Roberta McKern
The East Linn Museum contains many niceties. The first, of course, is its research room’s historical materials.
The many articles in the museum’s collection reflect the lives of those who settled and lived in the area, as well as their more intangible hopes and beliefs.
By “niceties,” we mean something good, pleasant and worth hanging on to. But the word “nicety” can also mean “reaching a final point and doing something as good as it gets,” as we will see.
Such niceties include manners and conversation, which sometimes can go awry. Saying “Ooh, nice” with raised eyebrows can mean something quite different.
We might imagine a nicety of manners going astray in the following scenario, which borrows from what we’ve learned about George Geisendorfer’s hotel and spa in Cascadia. The spot once took advantage of the area’s natural soda spring water – a cure, it was claimed, for dyspepsia. –
A gentleman taking it had just left the 50-cent “all you can eat” breakfast offering. Getting his money’s worth, he partook of two of about everything, including biscuits with butter and huckleberry jam, bacon and ham, fried eggs, hash brown potatoes and pie – one piece each of apple and peach – washed down in strong coffee diluted with sugar and cream. He passed up the toast.
Nevertheless, the meal’s effect on his unhappy stomach was what might be expected, and he began to doubt the cure’s lasting efficacy. Belching his way to the porch, he spied a friend, a consoling lady who would listen sympathetically to his woeful tale of affliction. But she’d been admiring George Geisendorfer’s dahlias, so her attention was distracted.
The man closed his complaint with “And pain, I’ll tell you!”
Nodding her concern, she replied, “That’s nice, Oscar.”
That is fiction. But in the museum’s reference room are Linn County’s Works Progress Administration histories, compiled in the 1930s and ‘40s. They’re excellent sources of information about our area’s early settlers as well as a nicety of recollections.
In the early days, having a good neighbor wasn’t just a nicety, it was a necessity. Catherine McHargue Hume wrote of two instances involving one, Jonathan Keeney.
When Hume’s father, James McHargue, arrived in the area between Brownsville and Crawfordsville with a young family, he used his last $20 gold piece to buy out squatter’s rights from a settler.
This left him practically penniless in October, and he and his family needed flour to survive. So he went to see his new neighbor, Keeney, and asked if he might have some flour until his own crop came in; he would repay the debt the following fall.
Keeney’s first impression of young McHargue was not high, but he agreed to the loan. However, he selected his poorest flour, likely figuring he’d get no return.
But when McHargue’s wheat crop came in and was milled, he chose his best flour and repaid with all due nicety. Keeney felt a little ashamed of his misjudgment, and the two became good friends.
As Catherine Hume said, Keeney helped many such arriving settlers when area farmers took their flour to Oregon City to be ground, an arduous trip by oxen and wagon that took at least a week or more.
Keeney also helped the William Templeton family. When they reached Oregon City, they and their stock were so worn out by their trip over the plains that Templeton decided they’d have to winter in a small cabin there. Someone brought word to Keeney about a Presbyterian elder stranded in Oregon City. Upon hearing the name, he said, “That’s my old neighbor from Missouri!,” took two yokes of oxen and brought the Templetons down to the Calapooia Valley.
If the nicety of neighborliness helped the pioneers, sometimes just the solace of a talisman worked too. An object of mystery is a little worn book of Methodist hymns and Psalms, “Watts Elect Hymns and Psalms,” published around 1834. It would have crossed the plains.
On a back page is a notation, “Pew 7.” We can feel that some woman gained consolation from reading the hymns and Psalms because she marked the ones she preferred with a nicety of dress scraps. Included, too, is a drawing of a child in a tidy outfit and pleated dress or coat with matching hat.
It’s hard to tell if we’re seeing a boy or a girl, since at that time – the later 1800s, from the style – both little boys and girls wore dresses. By looking at the unknown lady’s choice of reading material, we get the feeling that she felt lost in a strange land, but with the reassurance of a better day coming, a nicety of hope.
Family Bibles and tintypes helped many settlers find comfort in remembering those they left behind.
They also recorded a new order because the Bibles on hand left by the Andrew Wiley, Zealey B. Moss and Asher F. Hamilton families list dates primarily for a second generation, the descendants of those pioneers, many of whom appear in the portraits on the museum’s walls.
As the settlers settled in and the population grew, the material niceties that form the museum’s emphasis of change often take charge. Class and status began to matter, as reflected in manner of dress, education and wealth. Rituals developed to weed out pretenders. Those of higher ranking had to know which fork at a table place setting was for fish and which wasn’t. Niceties of manners counted.
There aren’t likely many fish forks in the East Linn Museum. But among examples of glassware range several spooners. The nicety involved placing this vessel of spoons on a table so a diner could help her or himself. This seems like a democratic way of thinking compared to seven or eight pieces of silver at an upper-class table.
With the coming of trains and mail-order catalogs, people wanted a way to celebrate rising above the level of necessity. Chinaware got fancy, like the big sugar bowl covered with hand-painted violets in the front room. The bright green glass with gold trim highlighting its Croseus pattern is probably the last of a lemonade set, a pitcher with six matching glasses.
Sets became popular, but often only surviving pieces have shown up in the museum. Among the glass and Chinaware – and what we may think of as out of place – sits a chamber pot, but not just any chamber pot. This one has pink and red roses on its body and lid.
Had it been a set, along with the chamber pot there would likely have been a basin, a large pitcher and a slop bucket, all to fit in a special commode, making a sort of bathroom in a bedroom cupboard. If fancy chamber accessories could be called niceties, we must think getting indoor plumbing ranked higher.
At this point, with late 19th- and early-20th century niceties appearing right and left, it’s time to devise a museum niceties game. How many can be found – from fancy fans to two-toned, high-topped gentleman’s shoes, to perfume and toilet-water bottles, to crocheted collars and on and on. There should be extra points for finding a fan featuring women of the Maccabees, a man’s shaving mug featuring an elk, or Nelly Barr’s 1894 wedding dress, rust-colored with bunches of white lace trim.
Of course, the biggest nicety of all – and you knew this one was coming – is simply to have the museum here in Sweet Home. It’s both good and pleasant to wander around, trying to recall the past. We can attempt to re-create something of it, but we get just picture postcards at best and shadows otherwise.
Sometimes we have a nicety of memories. When looking at a line of perfume bottles, we discover some tiny ones and remember when the drug store sold little bottles of scents like lily of the valley, rose, violet and exotic gardenia for 10 cents.
One woman spoke of how some magazines in the 1930s and ‘40s advertised perfumes and offered free samples. She and her sister collected them. We can think of the scent of the past as being roses or maybe “Midnight in Paris” in a blue bottle.
The museum yard sale will be coming up Saturday, July 10, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. We are still collecting, niceties included.