4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL MARCH 14, 2018
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: Albany man's determination
On
Novem-
ber 4, 1885, a
27-year-old man
was
strolling
down an Albany street with a pretty 20-year-old
brunette woman. He was wearing a disguise —
fake mustache and sideburns, a heavy overcoat.
He had introduced himself to the woman as “J.
Blankhead.” And somehow, he expected her to be
fooled by all this.
She was not. She’d recognized him immediate-
ly as her ex-fi ancé, Charles Campbell. And she’d
made arrangements for him to get a lively recep-
tion after walking her home.
The reception he got, however, was quite a bit
livelier than either one of them had expected it
to be. When they reached the front steps of her
home, out of the shadows stepped her brother-
in-law-to-be, a dark, sinister-looking war veteran
named Capt. W. Wirt Saunders. Saunders had a
Colt .45 revolver in his hand.
Whether Saunders and Campbell spoke or not
is in dispute; the accounts differ. What is not in
dispute is that the gun spoke — twice.
Mattie ran to fi nd a doctor and soon found Dr.
G.W. Maston.
“For God’s sake hurry up,” she sobbed. “I nev-
er thought it would come to this.”
Maston quickly recognized the case as hope-
less. He made the wounded man as comfortable as
possible and asked him what had happened.
“Mattie and I were coming up the street and
Mattie was talking pretty loud,” he said. “Just
then someone came up and shot me down like a
dog without saying a word.”
He turned to Mattie. “For God’s sake,” he
begged her, “forgive me before I die.”
“I don’t know,” she told him, “whether I can
or not.”
The killing galvanized the town of Albany. It
didn’t help that the town had a new startup news-
paper, the Albany Bulletin, whose editor hap-
pened to be looking for a good hobby-horse. The
other papers, the Albany State Rights Democrat
and the Albany Herald Disseminator, covered the
story fairly evenhandedly, at least at fi rst; but the
By FinnJD John
For The Sentinel
Bulletin went straight to the mattresses.
“A cold-blooded murder was perpetrated in
this city a few months ago,” the editor wrote in
March. “A young man was shot down without any
warning, and leaning on his arm at the time was
a woman named Mattie Allison. She put up the
whole job, arranged the meeting, and after Char-
ley was shot told people she was sorry she did not
do it herself.”
District Attorney (and future Oregon gover-
nor) George Chamberlain drew up an indictment
against both Allison and Saunders. Saunders, who
didn’t deny the shooting, was promptly indicted
on a charge of fi rst-degree murder. But against
Mattie Allison, the grand jury did not fi nd enough
evidence of her having “put up the whole job,”
and declined to indict.
Chamberlain tried again. Again, the bill was
declined. It looked like Mattie would go free. On
his editorial page, the Bulletin’s editor howled
like a blood-mad panther, calling the decisions
“an attempt to whitewash the character of a wom-
an whose hands are red with the blood of the inno-
cent.” He even called (rhetorically, one assumes)
for the arrest and prosecution of the editors of
the competing newspapers, whose editorials he
deemed insuffi ciently enthusiastic in asserting Al-
lison’s guilt.
“They tore into Mattie Allison like a pit bull
defending a butcher bone,” historian Diane Go-
eres-Gardner writes.
The result was that, when a new grand jury was
impaneled later that year and Chamberlain tried
for a third time to get charges to stick to her, they
fi nally did.
By that time the waters in Albany had been so
thoroughly poisoned by the Bulletin’s sustained
campaign that the trial had to be moved to Salem.
This meant that Chamberlain was off the hook for
prosecuting the case ... a fact that, given the facts
that came out at the trial, may have saved his po-
litical career.
Mattie Allison’s trial got started in October
1886, just under a year after the killing. And the
picture that emerged, as witness after witness took
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
the stand, was at considerable odds with the one
the Albany Bulletin had painted.
The newspaper reports of this trial were how
most citizens of Albany learned just what it was
that Charles Campbell had begged Mattie Allison
to forgive him for, as he lay dying; and why she
so coldly declined. He had been stalking her for
three years, starting when she broke off their en-
gagement, back when she was a girl of 17. Know-
ing her family had no male patriarch to stand up
for her, as was then the custom in such matters, he
had been very bold, and particularly cruel, in how
he went about it.
Witness after witness recounted episodes when
Campbell had been caught peering in the win-
dows, the times he’d boasted that he was regular-
ly sleeping with her, the times he got drunk and
threatened to kill her. He’d pulled a gun on her
at her mother’s hat shop; followed her to Eugene
when she went to visit her aunt; pulled a pistol on
her mother in a jealous rage when the elder Alli-
son refused to support his suit for her daughter’s
hand; and even once drunkenly tried to break into
her home while they were inside.
Probably the most damning bit of evidence
came from a friend who had spoken to Camp-
bell the night he borrowed the overcoat and false
mustache, who, according to the Morning Orego-
nian’s report, said Campbell “had often boasted
that he had ‘slept with her’ and would ruin her that
night if it cost him his neck.”
Saunders — who had, a month or two earlier,
been convicted in an Albany courtroom and sen-
tenced to hang — testifi ed that she had approached
him, her future brother-in-law, several weeks be-
fore, to ask if he would protect her from Camp-
bell. She’d told him things were OK just then, but
that she expected him to start more trouble soon,
and she was afraid he would follow through on his
threats to kill or rape her. Then a letter had arrived
from “J. Blankhead,” a letter that appears to have
been intended as a coyly worded proposition: “I
am a stranger in your town and desire to see you
and form your acquaintance. I wish you to do me
a favor. It will be but a slight task for you to per-
form, and will afford me great pleasure.”
