HARDY PIONEER WOMAN
Viola Howlett Douglass, daughter of William and Sabina Markwood Howlett, was born in 1855 in what would become the Douglas Ridge community located on Wildcat Mountain Drive between Dover and Eagle Creek. The Howletts were early Oregon Trail travelers and had arrived in Sandy from Missouri in 1851. It had been an especially difficult journey as William's father had died on the way and was buried near the Oregon-Idaho border. At age 21, William had to take over as wagon master.
In 1870 at age 15, Viola married James Wesley Douglass who had driven one of the wagons when his parents’ family had traveled the Oregon Trail in 1867. James built a log house in Douglass Ridge where their 12 children were raised. Two of their children died early, an infant son and a 17-year-old daughter.
The children were raised to be hardier, self-sufficient people that were used to simple accommodations and hard work. Viola soon learned to spin yarn and knit, as all the children's clothing was made by hand. She once mentioned that she did the family washing at a spring and laid the clothes on bushes to dry in the summer sun. She never complained of hardships.
It was remembered that Viola, during some of the difficult early years, bought a bundle of Sunday Oregonians and papered the interior of the house with them.
“It worked out beautifully,” said Viola.
Granddaughter Alta DeShazer Craft, who published a detailed history of the family, wrote the following of her grandmother:
“To look at this serene, well-preserved elderly lady, one could not realize she had raised 12 children, spun a pound of wool a day, did all housework, knitting, sewing by hand, packed water uphill from a spring, and underwent all the hardships of a pioneer family in helping to carve out a home in the wilderness.”
In the early 1890s, a modern two-story house was built near the cabin where many family gatherings were held. A charming lady with a sprightly nature, Viola loved to entertain at her home and made it available for neighborhood meetings and dinners. They often had community dances lasting until around dawn with midnight suppers.
The family was active in the Eagle Creek community and was particularly known for contributing eight Douglas brothers and an uncle for the Eagle Creek baseball teams
that played in an informal league with Estacada, Boring, Gillis (near Orient), Sandy, and Damascus.
Some time after her husband James died, she was married again briefly, but her second husband died, too. Viola then spent her later years living with her daughter Bina, her daughter’s husband Will Bell, and grandson Dave at the Bell home in the Sandy Ridge area.
In 1931, she was honored as “Queen” at the annual Pioneer picnic at Jonsrud Park just south of the viewpoint.
When I was a little kid in the 1920s and tagged along with my parents to grange meetings, I remembered her as a calm, sweet, elderly lady who was famous for bringing strawberry pies for the grange dinners.
Later when I thought of all I'd learned about her accomplishments in her long, useful life, I realized how tough and hardy she really was!
