Astoria Then And Now

Photo of Astoria's second customs house taken just before demolition in 1918. It was
built in 1852 to replace the first one destroyed by fire. An accurate reproduction was 
built in 1994 about 200' west of the original location in the Bethany Lutheran parking lot 
On June 16, 1849, Calvin Tibbets and his Clatsop Plains neighbors registered the schooner they had built, christened the Pioneer, in Astoria before sailing it to San Francisco loaded with farm produce and lumber to sell to gold miners (see pages 38-40 of Calvin Tibbets: Oregon's First Pioneer). 

John Adair had just arrived to serve as U.S. Customs Collector for the newly established Territory of Oregon on April 3rd. For the first couple weeks, his family was hosted by Nancy (Mrs. James) Welch. He worked there while awaiting completion of a formal customhouse. In June he was working out of the house of John McClure, who was away. Adair's wife Mary Ann described McClure's house in her memoirs as a "shanty," though it was an improvement over the place their family had just left. That "shack...later lived in by Mr. Holman" had a fireplace that wouldn't draft and, because it been raised to stand over water at high tide, Clatsop Indians caused a fright one night when they poked their heads up through the loose floorboards while taking refuge from the rain in the space below. 

Given John McClure played such an important role in building Astoria, I was surprised to learn that the location of his house had never been pinpointed. With the help of Clatsop County Historical Society's archivist Liisa Penner, John Goodenberger (architectural historian who guided reconstruction of the second custom house shown in the photo), early survey maps, the distinctively steep roof of the Pike house, and Clatsop County Clerk records, I was able to place McClure's house in the modern driveway between Peace Lutheran Church and its daycare center, housed in a building still referred to as "the Kirchoff House." Part of the church now stands where Judge Cyrus Olney built his house soon after buying out McClure in 1858. The Hughes-Ransom Mortuary has replaced "Pike's Peak."

As I drove through Astoria, ahead of a presentation at the Columbia River Maritime Museum which included these findings, I appreciated for the first time how much the city's landscape had changed over time. Most notably, Marine Drive between 10th and 14th which crosses what had been the little bay in front of McClure's house, now filled in over buried docks that supported commercial and industrial buildings in the early 1900s. 

I have not managed to locate "the shack," but the "Mr. Holman" who Mary Ann Adair said lived there after her family was most certainly James D. Holman. Published biographies show him moving from Oregon City directly to his development at Pacific City, WA in 1850. But an obituary for his wife Rachel in the August 4, 1900 Astoria Budget reported them having lived in Astoria for several years and on July 24, 1930 the paper reported daughter Kate being born there. Oregon State Archive records confirm Kate's birth in Astoria on December 10, 1856. In Nellie Flavel's 1885 diary, published in the Spring 2001 Cumtuxshe speaks of Kate as a close friend. James and Ruth buried an infant daughter, Elizabeth, at the Clatsop Plains Pioneer Cemetery in 1854. Their son Frederick was born in Pacific City in 1852. He went on to become a prominent Portland attorney and President of the Oregon Historical Society. Given his wealth and Mary Ann Adair referring only to him, James likely lived in the shack on the beach for a short time while finding more suitable quarters for his family where they  lived intermittently during the Pacific City years. After it failed, they moved to Portland permanently. In the 1870s, James developed Ilwaco on the same land claim. 

An introduction to Calvin Tibbets and more stories like this can be found on the Home page.