Victoria Chapman

CHAPMAN, MICKELSON, SMEED, WALKER, GRIFFITHS

Posted By: Paul French (email)
Date: 11/16/2003 at 22:32:26

The Lockley Files Conversations with Pioneer Women, Fred Lockley
1981, Rainy Day Press, pages 15-24 (interview published in the Oregon Journal, 1924)
page 15

Vittwia St. Clair Chapman Mickleson

"No, indeed I haven't forgotten how to dance. I danced on my 83rd birthday, to celebrate the occasion.

"A good many of the young women of today are a pampered self-indulgent lot. For the past eleven years I have lived all alone. I do my own housework, cook, bake, clean house, do my own washing, and work in the garden, so I have no time to sit around and feel sorry for myself and indulge in nerves or tantrums.

"I was never a nagger, a calamity howler, or a complainer. I have always been too grateful for health and the possession of all my faculties to moan over my sad lot. In fact, sunshine has always appealed to e more than gray clouds or weeping skies. I not only work with my flowers, but my garden comes pretty near to supporting me. I sell eggs and chickens and with the money I buy the few things that go on my table that I do not raise.

"Tell you about myself? If you listened and wrote up all the things I could tell you, you would have a book instead of a newspaper article, so I will just give you a few highlights for my life.

"My father, Samuel Chapman was born in England, as was my mother, Sarah Smeed Chapman. I was born August 2, 1841, in Kentucky, and I was christened Vittwia St. Clair Chapman.

"My father's people were wealthy, so he spent his boyhood in travel. My father and mother spent their honeymoon in travel in Europe. They liked it so well that they put in the first year or so of their married life in seeing the sights of Paris and other European capitals and world ports. Their first baby, a little girl, died at the age of three weeks.

"From Paris my parents went to Scotland. They lived for the next eight years at Inverness or Aberdeen. Of their 13 children, 12 lived to maturity, but I am the only one now living. Two of my brothers and three sister were born in Scotland, my next brother in England, the next brother in New York City, the next four children, including myself in Kentucky, and the last child at Burlington, Iowa.

"My father studied art in Europe and planned to make painting his life work, but with a family of 13 children it was necessary to turn his hand to other things to bring in money to support his family. Do you remember Captain Barckley, the pedestrian, who made a tour of the world afoot---or at least that part of the world that was dry land? He was a good walker, but poor at writing, so he sent his travel notes to Father, who prepared them for the press. These articles were published in many of the larger papers in Great Britain and Europe and brought in considerable money, so that as long as the captain kept walking my father could keep writing and the money flowed in.

"After coming to America, Father met the governor of Kentucky, who employed him to go back to England and select a herd of Durham and Devon cattle for his estate in Kentucky. Father executed this commission so well that the governor employed him as his private secretary. We lived for some time at Frankfort and later at Lexington Kentucky.

"When I was four years old we moved to Burlington, Iowa. That was in 1845. I saw there, for the first time, some Indians. I was so frightened that I ran away and hid in some standing grain and lay as still as a quail or little rabbit. I remember a few years later seeing lots of prairie schooners going westward with mottoes like these on the canvas tops: 'California or Bust', and 'For Oregon'. That was in 1849, when I was eight years old. We moved back to Kentucky in the early '50's, but just before the Civil War we moved back to Iowa.

"I volunteered for service as a nurse. What I saw as a nurse is as vivid today as if it had happened last week, in place of 60 years of more ago. I was 20 years old when Fort Sumter was fired on, and, like most young women, I was anxious to do all I could for the young men who were fighting for their convictions.

"Scores and hundreds of young medical students, as well as more experienced doctors became army surgeons, or 'contract doctors'. This last was a great mistake. In the hospitals where I served as nurse I have seen scores of times a contract doctor amputate a young man's leg or arm that could have been saved just as well as not. Frequently they would cut off a young lad's leg when all he had was a flesh wound. I would assist in the operation ad of course I knew how needless the amputation was, but I could only obey orders. The contract doctors at that time received $50 for every amputation and, of course, much less for merely bandaging a wound, so they usually decided on amputation, frequently explaining to me as a justification, that gangrene might set in, so they would play safe and take off the wounded arm or leg. The soldiers called those contract doctors the 'Iowa butchers'.

"For a while I nursed where wounded Confederate prisoners were treated, and many a young chap who had been marked to have his leg or arm amputated was spirited away through my help.

