I Finally Found Matilda Biddle Porter's Obituary!

A couple years ago I posted some plans to research my 3rd great grandmother Matilda Biddle's obituary.  Thankfully Newspapers.com beat me to the punch and I found two variations of her obituary last week.  I may eventually see if I can find Newport, Oregon newspapers mentioning her death, but for now at least I have something!

Unfortunately, most of the information given in the obituary is about her father and her ex-husband, not her.

Corvallis Gazette-Times (accessed from Newspaper.com)
(Corvallis, Oregon)
27 Aug 1927, Sat  • Page 6

Mrs. Porter Dead
Member of Pioneer Benton Family Dies at Home at Newport
Mrs. Matilda Biddle Porter, wife of Orville T. Porter, one of Benton county's early residents, died late yesterday afternoon at the family home at Newport.  The body was brought to Corvallis and prepared for burial and the funeral will be held Sunday afternoon at 2 o'clock at the grave in the I. O. O. F. cemetery.  Rev. E. J. Harper of the Madison street Methodist church will officiate. 

Mrs. Porter was born February 22, 1846, in Springfield, Ill., but apparently came west during her childhood.  She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin R. Biddle, pioneers of Benton county.  From meagre information that could be obtained, it is believed Mrs. Porter's father was Dr. R. B. Biddle, a prominent dentist in Corvallis in the early '70s, who after retiring to Pleasant Valley, 1 1/2 miles south of Philomath, established a short course in dentistry which was probably the first dental college in Oregon.  George Biddle, a brother, is said to have become a leading dentist in Eugene. 

Mrs. Porter was aged 81 years.  She is survived by a daughter who resides in Albany and a son in Seattle.  No definite information regarding the family could be obtained.

Corvallis Gazette-Times (accessed from Newspapers.com)
(Corvallis, Oregon)
30 Aug 1927, Tue  • Page 3

Was of Pioneer Family - The remains of the late Mrs. Matilda Biddle Porter, widow of Orville Porter, were interred Sunday in the I. O. O. F. cemeteryq [sic] where a brief service was conducted by Rev. E. J. Harper.  Mrs. Porter died Friday at the family home at Newport where she had resided in late years.  She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin R. Biddle who crossed the plains to Oregon in 1850, and rode in a wagon with W. B. Carter, and early editor of the Gazette, as driver.  The Porters lived in Corvallis a number of years and Mr. Porter was a teacher here.  He organized bands, was editor of a Republican paper in Albany for a time and later was a member of the Indian commission in Alaska.  He died 15 years ago.  Dr. Biddle, father of Mrs. Porter, was a prominent dentist of the 70's.  There is a brother, Dr. E. W. Biddle of Hillsborough, Cal. A daughter residing in Albany and a son in Seattle survive.

Related posts for Matilda:

Monday Is for Mothers: Matilda Biddle (1846 - 1927)
Hat Tip to Those Relatives Who Wrote Their Stories Down, Part 2
Monday Is for Mothers: Maria Evans (1814 - 1899) Part 1
Working on Wednesday: Orville Tracy Porter (1838 - 1916) North to Alaska
52 Ancestors in 54 Weeks: Week 5: Tracy Darrow Porter
Orville Tracy Porter: Divorce and Marriage
Monday Is for Mothers: Sarah Emma Biddle Spencer (1842 - 1868)

© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers: Rockhounding on the Oregon Coast

I'm guessing that this picture of Mother and me was taken at Merchant's Beach, Oregon, in about 1960.

[From my personal collection]

I wonder what the joke was.




© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers: Myrtle Ruby Worden (1882 - 1962)

Myrtle is one of my maternal first cousins, three times removed--her father Schuyler Colfax Worden was one of my great great grandfather Dick Worden's brothers.* She was born in Iowa, was taken to Nebraska as an infant by her parents and at the age of 21 married John Davison (1873-1949) there.

By 1919 the Davison family had relocated to Siskiyou County, California, but by the 1930 U.S. Census they had finally settled in Oregon.

This photo of Myrtle, her grandson Cecil Vernon Davison (1944-1992) and his mother Lorine Marjorie (Wells) Davison was probably taken in 1945/46.

