On Thursday, September 10, 2007, Stahancyk, Kent, Johnson & Hook threw a fantastic party and open house celebrating five successful years in Vancouver. The event was planned carefully to fall on the 135th wedding anniversary of Charles and Rebecca Brown, which made the party twice as historic.

Approximately 60 guests attended the historic event, ranging from local judges, attorneys, clients and neighborhood friends.

The menu included salmon sliders (wild salmon fresh off the boat from Astoria), mini cupcakes and candied bacon. Teresa’s sons, Mason and Seth, acted as servers. Beer, wine and water rounded off the drink portion of the menu.

Jody, Lara, Teresa’s sons, neighbor Sallie Reavey and myself dressed in antique garb fitting of the time period in which the house was built, the Civil War era.

Guests were provided with a brief history and description of focal points in each room, house brochures, a slideshow, and tours of the house. All this, as they made their way to the back of the house where the food and drinks were stationed outside.

Special thanks to Javier, Adam, Lara, Humberto and Jesse and anybody else who I may have left out. Your hard work was much appreciated.

Here’s to another five more great years in Vancouver.

Early American west pioneers created fruit and vegetable gardens to supply their homes with fresh foods in a foreign land. Years later, during the World Wars, such gardens were known as “Victory Gardens”. Victory Gardens were built to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In today’s economy these are increasing in popularity. The Brown family, American west pioneers, had such a garden, as did their neighbors. It was a necessity of life. We at the Brown House have recreated the Brown family’s garden, most likely in its original location. Watch as we restore the garden to its authentic beauty while providing fresh produce for all to enjoy.

Bates and Burnett purchased the Brown House in 1946 and became the first decentralized law office in Vancouver. The below photograph was taken at a party held for the two on behalf of 50 years practicing law together. Mr. Bates is holding the big gift on the left and Mr. Burnett is holding the smaller gift on the right looking into the camera.

Mary Josephine Tuomala Hilstrom (1863-1929) was the mother in law of Mr. Bates. She was also the maid for the Brown family for several years. Below is a biography of Mary written by her granddaughter, Mary Ellen Bates.

In 1946 my father, William (Billy) Charles Bates, and his partner, L. Milton Burnett, purchased the house, known as the Brown House at 400 W. 11th Street, Vancouver, and relocated their law practice there. For several years the firm had maintained offices in the Ford Building in downtown Vancouver, but when the Brown House was available for sale they considered buying it: first and for sentimental reasons, it was the first house in which Father’s mother in law had lived when she arrived in Vancouver and second, it was within easy walking distance to the Clark County Courthouse.

When Father and Uncle Milton first met, Father was sixteen and Uncle Milton a year younger. Father was then living with his grandmother in a house on the corner of 24th and Franklin Streets and Uncle Milton’s family lived just to the west. They immediately became best friends, went to Franklin and Vancouver high schools together and a year after graduation entered the University of Washington Law School where they roomed together and where Father was a member of Acacia Fraternity. A year elapsed after high school because father spent a year with his parents in Colon, Panama, where he was employed as a clerk with a steam shovel company. Grandfather Bates was a steam shovel operator/gang supervisor and construction engineer on Panama Canal’s Culebra Cut.

In 1910 Father and Uncle Milton began practicing law together and did so for over 50 years. They were known not only as practicing attorneys but Father was also a long-time city attorney and Uncle Milton was head of the school board and prosecuting attorney. They were known throughout the state as father was, in 1932, Grand Master of Mason and Uncle Milton was head of the Knights of Pythias.

But I digress. Early on (the mid-1910’s?) Judge Miller urged father to meet a sorority sister of his daughter, Marjory, an Alpha Omicron Pi at the University of Washington. The friend was Theresa (Tess) A. Hilstrom who was also from Vancouver and was the oldest child of Mary Josephine Tuomala Hilstrom.

Mary Josephine was the only daughter of the owner of a stagecoach stop and inn located midway between Helsinki and St. Petersburg. To keep the inn’s dining facility in meat her father traveled north during the winter each year to buy reindeer meat from the nomadic Laplanders (now known as Saami or Sami as the word Lapp is considered most derogatory). During one trip he noticed the daughter of the chief of a nomadic tribe and asked for her hand in marriage; her father said that if Mr. Tuomela felt the same way the next trip he would consider giving his consent. The following winter he did; my great-great grandfather kept his word and my great grandfather and great grandmother returned to the stagecoach inn where they became most successful financially.

In 1881 Mr. Tuomala arranged passage on a ship sailing to New York; he took with him his three sons and Mary Josephine. His wife refused to accompany them, as she was certain that the business could not run without her, which it probably couldn’t.

Mary Josephine was very anxious to see the Pacific Ocean and asked her father for permission to make the trip to Astoria. He gave her more than sufficient funds to travel to the west coast and return to Chicago where he was staying with his sister. So alone, at the age of eighteen, she made her way to the Pacific Ocean. On the boat trip east on the Columbia River she stopped at Vancouver and telegraphed her father that she was staying there. Her father wired back telling her that when she was ready to return to Finland he would gladly send her the money for the return trip. She did not take him up on his offer and, although her family was close knit, she remained in Vancouver and never saw any of her relatives again.

