Soap Creek Valley · Person
James Hanish
James Hanish— narrator, co-author, mentioned in the Soap Creek Valley oral history series.
narratorco-authormentioned
Provenance
- Dates
- 1910 – unknown
- Work
- Logger
- Where this comes from
- #6 James Hanish, p. 74, narrator profile; the 1999 thesis, p. 39, Table 4 (informant profile); the 1999 thesis, p. 39, born (from Table 4 lifetime); #6 James Hanish, p. 74, contributors / front matter credit; SCARC OH 006 finding aid: interview dates and cassette counts; #3 Donald Dickey, 11-13, p. 18, p. 44, p. 50, printed back index; #5 John Jacob & Wilma Rohner, p. 6, printed back index; #6 James Hanish, p. 1, p. 76, p. 79, printed back index; #6 James Hanish, p. 52, printed back index; #7 Charlie Olson, p. 35, p. 36, printed back index; #8 Neil Vanderburg, p. 14, p. 30, p. 39, p. 42, p. 58, p. 66, p. 80, printed back index; #8 Neil Vanderburg, p. 23, printed back index; #9 Eugene Glender, p. 19, printed back index; #12 Wanda Marcks Cook, p. 35, printed back index; #14 Charles and Norman Hindes, p. 3, p. 37, printed back index; the 1999 thesis, p. 5, p. 11, p. 20, p. 22, p. 39, p. 46, p. 49, p. 60, p. 61, p. 68, p. 81, p. 84, p. 89, p. 90, p. 92, p. 96, p. 119, p. 120, p. 124, p. 126, p. 129, p. 143, p. 190, p. 192, p. 198, p. 232, p. 237, people mentioned in the thesis; the 1999 thesis, p. 5, Table 1 citation rule: cited as (Hanish 1994), referenced as (Zybach and Sherer 1994), #06; the 1989 Auto Tour, p. 2, people named in the Auto Tour; the 1999 thesis, p. 235, p. 236, p. 237, Appendix A, Table A.1 (monograph numbers and titles) and Table A.2 (page counts)
- Accessioned
- From Bob Zybach’s upload, 23 August 2026
Home site
Plotted at Hanish Homestead, as on Map 9 of the 1999 thesis.
The map could not load. The list below carries the same places.
Sessions
- January 13, 1990 — Berry Creek, Dunn Forest tracts, OSU Research Forests, Benton County, Oregon
- April 10, 1990 — Forest Peak, Berry Creek and Staats Creek, Benton and Polk Counties, Oregon
Worked on
Where others mention them
Dates they give
- 1861-1865 — Grandpa Hanish came from Austria with his parents when he was a small child. Later in life he met a girl who also came from Austria. They married and had two sons: Fred and Harry, and four daughters: Lora, Nora, Cora, Erma. Grandpa Hanish served in the civil war, and died in the Old Soldier House, Terra Haute, Indiana.
- 1900s — My mother's mother, Pearl Meador, was of New England stock. From what I heard, the early ancestors came over on the Mayflower and the ship made several trips from England. The Meador family settled in Battle Creek, Michigan. During that time Kellogg was starting to experiment with Corn Flakes. My grandmother, Pearl Meador, met Thomas O'Neil, her future husband and
- 1915 — I remember as a boy, about three or four years old, riding the El train going to the Circus on the lake front. Downtown was very crowded and windy, very hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Cobblestone streets, chain driven trucks and large horses pulling freight wagons, going on the steam boats. Sunday rides on Lake Michigan. My
- 1930s — Oh, in the '30's, as far as I can remember back. And there wasn't any mink or beaver here at that time in any of these creeks.
- 1930s — Yeah, they had plank roads, in fact, I remember during the Depression, the men used to put in the plank road, they wanted to keep working because they had to reach more
- 1930s — Yes. Because . . . like lots of times in the winter you . . . he couldn't operate all year round. He couldn't get the logs in the snow, at one time there was three feet of snow in this country, you couldn't do anything.
- 1930s — Oh, they must. . . we must have with our timber holdings and everything, we must have lived out here, I came back to help them, I would say at least ten or twelve years or more.
- 1930s — Depression, yes. Sometimes the brokers would change their mind and not. . . see they sold in them days their lumber to brokers. And took the brokers price and then he'd sell it. But they were all right. None of our here in this country here, the way people weren't as closely knitted. If you started pulling crooked deals and
- 1930s — Yeah. There was a pioneer graveyard there was about two or three graves. When we left here, they were just about hardly distinguishable. Yeah, the Mennonites at one time lived here once and they moved out.
- 1930 — About sixty years ago.
- 1930s — Yes, we went through the Depression.
- 1930 — The Depression really hit and we traded the ranch (10 acres) for 160 acres in Benton County, about twelve miles from Corvallis.
- 1930s — I returned to Oregon to the forty acres, due to severe depression in Steel work. My Dad was in Lakeview, Oregon working. I cut pulpwood. My Mother and I cared for the wood and garden raising.
- 1930-1938 — JAMES HANISH Biographical Sketch And A Tour Of Berry Creek Benton And Polk Counties, Oregon: 1930-1938
- 1930 — As a result, many local families moved to other locations and The Valley’s population declined for several years (Hanish 1994; Vanderburg 1995).
- 1933 — might have been somewhere . . . get there and went into in '33, '34 . . . it was the early twenties I would say.
- 1935 — Jim Hanish and his mother, Connie at the Hanish home along Berry Creek c. 1935.
- 1935 — View east from Hanish home, c. 1935. Now part of Paul M. Dunn Forest.
- 1937-1938 — My folks know, I was in California at the time. And they wrote and told me they couldn't. . . in fact the ranchers had to go out and chop down fir trees for the sheep to eat the needles, there was no feed. It was just covered.
- 1937-1938 — Yeah. They'd have to take the hay out of the barn and scatter it out somewhere, a lot of the sheep were lost because they got buried. It showed how quickly how much it snowed. My mother said my father shoveled a path out to the barn, our barn was about hundred and fifty feet away from the house, by
- 1941 — My uncle, Will Meador in El Cajon, California said his friend and partner was in the Naval Reserve, and was called in to assist the British to operate U.S. destroyers. His ship was the Reuben James. I helped my uncle to run his vegetable and fruit ranch: irrigate, train berry vines, drive a tractor. I made a soil conservation dam
- 1941 — I registered with the Selective Service Board in El Cajon. My uncle decided to sell the ranch. I went to San Diego to find work with an aircraft plant and was employed by Solar Aircraft, running power machines for parts for aircraft.
- 1941-12 — After Pearl Harbor I enlisted in the Air Force. Basic training, schooling, then overseas: Scotland, England, France, Belgium, Germany.
- 1942 — We moved out before Camp Adair came in.
- 1942 — No, I think that main part took out in there [toward Joe Smith's], because it hasn't been after the war and everything went back to normal and people started moving in here, I used to hear of. . . cases where shells were found. They had an artillery they had a rifle range and every kind of a range you
- 1990 — Well, I can give you a pretty good idea. I'm 78 now, and I was about 17 or 18 years old when we moved up here, so subtract that from
- 1990-01 — The interviews took place on OSU Research Forest properties in January and April of 1990 in the vicinity of Berry Creek and Forest Peak of the Dunn Forest tracts.
In the Series Index
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
- The Zybach Collection, Soap Creek Valley series: James Hanish (person record).
- This page
- Soap Creek Valley: James Hanish. America's School Trust Library, The Zybach Collection. https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/people/james-hanish/
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