alley Growth Watched!
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MEDFORD. OREGON. SUNDAY. JUNE 23, 1963
Bv EVA HAMILTON
Mail Trikim Ktmtl
When residents o( Rogue Valley Manor atop Barne
burg Hill exclaim about their view, Mrs. MoUie Keene
of 136 South Oakdale ave., Medford, wants them to
know they are not the first to appreciate it.
From this same vantage point, three generations of
Barneburgs watched events in the valley below many
long years ago. The sprawling early settlement of Jack
son county, the changing weather patterns were ap
praised from Barneburg hill.
Mrs. Keene remembers most clearly the coming of
the railroad in 1887. She was a Barneburg and with
other members of the family, who resided in the house
, now converted into K-Boy Ranch, home of the radio sta
tion on Barnett road, Mrs. Keene climbed the hill to
watch the construction workers.
Created Wide Interest
The meeting of the California and Oregon surveys
were not in alignment and construction of the last sec
tion created wide interest. The hilltop was a "box seaf
in the outdoor theater in which the Barneburgs watched
the laying of the rails. .
Mrs. Keene, widow of Dr. J. M. Keene, Medford
dentist, is the last surviving member of that generation
of Barneburgs. It was her father, Frederick Barneburg.
grandfather of Harry Barneburg. a director in the South
ern Oregon Historical Society, who purchased 160 acres
of land southeast of Medford in 1860. From this pur
chase the Barneburg estate expanded to 1.685 acres, en
compassing the area from the present Sacred Heart
hospital to the Hillcrcst-Phoenix road.
At the age of 18, Frederick Barneburg made his first
trip by pack train into the Rogue Valley from Missouri.
The gold rush to Jacksonville was on and he planned to
obtain property between Medford and Jacksonville.
Receive! Word of Death
Before he had time to complete his Investigation of
donation land claims, however, he received word that his
father had died in Missouri, leaving many debts. Fred
erick returned to his home state riding a mule from
Sacramento, Calif., and arrived with his face masked
with a beard and his belt filled with $20 gold pieces.
His mother opened the door, saw a man with a beard,
riding a mule, failed to recognize her young son and
slammed the door. '
(That beard, he wore it the rest of his life, got the
southern Oregon pioneer into a more embarrassing situa
tion when he went bear hunting with John Griffin. He
awakened in their Dead Indian camp to find that a rat
had played barber during the night. There was a part
of the beard trimmed and this didn't convert it into a
Van Dyke, his grandson recalls the story.)
Missouri had become a hot bed of pre-Civil War .
clashes during Barneburgs brief absence. He decided to
pay his father's debts and return to Oregon. This he did
in 1860 after marrying Electa Norton. He joined the 1860
train composed chiefly of Furrys, Nortons and Barne
burgs. He found the land he had wanted was taken so
he bought out John LaTourette, paying him 51.25 an acre.
From Barneburg Hill
- . , - The going was not easy but Barneburg, who had come
V
Frederick Barneburg, who farmed 1,685 acres in the
Medford area, and gave his name to the hill, which is now
setting of the Rogue Valley Manor, died pursuing his fav
orite sport, fishing. He was drowned in Rogue river near
Bybee bridge in July, 1907.
to the states from Germany at the age of eight, hid
learned to build the better mouse trap, so to speak.
. Freighting was the popular means of deriving an in
come at the time. He soon learned that it was not profit
able to drive empty wagons one way. He raised hogs,
butchered them and made ham and bacon. When he set
out for Roseburg and Redding for supplies his wagons
were filled with hams and bacons which he sold at the
' freight stops. This way he collected for the meat and
again for transporting whatever supplies he brought
. back to Medford. He was able to stay in business while
other freighters went broke.
Barncburg's biggest problem became the coyotes that
threatened his stock.. His greatest assets in combatting
this problem were two old hounds. Bugle and Fatty.
Mrs. Keene remembers them well and Harry Barneburg
recalls many stories told about them by his father, Pete
Barneburg.
Rooiter-Coyote Story '
Harry's favorite story, however, concerned a rooster
and the coyotes. His grandfather had a rooster which
he staked out as a lure to draw the coyotes Into a trap.
One morning he found a coyote in the trap and the
rooster staked very close by. When the coyote saw the
man, his captor, he apparently realized he had been
tricked, lashed out at the poor rooster, which had come
safely through the night, managed to reach him and tore
him to pieces before Barneburg could intercept the at
tack. The first Barneburg home was a log cabin just off
what is now Black Oak drive below Barneburg hill.
Harry Barneburg was born in a house built on the same
property. The log cabin is gone but the house in which
Harry was born is still there.
The poet says "It takes a heap o' livin' in a house
to make a home."' Webster's dictionary defines a home
as "The house habitually occupied by a family." The
Barneburg houses qualified as homes, all of them. Not
Just one, but two grandmothers lived with the Barne-burgs-Mrs.
Jemina Norton, mother of Mrs. Barneburg;
Mrs. i Anna Barneburg, mother of Mr. Barneburg. Mrs.
Keene's house on South Oakdale meets the "habitual"
qualification. She has lived in it for more than 70 years.
Raturn to Birthplaces ,
Mrs. Keene and her nephew returned to their birth
places for brief visits Monday.