She was fortunate. Although she spoke no English, Mary met Mrs. Brown, the wife of a local banker, who hired her to tend her children and who taught her English so well that Mary had only a slight accent and also had more than acceptable penmanship. It was while she was with the Brown’s that Mary met her husband, Peter Olav Hilstrom. He had emigrated from a poverty –stricken company-owned fishing village on the west coast of Sweden, had gandy danced (laying railroad tracks) across much of the United States and from his meager earnings has purchased a small farm in Hockinson, WA, just across the river from China Ditch. Along with farming his supplied firewood to Vancouver Barracks and, among others, to the Browns.

After their marriage Grandfather and Grandmother Hilstrom farmed for several years but education for their children was extremely limited and as soon as their children outgrew the one-room schoolhouse they moved to 714 West 9th Street in Vancouver. Grandfather briefly owned a furniture store/funeral parlor with Uncle Milton’s father and later was the first game warden in the local area. When he was at Salmon Creek and preparing to go home he mistakenly put the car in reverse, backed into Salmon Creek, was trapped inside his vehicle and drowned.

Grandmother Hilstrom was then a widow with six children. Despite financial hardship she urged her children on to education and success. My mother, Tess, graduated Phi beta Kappa from the University of Washington; Mother and Mabel were teachers; George was an accountant for Hunt Packing Company; John was a vice-president of California Packing Company; Stan became west coast district manager for Western Union.

While Mother was at University she and Father carried an on-again-off-again friendship. But when mother returned to Vancouver and became principal of the Sarah School (one of the other teachers was Miss Eva Santee who later was the Vancouver Public Library librarian), they became engaged. Father became a regular at Grandmother Hilstrom’s Sunday supper; on 25 October 1919 she asked Father when he and mother going to marry…at last…to marry; he said Mother wouldn’t tell him when! Grandmother then told Father that he was not welcome at Sunday supper again until they were married. One week later, on Saturday, 1 November 1919 they were married and Sunday supper attendance resumed.

The lives of the Bates, Burnetts and Hilstroms were intertwined so when the Brown House was for sale Father wanted to but it and Uncle Milton acquiesced. The structure itself was in poor shape but repairs were made and the firm of Bates and Burnett practiced law there for many years.

I know that Grandmother Hilstrom would have been very pleased that Father and Uncle Milton bought and practiced law in the Brown House. Grandmother had a strong will and determination; she loved my father as a son and was very fond of Uncle Milton. Mary Josephine was not a beauty but her inner strength coupled with her firm but gentle nature shone through and she was much admired and loved.

William Charles (Billy) Bates was born in Toronto, Canada on 20 October 1885. His mother was born in the United States of parents who were of English and Scotch-Irish ancestry. His maternal grandmother was born in Belfast, Ireland of Scotch parents and his maternal grandfather was a Yorkshireman who had worked on the Great Lakes as an engineer on various boats. His father was Canadian born and his paternal grandfather was also Canadian born of English descent. His paternal grandmother was of Pennsylvania-Dutch and French ancestry. Her father held a commission as a Captain for the United States in the War of 1812 but many of his father’s ancestors were U.E. Loyalists.

Mr. Bates first education was in the Sumach and York Streets and Gladstone Avenue grade schools in the city of Toronto. In the latter he received a vigorous reprimand from John Muir who was the composer of Canada’s national anthem, “The Maple Leaf Forever”. It seems he had gone to school without having his shoes shined properly!

His father was a steam engineer who worked in the structural ironwork, steam shoveling and dredging. In 1895 the family moved to Chicago, Illinois and Mr. Bates briefly attended school in Stonebank, Wisconsin. His grammar school was completed in Chicago at the James McCosh School, located in a district settled by tradesmen and mechanics. The principal, Mary Darrow Olson, was a sister of Clarence Darrow. It was the custom, in 1900, to award “Foster” diplomas to eighth grade graduates; Mr. Bates was the first boy at James McCosh to be awarded this diploma; prior to this the girls were the most fortunate winners. During this period an ardent WCTU worker staged one of those contests where everyone gives a narration about prohibition; he was awarded a silver medal for his oratorical efforts. In 1900 he graduated from grammar school.

Immediately after graduation the family moved to Walla Walla, Washington where Mr. Bates’ father and uncle were running a steam shovel, employed by McCabe and McCann, to fill various bridge sites between Waitsburg and Dayton. Here he earned the first “real” money as water boy, getting the princely stipend of $1.00 a day plus a piece of apple pie from the Chinese cook (whenever the boss wasn’t around).

In 1901 the family (his parents, his Uncle Will and Aunt Lil and his great-grandmother who rode along on a flat car and sitting on her favorite rocking chair) moved by train to Western Washington where Mr. Bates’ father was running a steam shovel and extending the Northern Pacific Railway from Kalama to Vancouver. For a brief period he attended high school in Olympia and on 2 January 1902 he enrolled in high school in Vancouver, Washington.

