The slave who play the fiddle for gold diggers and fought the indians in Oregon. This is the Louis Southworth Story

During a recent visit to North Carolina, I came upon Days and Deeds in the Oregon Country: Ten-Minute Stories from Northwest History by John B. Horner.¹ In its pages I encountered the figure of Louis Southworth, the old fiddler whose story has continued to resonate long after I first read it.

That discovery led me to Peggy Baldwin’s remarkable essay, A Legacy Beyond the Generations, published by the Oregon Secretary of State.² Baldwin’s text offers not only the historical outline of Southworth’s life, but something rarer: a sense of his character, humor, endurance, and music.

The timing could not have been better. As Benjamin Hunter, Loren Ludwig, and I continue gathering the stories that will shape the upcoming documentary Black Fiddlers, Southworth’s life appears as part of a much larger American story—one in which music, freedom, labor, and memory are inseparable.

Rather than summarize further, I would rather make room here for Baldwin’s voice, and through it, for Southworth’s own. That, after all, is very much the purpose of Black Fiddlers.

A Legacy Beyond the Generations

By Peggy Baldwin, MLS

Death takes us from this world, yet each of us hopes that somehow we leave a piece of ourselves here. We hope to have made a difference. We hope to have been truly seen for who we are and for that to make a difference in the lives of others. When we have children, we at least know that our legacy will go on. But when we are childless, that mark is more difficult to believe in. When a person is a member of a disenfranchised group, all that may be seen of them is what marks them. Because this could be said to be true of Lewis Southworth, what chance did he have of being seen, appreciated for his true nature, and to leave his mark?

Louis Southworth

by many, was described as that “old cotton-headed fellow who for several years walked the streets of Corvallis leading a big stallion of which he was very proud.” In earlier years he was known as a “good young man, quiet and peaceable, and obedient to his master.”¹ All “good” and childlike qualities for a time when African Americans were not allowed their full manhood. This is a mild expression of the attitudes that Louis encountered in Oregon when he arrived. His life would take on a dynamic and sureness that belied the expectations of whites around him, who discounted the ability of African Americans to prosper outside of slavery.

In 1853, Lewis came on the Oregon Trail with James Southworth, his master, and James’s family, to the Oregon Territory, where attitudes were about as primitive as the countryside.²³ As the enslaved, he had no choice in the matter, at a time when Oregon was hostile to ethnic minorities. Many of Oregon’s early settlers came from the South, via Missouri, and wanted to avoid the “trouble with negroes” they had witnessed in the places they had come from. Early settlers feared a backlash of violence from African Americans joining with Native Americans. As a result, most people did not support slavery, or any other activity that would bring Blacks to the Oregon Territory.

The first exclusion law was passed in 1844, not allowing Blacks to settle in Oregon.⁴ Oregon has the dubious honor of being the only state to have an exclusion provision in the state constitution. Article I, Section 35 from the Oregon Constitution, passed in 1857 and not repealed until 1926, reads:

“No free negro, or mulatto, not residing in this State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein.”⁵

The hostility that many people in Oregon felt for African Americans was expressed vehemently by Asabel Bush, publisher of the Oregon Statesman:

“Their assertions that Negroes are entitled to approach our polls, to sit in our courts, to places in our Legislature are not more rational than a demand upon them that they let all adult bulls vote at their polls…”⁶

Not surprisingly, the African American population of Oregon was very small during the early years of the Territory and State. A mere 54 Blacks were counted in the 1850 Census. By 1870, the population was 346. The percentage of Blacks in Oregon did not pass 1% until 1960.⁷

It is not that there was no one in Oregon who believed in equality. Jesse Applegate, builder of the southern branch of the Oregon Trail, was a champion for the rights of ethnic minorities.⁸ But even supporters wanted Blacks “in their place.” One advocate wrote:

“What negroes we have… are law-abiding, peaceable… but not sufficiently numerous to supply the barber shops and kitchens…”⁹

Did Lewis Southworth have what it would take to survive in this environment? His name was sometimes written Lewiswith an “ew” and sometimes Louis with an “ou.” His full name was Lewis Alexander Southworth, but it could easily have been Lewis Adaptability Southworth, for that was the trait of this good-natured man that helped him most to prosper in this hostile, primitive environment. As the Serenity Prayer goes, he would have the “serenity to accept the things he could not change; courage to change the things he could change; and wisdom to know the difference.” He worked around the limitations he was saddled with in this racially prejudiced environment. And lest we envision him a saint, he could also “dish it out” with the best of them, possibly another trait that ensured his survival.

