For fifteen years I lived near Long Road. I never gave it much thought, other than perhaps noting that it is not all that long of a road. About a year ago, while researching another story, I stumbled upon an old photograph of one of Les Long’s airplanes. Curious, I spent more hours than I…
As far as I know, there is only one monument in the Cornelius Methodist Cemetery that was paid for by an act of the United States Congress. On April 19, 1928, Representative Fiorello La Guardia of New York introduced H.R. 13172: “That the sum of $1,000 is hereby authorized for the purpose of erecting a…
When the first settlers put down roots on the Tualatin Plains, they needed three things before a community could truly call itself a community: a school, a church, and a place to bury their dead. Cornelius got all three in short order. And the stories behind each of them are considerably more remarkable than most…
The Gold Standard — Lester Mooberry on Life in Early Cornelius When it comes to local historians, Lester Mooberry sets the standard. Digging up information on big events is relatively straightforward — newspapers and books documented those well enough. But the details of normal daily life are far more elusive, and those details are what…
The Tualatin River brushes up against the southern edge of Cornelius in no particular hurry. Fifty river miles still lie between it and the Willamette, and the Tualatin seems entirely unbothered by that fact. From the air, its course through the bottomlands south of town looks less like a river and more like a question…
Abigail Scott Duniway is remembered as Oregon’s Mother of Equal Suffrage and “the pioneer Woman Suffragist of the great Northwest.” As lecturer, organizer, writer, and editor, Duniway devoted over forty years to the cause of women’s rights. Duniway toured the northwest to give speeches/lectures advocating for voting rights for women. She would write about her…
Determining the builder of a 1910 house is not an easy task and honestly, I have struck out often in my attempts. Building permits were not yet a thing at that time. But in the case of the Sholes house in Cornelius, a bit of luck followed by a bit of research allowed me to…
Nothing beats my mom’s potato salad. I can make her recipe, but she must have held onto a secret or two, because mine never quite tastes the same. I wonder if the Reser kids felt the same way about their mother’s. Many of you already know the connection between Cornelius and the Resers, but for…
Long-time members know I love researching the people who lived in Cornelius before us. This is the real history, not presidents and generals, but ordinary families who worked, loved, suffered, and persevered. I picked this grave in our Methodist Cemetery because Peter Brooks served in the Civil War, yet he’s buried alone here, no other…
In Cornelius Methodist Cemetery lies a weathered metal grave marker, rusted and broken, half-buried in the grass. The inscription reads: MABLE M. EVERITTDied AUGUST 2, 1965Aged 86 Yrs. She rests there alone – no family plot, no other Everitts nearby, no permanent headstone to replace the temporary marker from 59 years ago. But Mabel’s story…