History of Early Pioneer Families of Hood River, Oregon. Compiled by Mrs. D.M. Coon

MRS. MATTHEW HARBISON AND FAMILY                         1886
Robert Ellsworth Harbison

     The original Harbison family consisted of Matthew H. Harbison, father, Mary Weir Harbison, mother, and their three sons: Luther J., J. Samuel and Robert E. Harbison.
     The parents were born in South Carolina, of Revolutionary stock, in the year l833. The families of both parents emigrated to the wilderness of southern Indiana, where the town of Bloomington now stands, in the year 1835. There the parents were married and later moved to Warren County, Iowa, where the three sons were born.
     Father enlisted in the Union army in 1862, when Robert E. was a babe one year old. Mother then moved to La Crosse County, Wis., and kept house for her bachelor brother, James Weir, who owned a farm.
     She soon bought out his interests and here we lived until all the sons had passed their majority. Brother Luther went to California and Mother, Sam and I moved to the Big Bend section of Eastern Washington, which was then known as Washington Territory.
     This move was made in 1884. The fall of 1886 we sold out our interests there and moved to Hood River Valley, being induced to invest in that locality by the Ranch families whom we had known in Wisconsin and who had preceded us to Hood River by about two years.
     After some prospecting about the valley, we bought the farm that we owned so long, from Peter Neal in Sept. 1886. It consisted of 160 acres, we paying $4500 for it. About 30 acres of bottom land was under cultivation. There were two old shacks of houses, the big barn which still stands and the old sawmill.
     This old mill was quite a crude affair being known as a sash mill. Uncle Robert Rand is fond of saying, to this day, that it went up one week and down the next. But it was something of a hog for sawing logs, and when water in the creek was plentiful, had been known to chew up some three or four thousand feet of logs per day.
     Peter Neal had the pick of beautiful yellow pine in his day and found a market for the soft, clear lumber in The Dalles. He sold this lumber at about $90 per thousand. We never made but a start at sawing lumber with the old mill. It was operated by a horizontal water wheel known as the Parker wheel. This wheel was bolted or rather hooped to a wooden shaft which connected directly to the sash in which the saw blade hung, by a long crank. The water to operate the wheel was impounded by a high dam, the pond covering several acres. In January 1887, some five months after we had bought the property, we had one of Hood River Valley's big winter floods. There was quite a bunch of logs in the pond which were not properly held back by a boom. When the flood was at its height these logs crowded down and lodged on top of the dam. The mill was framed against the dam and in the middle of the creek just below. Finally the logs rolled overt striking the under structure of the mill. The result was, that still, dam and everything was swept away in a twinkling, and strewn from the site probably all the way to Astoria. We salvaged some lumber and other stuff from the banks of the creek a mile or more below and that was all. That flood gave Sam and I what I think was the very closest call of our lives.
     When we saw that the logs were piling up on the dam we became anxious and were putting on our rubber coats for the purpose of going into the pond in an old boat to try and push them back. If the logs had held five minutes longer, I am quite sure that Mother would have been bereft of her sons, and Lucy Rand, whom I had married scarcely three weeks previously, would have been a widow.
     For a couple of years after the loss of the old mill we stuck to farming and clearing up the land but as there was still a considerable amount of good mill timber in the country the lure of saw-milling was too great for us so we rebuilt. We did not reconstruct the dam but took the waters of Neal Creek out of its channel in a mill race. We put in a Chandler & Taylor Side Cutting Mulay Saw. Also a planer. After planning for the saw milling outfit, it also occurred to us that everything was needed in the neighborhood in the way of grinding machinery. Grandfather Rogers had set up a pair of French Burrs with cleaning and bolting machinery on Phelps Creek, some years before and as it was not very paying, offered to sell the machinery to us. We bought this and provided additional room for its installation. We manufactured lumber quite extensively but, I think, we were more widely known for the grinding which we did. The plant was known as Harbison Brothers Mills but we gave the grinding department the name of "Pioneer Mills". Brother Sam was farmer, logger and all around outside man, while I was, at all times, the operator of the mills, doing the work with one man to assist. Grinding was only done on Saturday of each week and I operated this department alone.
     Grists were brought from near and far. The Mt. Hood people brought us wheat to be made into white and graham flour, and big loads of corn were hauled over from Mosier to be made into corn meal.
