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  • 'Mother of Oregon History' earned praise, but little money (Part 2 of 2)

    'Mother of Oregon History' earned praise, but little money (Part 2 of 2)
    2025/11/13
    Legendary author Frances Fuller Victor fell on hard times in the late 1870s. She never quit, but after she took a job writing for Hubert Howe Bancroft, he took credit for the books she wrote. (St. Helens, Columbia County; 1880s, 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1504a.frances-fuller-victor-part2.333.html)
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    9 分
  • Legendary Oregon author started with poetry, pulps (Part 1 of 2)

    Legendary Oregon author started with poetry, pulps (Part 1 of 2)
    2025/11/12
    Frances Fuller Victor became the founding mother of all Oregon history, and one of its most important writers of all time. By the time she arrived in the Beaver State, she was already a well-known writer. (St. Helens, Columbia County; 1860s, 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1503e.frances-fuller-victor-part1.332.html)
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    9 分
  • Supreme Court: Slavery is legal, but only for sailors

    Supreme Court: Slavery is legal, but only for sailors
    2025/11/11
    In May of 1895, on the old San Francisco waterfront, four sailors signed onto the four-masted barkentine Arago for a voyage to Valparaiso, Chile (“and thence to such other foreign ports as the master might direct, and thence to return to the United States”) via Astoria. By the time they got to Astoria, the four of them had had enough of conditions on the Arago. They stepped off the ship and essentially told the skipper, “We quit.” In doing so, they changed history — and the legal status of sailors would never be the same. (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-11.arago-four-sailors-slavery-591.html)
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    17 分
  • Lafe Pence’s crazy plan: Wash mountain into lake

    Lafe Pence’s crazy plan: Wash mountain into lake
    2025/11/10
    He might have accomplished it, too, but he lost friends when he tried to claim water rights to Bull Run, and when his primary investors went bankrupt in a bank panic, he was forced to give up the scheme and leave town. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1502d.lafe-pence-guild-lake-scheme.327.html)
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    10 分
  • Oregon's Modern Prometheus: The forced-sterilization advocate (Part 3 of a 3-part series on Bethenia Owens-Adair)

    Oregon's Modern Prometheus: The forced-sterilization advocate (Part 3 of a 3-part series on Bethenia Owens-Adair)
    2025/11/07
    THE YEARS JUST after the discovery of germ theory were a great time to be a mainstream physician. By understanding, for the first time, the true vectors of disease, doctors suddenly found they were able to make real and undeniable changes in patient outcomes. But understanding those vectors — microbes — did something else too.... (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1900s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2504b1008c.bethenia-owens-adair-oregons-prometheus-697.084.html)
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    9 分
  • Oregon's Modern Prometheus, Part 2 (of a 3-part series on Bethenia Owens-Adair)

    Oregon's Modern Prometheus, Part 2 (of a 3-part series on Bethenia Owens-Adair)
    2025/11/06
    It was a remarkable start to an even more remarkable career — the more so as Bethenia was over 30 years old when she launched it. It was also not a “second act” career, but a fourth — she’d been a wife, then a teacher, then a hat-shop entrepreneur, and now a physician. She had seen much of the world, and conquered more than most. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s, 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2504b1008c.bethenia-owens-adair-oregons-prometheus-697.084.html)
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    10 分
  • Pioneer ‘lady doctor’ was Oregon's 'Modern Prometheus': Part 1 of 3-part series on Bethenia Owens-Adair

    Pioneer ‘lady doctor’ was Oregon's 'Modern Prometheus': Part 1 of 3-part series on Bethenia Owens-Adair
    2025/11/05
    In Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Shelley tells the story of a brilliant and gifted scientist-physician who reaches too far in his quest for knowledge, and dares to lay his hands on the power that rightly belongs only to the gods: that of the creation of life. Oregon history has its own Modern Prometheus. She didn’t create and animate a monster out of corpse-parts, and the product of her overreach didn’t hunt her down with vengeance on its mind. But it has cast a terrible shadow over her legacy.... (Roseburg, Douglas County; 1870s, 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2504b1008c.bethenia-owens-adair-oregons-prometheus-697.084.html)
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    12 分
  • How the War of 1812 changed Oregon's fate (Part 2 of 2)

    How the War of 1812 changed Oregon's fate (Part 2 of 2)
    2025/11/04
    Yesterday, in Part One of this story, we had just gotten to the part where the Tonquin had been blown up, marooning the Astorians on the far side of the continent. But the damage done by the Tonquin and its captain, Jonathan Thorn, went far beyond the loss of the ship. Thorn’s bargaining style had not only cost the expedition its ship and stranded Fort Astoria in the wilderness, it had sent a really powerful message that the “Bostons” were dangerous and untrustworthy.... (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1810s, 1820s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2508a.1008b.astoria-party-saved-oregon-from-uk-704.083.html)
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    11 分