My early childhood was spent in the sandhills of Nebraska, a land characterized by tumbleweeds, prairie fires, and hot winds. Until I arrived in the Willamette Valley, I had never seen a lilac or a rose in full bloom. I shall always remember my first glimpse of the new Oregon home. On that Spring morning, no sky had ever been so blue, no fields so green, no fruit trees so pink and white.
The house with its high ceiling, grained woodwork, and flower conservatory aroused my greatest curiosity. How excited I was after several weeks’ sojourn to discover a tiny cellar that had escaped unnoticed! It had been the special location of a barometer and other instruments for official weather records.
The farm was a part of the Cline donation land claim of the 1860’s. In 1887, Mr. and Mrs. John Briggs bought ten acres of this tract, cleared the land, erected buildings, planted trees, and established a rose and shrub nursery. In 1902, fifteen years later, when Mr. Briggs began to fail in health, the farm was sold to J. L. Howard; and, in 1906, it was sold to Nels Savage.
My father purchased the farm in 1908. For fifty-four years it has been called The Chase Orchards, but older residents still refer to it as the Old Briggs Place. Old Mr. Briggs was a dyed-in-the-wool Britisher. Everything he planted was English to the extreme: English box, English laurel, English holly, English hedges—all fashioned in precise rows, circles, and squares.
If Mr. Briggs could see his old home now, he would find many changes. The little pines, firs, and cedars are giant in size, real patriarchs of the forest. English ivy covers the farm buildings, and the box hedges are broad and rambling. The nursery stock forms a rose-garden lawn with panels of the same old-fashioned roses that were planted seventy-five years ago. Filbert, walnut, and holly orchards have replaced some of the original trees.
In those early days, there were two entrances: a large gate for the carriage, and a small picket gate leading to a narrow walk between the hedge and the driveway. At another corner, near the farm buildings, was a secondary entrance designed for farm vehicles and delivery wagons. Woe to the misguided laborer who, inadvertently blundered through the wrong gateway!
Much of our knowledge of the early activities was gained from Mr. Briggs’ widow, who lived only a short distance from us. From her we acquired a floral language of technical titles for trees, shrubs, bulbs, and flowers. We ourselves made a special contribution to the time-honored Pacific Coast flora by adding a cutting from the rosebush that our Great-grandfather Chase had brought to New York State, a century and a half ago. We are not pioneers. We are not Webfoots. We are not Oregon mossbacks. We cannot claim relationship to a native son or a native daughter. We simply adopted a friendly Oregon community, which is still animated by the courage and industry of former beauty-loving Oregonians.
History of Early Albany Schools
Mary Myrtle Worley
The account of perhaps the first instruction given in Albany, dates back to the 1840’s. Since there were not enough children in the community for organization of a school, it cannot be classed as one. Mrs. Abraham Hackleman gathered a few small children into her home, a log house which stood in Hackleman’s Grove, and taught them reading, writing and numbers.