Mattie, not being in the business of doing “fa-
vors” for strangers, knew there was only one man
who would send her a letter like that. So she’d
sent for Saunders — who had promised he would
have a little talk with Campbell and, if he would
not agree to leave her alone, thrash him for her.
And that’s what Mattie Allison had expected
him to do that night: give the would-be Lothario
the beating of his life and tell him to stay away.
But he’d brought his Colt with him, just in case ....
The verdict was reached very quickly. After
about 20 minutes, a “not guilty” verdict was an-
nounced, and the entire courtroom burst into ap-
plause and cheers.
The Salem Statesman lit into the Albany press
with surprising savagery, accusing it of having
essentially ginned up a lynch mob. Indeed, there
had been an article in the Bulletin in particular
that almost looked like an invitation to form one
— an apparently made-up article about Mattie Al-
lison begging the sheriff for protection from an-
gry citizens who she was afraid might lynch her,
and the sheriff telling her to get lost.
Of course, by the end of the trial the Albany
residents who would have formed that hypothet-
ical lynch mob knew the rest of the story, and
chances are good that they didn’t appreciate the
heavy spinning they’d been subjected to. Whether
for that reason or some other, the Albany Bulle-
tin did not last long after that; although the State
Rights Democrat and Herald Disseminator are
still around, having merged into today’s Demo-
crat-Herald.
As for Saunders, his murder trial, which had
been held in the poisoned atmosphere of the Linn
County Courthouse in Albany, was overturned on
appeal. Retried in Salem, he was convicted of sec-
ond-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Seven years later, Governor Sylvester Pennoyer
commuted his sentence. He and Mattie’s sister
Minnie, who had waited for him, married after his
release and moved to Spokane.
Dr. Fuhrman:Pomegranates in your diet
This is an invitation and call out for all of you that have experienced and love the
iconic Swinging Bridge over the Coast Fork of the Willamette River. As you probably
know this community treasure has been closed for over a year due to safety concerns
and this closure has altered our way of life here in Cottage Grove. This vital pathway
has connected our two sides of town for nearly 130 years. If you would like to do
something to help get our Bridge back please join fellow Cottage Grovers at the Swing
the Bridge benefi t to help support the restoration of the bridge on Saturday, March
24th, at the CG Armory, 6 to 11pm. You can help support grants the city is pursuing
by writing a letter describing how much the bridge means to you, learn of the storied
history of the 5 versions of bridges that have been pedestrian pathways in that location,
leave a story or memory on the Swinging Bridge Story Wall, and help raise funds for
the Swinging Bridge Special City Trust Fund. There will also be music, dancing, and
good fellowship with your fellow Swinging Bridge Friends. Please bring an item for
the Potluck and anything you can spare to help the bridge. Hope to see you and all of
the community there, Swing the Bridge!
Dana Merryday
Cottage Grove
Ruby red, delicious and nutrient
rich pomegranates pack a mighty
punch in safeguarding your health.
Pomegranate contains a unique and
powerful antioxidant called puni-
calagin, the most abundant antioxi-
dant in pomegranate, responsible for
more than half of the antioxidant ac-
tivity of pomegranate juice.
Pomegranate juice has been an-
alyzed to have greater antioxidant
capacity than red wine, grape juice,
cranberry juice, green tea or acai
juice. Drinking pomegranate juice
measurably reduces oxidative stress
(the toxic effects of free radicals) in
healthy humans. Much research has
shown that pomegranate’s potent an-
tioxidant capacity provides protec-
tion against heart disease, cancer and
cognitive impairment.
Pomegranate was one of the ear-
liest cultivated fruits, and has been
prominent throughout history in art,
culture, and religion, from the story
of the seasons in Greek mythology to
Romeo and Juliet to the Bible.
Pomegranate is ubiquitous in Mid-
dle Eastern cooking and its super
food status, unique fl avor and tex-
ture has made it increasingly popular
in the U.S. A pomegranate contains
hundreds of tiny, crisp arils; each aril
is a seed encased in a juicy pulp, a
tasty mix of sweet and tart fl avors.
Health benefi ts of pomegranates -
anti-cancer:
1) Pomegranate has anti-infl amma-
tory effects that may protect against
cancer and other chronic diseases.
2) Pomegranate has anti-angiogenic
properties, meaning that they may
help to prevent growing tumors from
acquiring a blood supply, preventing
those tumors from receiving the
Please see FUHRMAN PG. A11
C ottage G rove
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IN BRIEF MARCH 14-MARCH 27
•
•
•
Cynthia Kendoll, Oregonians for Immigration Re-
form, will discuss their current petition drive at the
next meeting of the Cottage Grove 912 Project on
Monday, March 19th, 6:30 PM, at Stacy's Covered
Bridge Restaurant, 401 E Main. The petition drive
is to get Oregon's sanctuary law on the ballot in No-
vember.
On Thursday, March 27, South Lane Mental Health
will hold a grand opening for its newest location at
27 N. 6th St. from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. The public is
welcome.
On March 15 at 1 p.m. the City of Creswell will offi -
cially transfer the 'old school house' title to the Cre-
swell Heritage Foundation. The Title Transfer Cere-
mony will be held in front of the schoolhouse at 195
S. 2nd St., Creswell.