Soap Creek Valley · Person
John Jacob "Jake" Rohner
John Jacob "Jake" Rohner— narrator, mentioned in the Soap Creek Valley oral history series.
narratormentioned
Provenance
- Dates
- 1914 – unknown
- Work
- farmer (dairy and grass-seed farming)
- Home site
- Rohner Farm, northern slope of Coffin Butte, Benton County, Oregon (family farm 1919-1941)
- Interview focus
- Grass seed farming
- Where this comes from
- #5 John Jacob & Wilma Rohner, title page, narrator profile; the 1999 thesis, p. 39, Table 4 (informant profile); SCARC OH 006 finding aid: interview dates and cassette counts; #10 Velma Carter Rawie, p. 56, p. 57, p. 59, p. 69, printed back index; the 1999 thesis, p. 5, p. 20, p. 22, p. 39, p. 42, p. 45, p. 46, p. 47, p. 50, p. 56, p. 62, p. 68, p. 76, p. 84, p. 89, p. 90, p. 95, p. 101, p. 102, p. 106, p. 108, p. 115, p. 119, p. 120, p. 121, p. 122, p. 124, p. 136, p. 143, p. 146, p. 148, p. 152, p. 153, p. 154, p. 190, p. 192, p. 193, p. 198, p. 199, p. 230, p. 237, p. 253, p. 319, people mentioned in the thesis; the 1999 thesis, p. 5, Table 1 citation rule: cited as (Rohner 1993), referenced as (Zybach 1993b), #05; 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
Sessions
- September 18, 1990 — Jake Rohner's home, Benton County, Oregon
- September 30, 1990 — Automobile tour of the Coffin Butte area, Benton County, Oregon
- September 30, 1990 — Jake Rohner's home, Benton County, Oregon (afternoon)
Where others mention them
Family named in the transcripts
Dates they give
- 1908 — And this was in 1908, when my father caine.
- 1913 — In 1913 he went back to Switzerland and brought my mother over to Kansas, and my mother said, "This is not for me!" Dry, and windy, and no trees.
- World War I — And, well, World War I they were a little bit more bitter about the German speaking people.
- World War I — And I don't remember exactly when the house was built but it was built right about World War I time.
- 1914 — I was born in 1914.
- 1914 — Pictured with their parents are young Jake (b. 1914), Nellie (b. 1915), and Sam (b. 1916). All of the children were born in this house.
- c. 1915-1916 — See about, approximately 1915, '16 or so.
- c. 1918-1920 — And he, I believe he started in about 1918 to 1920 raising the grass, and he told me that it was brought from Africa by a man by the name of Harding.
- late 1920s — No, but I would think it was probably in the late '20's it was first brought in.
- c. 1920-1930 — He started on smaller scale and then about 1920, '29 and '30.
- 1924 — We didn't have a car until 1924.
- c. 1925 — It burned down years later. A Russian man, by the name of Mike Dobrinin, and there were quite a few Dobrinins in the Peoria/Halsey area.
- 1928-1930 — [Stambaughs, John Blasch, and Rohners raised flax for the Oregon State Penitentiary in 1928-30.
- 1928 — But see 1928 we bought the tractor and then, we started using the tractor.
- 1928 — See Studack originally bought it and then he was killed in 1928, later Albert Zundt bought it.
- 1928 — 1928, I would have been 14.
- 1928 — [Lumber was shipped from the mill near the Soap Creek Schoolhouse in 1928 by Model T trucks. After running through the planing mill in Wells, it was shipped by rail. JR]
- 1928 — [JAKE] Well, anyway along the line he went to work for Alvie Govier too, so the two of them felled timber for Alvie Govier, and he in 1928, early in 1928, he studied for his citizenship.
- 1928 — So he horse logged, this was in 1928 when Studack got killed, and he logged until about 1935 was it?
- 1928 — and after in 1928 when my father bought a tractor then we used the tractor on the binder, and we had lights on the tractor.
- October 1928 — Yes, I remember the family going to visit him in the hospital, but he was unconscious and he wasn't expected to live. And it was in Dr. Anderson's hospital, when Dr. Anderson had his own hospital in Corvallis.
- October 1928 — Oh yeah, they had decided to name the baby Alfred, after Alfred E. Smith.
- 1929 — I bought my first car in 1929 and my father traded in a 1924 Model T Ford for a 1927 Model T Ford Roadster.
- c. 1929 — Yes, this is where Kester lived and he rented since about 1929, I think was when he rented this place and they rented it until Camp Adair took over.
- 1930 or 1931 — [Eston Carter's house burned down during the dust storm in the spring of 1930 or '31.
- 1932 — Originally, it was for water, but it was replaced in 1932 with an electrical system (home built after World War I) to pump water.
- 1934 — Fact is, I was back there in 1934, and he had just wrote to my father how things were in Oregon and if there was a chance to come out.
- 1934 — [Uncle Oswald and Les Davis (brother-in-law) and mother-in-law Davis came from Kansas in 1934.
- 1935-1936 — [JAKE] Oh, it must have been '35, because he was killed after I got back from my trip in '34, so about '35 and possibly '36.
- c. 1936 — About six months later Oswald bought Clarence Wiles' place (about 1936).
- 1937 — We had a new barn in 1937 and in 1941 we built the new barn and had it almost done except for the siding on two sides.
- 1941 — [JAKE] They lived almost in Wells, had a farm there. Yeah, they did own it didn't they? So when Camp Adair came along and bought them out they moved to La Grande.
- 1942 — Somewhere I think just prior to when Camp Adair came in in 1942.
- 1942 — We put in a line fence and while we were here, until 1942, there was nothing growing there, we kept it clean, excepting where that grove of ash trees is, that was always there.
- 1942 — He moved there in 1942.
- February 1942 — fairly wet ground, and they started building in February, at the worst possible time.
- undated — [Ridders family cemetary is on the Corvallis-Independence Road about due east of Coffm Butte, a little north. JRJ
- February — Well, they moved here before I was born, and I was born in February.
In the Series Index
How to cite this item
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- As printed
- The Zybach Collection, Soap Creek Valley series: John Jacob "Jake" Rohner (person record).
- This page
- Soap Creek Valley: John Jacob "Jake" Rohner. America's School Trust Library, The Zybach Collection. https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/people/john-jacob-rohner/
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