Louis Southworth

Lewis would disprove the idea that many whites held—that Blacks were not resourceful enough to make their way in this world—by eventually raising $1,000, the equivalent of $23,000 in today’s dollars, to buy his own freedom.¹⁰ When asked why he bought his freedom, in a time in Oregon when slavery was not legal, he said that “his master had been good to him.” We have no way to really know how Louis felt. It is obvious that avoiding discord was important, so as not to encourage the wrath of whites, who had the law on their side. Besides, these words, supposedly out of the mouth of Louis, were reported by J. B. Horner, who sometimes had words coming out of Louis’s mouth that appear to have been heavily edited.¹¹

In 1854, Benjamin Richardson allowed Lewis to settle on an Oregon Donation Land Claim that his son had taken up and abandoned, near Monroe, Lane County, Oregon.¹² Donation Land Claims were open only to whites. He was not there long, because he soon left for the gold fields of southern Oregon. Earning his way to freedom was pressing him to act. He would earn $300 to bring back to James Southworth on this trip, making freedom seem possible.¹³

As he traveled back from Jacksonville, he was accosted by soldiers fighting in the Rogue Valley Indian War, who threatened to take the rifle he had bought for $50, necessary for protection while traveling through this isolated country. Lewis joined them, because, as he said, “Feeling as if I could not part with my gun, which was the only means of defense I had, I joined the company.”¹⁴

Colonel John Kelsay’s Second Regiment fought in two skirmishes in March and April of 1856.¹⁵ Lewis was wounded in one of those battles. The irony of an African American fighting American Indians—one subjugated race fighting another—should not be lost on us.

He headed south again in the fall of 1858 to Yreka, California. By this time he had discovered that he could make far more money teaching violin and playing for dance schools than he ever could mining for gold.¹⁶ He earned another $400 toward his freedom and his lifelong dream. In 1859, after Louis had made his final payment to James Southworth to purchase his freedom, James Southworth circulated a petition in Lane County to protect “slave property,” which was presented to the state legislature. It is obvious that Louis’s dream did not quite coincide with James’s action.¹⁷ In the end, James did not withhold freedom from Louis, but he never gave him formal papers.

The headiness of Lewis’s newfound freedom added a new joy to everything he did. He had worked for years toward this dream, and it made all the difference in how the rest of his life would play out. All he accomplished created a life for himself.

He would finally settle in Buena Vista, in Polk County, Oregon, around 1870. He purchased land and established a blacksmith shop and livery stable on the 100-foot-wide Main Street in the heart of this little town of 183 people.¹⁸ By comparison with modern-day quiet Buena Vista, on a bluff overlooking the west bank of a sleepy portion of the Willamette River, this town was thriving, with two hotels and stores in general merchandise, boots, and groceries. Other businesses included a grist mill for flour, a sawmill for lumber, a butcher shop, and a saloon. The town had a doctor, a post office, and a two-story school that served the 147 students who would be present in the district in 1880. The Methodist Church in Buena Vista could seat 150 people. This was an industrial town, home to Smith’s Buena Vista Pottery, producing sewer pipe, stoneware, flower pots, vases, and firebrick, among other things, and employing 50 people in 1880. Steamboats, during a time of heavy dependency on river travel, carried Smith’s Buena Vista Pottery to its markets and also served to transport people from Buena Vista up the Willamette Valley. A Buena Vista ferry also operated then, as it does today, carrying people to the east side of the Willamette River.¹⁹

Lewis himself may have used that ferry to cross the river when he courted and later married Mary Cooper on 16 June 1873 in Salem.²⁰ ²¹ Mary had adopted a boy, Alvin McCleary, who was born in 1866 in San Francisco to Jamaican parents.²² Lewis would create a life for his new family that would have been impossible during his days of servitude. They lived on in Buena Vista for a few years, Alvin attending the two-story schoolhouse, Buena Vista Academy.²³ The principal of Buena Vista taught Lewis to read and write there.²⁴ And then they took off for a more untamed place.

