NEWSPAPERS: Mrs. S. E. Howlett, Jackson County, Oregon *************************************************************************** USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with United States Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by noncommercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information is included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *************************************************************************** Transcribed and formatted for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Elizabeth Corethers 5 July 2003 *************************************************************************** Medford (Oregon) Mail Tribune, Sunday, 16 Jun 1929, p. 6, c. 1-2 BOSS COOK OF FAMOUS HOTEL IS 82 "Mother" Howlett of Eagle Point Still Cooks for Guests at Sunnyside Hotel Works Because She Likes It--Shingled Roof of Pioneer Home--Always Too Busy to Complain. (By Mary Greiner) An old-fashioned parlor with tacked carpet. A plush backed album on the table beside which lay a stereoscope--one of those adjustable two-glass affairs that gives the third dimension to a certain obsolete type of photography. On the wall, four enlarged pictures--her mother and father, and his father and mother. The kind of a room that is kept for company and used occasionally for quilting bees. That is the setting in which Mrs. S. E. (Mother) Howlett, 82, pioneer of Eagle Point, and sole proprietor of the famous Sunnyside Hotel, agreed to rest long enough to be interviewed. She had just come in from the long hotel dining room, where she had finished serving her 15 or so steady patrons in their evening meal--a bounteous supper that seldom stops at less than three kinds of dessert. Her eyes, keen and bright, took in the room at a glance. Her hard, brown hands used to action, quickly adjusted the few things apparently out of place. She paused a second for a glimpse out through the doorway at the waters of Butte Creek. "Old Butte's high now--the ruins," she indicated the beautiful stream rushing past her back door. Her attention passed to a patch-quilt folded neatly across the arms of a rocking chair. "Had a quilting bee the other day--I believe everyone in Eagle Point was here--almost. Yes--I had them all to supper--about 50. We had lots of fun. Folks are jolly when you get them all together that way. And I like to see them eat." Mother Howlett's joy in watching people eat was manifest even back to her childhood days, when she crossed the plains with her parents and brothers and sisters. Hey started out from their home in Missouri in 1853 having joined a train of 64 other covered wagons, all going west. Mrs. Howlett was then six years old. "But I can remember many of the things that happened on the trip--the same as though it was yesterday. I can remember the way they sed to draw around camp fires at meal time--and how I used to sit and watch those big husky men eat." There were two other girls in the family, besides Mrs. Howlett, when her parents began the six month's [sic] trip across the country. Her first brother was born and died as the covered wagon train reached Oregon. The baby was buried at The Dalles--one of the many tragedies of the long trek across the unknown prairie country. "I can remember yet--how frightened my mother was over the rivers we crossed--when the cattle had to swim through the water and the wagons would look like they were going to be submerged. She cried about the Snake River- -even in later years--when it was all over," she said. Another thing the local woman will never forget is the fact that the large party in this covered wagon train had to float down the Columbia river from The Dalles to Portland on rafts. She shudders now when she looks at this large body of water, and realizes the dangers encountered in those days. It was the last day of October, 1852, when Mrs. Howlett's parents landed on their donation claim 14 miles east of Portland. It wasn't very many years before the family had reached its quota of 13 children, and Mrs. Howlett had grown into a young lady, with ideas of "courting" just beginning to enter her 16-year-old head. About that time Mr. A. C. Howlett, an ordained Methodist minister, had received a call to the Portland circuit, where he met the very girl he had been searching for as his wife--even though she was a Presbyterian and aimed to stick to it. The Howlett's [sic] were also the parents of 13 children, the first of which was born in Portland. The minister was moved to the Yreka circuit where he taught school for two terms along with his preaching. Yreka then was a booming mining town, and both preachers and teachers did well. After being moved once again to Portland for a brief engagement, they came down near Eagle Point, where they homesteaded a piece of land and proved up on it. This