OREGON FOLKLORE - WORK PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION: Surnames: Beekman
Title: C. C. Beekman, Jacksonville
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Subject: C. C. Beekman

Name and address of informant Benjamin B. Beekman 
601 Platt Building (Office)
Lives at Portland Hotel. 
Date and time of interview July 11, 1939 A.M. 
Place of interview: Beekman's office. 
Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant: 
Mr. Sherriff, Elks Building 
Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.: A typical lawyer's office, in
a nice building. 

Description of informant:
Benjamin Beekman is the son of C. C. Beekman, Wells-Fargo agent and banker of
early historic days of Jacksonville, Oregon

Left the community when he was seventeen to go to school; studied law at Yale,
and returned from thence to Portland. He has lived in the same room in the
Portland Hotel, using the same key, for the past forty years. 

He is a tall, spare man with grayed hair and mustache. Wears pince-nez
glasses. He is seventy-six years old. Offers annual prizes through Oregon
Historical Society to students between ages of fifteen and eighteen on
subjects of Oregon history. He thinks the younger generation ought to know
more than it does about Oregon history.

Text: 

My father, C. C. Beekman, came west in 1850, landing in San Francisco. His
father had been a contractor and he had taught his boys the trade. He found
plenty of work in San Francisco and went to work at once. He came to
Jacksonville in 1852, mining for a while nearby. He made quite a bit of money
and sold out and commenced buying gold, which was the start of his banking
business. 

Later, when the Wells-Fargo express-company put in its appearance, he was
appointed agent. The stage stopped at his door where all goods sad passengers
had to be loaded, so he worked under an advantage so far as robbers were
concerned. No one knew when he was going to make a shipment of gold. Another
thing to his advantage was that he never shipped gold in the iron-bound
express box. When bandits hold up the stage, it was customary for them to ask
for the registered mail and the express box. My father would take an ordinary
candle box, put in fifteen hundred or three thousand dollars' worth of gold,
and fill up the remaining space with paper, straw, or excelsior, so that the
weight of the loaded box was about equal to what it would be if it were loaded 
candles. This he would ship, confident in the knowledge that no highwayman
would rummage around among the baggage, looking for gold in an old tallow box. 

The only time there was any danger of a hold-up was along in 1910 when the
Pinkerton agency, under whose protection he had placed his bank, unearthed a
plot in Portland to rob the bank. Officers stayed around across the street for
several days with pistols and rifles, waiting for the would-be hold-ups to
arrive, but they must have got wind the bank was being watched, for none of
them ever came. 

If you go into a newspaper office or pick up the usual history book, you will
find that the usual reason for the railroad's passing through Medford instead
of through Jacksonville is that the citizens of Jacksonville failed to gather
in a bonus required by the railroad; but this in not true at all. The railroad
made two surveys, one passing through the present site of Medford (which was
not in existence then), and another that passed within two and a half miles of
Jacksonville. Medford is five miles distant. The present route is the longer,
while the other ran along the base of the foothills, it all depended on
Ashland. If the closer survey more adhered to, the line would wind up into the
hills above Ashland; otherwise, on the flats below. It so happened that
Ashland was placed in a strategic position to be a division point of the
railroad, and this determined the survey as the one in present use. The other
would not have permitted the building of roundhouses, workshops, and necessary
appurtenances of a railroad division. Considering these things the citizens of
Jacksonville saw it was useless to raise the money required, for the
difference in a distance of two-and-a-half miles from town to the railroad,
and the present distance of five miles was not enough to get fractious about.
Either would have spelled doom to the town of Jacksonville, either by creating
a new town (viz. Medford), or by moving the business district of the old,
two-and-a-half miles to the railroad. This is the real reason why the railroad
now runs through Medford instead of [through Jacksonvile?]