Jim Doty suggested to Lewis that they look for land to homestead in the Alsea River Valley. Jim appears in many stories about Lewis, and must have been a very good friend. He was white, and 36 years old in 1880,²⁵ while Lewis was 50 that year. Lewis, in his own brand of humor, showing a deeply felt connection to Jim, said, “Jim Doty and I were the first two white men on the Alsea Bay.”²⁶

According to Alvin McCleary, Lewis’s stepson, “In 1879, Lew made a trip up the Alsea river with Jim Doty . . . and they decided to homestead. After travelling up and down the river they selected some land lying on both sides of the creek. Jim Doty, who had brought Lew, offered his companion first choice of land. Lew refused and then Jim selected the north side of the creek and Lew took the south side, which he said he preferred anyway as being on slightly higher ground. Then and there they homesteaded… A year later, in 1880, Lew brought his wife and me and we settled on the land.”²⁷

The valley begins, on the west side of the 1,230-foot Mary’s Peak summit of the Coast Range, as the Alsea River tumbles vigorously out of the mountains. The Coast Range serves to keep most of the rain in the valley, with an average rainfall of 60 inches each year.²⁸ Moss hangs like light-green ten-inch icicles from the limbs of trees. Mustard-colored lichen and lime-green moss cling to the limbs—a one-inch-thick coating on all sides of the branches, giving the impression of leafed-out spring trees in all seasons. The narrow Alsea River Valley, with a strip of bottom land south of the river, and then north, opens up into the broad Alsea Bay on the Pacific Ocean. The west end of Lewis’s homestead abutted the east end of Alsea Bay and extended down the valley to the east, on the south side of the river. Jim Doty’s family homesteaded directly across the river. The river was their transportation, because a reliable road did not traverse the length of the valley until the 1920s, keeping them in a bucolic time warp.

Lewis would clear land, plant, and build structures at a record-breaking speed. Over a period of six years, he cleared 10 to 12 acres each year, with animal power and a wooden plough. Between February 1880 and October 1885, when his homestead was “proved up,” he built an 18 x 24 foot house, with a 16-foot-square wing. He had 10 or 12 acres fenced and in cultivation, a small barn, an orchard, and about 27 acres cleared and sown in grass.²⁹

Alvin, speaking admiringly of his stepfather:

My foster-father, Lou Southworth, took up a place on the Alsea river about four miles above Waldport. Lou ran a scow here in early days and put people across the river or took them up and down the river, letting the tide do most of the work, though he had a pair of sweeps to help the progress of the scow. Lou was a good worker. He used to go out into Benton County, around Philomath and Corvallis, every summer to the hay harvest and wheat harvest. In this way he earned money for the winter supplies. When it came to meat there was no expense except for powder and lead. Lou had a good rifle and was a crack shot. We always had plenty of deer, elk, and bear meat, and we always had enough bear grease to fry the venison and elk in. Lou also would kill lots of wild geese and ducks, as well as grouse and American pheasants. There was plenty of salmon, trout, clams, and crabs there; so we lived well.³⁰

Lewis knew how to enjoy life, and lived with enthusiasm, humor, and generosity. Lewis was very fond of his master’s brother William’s granddaughter, Rhoda Ann Southworth Beem, whom he “almost raised.” Rhoda Ann’s daughter Nettie Beem, my great-aunt, told me a story about Lewis. Lewis told small Nettie and her brother Dewey that if they could catch a horse that he was training, they could have him. They ran and ran, trying to catch that horse. Nettie laughed about that in later years. Lewis knew that there was no chance the horse would allow them to catch him.³¹ That may have been the horse he later called Dewey, which he trained to do tricks in Oregon State Fair shows.³²

Lewis A. Southworth was about 5’6” tall,³³ wiry and lanky, built for hard work. No pictures survive of the athletic man he had been as a young man. Two photographs, taken in his later years, show a balding man, with white kinky hair fringing the back of his crown. He sports a white beard with no mustache. In one photograph he is dressed in a dark suit, with worn dusty boots, and sits in a rocking chair, gazing at a portrait of Lincoln hanging over the mantel of a dark, expansive fireplace. In the second photograph, Lewis is dressed in a light-colored suit, complete with vest. The bridge of his nose crinkles with a smile that extends to his eyes—eyes that see the humor and irony in life. He holds his violin in this photograph, a dear companion and instrument of joyous self-expression.

He played the fiddle for dances in Waldport with vigor, dancing as he played. As an Alsea Valley old-timer said, “Oh, boy, could he play the fiddle! He would sing, ‘Old Nigger³⁴ Lou . . .’ and he would get out there and dance with it.”

