Photo Stirs ‘Lebanon of Yore’ Memories
By Jo Sommer
Memories of yore have certainly been stirred by the “Lebanon of Yore” picture printed in the Jan. 5 express (page 11). By combining facts given by several informants in telephone conversations, we have compiled a story to go with the picture. R is reprinted here to make it easier for our readers to identify each building.
From the foreground of the photo, we are looking north on Main Street in the intersection of Main and Ash. The store building in the right foreground was built in 1890, by John N. Crandall, grandfather of Mrs. Grace Hardin, 46 E. Vine.
This was the first building constructed by Crandall after he settled here in Lebanon and thereby hangs a tale. It seems Crandall stopped over in Albany for lunch enroute to Roseburg where he planned to settle. While in Albany, he telephoned Frank Miller in Lebanon. The two men had been Civil War buddies.
“Lebanon is a booming little city, John,” Miller said, “Why don’t you settle down here instead of going on to Roseburg?”
“Well, my tool box has already been shipped to Roseburg, Frank,” Crandall explained, “Guess I’d better follow it.”
Apparently Miller was a pretty good persuader, however, for Crandall did send for his tool chest and settled here. Mrs. Hardin can still pick out several buildings here in town which were built by him. The historic Providence Church northeast of Lebanon is one of the landmarks constructed by him. Three sons, Ira, Louis and Albert, later followed him to Lebanon and worked with him on some of these buildings. They used to operate a planing mill on Main Street to the present Safeway Shopping enter area. Mrs. Harden is a daughter of Ira Crandall.
Old Post Office
“The store in the photo was the Lebanon Post Office when grandfather first built it,” Mrs. Hardin said, “Later it disintegrated into a second hand store. Mrs. Frank Miller, was the first postmaster in that building.”
Mrs. Harden recalls that the upper part of the building used to be the meeting place of the McAbee Lodge. Mrs. Glenn Tucker identifies the store as Gallagher Second Hand Store and Guy Mackey and/or Howard Collins recalls the name Win Bogart connected with it. We assume by this fact that it had changed hands through the years.
All agree that the old store was later moved to what is now the Foodtown parking lot across the street from the Lebanon Express office on Grant Street, Cruise’s Paint Store was located there for years. Howard Collins, Route 1, Lebanon, remembers buying a bicycle form Win Bogart when the building was still a second hand store in 1908.
Now back to the photo of the Main and Ash street intersection. The first house beyond the store on the right was the home of Sam Thomas, according to Mrs. Harden’s memory. The Crandall home — where Mrs. Harden spent her childhood — is either the second or third house on the right. She does know that it is the one with the tall cedar trees in front of it. This would appear to be the tall one with the chimney showing in the photo.
“I have many memories of our home in that location,” she said, “and the board walks which we traveled to and from school. The cedar trees grew to be very large before we sold the property in 1925 and the trees had to be removed.”
Mrs. Tucker identifies the trees beyond the cedars as locusts in front of the F. M. Miller house, now Lowe’s Trailer Court.
Childhood Home Moved
Mrs. Harden relates here pleasure when the oil company officials who bought their Main Street property asked her if she would like to have her childhood home. It was moved around the corner facing Vine Street and she still lives in it today.
“I hated to see the old tree go, too,” she said, “When they had to be moved, we had the limbs taken to the mill and made into lumber. I still have wardrobes lined with the cedar lumber and some of the lumber stacked in the basement. It should be sold and put to good use.”
Identifications of homes on the left side of the street scene in the photo are agreed upon by several of our informants, Dr. Laird’s home is the first one, located where Sharon’s Fine Foods is now. Next is the Joel Mayer home and the third one, behind the trees was Hulda Miller’s home.
All who called seem to agree that the second house on the left, the former Mayer home, was moved back on the block and is the one which is now home to Lou Grey (west of Sharon’s on Ash Street).
In the left background of the photo (white house) is the Harney place. Even further back in Lebanon history, it was the S. H. Meyer home, Mrs. Harden recalls.
There you have the contents of several phone calls — all resulting form one “Lebanon of Yore” picture.
The Lebanon Express (Lebanon, Oregon)
17 Jan 1966
page 1