[Originally shared by Ardis Patton to her Ancestry.com family tree]

Here's her obituary that Christine found in the Albany, Oregon, newspaper:

[Newspapers.com - Albany Democrat-Herald - 4 Dec 1962 - Page 2]

*Another child of Porter and Hannah (Leonard) Worden.



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

RePost from 2015: Tip: Don't Just Rely on the Search Function When Using Newspaper Databases

"Dehesa Doings," San Diego Union (San Diego, CA), p 5, col 4, 8 Aug 1892; digital image, GenealogyBank.com (http://www.genealogybank.com: accessed 17 Oct 2015).

The info above was found doing a "Hartley" search.  Since newspapers often had recurring columns I thought to search "Dehesa Doings" to possibly find other tidbits in other issues.  But instead I got this:

Oh, come on, I just found Dehesa Doings three minutes ago!

I am assuming the optical character recognition just doesn't read it as Dehesa Doings (and who knows what it thinks it says).  While it may not be an ongoing column like I thought, the term "Dehesa Doings" DOES appear at least once for sure!  So what should I do?

I went page by page through other issues close in time to this one.  This is a bit tedious, but not only can it help you catch information missed by OCR, it also gives you a feel for what the newspaper was like and what kind of information you can realistically expect to glean from it.

Unfortunately I haven't found a graceful way to search newspapers this way on GenealogyBank, as they don't provide an easy way to browse papers--you have to search through them, which is different.  So I narrowed down to the specific paper I wanted, and then typed in a date range (in this case San Diego Union and August 1892--alternately, you could just type in a specific day and year):

Then I ordered by Oldest (you an order by Oldest, Newest, and Best):

Note the varying quality of the scans, even in one issue (in this case, all the results in this screenshot are from the August 1, 1892 issue).

No wonder the OCR doesn't find every word from the scanned images--just look at what it has to contend with!

After looking at a number of issues I realized that "Dehesa Doings" was not a regular heading, but I could depend on page 5 in any given issue in that era for information on local people, with the leading title "Local Intelligence. In General.":

"Dehesa Doings" in the larger context.

Every newspaper database I've used has to deal with the same OCR problems.

Many states now have historic newspapers to browse through, like the Historic Oregon Newspapers.  I use this database to find my Oregon ancestors.  When a search for my 2nd great grandfather William Nosler's death notice or obituary came back with no results, I used his known death date (3 Dec 1914 in Coquille, Oregon) to narrow down and search page-by-page, issue-by-issue, to find his obituary:

No doubt the fuzzy print threw off the OCR.  This example also shows how discrepancies can occur in newspapers--the Oregon death index indicates he died on the 3rd, while this report indicates he died on the 5th.  Mrs. George Hartley is my great grandmother Minnie (Nosler) Hartley. "Dies in Coquille," The Coos Bay Times--Evening Edition (Marshfield, Oregon), 7 Dec 1914, p 1; digital image, Historic Oregon Newspapers (http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/ : accessed 17 Oct 2015).

Here is the obituary in the larger context:

These obituaries are often found later in the issue, but more well-known citizens' obituaries might be featured on the front page.

Oh, so maybe I should have searched for William H. Nosler, then?  Nope (and using capitals or not didn't matter, either):

But I just found his obituary in there!

While using Search is a great way to use newspaper databases like GenealogyBank or Historic Oregon Newspapers, it is really just the tip of the iceberg. You've got to really spend some time looking at newspapers, page by page, to know how to use them.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Whiskey Run, Oregon Coast - Summer, 1955

This sheltered campsite, far enough back from the beach to be comparatively warm, was one of our favorite places to stay. (And true my parents' frugal habits, it was free.)

In those days the road to Whiskey Run wasn't paved.

 And in one area there were several choices, so Dad always checked out the route on foot to see which one appeared to be the best. We never got stuck in the sand.

Here's a photo of me on my way down to the beach in search of agates and petrified wood which was the attraction this area had for us.

[All photos from my personal collection]

Whiskey Run's history dates back to the early 1850s when gold was discovered in its black sands.


TripAdvisor rates this beach at 4.5--you can see current photos of it here.