"While I was nursing at Keokuk, Iowa, a Mrs. Astone an Englishwoman, whose husband was in the Confederate Army, appealed to me to help her join her husband. She had two small children. I secured a skiff, and, waiting for a moonless night, we launched the skiff and started down the river for St.Louis. She cared for her two babies while I rowed the skiff. We hid during the daytime and traveled at night. She found friends at St.Louis who assisted her in rejoining her husband. I made my way back up the river to Navoo, and from there I made my way home, but my career as an army nurse was over, for I couldn't explain my apparent desertion from duty.

"My brother Henry Chapman, was eight years older than I. He was born in 1833.He was a frail and sickly child, and he was never strong. I was a light sleeper, so from the time I was a little tot, I slept on a pallet beside his bed so as to cover his feet at night or give him his medicine. The doctor said a complete change of climate might be beneficial to him, so, in 1853, when I was 12 years old, he and my brother Daniel started across the plains for Oregon. Daniel got a job driving a prairie schooner for Enock Walker, while Henry who was 20, drove a wagon for Enoch's brother, Fruit Walker. I cried because I could not go to Oregon with my brother Henry. I remember they laughed at me when I cried and said, 'Poor Henry! Who will cover his feet and give him his medicine if I do not go along?'

"On the way across the plains, one of Fruit Walkers' drivers, a man named Griffiths, quarreled with another teamster and, picking up an ox yoke, tried to brain him. Fruit Walker grabbed the yoke in time to save the man from being killed. That made Griffiths crazy with anger, so, pulling an Allen pepperbox revolver from his pocket, he shot Fruit Walker through the groin, killing him. Fruit Walker's young widow had two small children and was expecting another shortly. My brother Henry took charge for her and brought her safe through to Oregon. Shortly after she reached the Willamette Valley she gave birth to a son who, of course, never saw his father and knew of him only by hearsay. Not long after arriving in Oregon she married Fruit Walker's brother John.

"My brother Daniel Chapman settled near Ashland. Some of his children and grandchildren still reside in Jackson County. My brother Henry went to Yreka, California, to work in the mines, but his health was so impaired that he could not do hard work, so he came back to Southern Oregon, and took up a donation land claim on Emigrant Creek, seven miles from Ashland.

"During the second Rogue River War, in 1855-56 Henry, with two neighbors, was out in the hills looking for hostile Indians. He saw several grizzly bears on the hillside eating service berries. Henry was a good shot. He had a hard-shooting muzzle-loading gun. He took careful aim and shot at one of the largest of the bears. It fell in its tracks. He loaded his gun and shot another bear, which made off in the direction taken by the other bears.

"Henry carelessly, did not reload his gun, but went up to examine the dead bear, which was a huge one. Just as he got to it the bear came to and made for Henry. Henry started to run. The bear struck at him, tearing Henry's coat nearly off. Henry ran for a tree, which proved too large for him to climb. He ran toward a smaller tree, but the bear overtook him and with one blow knocked him down and tore his shoulder blade loose. The bear with one or two strokes of his claws tore Henry's clothes off.

"Henry had heard an Indian say that if a grizzly attacked you if you "memaloosed" the bear would leave you alone, so Henry played dead. The bear had never heard that you do not molest dead men, for he bit my brother in the loins and back so that Henry screamed from the pain. Then the bear clawed his head and turned him over to bite his neck. My brother rammed his fist into the bear's mouth. The bear crushed the bones in his hand and wrist. Then the bear bit him through the shoulder and stripped the flesh from one leg from the thigh to the knee.

"The two young men with my brother heard him scream when the bear bit him in the loins, and hurried back. They shot and killed the grizzly.

"My brother was still conscious, and as they rolled the bear off him he said, 'I'll never see Mother or Father or old Kentucky again.' The he fainted. They thought he was dead, so they tied him across his horse to bring him in for Christian burial. The motion of the horse brought him to.

"They took him to the home of "Daddy" Wells, a nearby settler. There was no doctor nearer than Jacksonville. So one of the boys rode at full speed to get the doctor, while Daddy Wells washed my brother's wounds and with a sack needle and twine sewed the flesh that was hanging loose back into place. When the doctor came he had to rip out all the stitches so as to wash the torn flesh better.

"Henry's neck was terribly lacerated. They thought he could not live, but he kept alive day after day and at last they decided to send him to San Francisco to secure the services of a surgeon to fix his shoulder, which was so badly shattered when the bear crunched it that the local doctor could not fix it. Even the San Francisco surgeon could not restore its strength and usefulness.