     There were several old time millers in the vicinity, John Rankin and Mr. Joss in particular and through them I was taught the art of dressing millstones. I made very good white flour as the old burr flour went, but our best trade was in graham flour. We kept the stores of Hood River with this for years and I sometimes meet an old timer who expresses a wish that he might yet obtain a sack of our old product. When we entered Hood River Valley in 1886 the amount of cleared land in it was very small. To look up the valley from the main road, say about opposite the Maxwelton Orchards, it appeared as an unbroken forest. Besides the one main road leading up the East side there was but one lateral, all of the others having been opened in our day. The main road went out of town over the high hill on the Button place and thence on through the east side practically as it is now. The single lateral branched off just about where the present road turns west to go to the Paasch place. Its course was southwest, crossing the Peter Mohr lands, which are now owned by A.I. Mason, crossing the small creek just about at the same point as now, thence across the lands now owned by M. Hill and Wilson Fike and on to the old mill. It followed the creek about where the mill race is located and forded the creek just under the home buildings of the Dr. Allen farm. Thence diagonally S.W. to the Odell Corners. The writer obtained forms for writing road petitions from the late Newton Clark and wrote petitions for the vacating in sections of all that old lateral road and for the locating of nearly every new road on the east aide, never getting anything but glory for the services. The hardest change was when the road between the mill and Odell was vacated and the new one substituted which crossed Neal Creek below the mill. A high bridge was required and the County of Wasco balked at the expense. Sam and I finally compromised with the county and everybody, by donating all the timbers for the struct-ure, the county paying for the planks. Most of the work of construction was done by holding a big 'bee", but the county, I think, gave the late A.H. Tieman and Orton Rhoades something for taking charge of the work. Our old friend Hans Lage was supervisor at the time and gave effective assistance. Several years later brother Sam was supervisor and it was under his tenure of office that the change was made in the grade out of town. Getting the second section of cliff blasted off was the first big job. The County agreed to stand halt of the expense. I think the total cost was around $800. Sam canvassed the town for subscriptions and rode horseback all over the East Side clear to Mt. Hood. He finally collected about $400 and let the contract to a Mr. Brown of The Dalles for doing the rock work. The grade up to the Foss place was opened up for travel by donation work from all the east side people. I can recall what a terrible "Slough of Despond" the little ravine just below Mrs. Foss's house always was in the winter time. The mud was always axle deep. When Sam was supervisor he covered this strip of mud with gravel hauled from the pit on what was known as the Johnson place. This kept us out of the mud in good shape and was the beginning of gravel roads on our side of the river.
     Our old sawmill, I am sure, was a great assistance to the development of the East Side. People who needed lumber could exchange logs for it, and when lumber was needed for public purposes, while others gave work, we donated lumber. It was in this way that the Congregational parsonage was built in Hood River. We contri-buted all the frame lumber for that building. Some two or three years after moving to Hood River we added to our acreage by purchasing fifty three acres additional from the Mitchell estate, paying ten dollars per acre for it. This tract constitutes the larger part of Wilson Fike's orchard tract at the present time. We did lots of land clearing and must have added two hundred acres of cultivated land to Hood River Valley's area. We joined with the late John W. Hinrichs and Hans Lage and bought the first real thrashing machine that was ever owned in the valley. The two fore mentioned men and brother Sam operated the machine every fall for many years.
     On January 1, 1887, the writer and Lacy Rand, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. M.V. Rand were married at her home, Rev. V.J.W. Eldredge officiating. Miss Rand had moved to the valley from Iowa in 1884 and had completed her schooling in Hood River's public schools under Professor T.R. Coon. She secured a certificate and taught the winter of 1885-86 in the Pine Grove district but the location of the school house was not the same as it is now. It was a log structure and stood on the back part of the land now owned by Martin Dragseth near the line between his and Mr. Lage's places. The land was then owned by Edward Feak, grandfather of my wife. Her pupils were made up largely from the families of Captain Jackson, D.A. Turner, John Mohr, Peter Mohr, Hans Lage, Hoek and a few others.
     From my union with Lucy Rand we have had five children born to us, all living. Blanche Irene, (Mrs. John D. Bergen) Hester Elizabeth, (Mrs. Glen Payne) Ruth Letitia, Mary Alice and Robert E. Jr., the latter being born July 4, 1905. About 1903 brother Sam and I began to divide our interests and some three years later I disposed of all my holdings and moved into town. In 1908 and 1909 was half owner and manager of the Hood River Box Company, the other stock being owned by the Davidson Fruit Company. In 1911 sold out everything and moved to Hillsboro, Ore.
     In 1901 brother Sam married Emma Smith, a Wisconsin girl, from their union they have three children: Henry, Leslie and Winifred. He closed out most of his interests about 1903 and moved to Albany, but sold out there and bought a farm in Yamhill county close to Layfaette where they all reside.
     In April 1913 mother died at LaFayette while at Sam's home and is buried in one of LaFayette's Cemeteries. Father lies in an unknown grave at Memphis Tenn.

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