Pioneer Profiles
Crime and Punishment in a Gold Rush Town – by Carolyn Kingsnorth
Pioneer Profiles – November 2019
This year’s Meet the Pioneers tours of Jacksonville’s historic cemetery included several vignettes portraying 19th Century crime and punishment. In one, a man named Matt Shannon had been killed in an […]
Thomas Fletcher Royal “Minister and Educator” – by Carolyn Kingsnorth
Pioneer Profiles – October 2019
Reverend Thomas Fletcher Royal, known as “Fletcher” to his family and “T.F.” to his friends, arrived with his family by wagon train in the Rogue Valley on October 27, 1853. Gold […]
Peter Britt, Part 3 – “Photographer, Visionary, Entrepreneur” – by Carolyn Kingsnorth
Pioneer Profiles – September 2019
The past two Pioneer Profiles have partially explored the public persona of Peter Britt, the pioneer Swiss photographer famed for documenting Southern Oregon’s people, activities, and landscapes, […]
Peter Britt, Part 2 – “Father of Southern Oregon’s Orchard, Wine, and Horticulture Industries” – by Carolyn Kingsnorth
Pioneer Profiles – August 2019
In July, Pioneer Profiles highlighted Peter Britt’s renown as photographer, artist, and documenter of pioneer life in Southern Oregon. However, Britt was also an avid gardener and […]
Peter Britt, Part 1 – “Photographer, Visionary, Entrepreneur” – by Carolyn Kingsnorth
Pioneer Profiles – July 2019
It’s Britt season, so what better subject for summer’s Pioneer Profiles than Peter Britt, whose pioneer homestead is now the site of Britt Festivals, the Britt […]
What’s in a Name? – by Carolyn Kingsnorth, based on research provided by Ben Truwe
Pioneer Profiles – June 2019
Part of being human is to identify things by naming them so that we can relate to them, personalize them, own them if you will. My […]
The Legend of “Aunty” Zany Ganung – by Carolyn Kingsnorth
Pioneer Profiles – March 2019
“Aunty” Zany Ganung is a Jacksonville legend. According to that legend, Zany returned to Jacksonville in May of 1861 after an “all-nighter” nursing one of her physician husband Lewis’s patients. What […]
“Judge” William Mason Colvig: Private Practice, Public Orator – Part 2 – by Carolyn Kingsnorth
Pioneer Profiles – February 2019
Given the two-month time lapse since Part 1 of William Mason Colvig’s pioneer profile, let’s begin with a quick recap of the Judge Colvig story.
Born in Missouri in 1845, Colvig had […]
“Judge” William Mason Colvig: Jack of All Trades, Public Servant, Part 1 – by Carolyn Kingsnorth
Pioneer Profiles – December 2018/January 2019
William Mason Covig’s Christmas greeting is written in Chinook, the “trading language” used between immigrants and the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest until around 1900. Colvig professed to have […]
Father Francis Xavier Blanchet: Minister to All! – by Carolyn Kingsnorth
Pioneer Profiles – September 2018
On September 22, 2018, the Friends of St. Joseph’s are hosting “A Bid for History”—a dinner and auction to support the ongoing care and preservation of Jacksonville’s classical 1868 Catholic Rectory, […]