Winter 2011

selected articles from Winter 2011 Newsletter

Miller Exhibit leads to major donations of artifacts

by Patrick Harris
As detailed in the last newsletter the Miller family, with their eleven siblings, played a major role in the Bethel and Aurora Colonies, a fact that, until this recent exhibit, had not been explored in detail.
Partly this was because so many of the Miller women had married very prominent men from other families, and their own stories had been overshadowed.
Miller family descendants seemed more often to identify with these other families.
Some of our best contacts with Miller descendants had been made over twenty years ago, and as is the way of the world, many of these folks had died.
In putting the stories together for the Miller family exhibit both Janus Childs and I commented how difficult it was to sort through the information. But as I have increasingly come to believe, the Millers who have passed took notice of our efforts and began to whisper to their relatives still living on the earth.
Gradually, we established contacts with people who had had little or no contact with our museum. And boy, were they eager to participate and to loan, and in some amazing cases, donate family artifacts to the exhibit.
To pick out one story seems almost unfair, but space permits just one and so . . .
In 1986 Roland Wurster visited with Patrick Harris at the museum. He left a letter that had been written by an ancestor of his named Elias Hewitt that described the sacrifices that his branch of the Miller clan went through by making such a strong commitment to Keil’s colony. When Patrick first considered this new exhibit he knew that he had to follow up on this story and locate members of Roland’s family to see if they had any artifacts to further illustrate this story. Through the use of modern search engines, we were able to locate Roland’s daughter Emily but despite our efforts we were unable to connect with her before the exhibit opened. However, soon after, Emily sent us a letter, thanking us for the contact, and saying that yes she had some artifacts and would like to bring them to the museum. In August, in conjunction with her daughter Amy, Emily donated five quilts, many other textiles including two wedding dresses, and some of the most important papers and photographs to come into our collection in recent years. So, you just never know!

Goodbye, Good Friends

by Patrick Harris
loss of two of our best supporters and friends with the deaths of Board Member Jim Kopp and descendant Eugene Snyder. While the loss of anyone loved is never easy to accept, it is doubly difficult in the cases of these good friends whose deaths could not have been anticipated at the beginning of 2010. And so, in separate tributes, we offer our farewells.
Rarely a week went by until last May that Eugene Snyder didn’t call the historical society. He was not one for idle chit-chat and while he didn’t mind exchanging brief updates with whomever answered the phone, Eugene quickly moved on to the reason for his call. “Do you know,” he would ask Patrick, “how the colonists made their way from Pennsylvania to Bethel? Were there canals? Can you think of someone who would know this?
Eugene hoped to finish this last work about the nature of travel during the early colony period but there were so many other projects he still had on the table. After all, he liked to say, “I’m not going to live forever. At least not here!” I could almost sense a hint of laughter on the other end of the line, but Eugene kept his cards pretty close to his vest when it came to such emotions, so how could one be certain?
He was ninety two when he died. During the last few years of his life he completed a novel titled “The Last Immortals” and a book “My Mountain Childhood” that celebrated the early life of his famous artist mother Amanda Tester Snyder.
Perhaps because of his family’s interest in utopia as seen from their participation in the Colony, Eugene wrote in “The Last Immortals” about the life of the Elysian’s who had formed a “New” Society. Taken from the “The Elysian Fields,” a place of eternal bliss appearing in Greek mythology, Eugene cautions us that “Our Elysians had made some big changes. You might not want to try what they tried!” With his characteristic tongue in cheek approach, Eugene described the book as follows: “Some would call it Science Fiction. The ‘Sci’ is a bit shaky, but no one would decline to give it the appellation ‘Fiction.’ If it must have a label, the author suggests ‘Tragi-Comedy.” Ah, Eugene!
Eugene lets his mother tell her own tale in “My Mountain Childhood.” The work is illustrated with Amanda’s own drawings and her charmingly simple text that brings the mountain world of Tennessee to life: “I was four years old and my brother was three.
We were blond and shy.”
Eugene is best known in Oregon for his works on early Portland history, and in Aurora for his “Aurora, Their Last Utopia: Oregon’s Christian Commune 1856-1883.” In the latter Eugene explored the intimate lives of his Snyder and Forstner ancestors with special attention to their motivations for joining a Christian communal venture. During the last few years of Eugene’s life we were both introduced to Dr. Victor Furnish, a cousin who Eugene engaged in the great task of locating the Snyder’s actual home village in Germany. This proved challenging, but Victor came up with information that convinced us and that almost convinced Eugene.
We were so busy last May and June and it took me a while to realize that we hadn’t heard from Eugene. And then, word from a relative that he had died. I felt that I had missed my chance to say goodbye, but then I remembered our many conversations over the past few years and I realized that Eugene wanted it this way. Not one for idle chatter, he had said goodbye.
And, as we soon learned, Eugene had planned for ACHS in his estate planning. By the next newsletter we should be able to share with you the amount of his extraordinary commitment to our mission.
The death of Jim Kopp tests a person’s faith to the very limits; 2009 had been such a triumphant year for him. Jim had published his book “Eden Within Eden: Oregon’s Utopian Heritage” and he was being invited to speak about it all over the Northwest.
He had successfully chaired our 2009 National Conference of the Communal Studies Association, and he was writing a fictional book about young Aurora Keil. All of this was happening at the same time that Jim served on our board of directors and also continued to work as the Head Librarian at Lewis and Clark College. One of Jim’s many extraordinary gifts was his ability to sit through meetings just packed with information and then to distill the mass into clear and concise sentences that perfectly described how all of this related to our mission.
But Jim had also survived some challenges in 2009. One of his sisters died and then all too quickly after that, he and his wife Sue had to put their dog to sleep. And Jim wasn’t feeling quite up to par and so went in for a physical that revealed that he needed to have some surgery. When this was completed in March, the prognosis was good, but Jim just didn’t get his energy back and week after week we became more and more alarmed as his condition deteriorated and no cause for it could really be pinpointed. Finally, an answer, not a very pleasant one, but one at least that seemed to offer hope that after some extensive treatment, our Jim would be well again. But, it was not to be.
It remains impossible to this day to think that big gentle Jim will not walk up the stairs again at the museum and enter a meeting again with “Sorry, I’m late, what have I missed?” The outpouring has been amazing. Several thousand dollars have so far been donated to ACHS in Jim’s name and in 2011 the Oregon State University Press will publish Jim’s little book on Aurora Keil. The only thing better would be if Jim were here to enjoy this with us, and those of us with faith, like to think that he is.

ACHS Staff Member, Pamela Weninger Retires

After six years of service at the Aurora
Colony Historical Society, Pamela decided to retire in August. During her years at ACHS, she spent many hours scheduling tours, answering
phones, and greeting visitors at the front desk. She was glad to see the gift shop take shape and the front desk moved. We will miss her smiling face and sense of humor. She plans to spend her new found free time enjoying her grand children and volunteering at ACHS.