In 1904 his father and uncle were sent to the Panama Canal as the first steam shovel engineers under American occupation. Later their wives joined them. They were passengers on individual ships (in case one ship were unable to reach Colon); his mother’s ship was the second to arrive so she was the second American woman to arrive in the zone.

Upon graduation from high school in 1905 he was given a job as a railroad trainman at $60.00 per month on the Canal but when he arrived at Colon the steam shovel erection crew needed a clerk and he was switched to acting as time-keeper, clerk and secretary to the representative of the Bucyrus Company that was assembling all steam shovels they sold to the government. He worked in this line until the autumn of 1906 when he matriculated at the University of Washington in Seattle.

He returned to the Canal Zone in the summer of 1907 and was given a job by Mr. Ralph Bud, later president of Burlington, as steam shovel fireman at $100.00 a month. This work enabled him to pay his expenses to and from the zone.

Upon graduation from the University of Washington in 1910 with a degree of L.L.B. he returned to Panama, stayed for some three months, and was admitted to practice in all courts of the Panama Canal Zone.

On 23 January 1902, his first day at Vancouver High School, he met L.M. Burnett. This friendship continued not only during high school but also through four years at the university. And on 26 November 1910 the partnership of Bates and Burnett began practicing law in Vancouver and continued until their retirement some fifty years later. The only political office he held was that of Vancouver City Attorney for six consecutive terms from 1917-1929 and later from 1942 to 1946. However he did attempt to represent Clark County in the legislature on the old Bull Moose Party (Teddy Roosevelt) and their platform but they were not in favor…

In 1946 the firm of Bates and Burnett moved its practice from downtown Vancouver to West 11th Street. They were the first firm to decentralize, buying the Old Brown House, so-called, after the former banker who had built the house for his family. When Mr. Bates’ mother in law, Mrs. Peter Olaf (Mary Josephine) Hilstrom nee Tuomala, arrived in Vancouver from Finland at the age of eighteen, Mrs. Brown hired her to care for her children. Mr. Bates was very fond of his mother in law and this affection prompted the selection of the Brown House.

In over 50 years of practice he had only one criminal case. Appointed by the court as his attorney, his client was accused of stealing a red lantern that was used as a warning of minor construction on the interstate bridge. His client was adjudged innocent; after he settled his fee he turned to Mr. Bates and asked him if he could use a red lantern. Mr. Bates never took another criminal case.

In addition to his terms as City Attorney, Mr. Bates was a member of Acacia Fraternity; the Washington State Bar Association; Martha Washington Chapter #42, Order of the Eastern Star; past commander Vancouver Commandery K.T. #10; BPOE Lodge #823; and was a past president of the Vancouver Kiwanis. He was made a master Mason in University Lodge #141 in Seattle in 1910, belonged to Mt. Hood Lodge #32 F & A.M. and in twenty years advanced to Most Worshipful Grand Master in 1930. He was instrumental in the founding of the Vancouver Federal Savings and Loan and was a director and their attorney, and served on the board of directors for the Seattle First National Bank.

On 1 November 1919 he and Theresa Ada Bates nee Hilstrom were married in Vancouver. Mrs. Bates, a Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Washington, was born in Clark County but her father was born in Sweden and her mother in Finland. They had one daughter, a retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel.

Photo and story courtesy of Mary Ellen Bates.

Stahancyk, Kent, Johnson & Hook is excited to welcome new associate Matthew Cohen to our Vancouver office. Matt graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned his law degree from Lewis & Clark College in Portland. Matt brings a high energy and hard working attitude to the office and we are thrilled to have him as a part of our team.

Rick and Rosy Brown, very distant cousins of Charles Brown, who live in Minnesota, briefly stopped by the house last week while they were in town for business. Vince gave them a tour of the house and exchanged email addresses. Rick is very interested in Charles Brown’s father, Sam, and wanted to learn more about him, as well as Sam’s descendants. Rick provided us with a copy of Sam Brown’s obituary.

Bella C. Lemon was the only child of Alonzo and Belle Cook. Alonzo is believed to be the builder of the Brown House, although some evidence suggests Sam Brown could have built it. Mrs. Lemon quite possibly lived in the Brown House for several years as a young girl. Her obituary appeared in the Daily Olympian, March 12, 1940. Click to read.

Stahancyk, Kent, Johnson & Hook’s very own Vince Roman had a short story he wrote printed in the most recent issue of the Trailbreakers, the Clark County Genealogical Society’s quarterly. The story concerns early Vancouver pioneer Samuel W. Brown. Click on link to view article and click on article to enlarge.

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We recently donated photographs and other historical information regarding the Brown Family to the Knox County Genealogical Society in Galesburg, Illinois. This information was then forwarded to the Galesburg Public Library where it is stored in their archives. Galesburg was the hometown of Samuel Brown. Below are two thank you cards each organization sent us. Click to read.