OREGON FOLKLORE - WORK PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION;Surnames: Nesmith, McDaniel, Grant, Sherman, O'Neal, Lyon, Boise, Hallock, Lyle, Kelty Title: Ellendale, ghost town ********************************************************************************* USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE: ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/or/orfiles.htm ********************************************************************************* Transcribed and formatted for use in USGenWeb Archives by: W. David Samuelsen - December 2001 - NO COPYRIGHT - PUBLIC DOMAIN ************************************************************************ Title: Ellendale: Ghost Town. Name and address of informant; Newton McDaniel 1413 SW 14th Avenue, Portland, Oregon. Text: Ellendale was founded in 1845 by James O'Neal, in Polk County, four miles west, above Dallas. He went into the flour mill business and chose, because of the water, the spot on which a little town flourished for a few years and then died, and now is as if it had never been. He ran the mill about four years and then sold it to Colonel Nesmith and Harry Owens. They in turn sold it to the Hudson's Bay Company, in 1854. A post office had been established there in 1850, and was named O'Neal's Mills. There never at any time was more than a handfull of residents but that handfull accommodated a great many travelers with meals and lodgings for the night. Parties of miners in '48 and '49 used to came there to buy flour for their pack trains. Ellendale was named for Ellen Lyon. She married Judge R. P. Boise, Circuit Judge in Polk County, and two of their sons are Whitney and Reuben Boise. Most of the people thereabouts, the Hallocks, Lyles and Lyons, were farmers. Ellendale probably perished because it was destined to perish, and because folks started to take another road, and because the water failed. They had some colorful murders, though -- if not right in Ellendale, at least in Polk County. A bartender killed a hot-headed fool of a man in a fair fight, and later, also in a fair fight, he killed the man's son, who had burst in, guns popping, to get revenge. When the citizens, avid at the sight of all the spilled blood, and hoping against hope for the ineffable thrill of another such sensation, went to the only son left, a younger brother of the dead lad, and asked him if he was going to kill the bartender and "get even," he said, "Hell, no. I'm not a very good shot anyway, and I'd be killed as sure as blazes, and besides I don't want to get even, and Bub hadn't ought to have butted in to other people's business. Pop had what was comin' to him." (Which indeed he had had, being one of the most disagreeable men in the country). He grew to be an honored and respected citizen, and was lauded as a level-headed gentleman to the end of his long life. The bartender was killed ten months after in a brawl over cards in Prineville. Once an infuriated mob hanged a part-Indian because, in a drunken frenzy, he had hacked his meek blonde wife and her unborn child to pieces. His father, J. P. Kelty, a rich man, would not put up a cent for his defense, which made little difference as an angry group took justice into their own hands and the second day of the trial strung him up "higher than a kite," before nightfall. When the Editors of a Polk County paper protested against such an action, every single subscriber stopped taking the paper and they had to sell out. Two items of no particular importance: "Lid" was the name given to a man's hat by the Indians and not by the buckaroos, as some suppose. And do you know where the names Big Nestucca and Little Nestucca came from? This is the story that was told in Portland: General Grant, Sherman, and Colonel Nesmith went over into that country. They thought some of taking Indian wives temporarily, of course and would have, only there was just one Indian squaw available. The rest were gone into the mountains, for herbs, or had passionately jealous husbands. They all tried to win her but the successful one was Colonel Nesmith. Nes' tuck 'er . (Nestucca). At any rate, that's the story that went the rounds in Oregon, much to the merriment of the pioneers.