and the Xerox copier are both introduced.
• "The Twilight Zone" premieres on TV. Academy Awards: "Ben Hur" (US), "Black Orpheus" (France). Prize-winning Books: The Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud and The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, Robert Lewis Taylor.

In Salem
Mark Hatfield has been elected as governor, but his High Street residence, purchased the year before, has to be renovated before he can move in. [Meanwhile he and family are living at the Royal Court Apartments on Chemeketa Street.] In the photograph above, the view of his property is from Kearney Street looking toward High Street with Bush's Pasture Park in the background.
It is a sign of the times that extensive electronic networks and a bomb shelter must be added in the basement. J. Warren Carkin designed a large kitchen and servants' wing that was added at the rear. The Oregon Centennial of 1959 was celebrated with many social engagements at this house and during the Legislative sessions of the Governor Hatfield's two terms, the governor's wife, Antoinette, held weekly open houses. Thousands of residents and visitors attended these events. Both Governor Hatfield and his wife posed for photographs inside the house. All four of the Hatfield children were born here.

When you visit
This house was built c. 1880 for Virgil Pringle (1804-1887) and was occupied by him until his death in 1887 and by his widow, Pherne, until her death in until 1891. His obituary recalls, "Mr. and Mrs. Pringle lived to a ripe old age and died at their home near Salem where shortly before they had celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary, surrounded by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This was a happy reunion". The nearby Pringle Creek was named for this Salem pioneer of 1848. Note: Mission Street was the southern border of Salem city limits at the time of his death.
Even after the Mark Hatfield sold the house in 1968, it remained as a private residence. This SCAN neighborhood residence is in the Gaiety Hill/Bush's Pasture Park Historical District. It is featured on the SHINE Gaiety Hill/Bush's Pasture Park Walking Tour.

Other events

• Russell F. Bonesteele is elected mayor. The house associated with Russell and Valerie Bonesteele is at 396 18th Street in the NEN neighborhood. Mr. Bonestelle's family was in the automobile business. He served on the hospital board and the Salem City Council before his election as mayor.
• The Thomas Kay Woolen Mill announces it will close. The advent of synthetic fabrics and advances in manufacturing technology left the traditional methods of the Kay Wooden Mill unable to compete. The property has served as a non-profit entity since then. Originally known as Mission Mill Museum, it is now Willamette Heritage Center. Four pioneer structures have been moved onto the property and the institution is preserving the city's history as well as providing tours of the former mill.

Vice President Nixon and Oregon dignitaries at Centennial Celebration in Salem

• In February, the Vice President of the United States, Richard Nixon, attends the Oregon Centennial Celebration at the Capitol. From a second floor balcony, the dignitaries listen as the Portland Symphony concert opens the ceremonies. The governor was still living at the Royal Court Apartments that February and the Vice President visited the Hatfields there. In this year, less security is required for our Vice President: the tenants, aware that Mr. Nixon would be visiting, lined the railings of the lobby balcony and applauded when he entered.
• On June 9, the Capital Journal publishes a 116-page issue, entitled Oregon Centennial. Four special sections feature the 100-year history of the Willamette Valley. It is edited by William Mainwaring, son of the late publisher, Bernard Mainwaring, and is his first "major assignment" since returning from military service.
• The much-debated use of a bequest by Carroll Moores, is finally resolved with a 12-foot statuary group entitled "Guidance of Youth". An earlier suggestion that a Renoir nude be purchased with the $34,000 had been met with indignant local protest. Avard Fairbanks of Salt Lake City created a more suitable statue that was accepted by Salem public vote. It presents a pioneer father with a hoe, a pioneer mother properly attired with skirt sweeping the ground and a pioneer youth. This group statue is sited in Bush Park’s southeast corner overlooking a playing field to the east.

Lancaster Area of Salem

State Street as "Four Corners"

• An aerial photograph of the Four Corners area of Salem (State and Lancaster intersection) taken this year shows a residential suburb of homes on generous lots surrounding this business corner. The street level view shows the small businesses on the unpaved State Street in this unincorporated section of Salem.

Capitol Funeral of Douglas McKay

• The funeral of former governor Douglas McKay, later US Secretary of the Interior, is held in the Capitol. It had been the intention of the family to hold the funeral in his church, First Presbyterian, but that structure was in the middle of Winter Street, still on its journey to its new location. Governor Hatfield led the procession out of the Capitol.

Salem in 1863

World Events

• French capture Mexico City and proclaim Maximillian as Emperor.
• International Red Cross founded with ratification by 16 nations after a Geneva Conference.
• Most memorable battle of Civil War fought at Gettysburg: Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address. He proclaims last Thursday of November as Day of Thanksgiving.
• Medal of Honor is established for those who "distinguish themselves conspicuously by gallantry and integrity" in combat.
• Four-wheel roller skating introduced in New York City.
• James Whistler's paintings exhibited at "Salon des Refuses" in Paris along with Claude Manet and Paul Cezanne.
• New American Book: Edward Everett Hale publishes his novel, Man Without a Country. 

