Unknown Publication-1945

Early Days of Elochoman Valley
As told by Martha (Sales) Page

Made Own Candles

Vignetting those early days, she could milk a cow, but was not required 
to do so often.  She did maker her butter and cheese – and had lots of 
it.  She made her own candles for at least four years and is a little 
provoked that some of the children have misplaced the moulds.  She 
could cook a little, but was blessed with a husband who never 
complained about her cookery, so in time she became a marvelous cook.  
She preserved her fruits and vegetables for the winter by putting them 
in large cans and sealing them with red wax.  She helped a little with 
the haying, but not much – yet knows the feel of reins which came over 
the backs of both oxen and horses.

She remembers quilting and sewing bees in the valley and reckons they 
must have been called bees because the woman talk of the day “buzzed 
all afternoon”.  She went to dances occasionally, but her husband 
didn’t dance, but just preferred to visit around while she swung around 
in the square dances, the cotillions, and the lancers and the 
schottische.  And she recalls how the two of them walked home after the 
dance, many times, hand in hand, with the sun coming up.

Remembers Peddler

Martha remembers vividly a peddler named “Levine” who staggered from 
the waterfront at irregular intervals under the tonnage of two immense 
pack sacks, “each as big as that stove there.”  Levine brought with him 
almost everything that Buttercup of “Pinafore” fame brought to the 
British tars from her bumboat, and besides that he brought men’s and 
women’s underwear, corsets, dresses, suits, corset stays, shoe laces, 
blankets, sheets, etcetera.  Though he was often weary from his great 
load, Levine had an express train mind, always getting to the Page home 
for meal time.

Listening to the news over the radio, she opines she “wouldn’t trade 
the 87-year-old world I have lived in for the troubled one of today”.  
Asked whether she could pass on some advice to young girls of today in 
order for them to live as long and look so well, she smiled and said:  
“Let ‘em figure it out for themselves like I did”.  There’s something 
magic in the advice when one comes to think about it.

Martha remembers hard winters, sitting at sickbeds, mourning the 
passing of some of her children, worrying when her husband and a 
neighbor, Jack Foster, left for Astoria in a small boat in an ice-
spotted river to bring back a coffin with which to lay her oldest 
daughter to rest.  She lived through the worry of a baby so tiny it 
would have been put into a incubator today.  Yet she was blessed with 
priceless neighbors, one of whom, Mrs. Charles Hanigan, took the child 
to Portland for medical attention.  The child grew to be a big 
strapping fellow who lost his life in a logging accident.



Exchanged Babies

The trip to Portland was necessary because there were no doctors in 
Cathlamet then.  Yet it posed a real problem for both Mrs. Hanigan and 
Mrs. Page, who were both feeding infant babies at their breasts.  
However, Mrs. Hanigan was up while Mrs. Page was still in bed.  So in 
true pioneer fashion, they exchanged babies for the duration of the 
round trip to Portland.  There was no false modesty then, and the 
science of bottle fed babies had not yet reached its present state of 
efficiency.

Martha Page, at 87, is still blessed with a happy heart.  And is our 
memory of that happy visit, we keep praying that it will help carry her 
through many more winters and summers.  The queens with happy hearts 
deserve to live a long, long time – to bless the young with their 
example and their philosophy.