And more from Benton County

[Dave Robertson]

Mrs. Jasper HAMAR (Leona PARKER)

     My mother was Elizabeth KEYS.  She crossed the plains with her parents in 1864 when there was but one log cabin where Portland now is, and settled in Salem.  There Grandfather KEYS ran a hotel for years.

     Father was born in Washougal, Washington, in the 'forties.  His parents, David and Anna PARKER, were Scotch.  Grandfather had a donation land claim of 640 acres at a place that came to be called Parker's Landing.  It was on the Columbia River twenty-five miles above Vancouver.  Grandfather was the first settler there.  The next man to come, HOWE, was a squaw man.  Father had no playmates except the half-breed and Indians, and he gained a much more thorough knowledge of the Indian language than was common among the whites.  At one time he was employed as an interpreter at Vancouver.  Means of transport were lacking and as father grew older he often carried a sack of flour from Vancouver to Parker's Landing.

     When the railroad was being built south from Portland through Salem, father was boss of a gang of men.  He boarded at Grandfather KEYS hotel in Salem and became acquainted with my mother. Mother was only sixteen but her parents thought she was old enough to get married.  She was not entirely pleased with the idea at the time.  After the railroad was finished my parents moved back to Parker's Landing.  Their children, beside myself, were Hattie, Ella, Maud, and George.  When I was four years old my father died and mother took her children back to Oregon and got a job in the BROWNsville Woolen Mills. Here she lived until her family were grown.  I went to school at BROWNsville, but I cannot recall the names of my teachers.  Then I went four years to the Sisters' at Albany.  After that I worked in different places at
house work.  There was nothing else for a girl to do.  In 1907 I married Jasper HAMAR.




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