"My brother proved up on his donation claim, and in 1862 went back home by way of the Isthmus. They still call the mountain where the bear and my brother had their fight Grizzly Butte. Come on out here on the porch and I will point out Grizzly Butte to you.

"In 1862, because I have always had a knack for nursing and because I loved my brother dearly and was sorry for him, I took him under my wing and did for him, earning money at whatever I could find to do to support both of us.

"Henry was restless and wanted to travel, so I bought a team and a light rig and we traveled all over the middle west. I acted as travelling correspondent and field editor of one of the St.Louis papers. Later I added several other papers to my list, and made good money. Henry could do light work, so he took subscriptions for the papers on a commission basis, which brought us several extra dollars daily and helped pay our expenses.

"In our travels we visited Colorado. Henry thought the climate there would help him, so I landed a position as cashier at the Southern Hotel at Trinidad. Times were flush in the early '70's in Colorado. They paid me $225 a month and board. I was young, good-looking, and vivacious. Scores of wealthy cattlemen or miners who had struck it rich would put up at the Southern. The rates were $10 a day and up. When they paid their bills they would toss back a $5 gold piece and say, 'Keep that you yourself, Bright Eyes.' Or 'Here sunshine, is a gold piece to remember me by.' I took in as much from tips as I received in salary or more. Quite a few of these miners and cattlemen tried their best to persuade me to quit the state of single blessedness, but I felt that my first duty was to my sick brother. I knew he would feel, in a way, as though he were playing second fiddle if I devoted my attention to any other man, either a sweetheart or a husband, so I promised to be a sister to my various ardent suitors.

"Presently Henry became restless to be on the go, so we started by team again. Henry believed we could make big money by buying a bunch of blooded cattle. Henry got in touch with a stock man who was willing to put up most of the money, so we gathered up a bunch of cattle consisting of about 200 head and started for southern Oregon. Near the base of the Spanish peaks in Colorado we ran into a lot of grief. The Utes left the reservation and began killing emigrants and settlers and burning ranch houses. A runner came and warned us. We hurried our stock into the mountains Henry and his partner left me in charge of the stock while they went to secure help.

"I shall never forget the lonesome night I spent. The cougars and wolves were bad there, so with a six-shooter hanging in the holster from my belt and with a Winchester on my shoulder, I kept guard over the cattle all night. We decided that it would be too dangerous to try to drove the stock through the hostile country, so we drove them down into New Mexico and sold the heard at $100 a head straight through.

"The Ute outbreak enabled me to drop back into my old job as correspondent, so I sent accounts of the Indian troubles and also travel letters to the Eastern papers.

"In work of that kind one meets many charming people. I believe two of the most delightful persons I ever met were General George A. Custer and Elizabeth Custer, his wife. They were simple, unaffected, friendly and most charming, Mrs. Custer always called me Pussy.

"I saw some rough times in the late '70's at Trinidad, Pueblo and Colorado Springs. The towns were wide open and a 'man for breakfast' was a common occurrence.
In September 1880, 44 years ago, Henry and I came to Southern Oregon. We went out to Henry's place in the foothills-the claim he had taken up near Ashland in 1855-and I divided my attention between caring for Henry and raising Percheron horses. Henry died 19 years ago at the age of 72.

"In 1890, when I was 49 years old, I married Michael Mickleson. I would not have married him, but he was sick and needed careful nursing, and I could care for him better as his wife than in any other way. Ever since I served as nurse during the Civil War people who are helpless or dependent or who need nursing have made a strong appeal to me. I guess it is the maternal instinct in me.

"Mr. Mickleson was in old-time Nevada miner. He was a silversmith and also a blacksmith. On the early days in the mines he used to get as high as $10 for shoeing a saddle horse. I married Mr. Mickleson on October 14 1890. I traveled all over California with him for his health, but he died on October 5 1894.

"After my husband's death I ran my brother's ranch and also my husband's. They were nine miles apart and I rode from one to the other on horseback through the mountains every day to superintend the work. I bought this place and built my home in Ashland 21 years ago. Some years ago I sold both of the ranches, as I found it hard to get reliable help to run them.

"I am 83 years-I will not say old, except in experience-and as I sit here alone of an evening, I find I have plenty to think of, though of course, I would like to have young folks of my own flesh and blood about me."

-Oregon Journal
September 1-3, 1924