In SalemNoble goals are expressed in our nation this year: The Red Cross, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and the Medal of Honor. In Salem these ideals of service are expressed in the founding of the First Congregational Church at the corner of Liberty and Center Streets with Obed Dickinson as minister. Charlotte and Obed Dickinson had been newlyweds in November of 1852 when they embarked on the long voyage around the Horn to Obed's assignment as a Congregational minister in frontier Oregon. Landing in Portland the following April, they had personal baggage and simple furnishings for their home: a stove, table, chairs, and bedding. It took them eighteen days to transport their belongings and themselves by boat and cart to Salem, a village of 500 people, ten dry goods stores, four physicians, a flouring mill, various mechanics - and five other ministers, all Methodist. His church was an abandoned schoolhouse at Commercial and Marion Streets described as "dirty as a pig sty, its floor covered with mud." Boarding was too expensive, so Obed purchased a half acre of land, deep in the brush between Front Street and the river, for a small 16 by 26 feet home.
His conflict with the membership, especially the founding Gilbert family, arose when he allowed African-Americans to attend services and one couple to marry there (see below). His wife Charlotte taught four of these women to read and write. Obed resigned his pulpit four years later, becoming a successful seed merchant. This church building was replaced in 1905. The third construction is at the corner of Marion and Cottage Streets, location of the boyhood home of A. C. Gilbert, demolished in 1941.
When You Visit: Dickinson family sites
Nordstroms is currently on the site of this church. Dickinson's seed store was at Chemeketa and Commercial Streets, now the Union Gospel Mission Office. The family's first home, a rough cabin built by Dickenson himself in this year, was near Ferry on Front Street. After Dickinson became a successful merchant, their 1880s home bordered the then-fashionable Marion Square Park. It was demolished for Marion Street Bridge ramp construction. The graves of Obed and Charlotte are in Pioneer Cemetery. Their daughter, Cora Dickinson Moores (1857-1938), was buried near her parents. Another daughter, Edna Dickinson Raymond, was living in Santa Monica, California when her sister died.
The Cora and Albert Moores' home was on Chemeketa Street in Piety Hill, the four block residential section north of the State House. When this area was acquired by the state for North Capitol Mall, their house was one that survived demolition. It was moved to Leffelle Street where it is today.

Other Events

• H. M. Thatcher was mayor during 1863-4.
• The Union House on the northeast corner of Ferry and Commercial Street, site of Salem's first store, burned in May of this year. The hotel was so named because it was a combination of the store and the blacksmith shop next door. The Union House contained the Gem Saloon with bar and billiard table.

Sacred Heart Academy

• Sacred Heart Academy was established on the east side of Cottage between Center and Chemeketa Streets by the Sisters of the Holy Names, opening with 80 girls as students. Legend gives Asahel Bush credit for encouraging the founding of this school for the primary eduction of his daughters. Mass was celebrated there until St. John's Church (now St. Joseph's) was dedicated. This 1886 photograph shows the original three story, brick building. A handsome, high-ceiling classroom with louvered shutters on the windows was photographed in 1908. The school moved to Lancaster Drive in the 1960s, but has since closed.
• Hamilton Campbell, a Salem pioneer in engineering, construction and photography, was murdered in Mexico while working in for a mining company. He had created the die for the Oregon Beaver coin. He and his wife, Harriet Biddle Campbell, had arrived in Oregon in 1840 as members of the Lausanne missionary reinforcement. His widow Harriet was living in Portland in 1900, still "sprightly" at 83. 
• Richard and America Waldo Bogle were married at the First Congregational Church on January 1. Richard was Jamaican, living in Salem where he met America Waldo. Rev. Dickinson officiated the wedding and hosted the wedding reception. A black wedding taking place in a white church and a party attended by both blacks and whites was apparently too much for some people to handle. The event provoked negative comments from Asahel Bush, first in his private letters and then in the Oregon Statesman where he called it a "disgrace"; eventually, the incident made the newspapers as far away as the Portland Oregonian and the San Francisco Bulletin. The couple moved to Walla Walla in the Washington Territory. There, Richard tried his hand at mining, but he didn't strike it rich and later returned to his old trade of barbering. The Bogles made their money ranching, and Richard was sufficiently wealthy that he was one of the founders of the Walla Walla Savings and Loan Association, providing some of the seed capital for the organization and backing it with his good name. Richard and America had eight children together, at least two of whom went on to become barbers in Portland.