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Cape Perpetua, Oregon - 1954

Here we are, seven-year-old me standing next to the Forest Service sign, while Mother watched from the truck. Whenever our summer trips took us to Washington state, we always stopped at Cape Perpetua.*

[From my personal collection]

*You can find out more about Cape Perpetua in one of my previous posts.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Barbara Hoadley Porter (1916 - 1978) Historian

Barbara Porter and her twin sister Betty were born in Seattle, Washington, in 1916. Here are their senior pictures from Garfield High School, Class of 1934. (Barbara is on the left)

[Ancestry.com - U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-1990]

According to U.S. Census records Barbara was still living with her parents in 1940. By 1953 she was married to Ernest V. Elkins, which seems to have been a second marriage for both of them. 

Barbara is one of my paternal first cousins, twice removed; the ancestors we share are B.R. Biddle and his wife Maria Evans.

[Ancestry.com]

I just learned about Barbara from these index cards in the State of Oregon's Biographical and Other Index Card File. So far I haven't been able to find out much more about my cousin's life, but it's clear she was very proud of her descent from Oregon Pioneers. (Note that the reference to scrapbooks--I wonder what's in them?)

[Ancestry.com. Oregon, Biographical and Other Index Card File, 1700s-1900s [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors. Original data: Oregon, Biographical and Other Cards. Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon.]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Memento Mori: Oak Mound Cemetery - Healdsburg, California

Early Oregon pioneers Benjamin R. and Maria (Evans) Biddle, a pair of my paternal three-times great grandparents, are buried in this shaded plot. One of their sons (Edwin Webber Biddle 1849-1928), his wife Delora and their son Chester Edwin Biddle are also buried there.

[Courtesy of Nick Juran]

This photograph was taken by a friend who lives in Northern California and kindly volunteered to visit their graves and take some photos.

My direct ancestor, their daughter Matilda Biddle Porter (1846-1928) is buried in Corvallis, Oregon.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers: Sarah Emma Biddle Spencer (1842 - 1868)

Sarah Emma, one of my paternal third great aunts, was not quite ten years old when her father returned from the West and packed up his whole family and moved with them to the Oregon Territory.*

[From the Barton/Cardwell/Chalmers/Babler/Fortier Family Tree

of Delby46 on Ancestry.com]

At 17 she married William H. Spencer:

[Ancestry.com. Oregon, Biographical and Other Index Card File, 1700s-1900s [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA:

Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors.

Original data: Oregon, Biographical and Other Cards. Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon.]

Her only child was born two years later and died at 15 months:

[Ancestry.com. Oregon, Biographical and Other Index Card File, 1700s-1900s [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA:

Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors.

Original data: Oregon, Biographical and Other Cards. Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon.]

Today I found Sarah Emma's 1868 obituary at Newspapers.com:

[30 May 1868, Page 3 - Corvallis Gazette-Times at Newspapers.com]

She's buried next to her son in the IOOF Cemetery in Corvallis, Oregon.


*She was just over three years older than her sister Matilda "Puggie" (my great great grandmother).

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Tharold Conner (1903 - 1970)

I've noticed some interest in one of my earlier posts that included members of the Conner family so here's a page from Dad's photo album with pictures he took before his family left Oregon a year or two before 1920.

[From my personal collection]

Here's the Conner family in the 1920 U.S. Census, residents of the house located on Kentuck Slough across the bay from Marshfield (now Coos Bay). It appears that Tharold was a year or two younger than Dad.

[Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. ]

[Detail of Plate CXXVII. Coos Bay Quadrangle, Oregon, Land Classification and Density of Standing Timber. Twenty-first Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior. 1899-1900. Government Printing Office.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

I don't think I ever met Tharold who was living in Fresno, California, by 1930 but we visited the Conner family every year so the house was familiar to me. They still had dairy cows--I helped make butter in their kitchen one year.

[Curreys' truck and trailer in front of the Conner's house - 1948]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: New Year's Eve and Harold D. Currey's Birthday!

Born on December 31, 1902, Dad always claimed he just barely missed being a New Year's baby. This portrait of him and his mother Ethel Plank Currey was obviously taken in 1903 somewhere in Oregon.

Looking at all these pictures of Dad as he grew up in Marshfield (now Coos Bay), Oregon, I'm struck by how he's always recognizable.

[All photos from my personal collection]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Tugboat at Bonneville Dam Locks - 1948

Bonneville Dam was formally opened on July 9, 1938 so the complex was ten years old when Dad took this photo.*

[From my personal collection]

Here's a general overview of the layout of the dam and locks.

