Historic Hood River
Detective Work
Notes
There are several stories to tell about this envelope found in our collection.
You can see by the address it was sent to Mary Coe who homesteaded in Hood River in 1854. Since it was addressed to her on the “Stmr Idaho” we know it was sent between 1860 and 1881.
The cover had a note in pencil on both sides. Unfortunately it has been handled extensively and was not properly protected (until our archives team attended to it last week). Pencil smudges easily with handling (the other side even more so), so I applied some digital filtering tricks to tease out the text. In the filtered version you can see it bears the instruction, “if Lund or Brownie is up let Mr. Roberts have one to ride”.
The other side includes instructions on the handling of a bundle of mail, presumably bound with this as its cover.
“? the express envelope directed to Mr. Coe & let Henry take the letter to the Dalles, no scratch out Mr. Coes name and send it to ?, he will know what to do with that bundle. If Mr. Joslyn goes to the Dalles tomorrow he will be at the…
Nothing earth-shattering, but it is fun to see the everyday concerns of a woman we only know for her role in founding our city 160 years ago. Now we know the names of her horses.
charlott
Possibly the Mr.Joslyn that she is referring to could be Erastus Joslyn or possibly a son if he had one. Joslyn’s were the first whites in Bingen. The big house near Dickey’s is the Joslyn House. It is not the original. That one was burnt down by the Yakima Indians.
Kyle
Very cool.
L.E.
A precious bit of history for both sides of the river. As Charlott says, the Joslyns were burned out in 1856. They managed to sneak across the river to the Coe residence and watched the burning of their farm from there.
The Joslyn farm was later used as a temporary White Salmon Indian Reservation. By the time they were able to move back several years later, there wasn’t much left of their orchard or hay ground.
I wonder if the "Idaho", was part of the Oregon Navigation Co., which Henry Coe was part owner?
L.E.
I guess if I would click on Arthur’s link about the Stmr Idaho, I wouldn’t have to ask silly questions.
Jill Stanford
I just found this so interesting for so many reasons – but what really got me was, how the heck did you sneak across the Columbia in 1856? Perhaps at night? And I assume they were rowing for their lives! How awful to watch their hard labor go up in flames.