Historic Hood River
Clarence Brown
Notes
Meet Clarence Brown, age 8, at his family homestead near Oak Grove. The year is identified as 1896. I think he’s holding a pellet gun. Not sure what is around the barrel.
That’s an awful lot of fence. Lumber must have been plentiful.
A 1915 obituary for his father, Harry Brown, indicates the Browns homesteaded “the Osborne place in the Oak Grove District in 1884. He circled the globe 9 times as a sailor, and married Adelaide Tostevin 1887. Clarence must have been born shortly thereafter.
A 1911 Glacier article mentions his participation in a debate at the Hood River Heights Literary Club. He took the affirmative in “Resolved, That negroes have been treated worse than the Indians.” It would be fascinating to know what the arguments were in that time and place.
Charlott
Clarence was born in March of 1889 and died on 17 March 1948.
His father was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1835. He died here in Hood River in 1915.
Buzz
Not sure what is around the barrel either, but he appears to be holding it in his hand and it has a bullet hole in it. I never got my first 22 until I was a few years older than him.
L.E.
Is it a hat?
Dale Nicol
L.E. I had the same thought….could be an old Bowler hat by the shape and brim size.
Kenn
I would guess a hat, few were without them in those times of being mostly outdoors.
As a kid we had BB guns and 22s, I had not heard of pellet guns until decades later.
Longshot
The barrel looks to be pretty large in diameter for a pellet or BB gun.
Kenn
The barrel appears to me to be about 1′ OD and remember BB guns to be about the same with 22s being smaller?
Kenn
Going through numerous old photos and find none with bareheaded males outdoors, leads me to think the hat is off just for the photo. Only orientals and Indians I see bareheaded. Slightly related, not very long ago females did not go to church without a hat. and males not indoors with a hat except where females were not present.