Dances were a cherished social outing, and people from inland Tidewater, where my relatives lived, traveled the twelve miles to Waldport by the sea in small boats down the Alsea River.³⁵

Generosity was a quality those around him came to identify with Lewis. Francis Gaten, who was a young boy living in the Alsea Bay area, said many years later that Lewis was the only fisherman on the river who would take the time to show him, as a child, how to pack the net for gill netting. Born in 1889, Gaten was treated to many stories during those days on the river with old man Lewis. When in his eighties, Gaten told this story about Louis’s encounter with a cougar, which shows Lewis’s good nature:

He and Doty was haying one year and they had a dog. And he went over in the crabapples and started barkin, barkin, barkin. He stayed in there barking. They called him out two or three times and he’d run back in and bark. Old Doty said, “There must be something in there.” So he went over and looked up in the crabapple and there sat a great big cougar. An awful big one. He come out and he told Old Louie, “Big cougar. Get your gun.” Well, Old Louie had one that he made. He run down and got the single-shot muzzle-loading proposition. He shot up there at that cougar. It was rabbit loaded and there wasn’t very much powder in it and it didn’t blow the shot clear through this old cougar. Down him come and he gave that dog a good maulin. The dog fought him good too. But Old Doty took the gun and weighed in and the first lick he broke the stock off and then he grabbed the barrel and he soon made mince meat out of that cougar. He come out a-draggin the cougar in one hand and the two pieces of gun in the other, and he didn’t say anything about his cougar.

“Look, Louie, what I done.”

And old Louie’s eyes was sticking out. “Yeah,” he said, “that is a good dog.”

“Look at here what I done, I broke the gun.”

“Oh,” he said, “it’s easy for me to make another gun, but it’s hard for me and you to make a dog like that one.”³⁶

Lewis had demonstrated an ability to find opportunities, work hard, enjoy life with humor, and share what he had and knew generously. He certainly heard derogatory racial remarks, but he could “dish it out” too.

Gaten told a story about Lewis, Jim Doty, and Dutchman Strope building a sawmill: “And every time they would saw something too short, Old Louie would say, ‘Stick a Dutchman under it.’ This little Dutchman had gotten just about enough of that and they got one there that was a little too short and he said, ‘Stick a God-damned nigger under that ’un.’”³⁷

Lewis, in 1883, donated one-half acre of land in Alsea Bay, at Oakland Landing, for a school, where a building was erected typical of unpainted clapboard-sided schools.³⁸ Perhaps he felt, because it was his land generously donated, that he should have more influence on decisions being made, and so the story from Francis Gaten goes:

There was three old fellers—Old Louie Southworth, Nick Constantine, and Old John Turk. One was a nigger, one was a Greek, one was a Turk. They’d hold meetings about, oh, they’d hold one at least once a month, and sometimes every week. That was what they lived for, them school meetings, ya know. And they could never get along. They would always have some kind of a falling out over them. Old Louie was there one day and things weren’t going just to suit him. He jumped up and says, “I makes a motion and I seconds it. This meetin’s adjourned.” And old Nick Constantine says, “Oh Louie, you cannot do dat.” “No, but I can punch you God-damned head in.” Well, they went at it. Us kids didn’t keep ’em from fightin’ it, either. . . They went down first. They clenched and then they went down. And then they got up on their feet again, and then they got down again. Old Louie just took Old Nick down, right down. And they landed right in the yellow jackets’ nest. They didn’t have on no hats. Nick was down so far on the ground, and Louie was kinda on top of him. These yellow jackets just swarmed on top of Old Louie’s head. Louie said, “I thought it was that Greek a-pecking me on the head.”³⁹

In these stories, you can hear the teller’s regard for Lewis’s pluck and admiration for the strength of character that exemplifies a true pioneer. You can also hear labeling. He was never just a man. He was viewed through a racial veil, always to be a “nigger.” It would be said of his stepson Alvin that even during the days of the KKK in Waldport, he was considered to be a decent, respectable citizen, and so “they left him strictly alone.”⁴⁰ He was respected, but not one of them, except for a few, like Jim Doty, who could see Lewis first as a person.

Lewis must have sometimes had a lonely existence, in a time when African Americans and whites did not easily mix. And because the African American population was so low in Oregon, especially in the rural areas where Lewis lived, he had to companion himself in creative ways. When the Baptists told him that he could not play his fiddle and go to their church, his course of action was clear:

Was brought up a Baptist. But the brethren would not stand for my fiddle, which was about all the company I had much of the time. So I told them to keep me in the church with my fiddle if they could, but to turn me out if they must; for I could not think of parting with the fiddle. I reckon my name isn’t written in their books here any more; but I somehow hope it’s written in the big book up yonder, where they aren’t so particular about fiddles.