they disposed of and ran sheep for four years at Derby. Then they leased what is now the Alavista orchard, which they have kept for 18 years. There were 900 acres in the tract, and they raised cattle, sheep and hay. Mrs. Howlett worked in the fields--drove the plow--ran the mowing machine,- -pitched hay. From three of [sic] four in the morning, the hardy pioneer woman-mother of 13 children--slaved thru a day that was never less than 16 hours long--taking the place of a couple of hired men. "I sometimes sit and think back over it all. What was it all about--all this hardship my parents endured? Crossing the plains--leaving a home where things were established and we had a comfortable enough living? Then--the years of hardship we went through. What was it all about, I ask myself. Al for a measly piece of free land!" she exclaimed. During much of the time the Howlett family lived on their land in the Eagle Point district, Rev. Howlett was away preaching, so the greater part of proving up, caring for the stock and the crops as well as all of the housework fell upon the small, though sturdy shoulders of Mother Howlett. When she hears the modern woman grumble over the light household duties she is occasionally required to perform, the 82-year-old pioneer woman is opt to smilingly reminisce over the time--a week before one of the 13 was born- -when she spent a half day shingling the roof of their home, single handed. It was in the year 1881, when the terrible epidemic of diphtheria hit the valley and took a ghastly toll among the early settlers. Mother Howlett will never forget it. Five of her children were taken in two weeks' time. The best doctors in the valley were summoned. They could do nothing with the disease in those days. The five Howlett children lie side by side in the old Antelope cemetery--the oldest, 14, the rest younger. "Of course," recounts the pioneer woman, "It wasn't all sadness and hardship in those days. We had our jolly times, too. Real good times. There were the taffy pullings, and the husking bees, and the carpet-rag tackings- -with the young folks all together having a good time. "Yes, there were dances, too. We didn't have them at our home, because Mr. Howlett was a Methodist. But I cooked for them all the same--they always came over to my place to eat," she added a bit mischievously. When they left the Alavista location, the Howletts bought a little house at the location where the Sunnyside hotel now stands. "It just suited me--that house," said the pioneer woman. "And I said to Mr. Howlett, 'right here is where I'm going to die.'" She paused a moment and simultaneously stopped rocking. Then-- "But do you know--I guess the Lord meant me to work. We weren't settled long, until a man came along and asked to stay over night with us. He had supper and breakfast and dinner the next day. Instead of leaving, like he aimed to--he up and told me that he had decided to stay with us for good. Said he liked my cooking. Well, I was surprised and put out--but there wasn't anything I could do about it. "That wasn't the end of it. He told a barber friend of his in town what a good place it was to board. And say--if he didn't move in on us, too. Then another man came long and wanted steady meals. Finally I told Mr. Howlett that if I had to board all these people I was going to charge them for it. And I did--from then on--25 cents a meal." Twenty-one years ago they built the Sunnyside Hotel, which then and ever since has [b]een famous for its home cooked Sunday meals. In dining room and kitchen of this rambling house are some rather quaint dishes--prized highly by the pioneer woman. They belonged to her famous aunt, Mary Ann Harris, who by her one act of holding her log cabin against the attack of 20 Indians, after they had killed her husband--has gone down as a heroine on the pages of Oregon history. Mrs. Howlett who even now, cooks for and serves from 25 to 30 people every Sunday, in spite of her 82 years, has no recipe for keeping young. Although she has worked hard all her life--she does not recommend hardship to the younger generation. "Maybe if I didn't like to work I wouldn't have done so much of it. But I was always happy, working--especially cooking. Why, I can't remember when I made my first batch of bread. When I was just a tiny tot, I can remember standing on a candle box, washing the family dishes for mother. "Yes--we made our own candles in those days. And our own soap. After I was married I often made as high as a hundred gallons of soft soap at a time. I sold it at 12 cents a gallon to the stores to pay our grocery bills. "But the young folks now-a-days couldn't stand the work I did. They don't have to. They've got other work to do. If they do it as well as we did ours--and as willingly--maybe they'll live longer than we did," she said.