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House of History |
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HOUSE OF HISTORY
Inside the Milwaukie Museum
Sitting atop a small, sloping hill is a house
with a covered porch and a pointed roof, home now only to relics hinting about
an almost forgotten past.
Stepping through the front door, this reporter was led
back a century in time to a place newly established as a city, a word fresh on
the tongues of local Oregonians - Milwaukie. This is Milwaukie Museum, and its
curator, Madalaine Bohl, knows the stories behind the antiques, bringing
Milwaukie history to life and visitors into a fascinating, reawakened
past.
"We have some things that belonged to some of the original settlers," said Bohl. "We've got a table in the kitchen and a little tea cart in the middle room, and all the chairs that are in the kitchen, belonged to Seth Lewelling."
Other museum relics include a sink from 1880, a missionary organ, a large and impressive 1890's Lyon and Healy pump reed organ, and photos of famed locals such as Philip Streib, founder of First State Bank in 1909, and Lot Whitcomb whose first church bell still rings in Milwaukie at St. John's Episcopal Church. There is a collection of homemade dolls made by Mrs. Paul Bourbeau, labeled "Avacado Seed Dolls" with creatively detailed faces carved from avocado pits, each doll unique in features and expression, and each with tiny home-sewn clothes.
Bohl discussed these items, and pointed to a photo of a
solitary building. "The Big Friar's Club that was on Elk Rock Island that
was very notorious because it was selling liquor when it wasn't supposed to, and
gambling, and they were always being arrested. But nobody in Milwaukie would be
caught dead going to the 
club. Everybody from Portland came down and went to the
club, because it was on the streetcar line, and they'd just ferry them across
the river.
"Upstairs are children's toys from the 1920's and a
rope bed that was brought across the Oregon Trail around 1830. A spinning wheel
stands next to an antique vacuum cleaner. A glass case holds Seth Lewelling's
hat, and an interesting machine stands against one wall. "This was a really
fancy Dictaphone," said Bohl. "You'd take these records and put them
in, and then you'd speak into it and it would cut 
the grooves, and then you'd
mail the record to a person and then they would play it back. It's sort of fun -
it was really modern at the time."
The museum building is an antique as well, built in 1865, the former home of the George Wise family. The building was donated to the Milwaukie Historical Society by United Grocers, Inc., and was moved to its current location in 1975. Outside the museum is an 1875 horse-drawn streetcar, the "sole survivor of the area's earliest street cars."
- Rachel Simon
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