Barneburg pointed out the spot In Lawson creek
where he caught 13 salmon with a pitchfork 60 years
ago when the water was high in the willows. He re
called how water rushed through Muddy creek in front
of the house, now home to the M. C. McCartneys.
He commented that he predicted, when the new St.
Mary's school was built in the area, that it would be
flooded and it was. ' ,
"I know those draws," he explained. "I've seen the
water rushing through too many times to be mistaken."
- "Grandmother Barneburg was an enthusiastic gar
dener," Barneburg continued his recollections, referring
to his greatgrandmother. "Somehow her gardening didn't
coincide with her son's hog producing. He Imported a
highly bred boar and the boar chose Great Grand
mother's garden patch as a rendezvous. She loved to
go to the garden with a lamp of salt in her apron and
eat cucumbers, right off the vine. When the imported
boar moved into the cucumber patch she announced his
days were numbered. She didn't kill him but she did
break his hind leg with rocks and from then on he was
" confined to his pen." ,
Carriage House Gone
"It is all so different. The carriage house Is gone, the
fireplace is gone," Mrs. Keene, who will be 89 next
month, lamented as she viewed her childhood home on
Barnett road. --...
From .this country home Mrs. Keene moved with her
parents to the South Oakdale residence she still occupies.
Life was lighter and gayer. She remembers dancing on
the freight cars when the Jacksonville railway was built,
skating on ponds behind the house, and riding horseback
all about the town. She attended school in the city school,
which was converted Into the Alford home tin West 10th
street, s . ' 1
On Dec. 23, 1901, Mary Alice (Mollie) Barneburg
married Dr. Keene In San Francisco. They returned to
the South Oakdale house but she made repeated trips to
San Francisco. Her contemporaries recall that she and
her sister, Ida, bought their clothes in the city.
. "They were beautiful women and they wore beautiful
hats and all the furbelows high fashion then required."
Planted First Pear Orchard
Mrs. Keene's sister, Ida, married W. H. Stewart, son
of J. H. Stewart, who planted the first pear orchard In
the valley. Mrs. Keene helped pack the first carload of
pears that went out of the valley. Her brother-in-law
set out the Hillcrest orchard, which was sold to Julian
and Ethel M. Perkins. Perkins later sold it to the Hill
crest Orchard Co., R. H. Parsons, president.
Barneburg remembers many stories of Perkins. He
owned one of the first automobiles in Jackson county.
f- ' . l', w t zx S
Mrs. Mollie Keene poses with her nephew, Harry Barn cburg, on the steps of her South Oakdale home. The flower
around the porch are proof of her gardening ability, which she still enjoys.
4 ft It iMmrn
The Barneburg home on South Oakdale, where Mrs. Mollie Keene has made her horns or 70 years, was like
this in the Horse and Buggy days, Standing In the doorway is Mrs. Frederick Barneburg. Mrs. Keene is on , the
left and Mrs. John Barneburg, in fashionable riding ha bit, holds her horse on the right.
When he came to town he always wore boots. The reason
was-whenever his auto frightened horses, Perkins
climbed out and led the horses, pulling a wagon or a
"surrey with the fringe on top," past the car. The roads
were muddy. When he reached town he took off his
boots and put on shoes.
The 15 acres, constituting Barneburg hill, site of the
Manor, were purchased by Barneburg from Abraham
Bish, grandfather of Mrs. Hurry Barncburg-the price
$1.25 an acre. The hill recently sold for $45,000, Marry
Barneburg was told.
Below the hillsirio whs a cemetery. It was on prop-,
erly then owned by David Ball. Several of the Ball chil
dren died In a diphtheria epidemic. Money was scarce .
and Ball established his own little cemetery in a corner
of his farm. The little girl's grave beneath a tree was
surrounded by a white fence (Barneburg pointed out the
tree).
"Those graves arc still hidden under the grass be
neath the oak trees," he insisted.
Harry Barneburg attended the same North-Phoenix
school his father attended. Describing the building, he
noted that boys who smoke cigarettes in school furnace
rooms today had their counterpart in the 19th century in
lads who spit tobacco through holes In the school room.
His father bored a hole in the North-Phoenix school for -this
purpose. It was still there, covered by two boards,
when the school was razed In recent years.
All the Barncburgs were Democrats, Harry empha
sized. "There was Virginia blood in their veins."
Dr. Keene, however, was an active Republican, per
sonal friend of Jonathan Bourne, Jr U.S. Senator from
Oregon from 1907 to 1913. A postcard sent by the sen
ator to the Medford dentist in 1911 is among Mrs. Keene's
souvenirs. It pictures a c o u pi e , one person labeled
"Atlantic," the other "Pacific," In a caress. The caption
reads "The Kiss of the Oceans-1915." This was by way
of predicting completion of the Panama Canal in 1915.
; It was completed earlier. The first ship, history records,
passed through Aug. 15, 1914.
I - . EJ&l glib
Harry Barneburg and hi wife, whose grandfather, Abraham Binh, sold the hilltop to Frederick Barneburg. paused
for this pholo while making s lour of the former Burn burg puietps This ts the house where Harry was born.
I II .... . . --. .----Zfam,.m. !
1
Mr. Mollie Keene remembers well the house where she was born. It Is greatly changed but still of solid con
struction, as were all hullrllngs constructed for her father In the early days. She consented to pose near the former
living room window Monday, .
11