Historic Hood River
Clarence H. Brown
10-27-2020
Notes
Here’s Clarence Brown at his parent’s Oak Grove homestead in 1896. If you look to his right he’s towing his sled.
It’s hard to imagine what it was like to live in Oak grove in this era. I wonder how many times he got to visit “the city” as a child, and what it seemed like to him.
Charlott
He, along with his parents Henry and Adelaide (Tostevin) Brown lived on what had been the Osbourne place, located somewhere in the Binns Hill area of Oak Grove. His father had been a sailor, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, for many year and finally married and only had the one son, Clarence Henry.
Clarence sort of just roamed about as a handy man in various places in Oregon. He at one time was in Imnaha, Oregon up in the Wallowa’s. I am not certain if he was actually married, but if he was her name was Helen Weathers. Brown died relatively young in the early 1940’s and is buried with his parents in Idlewilde.
When you say visiting the city, do you mean Hood River, or some place like Portland? Children didn’t get the opportunity to go to Portland very often in those days. I know my own father didn’t get to go to Portland until he was like 6 and he was in total awe that there could be a place that big. He didn’t know anything about hotels and to get to stay and eat in one was some really big to him.
L.E.
I remember an old guy telling me the story about his first trip to Portland. He was in a store with his parents and punched a little Japanese boy in the face. His parents asked him why he did that and he replied, "He was making faces at me."
This is the kind of snow, that if you didn’t get everything picked up before it snowed, you didn’t find it until spring.
Dan K
My father was born and raised in Oak Grove.
Roger Sheldrake
Interesting the house had gutters but not for long!
kmb
I wonder how this picture happened to get taken. How common would it be for the average family living in this area to have a camera back in 1896? The first Kodak Brownie didn’t come onto the market until 1900. Maybe there was a photographer living or visiting in the area at the time?
Wendell
Anyone have any idea what the long poles/wood is for on the left side of the house. Can’t really tell. Could it be something to help shore up the walls during the winter? This house has the appearance of an old house. Notice how the porch is sagging. Probably a house built by Osbourne the original owner.
John Buck
Arthur, what are the actual dimensions of the print? It might be possible to identify the camera, or family of cameras used, if it was a Kodak. Chances are it is a contact print, if that old.
ArthurB
The print is pasted in an album. It’s roughly 4.5"x3.3" but it may have been trimmed. It’s very faded and I can’t see enough of the edges to tell if it from a glass plate or film negative.
John Buck
This size would be closest to the No. 3 Kodak format, which is 3.25 x 4.25 inches. But as your dimensions are a bit larger, the print could have been, as you say, trimmed down from — perhaps — the No.4 Kodak format (4×5 inches). Both Kodak products were readily available in 1896, in box form only for the No.3, and in both box and folding forms for the No. 4. Prices for the cameras ranged from $25 to $50 (expensive). In any event, not really conclusive in this case! Fun exercise for me though…