Soap Creek Valley · Monograph #5 · 37 of 46

18. Stellmacher House Photograph

18. Stellmacher House Photograph of John Jacob & Wilma Rohner — printed p. 86 — recorded September 30, 1990 at Jake Rohner's home, Benton County, Oregon (afternoon). Every printed page has its own permanent link.

Zybach, Bob 1993. John Jacob and Wilma Rohner. Family Farming on Coffin Butte Between World Wars, Benton County, Oregon: 1919-1941. Soap Creek Valley History Project, Monograph #05. Oregon State University Research Forests and College of Forestry, Corvallis, Oregon: 132 pp.

p. 47 = printed page 47 of the original book; the link on each page number is a permanent address you can send to anyone.

Provenance

From: #5 John Jacob & Wilma Rohner
Narrator: John Jacob "Jake" Rohner and Wilma "Willie" Rohner
Recorded: September 30, 1990 · Jake Rohner's home, Benton County, Oregon (afternoon)
Interviewer: Bob Zybach
Printed pages: p. 86
Original: http://www.nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Oral_Histories/Soap_Creek_Valley/05_Rohner/Zybach_1993.pdf
Accessioned: From Bob Zybach’s upload, 23 August 2026

Part III. Printed session note: "The following transcnpt [transcript] was made from an interview with fake [Jake] and Willie at fake's [Jake's] home, during the afternoon of September 30, 1990. After reviewing the initial transcripts, fake [Jake] and Willie provided written corrections and additions. These com,nents [comments] appear throughout the manuscript enclosed in [brackets] and include the initials of the person that has provided the information." Both narrators present; speakers are marked in the printed text as [JAKE] and [WILMA]. A note "Pause in Recording" appears at p.64.

p. 86

18. Stellmacher House Photograph

Bob Zybach: Who's that, can you tell?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] That is a picture, I know two of my sisters was there, but I don't know who the third person is, and I can't see it good enough. But that's just the old home, just the way it looked when we was gonna have to leave before too long.

Bob Zybach: I don't think we've put anything on the tape about where that house came from.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Oh, that house came from the Steilmacher place, about a mile and a half to the east. And Steilmachers built a new house, and then the person that bought this place, from Joe Smith, decided to buy that house and move it. So they put four wagons under it, one under each corner, and they moved it up there, cut some trees and stuff to get through, and moved it clear to the back end of the farm. Why they chose the back end of the farm, I don't know, because there was that much more road to build and that much farther to move the house. So then the fellow gave up the place, decided he couldn't make the payments or something, I don't know, so Joe Smith repossessed it, then he sold it to my father and mother. And it was still on skids, the house when they bought it. So they put it down on the foundation, and my father built a road into it, it was all rock out of the rock quarry that we started on Coffin Butte on the east end of our place, and rocked the road.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Do you suppose that's the only place maybe they could get good water or something? Who dug that well? Did dad do it?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Dad dug the well. So it wasn't because of the well.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] That was good water.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] It seemed so ridiculous to put the house on the far side of the place when they had to build the road because they could have got by with half as much road as we put on there.

Bob Zybach: Was it more private there maybe?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Well, there wasn't no problem with privacy, then, because there weren't that many close neighbors.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] About one car every five or ten minutes went by on the highway down there.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] The ground sloped a little bit where the house was, not all that much. But

Speaker attribution inferred from typography where the printed page prints only Q and A.

How to cite this item

The first line is the citation as it is printed in the original. Use it when you cite the work itself. Use the second when you cite this page.

As printed: Zybach, Bob 1993. John Jacob and Wilma Rohner. Family Farming on Coffin Butte Between World Wars, Benton County, Oregon: 1919-1941. Soap Creek Valley History Project, Monograph #05. Oregon State University Research Forests and College of Forestry, Corvallis, Oregon: 132 pp.
This page: Rohner 1993. 18. Stellmacher House Photograph, p. 86. America's School Trust Library, The Zybach Collection. https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/m05-rohner/18-stellmacher-house-photograph/ (accessed 2026).
Cite this passage: Rohner 1993, p. 86 — Monograph #05:86
https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/m05-rohner/18-stellmacher-house-photograph/#p86 Swap 86 for whichever printed page you are quoting: every page number in the margin is its own address.
Permalink: https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/m05-rohner/18-stellmacher-house-photograph/
Original PDF: http://www.nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Oral_Histories/Soap_Creek_Valley/05_Rohner/Zybach_1993.pdf

More on citing this collection: How to cite the Zybach Collection.

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