The Scotts of Oregon

The story

David Scott and his wife Hannah Mcindoe Dick emigrated from Brechin in Scotland to Oregon in 1880 with their first five children:

As a younger son, David wouldn’t inherit anything from the family business, which would pass to his elder brother George.

David’s brother, William Kerr Scott, also emigrated to Oregon about the same time, though it isn’t recorded wither he was part of David and Hannah’s party. Eventually he moved on to settle in Minnesota.

When their ship arrived in New York, the family took the train to San Francisco. The story was that Sir Thomas Lipton was on the train and bought candy for the children, accounting for the family preference for Lipton’s tea. They stayed at the Palace Hotel before taking the boat to Portland.

David considered buying a farm in Portland, but instead bought a wagon in Forest Grove, loaded up the family (and a governess, as Hannah wasn’t well) and set off for the Santiam River. They bought a farm in Fox Valley, which he said reminded him of Scotland (to this day, it has lots of thistles!). David and Hannah had three more children, plus a girl who died at birth:

So where was their property? The first appearance of the Scotts in the Linn county archives was when they sold a small strip of land to the Willamette Valley and Coast railway in 1887. There is no record of their purchasing any land in Fox Valley until 1891, when they acquired the Abraham Osborn donation land claim from W.J. Burns, truetee. Part of this porperty is now the Fox Valley Ranch; it is plot 81 on map two in the Illustrated Historical Atlas of Marion and Linn Counties (IHA), shown as belonging to W.A. Potter; there is also a Susan Potter shown in a photograph of hop-pickers on Preston Berry’s farm in Fox Valley, along with David and Hannah.

But this accounts for only 320 acres, and we know that the Scott holdings eventually amounted to 640 acres, the equivalent of two donation land claims. It seems likely that their original purchase was the adjoining Abner Gardner donation land claim (plot 32 on IHA map two): it is also 320 acres, it abuts the railroad and the Preston Berry place where the “hop-pickers” photograph was taken, and is shown as the location of the Fox Valley post office. This ties in with the family tradition that David was the postmaster in Fox Valley.

An 1892 Albany directory lists David Scott as one of the largest taxpayers in the Fox Valley precinct ($2007 worth). Too large, perhaps. In 1894 the Scotts sold 520 acres to C.D. and J.A. Wilson (in 1997 the then owner of the Fox Valley Ranch said his house was built in 1895). The remaining 120 acres went in a sheriff’s sale in 1897, to V.H. Caldwell.

By this time, the Scotts were living in Salem, according to the 1895 Marion County census. David is listed as an engineer; it shows he was 6ft tall, weighing 220lb, with dark hair. Hannah was shorter, at 5ft 5in, weighing 150lb, and also had dark hair. By this time the older children, apart from David Junior, had left home. Though it is said that they lived in Albany for a time and some of the children attended Albany College, they appear to have had nothing further to do with Fox Valley. It seems most unlikely that any descendants still live in the area, or that any of the Scotts buried in the local cemeteries are related.

After giving up his dream of being a gentleman farmer, David lost a leg while working as a guard at the State Prison, and left because he didn’t like the idea of having to shoot an escaping prisoner. He also managed the water works in Salem and the fish ladder at Oregon City. Later the family lived in Vancouver, BC., and Portland.

David retained his thick Scottish accent throughout his life (as did the older children – the “Scottish Scotts”); he sported a luxuriant white beard, and his peg leg didn’t prevent him from wearing his kilt.

Hannah died in 1911, and after living for a while with Sandy and his family, David ended his days in a Masonic home in Portland, where he died in 1928. They are buried in Riverview Cemetery. Of their children:

David
moved to Canada, where he was a Mountie and later a British Columbia policeman.
Nancy
was a nurse and surrogate mother to the family. She died in 1937.
Sandy
was a grain buyer for Balfour Guthrie, a mostly Scottish firm, one of whose officers had been an office boy at Lamb & Scott in Brechin. He married Kathleen ROWE, and their children included Kathleen Jr. and Alexander Jr. He died in 1952.
Hugh Aird
was named after the family’s minister in Brechin. He ran away to sea; clapped in irons for mutiny, he jumped ship in South Africa and fought in the Boer War at the siege of Ladysmith. He later tended bar, but returned to Portland when his mother became ill. Thereafter he worked on the docks for his brother Sandy, but couldn’t stand the quiet life and died soon after.
Robert
was a mining engineer, oarsman and six-day bicycle racer. He seems to have moved around, having lived a while in Washington, spent time in Red Lodge, Montana, later moving to Roslyn, Washington. His wife, Milla, was Canadian, and their children included Marjorie, Robert, Logan Dick, and Patricia.
Mary
was the first of the Oregon Scotts. She married Ev Hallowell and worked in offices, including her brother William’s log-scaling business. She was the only one I actually met; I remember visiting her with my father in the early 1960s and her musing on the fact that her brothers were all big, healthy outdoors types who nonetheless mainly died in their sixties of heart attacks and the like. She died in 1970.
William (my grandfather)
finished grammar school and went into the lumber industry. He started out as an office boy in the Western Lumber Co. in Portland, where he made the front page of the Oregonian in 1900 by attempting to foil an armed robbery. In 1905 he bought the salvage rights to the logs left over from building the forestry pavilion at the Lewis & Clark Exposition, and made enough money to take a trip to Scotland on the proceeds. He married Inez “Glory” Evans, a society reporter for the Oregonian, in 1911. They had two children, William Jr. and Janet. He was a respected log-scaler until he died “on the river” in 1945 (around the time my father William Jr. met my mother Janice Jones).
Walter
the youngest, ran the Scott-Palitch Feed Mill in Portland. He was also an oarsman. His wife’s name was Mary, and they had a son, Walter Jr. Walter died in 1957.

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