Every man has his own way of looking at things and lovin’ them. You have yours and I have mine; and my way is to love this old friend of mine that always pleased me and never went back on me.

[He said that after a person plays his fiddle], “he knows he’s happier and better, and his next day’s work is easier. He has a smile and a kind word for everyone he meets, and everyone has a smile and a kind word for him. The world is heavenly to that man, and his feelin’s are nigh to religious.”⁴¹

In 1901, Lewis’s wife, Mary Cooper Southworth, died.⁴² He continued to live in Alsea Bay until 1910,⁴³ but by August that year he had moved to Corvallis in the Willamette Valley. He purchased a house on the corner of 4th and Adams, in a neighborhood of Victorian houses like the ones nearby that still survive and are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ In the next few years his health took a turn for the worse. Lewis worked hard until he could work no more, in the days before Social Security. Most people must have done that, especially if they did not have family to take care of them. At the end of his life he ran into financial difficulties and members of his community came to his rescue, raising money to pay the rest of his mortgage.⁴⁶

He had married Josephine Jackson, who was thirty-one years his junior,⁴⁷ in 1913, when he was eighty-four years old.⁴⁸ Josephine, a nurse, was taking care of him, and they married—he lying in bed and she standing alongside.⁴⁹ He died in 1917 and was buried in Crystal Lake Cemetery in Corvallis.⁵⁰

Years later, a woman named Jessica Dole would take up a cause in the name of Lewis Southworth.⁵¹ Two features on Lewis’s land on the Alsea River were named Darkey Creek and Darkey Road. Darkey Creek was a branched creek that ran through Lewis’s homestead property, with a west branch of 2½ miles and an east branch approximately one mile long. Jackie fought—and, surprisingly, it was a fight—to get the names of the creek and road changed to Southworth Creek and Southworth Road. Others argued that it was part of history, without regard for the hearts and minds of African Americans who would see it today, and without thought of the man they had been named for.

In the end, don't we all have the same need " to be truly seen " beyond the externals of skin color, size, gender. If we could talk to Lewis we would say:

In the end, do we not all have the same need “to be truly seen” beyond the externals of skin color, size, and gender? If we could talk to Lewis, we would say:

We see you now, Lewis. You did not leave a legacy of descendants, but you left a legacy of vigor, joy, generosity, love of life, and maybe a little mischief. You leave a legacy in the hearts of us, reaching back in time, who feel we know you. Every time we drive past Southworth Creek, in the verdant Alsea River Valley, we think of you and you live on.

Footnotes

1. “Aged Colored Veteran Answers to Call,” Weekly Gazette Times, Corvallis, Oregon, 28 June 1917, p. 3, col. 5.

2. James B. Southworth, Oregon Donation Land Claim entry file, Roseburg Land Office, certificate 866, T16S R5W, WM, Sec. 16, 17, 20, 21, 1 January 1866; microfilm, Oregon and Washington Donation Land Files (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 2000).

3. John B. Horner, “Oldest Negro Now Lives Here,” Weekly Gazette Times, Corvallis, Oregon, 16 July 1915, p. 3, cols. 1–2.

4. Elizabeth McLagan, A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788–1940 (Portland, Oregon: The Georgian Press, 1980), 19.

5. Ibid., 187.

6. Ibid., 42.

7. Ibid., 185.

8. Ibid., 28.

9. Ibid., 28.

10. Weekly Gazette Times, Corvallis, Oregon, 16 July 1915.

11. John B. Horner, “Uncle Lou and His Violin,” in Days and Deeds in the Oregon Country (Portland, Oregon: J. K. Gills, 1928), 139–146.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Charles H. Carey, General History of Oregon (Portland, Oregon: Binfords & Mort, 1971), 597.

16. Weekly Gazette Times, Corvallis, Oregon, 16 July 1915.

17. “Petition of James B. Southworth and Others Praying the Recognition of the Right of Legislative Protection of Slave Property,” 4 January 1859, Item No. 10974, Oregon Territorial and Provisional Papers; microfilm reel 73, Oregon Territorial and Provisional Records, United States Department of State (Salem, Oregon: Oregon State Archives).

