With him on this trip, or joining him shortly afterwards, were Hiram Smead, Tommy Summerville, and several others, none of whom settled in the Albany area. Smead was the man who later sold what is now the business district to the Montieths, when they arrived in 1847.
Abner erected a temporary shelter and stayed through the winter of 1845. In the Spring, he arranged to have Hiram Smead “hold down” one of his claims for him, and he himself returned to Iowa to bring the rest of the Hackleman family to the Willamette Valley. The land-grant law at that time permitted a man to be absent from his claim for two years while bringing his family from the East.
Albany’s first settler, however, was destined never again to see the area he had claimed, for he died in Iowa the following winter. Abner’s youthful son, Abraham Hackleman, settled his father’s estate in Iowa and brought the family to Albany, arriving in 1847 and taking up his father’s donation land claim. In the meantime, Hiram Smead, precariously holding down a claim to which he had no title, sold the land to the Montieths for four hundred dollars and a horse, when he received news of Abner’s death.
In the spring of 1848, Walter and Thomas Montieth, two energetic young Scotsmen, came into the valley seeking a location. After viewing the country, they concluded to buy out Mr. Smead. Judging from the lay of the country—with its broad prairies reaching back to the picturesque Cascade Mountains, which suggest unlimited resources for agriculture, and with its great possibilities in water power for all kinds of industries offered by the Willamette and Calapooia rivers—the young men concluded that this spot was a very desirable site for a town and that the surrounding country could soon be made to blossom as the rose. So they at once decided to file on another claim. They had the land surveyed and that part adjacent to the river they laid out in town lots. Their first cabin, at a point now known as Second Avenue and Washington street, soon was ready for occupancy. They named the new town Albany in remembrance of their home town in New York.
Early in 1849, they began the erection of the first framehouse built in Albany. It still stands and is often pointed out as a “relic of bygone days.”
The gold excitement in California that summer put a sudden stop to all building, as the Montieth brothers were among the first adventurers to catch the gold fever. The building just begun was finished the next year. It was a two-story structure, and although it has been remodeled several times, the framework is still sound.
According to information given by Mrs. J. V. Pipe, daughter of Thomas Montieth, “Thomas and Walter Montieth crossed the plains by wagon train to the Willamette Valley, arriving in the spring of 1847. In 1849 the Montieth brothers built the first frame house in Albany ... where both families lived. The dividing line of the two Montieth claims ran through the house, making it possible for the brothers to live under the same roof, yet each on his own claim. The dining table was affixed to the floor so each could eat on his own property.”
Mr. Thomas Montieth donated the ground upon which the first Albany College was built.
Providence Baptist Church
Lenore Powell
