Pioneering Death

Pioneering Death
Author: Peter Boag
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2022-05-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295749997

On an autumn day in 1895, eighteen-year-old Loyd Montgomery shot his parents and a neighbor in a gruesome act that reverberated beyond the small confines of Montgomery's Oregon farming community. The dispassionate slaying and Montgomery's consequent hanging exposed the fault lines of a rapidly industrializing and urbanizing society and revealed the burdens of pioneer narratives boys of the time inherited. In Pioneering Death, Peter Boag examines the Brownsville parricide as an allegory for the destabilizing transitions within the rural United States at the end of the nineteenth century. While pioneer families celebrated and memorialized founders of western white settler society, their children faced a present and future in frightening decline. Connecting a fascinating true-crime story with the broader forces that produced the murders, Boag uncovers how Loyd's violent acts reflected the brutality of American colonizing efforts, the anxieties of global capitalism, and the buried traumas of childhood in the American West.

Oregon 1859

Oregon 1859
Author: Janice Marschner
Publisher: Timber Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2008-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0881928739

The essential Oregon guide for time travelers of all ages. Oregon became the 33rd state in the Union on February 14, 1859. Portland had wooden sidewalks and tamped dirt streets unlit by gaslight until a year later. To the south, gold glittered in streams; towns with names like Echo, Lookingglass, and Quartzville were springing up all over. It is a time to remember— and revisit—today, 150 years later, with this detailed and lively guide. Janice Marschner provides all you need to travel through each of Oregon's 19 original counties at the moment of statehood: a map showing each county's 1859 place names and current reference points; the history of native peoples and settlers; early roads and bridges; the first homes, schools, stores, hotels, and churches; biographical sketches of notable individuals throughout the state. Historical photographs show the determined faces of natives and settlers; their oxen and wagons on wide, rough roads; their rafts and ferries on the rivers; and their towns under development. An inspiring, close-up portrait at the moment of statehood, Oregon 1859 will light the way back for anyone who wants to see Oregon today as it was then.