George Lincoln Drake (1889-1979) was employed by the U.S. Forest Service from 1910 to 1930 and Simpson Logging Company in the 1930s and 1950s. Ross Finley was the nephew of William A. Finley, the first president of Corvallis College.
Marko Haggard served on the McCall Lecture Committee of the College of Liberal Arts and was a professor of Political Science at Portland State University beginning in 1954. Haggard served as a special assistant to Governor Tom McCall and, later, he and McCall both served as political commentators for KATU television in Portland.
Jacob Henkle led a party of 21 wagons to Benton County, Oregon, in 1953. Robert MacVicar served as President of Oregon State University from 1970 until 1984. Dendrologist Oliver Matthews (1892-1979) traveled extensively in Oregon for more than 40 years in pursuit of trees, particularly the biggest of each species. Donald MacKenzie (b. 1887) worked as laborer, foreman, and logging superintendent with Anaconda Copper Mining Company in Montana from 1909 to 1957.
Harriet Forest Moore received training as a physical therapist at Reed College and served as a physcial therapist at several posts immediately following World War I. She later enrolled at Oregon Agricultural College and earned BS (1922) and MS (1924) degrees in vocational education. Moore was Oregon State University's first archivist from 1961 to 1966.
Ben H. Pubols (1899-1978) was born on a farm near West Union, Oregon, and earned a BS in agriculture from Oregon State College in 1926. Kathreen Kirkpatrick Purchase graduated from Oregon Agricultural College in 1914 and, in 1996, was believed to be the oldest living Oregon State University graduate. Paul Snook was born in Oregon in 1899; he worked with his father, Harmon Snook, on the construction of several Oregon State Campus buildings. His sister was Ella Snook who operated Snook and Traver construction company with her husband Louis Traver.
The Oral History Interviews, Personal Histories, and Sound Recordings Collection on Agriculture, Forestry, and Oregon History consists of 12 oral history interviews, personal histories, and sound recordings; the components of the collection are individually numbered OH05:01 thru OH05:12. Sound recordings and transcripts are available for 6 of the collection components. For the remainder (6), only transcripts are available.
The collection includes interviews with George Drake, Ross Finley, Marko Haggard, Robert MacVicar, Oliver M. Matthews, Donald MacKenzie, Kathreen Kirkpatrick Purchase, and Paul Snook; personal or family histories by Ben H. Pubols, Sr. as well as Jacob Henkle and Elizabeth Conger Henkle; a promotional sound recording by the Agricultural Information Trainee Program; and recorded recollections by Harriet Forest Moore.
The interviews with George Drake (OH05:01) and Donald MacKenzie (OH05:05) were conducted by Elwood R. Maunder of the Forestry History Foundation in 1957-1958 and describe logging and forestry activities in Oregon and the Northwest. Gordon D. Marckworth, Dean of the College of Forestry at the University of Washington, also participated in the MacKenzie interview.
The interview of Oliver V. Matthews (OH05:02) was done in 1959 by W.R. Randall, a faculty member in the Oregon State College School of Forestry. The interview describes Matthews' work in identifying and photographing trees that are depicted in a series of images that Matthews donated to the School of Forestry.
Ross Finley (OH05:03) was interviewed by J.H. Gallagher; transcripts of the interviews were made in 1964 by Gallagher's office at the Corvallis Sand and Gravel Company. Recordings of the interviews on SoundScriber discs are part of the collection.
The Robert MacVicar (OH05:06) interview was recorded in 1984 at the end of his 14-year presidency at Oregon State University and includes his reflections on his years at Oregon State. The interviewer is not identified in the transcript.
The interview with Paul Snook (OH05:07) was conducted in 1983 by Susan M. Gaughan and Alison Otis. The transcript was prepared by Gaughan. It consists of personal and family history and includes information about the Snook family's role in the construction of several campus buildings and Paul Snook's later work in highway and bridge construction.
The Kathreen Kirkpatrick Purchase interview (OH05:10) was conducted by Martin (Skip) Haley of the Oregon State University College of Home Economics in 1994 and addresses a variety of topics including her experience as a a home economics student at Oregon Agricultural College in the 1910s and her youth in Pendleton.
The collection includes a personal history for Oregon State alumnus Ben H. Pubols, Sr. (OH05:08), prepared in 1973, that describes his childhood and youth in Oregon, especially his farming experiences, and his attendance at Oregon Agricultural College in the 1920s. The family history of Jacob Henkle and Elizabeth Conger Henkle (OH05:09) was dictated in 1908 and includes recollections of the Henkle wagon train to Oregon in 1853 and the family's early years in Oregon.
The promotional sound recording for the Agricultural Information Trainee Program (OH05:04) was made in 1958. In addition to a reel-to-reel audiotape, a letter explaining the recording and a transcript prepared by the Oregon State University Archives are included. The 11-minute recording describes the summer Trainee Program for college students planning a career in agricultural journalism. The recording includes Jerry Carlson, a 1958 trainee, and George Loesing, a staff member in the USDA Radio Service and a 1956 trainee.
The Harriet Forest Moore materials (OH05:11) include sound recordings, transcripts, notes, and background materials pertaining to Moore's service as a physical therapist during World War I. The recordings were made by Moore in 1988-1990 to answer questions posed by Lettie Gavin, a researcher located in Seattle.
Collection is open for research.
Oral History Interviews, Personal Histories, and Sound Recordings Collection on Agriculture, Forestry, and Oregon History (OH 05), Oregon State University Archives, Corvallis, Oregon.
This collection is not fully processed; this guide is preliminary.
The materials were donated or transferred to the Archives in several accessions from the 1960s through 1997. Some of the sound recordings and copies of the transcripts were housed at the Horner Museum for a period of time and transferred back to the Archives from the Horner Museum collections in 1996.
The Archives holdings include many collections that pertain to the
topics in this oral history collection as well as the papers of two of the
interviewees: