Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/369



REMINISCENCES OF MARTHA E. GILLIAM COLLINS 361

to the Willamette Valley we had a pretty hard time as we had been delayed till the fall storms overtook us. At Burnt River we were met by an old-time friend of father's, James Waters. They generally called him General Waters. He took us to his cabin on Tualatin Plains where we stayed while father traveled over the valley looking for a land claim. Father found a place that suited him near what is now the city of Dallas, in fact the western part of Dallas is built on our donation land claim. I guess there is no doubt of my being the oldest living settler in Dallas for I settled here more than 70 years ago.

"After we had moved to our place in Polk county, Colonel Waters came and stopped with us for a while. I remember his visit because while he was staying with us he hunted up a broad smooth-grained shake, as we used to call the hand-made shingles, and whittling it perfectly smooth with his jack knife he printed the letters of the alphabet on it and taught me my letters. As we had no pencils in those days they generally melted some bar lead or a bullet and ran it in a crack and used that for a pencil, but he had a better scheme than that.

"In the creek near our house there were chunks of soft red rock called keel. He found a long splinter of keel and printed the letters on the shake and I had a mighty good sub- stitute for a hornbook and in no time I could read my letters, and he didn't stop 'till he had' taught me to make them for myself and name every one of them.

"Eugene Skinner stopped with us for a while. He took up a place at what is now Eugene. Skinner's Butte at Eugene is named for him and because he was the first settler there they named the town after his first name Eugene. He had the first house there. He hired father to build it for him. You see he went back in the spring of 1845 to get his family. They came out the following year and Mrs. Skinner stayed at our house. Mrs. Skinner gave me the only school book I ever owned. It was an A, B, C book. She called it a primer. I went to school altogether three months. I went for a month