Coming to Sherwood Oregon U.S.A.

From Interviews by Clyde List

JOSEPH HESS, Francis Hess family memoir of 1847: "There was a scarcity of game about or near the road. The hunters had to go some distance from the road in search of game. On one occasion one of our hunters Bennett O'Neal a tall thin raw boned individual got off his horse to shoot some game and his horse ran off and left him. He got lost and wandered round until he struck the road back of the train after being out eight days, overtook the wagons. During the time he was lost he subsisted on herbs, and roots such scraps as he could pick."

FRANK STAYERT arrived in America in 1907, a world traveler at age 22. His eyes were badly damaged in an industrial accident near Chicago. (He was dipping wire bundles in blue vitrol when a friend from the old country surprised him from behind and caused him to drop a bundle, causing acid to splash into his face.) A Belgian by birth, Frank came to Sherwood in search of the Walgraves, a Belgian family that he had heard about on the train. He caught the Red Electric to Sherwood, got off at the depot and decided to have a glass of beer. According to son Lawrence, "As soon as he touched the door knob on the saloon, kabingo, the lights went out. He said he ran down the sidewalk and stumbled on a broken board on the wooden walk. And then he looked around and here were two fellows out in the middle of the street having a row. And then the chairs come flying out. Afterwards he found out it was Dick Hess and the Williams boy."

MARGE (HOY) BLANKENSOP: "My father and mother came here in 1912. Mother and I came out to visit her parents, the Jansens, who lived at Six Corners. We were on a homestead in South Dakota. My dad was back there farming. When you went traveling in those days you stayed two or three months at a time, not just a few days. In the meantime, mom was writing to dad, and she wrote about no thunder and lightning storms like we have back there. And then one night in the worst electrical storm you can imagine... we were at the dinner table. My aunt went to answer the door and there stood my father! He had this little old black suitcase. He said, 'Here!' And in the suitcase was my favorite doll, Rita. That broke us all up. That's how we came to Oregon. He had all the household belongings-- a team of horses and the cow-- all together in a boxcar. And he had rode with them in the boxcar. I can still see momma sitting at the table, saying, 'James!'"

KEN BLANKENSOP, who arrived in Sherwood in the 1920s: "The first thing I saw in Sherwood... I went down the street to meet a fellow named Charlie Tooze. He'd had his first girl and was handing out cigars at the saloon. We got to the Cofelt Saloon [1st and Washington, today's "Clancy's Tavern"] down here and a fellow parted the doors with his head. He went right into the mud. He'd been kicked out of the saloon. He just stuck there. I thought the guy was going to drown so I helped him up and then I beat it. I didn't want anymore of that stuff! He didn't know what was going on. He might have drowned, he was so drunk." The town fathers tried to prevent the mud by paving the streets with brick, "..but they didn't last overnight."

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