Digging Jacksonville – February 2023

In January, local archaeologist Chelsea Rose and Tiah Edmunson-Morton of the Oregon State University Hops and Brewing Archives traveled to Lisbon, Portugal to present a paper on the recent archaeology done at the Eagle Brewery and Saloon. Established in 1856 and recognized as the first brewery in town, and one of the earliest in the state, the site of the Eagle Brewery and Saloon is now a private residence owned and stewarded by heritage-minded Ken Gregg and Frank De Luca. The Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology (SOULA) was hired to conduct archaeological investigations on the property in 2021. SOULA teamed up with Tiah, and the result is a fascinating story about early brewing in Oregon!

Largely assumed to consist of a male-dominated workforce and clientele, in reality, many early Oregon breweries were actually family affairs. While women, and children, were often intimately involved with making and selling beer, their roles are invisible in the documentary record. Nineteenth century census records for Oregon list just one woman as a brewer. That woman was Fredericka Wetterer of Jacksonville, Oregon. While Fredericka was most likely not the only female brewer, due to her circumstance as a widow, her role was made visible upon the death of her husband. Fredericka came from a brewing family that settled to the north in Albany and ran the brewery for several years. The brewery closed around 1890, and the family lived on the property until the 1950s. The property was then owned and renovated by artist Eugene Bennet. Luckily, Eugene, like Ken and Frank, recognized the importance of the site and took care to restore the surviving saloon which you can walk by on South Oregon Street.