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About Vernonia's voice. (Vernonia, OR) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 2017)
in other words september21 2017 7 The Good Ol ’ Days By Tobie Finzel The Keaseys of Vernonia The Vernonia Pioneer Museum Board mourns the passing of Ralph Keasey, a long time board member and museum docent. Since his departure last year due to health problems, we’ve missed his steady guidance and deep interest in the history of the Upper Nehalem Valley. With his family’s permission, we offer this brief account of the family’s generations here. Our sources include the article the late Jenelle Wiggins wrote about him in 1979 for the Vernonia Freedom series “Nehalem Valley People,” the January 2011 Voice article on the Keasey Farm, family memoirs, and Ralph’s own stories. Ralph’s great-grandparents, Eden and Nella “Ellen” Keasey, moved to Fort Worth, Texas, from Fayette, Iowa, in 1884. Eden’s asthma was so bad, the doctor told him to get out of Texas. He came to Oregon in the fall of 1888 and stayed for the winter. Ac- cording to Eden’s granddaughter, Abbie, “That year the roses bloomed all winter, and he thought he had come to paradise.” Calling it “Garden of Eden,” he applied for a homestead of 160 acres on Rock Creek and brought his family out in 1889. The winter was so bad with deep snows that the split fir and cedar-sided two room cabin he started wasn’t usable until April. The family stayed instead in a house halfway between Vernonia and the homestead. In the mid-1890s with the origi- nal cabin as its core and fifteen hundred feet of lumber from Isaiah Detrick’s Pittsburg Mill, Eden and his son, Carroll, added the two story home that is desig- nated a Century Farm. The Detricks and Keaseys thus became acquainted, and Lloyd’s daughter, Bertha, went for a time with each of the Keasey boys, Dow, Dorr and Carroll (known to all as “Cad”). Cad and Bertha were married in 1898 in St. Louis, Missouri, where Cad worked for a time as a railroad lineman. Their first child, Theodore (known as “Ted”), was born in 1900; when he was two, the family moved back to Pittsburg where they lived in a log cabin. Abbie Keasey was born there in 1903. In 1902, Cad and his brother, Dow, built the first telephone line, a ground circuit system, from St. Helens to Pittsburg and Verno- nia. In 1904, Cad and Ber- tha and their children moved out to the Eden Keasey home- stead because the elder Keas- eys moved to Portland, a year before Eden’s death. They stayed there until 1909 when Cad bought his brother Dow’s general merchandise store in Vernonia. Before the deal went through, the store burned to the ground, so they bought Tom Throop’s store and lived there for about three years. They purchased merchandise for the store in Portland and had it shipped to Clatskanie. From there, Cad had to drive a team of horses and a wagon on a puncheon road to bring the goods to his store. The family moved to the Willa- mette Valley in 1912 so that the children could get a high school education. They returned in 1918 having rented the farm during their absence to other people. Ted Keasey married Hilda Tuck- er in 1923. The Tucker homestead was located on Rock Creek, some of which is now Cedar Ridge Sports Camp and Re- treat Center. They moved to the Keasey homestead after Cad and Bertha moved to Corvallis in 1924. Ted, originally a logger of old growth fir, became a saw filer. Filing crosscut saws was a highly skilled occupation, and Ted was widely respected as an expert. He worked in several logging camps in the vicinity for nine years only coming home on week- ends. They had seven children; Ralph was the middle child. It was a hardship for his mother to maintain the farm and raise seven children without Ted’s help during the week. She sold cream, apples and sheep’s wool from the farm to aug- ment Ted’s earnings, and each of the children had chores In his interview for the 1979 Freedom article, Ralph recalled that “the railroad grade ran right through our backyard, and whenever we kids heard the (daily) train coming we would all run out to the fence and wave to the conduc- tor. Every day for years and years we watched that train load of logs as well as the passenger trains go by. The Ke- asey place was a hailing station on the rail line and went by the name of Home- wood.” His grandmother, Bertha, had chosen that name. Ralph and his sib- lings started school in the one-room TOO BUSY? Call your LOCAL bookkeeper R Y OLL A P PLUS LLC Edi Sheldon 503-429-1819 edisheldon@gmail.com Licensed tax consultant • Full service payroll Personal & small business bookkeeping • QuickBooks assistance CORPS, S-CORPS, LLC, Partnerships • Personal one-on-one service LTC #29629 - Oregon licensed tax consultant RTRP #P00448199 - designated as a registered tax return preparer by the Internal Revenue Service The IRS does not endorse any particular individual tax return preparer. For more information on tax return preparers, go to www.IRS.gov. A young Ralph Keasey; Ralph on the Keasey tree farm in more recent years. Rock Creek School near Homewood until the district was consolidated in the late 1930s. A two year letterman in foot- ball and track, he graduated from Verno- nia High School in 1946 and served as Student Body President his senior year. When the crosscut saw was replaced with the chainsaw in the late 1940s, Ted returned home and started a chainsaw business. Ten years later, af- ter Ralph had earned degrees in geology and agriculture and had served in the Korean War, he went into partnership with his father and later became the sole proprietor. Ralph’s specialty was small engine repair, but he always regretted that he didn’t learn the art of filing cross- cut saws. He sold the business to Bill Hawkins in 1975 and taught Forestry and Small Engine classes at Vernonia High School for a few years before be- coming a paid employee of the Keasey Family Corporation, established by his father, Ted, in 1971. By this time, the original 160 acres had grown to several hundred through purchases of adjoining property. Ralph loved his work in the woods and remained active in nurturing the timber until near the end of his life. Back in his great-grandfather’s and grandfather’s time, there was no ru- ral mail delivery. Certain homes were designated as post officers where mail could be dropped off and picked up. Eden Keasey was the first postmaster in 1890 and was succeeded by his son, Cad. In 1924 the post office was relo- cated to the Sitz homestead, five miles further down what was then known as Rock Creek Road, to better serve the logging camps. It retained the original name and thus the railroad switch and logging camp became known as Keasey. When the Post Office was re- naming roads in the area, the Postmas- ter asked Ralph what he thought about petitioning to rename Rock Creek Road to Keasey Road and then asked him to circulate the petition to the people who lived along it. Ralph said he was em- barrassed to do it, but he did indeed go house to house to obtain the needed sig- natures. There is so much more that could be written about the many genera- tions of Keaseys who have lived in this area, but with Ralph’s passing, some of those stories are lost to us now. We trea- sure the many anecdotes he shared with us at the museum and, as with most of us who have lost older family members, wish we had asked even more about life in those early years. The Vernonia Pioneer Museum is located at 511 E. Bridge Street and is open from 1 to 4 pm on Saturdays and Sundays (ex- cluding holidays) all year. From June through mid-September, the museum is also open on Fridays from 1 - 4 pm. There is no charge for admission but do- nations are always welcome. Become a member of the museum for an annual $5 fee to receive the periodic newsletter. We now have a page on the Vernonia Hands on Art website, www.vernonia- handsonart.org If you are a Facebook user, check out the Vernonia Pioneer Museum page. The museum volunteers are always pleased to enlist additional volunteers to help hold the museum open and assist in other ways. Please stop by and let one of the volunteers know of your interest in helping out.
