OREGON FOLKLORE - WORK PROJECT ADMINISTRATION
Title: Steamboating

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OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES

Name of worker Manly M. Banister
Name and address of informant: Captain Milton Smith, 3051 NE 38th Avenue,
Portland, Oregon
Date and time of interview: March 27th. 1939 A.M.
Place of interview: Captain Smith's home
Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant:
Howard Corning
Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.:
Captain Smith's home is located just below the crest of the hill in the
Alameda District, on the very fringe of the bon-ton residential area. The
house is a nice one and new, and while I was there, interior decorators
were busily at work, which necessitated conducting the interview in the
breakfast nook, the only place not cluttered with workmen and their
paraphernalia.

1. Parents, American: father, Joseph Smith, mother, a Hall.
2. Born at Buena Vista, August 10th, 1874.
3. Wife and daughter.
4. Buena Vista, French Prairie, Hobsonville up to the age of 22. Then Rainier,
Washington. Recently in Portland.
5. ---?
6. Steamboat captain and pilot on the Columbia, Willamette, and Cowlitz
Rivers.
8. Steamboating.
9. A man who looks much younger than his years. Sturdily built and only
slightly grey. Memory on the faulty side.

Text: I am the youngest of the Joseph Smith family of nine children. My
father and my mother crossed the plains in '46 and '47 respectively. They
met and were married at Buena Vista, and settled in the French Prairie
region near Woodburn. When I was about a year old, they moved to Buena
Vista, and then to Hobsonville near Tillamook. Father was not one of the
founders, because Hobsonville was a thriving place when we got there. He
built and operated a sawmill at Hobsonville, and later moved to Rainier,
Washington, where he built another sawmill and operated it until his death.

About that time I came into the picture--when I was twenty-two. I started
into the steamboat game, building and operating tugboats. I retired about
five years ago. We operated under the name of the Columbia and Cowlitz
Transportation Company. Then the name was changed to the Smith
Transportation Company. I finally sold out and it became the Shaver
Transportation Company, which went out of business about two years ago.

My mother was a Hall, and she came in a different wagon train from that of
my father. I remember having heard her tell that her sister was married to
a man named Croisan, during the trip across the plains. While they were
asleep in their wagon on their wedding night, some men came and played a
practical joke on them. They pushed the wagon out into the river near which
they were camped until the water came up into the bed of the wagon.

My father had the distinction of setting up and operating the first
threshing machine in Oregon. It was run by horse-power and not steam. I
forget who it was made for, but it wasn't Croisan.

Oregon had its first entry in 1913 at Chicago, in the international
speedboat races. It wasn't the first speedboat built in Oregon, but it was
the first one built here that took the world's record for speeds. We made
fifty miles an hour with it, and that became the record at that time. It's
name was the "Oregon Kid".

Yes, I used to know Charlie Fuller. He was what we called a "double-header"
in those days. That is, he had licenses both as an engineer and as a
steamboat captain. At this particular time I recall, Charlie was engineer
for me and we were taking a raft of logs down the Cowlitz. The water was
high and rough and a chain broke loose. I was running short-handed at the
time, for I didn't have a deckhand--a logger who could walk the raft. So I
got out there, and I found the chain had dropped loose. There was a piece
of rope there and I grabbed that, but I couldn't let go or make it fast to
anything. I had to have a chain and I had to have it fast before the raft
broke apart. About then I looked up and saw Charlie crawling across the
raft, dragging a section of chain after him. He couldn't walk the logs, but
he could crawl, and he came out there to me with that chain. That showed he
had guts.

---------

Comment: Captain Smith could not give me much time, but he is not a
particularly good informant. He has the complex to many have: the fear of
saying anything personal. Many informants try to make their talk as erudite
and cultured as possible. People of this type are difficult to get anything
from. When I offered to return at another time, he adequately squelched the
proposition, so I believe it would be a waste of time to interview him
further.

However, the Captain recommended that we interview his cousin, Ed Croisan
who lives near 52nd at Hawthorne, with a Mrs. Stow. He was once sheriff of
Marion County and later Collector of Customs at Portland. Also B. F.
(Frank) Hall, the oldest man in Oregon to have an automobile operator's
license. He lives at Woodburn, Oregon, and is well known so that he can be
found easily.