18. Isaac Connett and Mary Eliza Connett to Lewis Southworth, Polk County Deeds, Book 7:12, Polk County Courthouse, Dallas, Oregon.

19. Howard McKinley Corning, “Ghost Towns on the Willamette of the Riverboat Period,” Oregon Historical Quarterly48 (June 1947): 55–68.

20. Alsea Bay and River: Early Recollections, Alvin McCleary file, ALSI Historical & Genealogical Society, Waldport, Oregon.

21. Jeanne Custer and Daraleen Wade, comps., Marion County Oregon Marriage Record 1871–1874, vol. 2 (Salem, Oregon: Willamette Valley Genealogical Society, 1979).

22. Alsea Bay and River: Early Recollections, Alvin McCleary file.

23. Fred Lockley, “Impressions and Observations of the Journal Man,” Oregon Journal, Portland, Oregon, 23 December 1932, p. 6.

24. Bob Zybach, “Southworth Made Mark on Region,” Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, Oregon, 21 February 1991; clipping from Louis Southworth file, Benton County Historical Museum, Philomath, Oregon.

25. James H. Doty household, 1880 U.S. census, Benton County, Oregon, population schedule, Lower Alsea, Enumeration District 9, p. 102B, dwelling 8, family 8; digital image by subscription, Ancestry.com; from National Archives microfilm T9, roll 1080.

26. Oral history interview with Paul Keady and Francis Gatens, audiotape (Portland, Oregon: Oregon Historical Society, ca. 1970s).

27. Alsea Bay and River: Early Recollections, Alvin McCleary file.

28. Guin Library, “Wind, Temperature, Pressure, Precipitation,” HMSC Weather Summaries, Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Science Center.

29. Lewis Southworth homestead entry file, Oregon City Land Office, certificate 2015, T13S R11W Sec. 26, 10 March 1886; General Land Office Records, Bureau of Land Management, Record Group 49; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

30. Oregon Journal, Portland, Oregon, 23 December 1932.

31. Interview with Nettie Beem Haggerty, Enterprise, Oregon, by Peggy R. Burrell (Peggy Baldwin), 1978.

32. Oral history interview with Paul Keady and Francis Gatens.

33. Height based on photographic comparison with standard 14-inch violin.

34. The word “nigger,” which is repugnant to many today, is used only when in quotation. Its historical usage reflects the racial attitudes of the time.

35. Oral history interview with Paul Keady and Francis Gatens.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, Oregon, 21 February 1991.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. Horner, “Uncle Lou and His Violin,” in Days and Deeds in the Oregon Country, 130–146.

42. Cemetery Records and Tombstone Inscriptions of Benton County (Corvallis, Oregon: Mid-Valley Genealogical Society, 1990), 118.

43. Louis A. Southworth household, 1910 U.S. census, Lincoln County, Oregon, population schedule, Alsea Precinct, Enumeration District 166, p. 6A (penned), 187A (stamped), dwelling 122, family 122; digital image by subscription, Ancestry.com; from National Archives microfilm T624, roll 1281.

44. G. A. Whiting and Retta G. Whiting to Louis Southworth, Benton County Deeds, vol. 52:226, Benton County Courthouse, Corvallis, Oregon.

45. “Walking Tour of Selected Historic Sites and Structures in Downtown Corvallis,” City of Corvallis, Oregon.

46. “Ellsworth Post Boosts for Ex-Slave,” Weekly Gazette Times, Corvallis, Oregon, 26 April 1917, p. 5; “Helping Aged Negro Soldier L. Southworth,” Weekly Gazette Times, Corvallis, Oregon, 28 June 1917, p. 3.

47. George F. Sanborn household, 1910 U.S. census, Multnomah County, Oregon, population schedule, 2-Wd Portland, Enumeration District 131, p. 8A (penned), 192A, dwelling 63, family 58; digital image by subscription, Ancestry.com; from National Archives microfilm T624, roll 1285.

48. Lewis Southworth and Josephine Jackson, marriage license no. 25703, Multnomah County Marriage Book 33:392, Portland, Oregon.

49. Oral history interview with Paul Keady and Francis Gatens.

50. Louis Southworth, certificate of death, local register 31 (1917), Bureau of Vital Statistics, Oregon State Board of Health, Portland, Oregon.

51. Brian T. Meehan, “Historical Name or Slur?” Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, 22 July 1999, p. A01.