[Bonneville Power Admin. pamphlet "Columbia River Power and the Northwest," p. 6, 1940. Source: The Oregon Encyclopedia]

And here's what the locks look like today, after extensive changes were made in 1993.

[The Locks at Bonneville Dam, 2008. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication]

*As far as I know, the people in the photo weren't known to the Curreys.



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Log Trucks near Eugene, Oregon - 1948

Dad loved watching big, powerful machines in action as is evidenced by this sequence of photos taken in the late 1940s in Oregon. I'm guessing it was taken near Springfield, Oregon, because that's the name on the side of the red truck visible behind the log truck in the second picture.

[The yellow signs reads: Watch Out for Log Trucks]

[Log Truck - Springfield, Oregon]

[Dumping the logs]

[Holding dam for logs]

[Logs in river]

At first I thought that the color of the water was due to the old slides having faded but on further inspection I believe that the river looks brown because of the mud stirred up by the logs falling into the water.



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Near Silverton, Oregon - 1948

This 1948 photo of me peeking out of the Currey's trailer gives us an opportunity to get a glimpse of its interior. I just wish we could see more of that trailer in the background.

[From my personal collection]

Silverton is in Marion County and I'm not sure what we were doing there. (Naturally since I was about 16 months old I have no recollection of this.)




© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Rogue River Bridge - 1948

According to the Oregon Encyclopedia this bridge, named for Oregon governor Isaac Lee Patterson, was opened in 1932* so it was about 16 years old at the time Dad took this photo of it from the ocean side of the structure.

[From my personal collection]

From the same source we learn:

In 1982, the American Society of Civil Engineers designated the Rogue River Bridge a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark because of McCullough’s use of Freyssinet’s pre-stressing technique. In 2005, the bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

*Apparently the bridge also boasts Art Deco touches, including Palladian and Egyptian elements.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Seal Rock, Oregon - 1948/9

The only reason we know where this picture was taken is because Dad (Currey) wrote "Redinger's house at Seal Rock" on the slide holder.

[From my personal collection]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: More Middletons - Oregon, 1950

No motor vehicles this time (or cows either)...

[From my personal collection]

Three horses, three humans and a big red barn. Roger Middleton is half-visible on the left and his sister Joelita is holding the horse that I'm perched on.




© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Family Friday: The Conners, the Marks (and Some Curreys) - 1948

Dad Currey had a hard time fitting all the names of the people in this color slide from July, 1948, taken at the Marks residence in Reedsport, Oregon. Actually he only noted their first names but fortunately that was enough for me to be able to supply their surname from my childhood memories.

Left to right we have (in back) Eben Conner, his wife Ada (Couzens), his sister Gwen Marks,* son Monte,** (un-named boy - probably Gwen's son Darrell, and (in front) Mother***and me, Eben's daughter Cecelia and Gwen's daughter LeVonne Marks.

[From my personal collection]

*I wrote about her husband George in this post from last year.
**Full name Eben LaMonte Conner, Jr.
***Though of course Dad calls her "Min"



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Truck, Trailer & Cow - Oregon, 1950

If not for the caption on this slide we would never understand why our truck was hitched to a trailer carrying a dairy cow. Fortunately Dad wrote "Roger - Lloyd Middleton Auction near Portland" and this slide is one of several obviously taken during the same visit in 1950.*

[From my personal collection]

Who were the Middletons and why were we visiting them?

Here's the family's listing in the 1940 U.S. Census where their place of residence was given as Eastwood in Multnomah County, Oregon, and Lloyd was a truck driver.

[Year: 1940; Census Place: Eastwood, Multnomah, Oregon; Roll: T627_3376; Page: 13A; Enumeration District: 26-23. Ancestry.com. Original data: Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940.]

Dad's note on another slide suggests that by 1950 the Middleton's were living in Estacada and daughter Joleta's obituary states she was raised in Boring.

I have only the vaguest memories of how Dad Currey** was connected to them but they may have fallen into the category of what he called "shirt tail relatives."

As for the cow, I don't know if she was coming or going.


*Stay tuned, I'll be posting at least one more from this series in the future.
**I believe they would have been Currey rather than Grenfell connections because of their location in Oregon.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.