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.

Was the date the law firm of Bates and Burnett finalized the sale of the Brown House to James Gregg, who still practices and shares space with us in the house today. Bates and Burnett were innovative in that they were not only the first decentralized law office in the City of Vancouver, but also the first decentralized office used by any professionals in Vancouver as well. Below is the deed showing the transfer of property from Bates and Burnett to James Gregg. Click to enlarge.

Mary Ellen Bates, daughter of William C. Bates, an attorney who practiced in the Brown House from 1946-1960, sent me this article. It appeared in The Columbian June 11, 1946. Written by Clark Brown (no relation to Charles) the article is an announcement welcoming the offices of Bates and Burnett to the neighborhood at 400 W. 11th Street. The office relocation to the Brown House by Bates and Burnett was innovative in that it was not only the first decentralized law office in the City of Vancouver, but also the first decentralized office used by any professionals in Vancouver as well. Brown also includes a brief history of the house. Click on image to enlarge.

An announcement from 1946 advertising the new location of Bates and Burnett’s law firm hangs in the Brown House. This was the first decentralized law office in the City of Vancouver. They practiced law in the Brown House for 14 years until Attorney James Gregg bought the house in 1960 where he still continues to practice to this day.

1866
Alonzo and Isabella Cook, original owners.

June 19, 1874
Charles and Rebecca Brown. Charles died April 19, 1901.

June 1901
Homestead claim by Rebecca Brown. Rebecca died in 1910.

September 12, 1925
Heirs of Rebecca Brown deeded it to Alice Hubbard. Alice died April 3, 1935. It is unsure who occupied the house for the next five years.

April 13, 1940
Mary Prindle, Alice Hubbard’s sister, sold the house to William and Julia Frost, another sister and brother in-law. Mary may have inherited the house from her sister Alice after she passed away.

May 31, 1946
Law office of Bates and Burnett became owners. This was the first decentralized law office in the City of Vancouver.

June 8, 1960
Attorney James Gregg and wife Barbara became owners.

September 2004
The law firm of Stahancyk, Kent, Johnson and Hook purchased the Historic Charles Brown House.

Thursday, June 1, 2006
Three great-granddaughters of pioneer Vancouver banker Charles E. Brown on Thursday walked through the restored house he owned for 27 years around the turn of the 20th century.

The women, Nancy Brunquist of Portland, Deborah Reis of Union, and Liz Carpenter of Linwood, had never before been in the 140-year-old house at 11th and Daniels streets. They said they were amazed at the renovation, which has brought the house back to the shape it was in when their great-grandparents lived in it from 1874 to 1901. The house was built in 1866 by a pioneer attorney, Alonzo Cook.

Jody Stahancyk, of the Portland-based law firm Stahancyk, Kent, Johnson & Hook, purchased the sagging, two-story house in 2004 for $400,000 from attorney James L. Gregg. Gregg, 78, maintains an office in the house where he has practiced since 1960.

The house was stripped to the studs and rebuilt over the past two years. Layers of paint were burned off the outside wood walls, and the stone-gray exterior was repainted the original shade of tan. Rooms that originally were for billiards, dining, sleeping, cooking and food storage were converted to law offices and conference rooms.
Portland preservation architect William Hawkins worked to renovate the house in antique style and retain such details as 12-foot ceilings, a door with an original doorbell, an ingenious revolving-wall panel room vent, windows with porcelain-knobbed latches and an almost impossibly steep, winding stairway.

The house is a rare example of Second Empire-style architecture with a flat roof, a tower, decorative brackets, molded cornices and detail on windows and doors. Such homes were built primarily from 1860 to 1880. The term Second Empire is derived from the reign of Napoleon III, who loved architecture.

“Jody just loves history and old things,” said Jade L. Bunker, the firm’s public relations representative.

The house is freshly painted, furnished and filled with portraits of Abraham Lincoln and cartoons by the pioneer French cartoonist Honore Daumier, who lived from 1808 to 1880.

Lincoln figures indirectly in the history of the house. He appointed Charles Brown’s father, Samuel W. Brown, to be the first receiver of the U.S. Land Office of Vancouver in 1861. Lincoln’s appointment brought the 11-year-old Charles Brown to Vancouver.

Charles Brown grew up here and lived here for the rest of his life, except for an excursion to San Francisco in the 1870s to work in the printing trade. He returned to Vancouver in 1874 and served on the city council and was a community leader.

He became president of the First National Bank of Vancouver in 1891. But scandal and tragedy arrived.

On April 19, 1901, Brown committed suicide along with bank cashier Edmund Canby after the bank’s records failed to reconcile.

The restored house now will be the offices of attorneys Teresa L. Foster and Shantel P. Bray, representing the Stahancyk firm, which concentrates on divorces and estate planning and has offices in Astoria, Bend and Prineville as well as in Portland.

Attorney Alonzo Cook, who built the house, represented W. Bryon Daniels, for whom the street by the house was named. In 1874, Cook and his wife, Isabella, sold the house to Charles Brown and his new wife, Rebecca Slocum Brown. After Brown’s death in 1901, his widow lived in the house. They had three daughters.

In 1925, the Browns’ heirs sold the house to Alice Hubbard. Some time after 1930, ownership passed to Mary H. Pringle and her husband. In 1940, Mrs. Pringle sold it to William E. Frost and his wife, Julie. In 1946, Mrs. Frost sold the house to the law firm of Bates and Burnett, and they sold it to Gregg and his wife, Barbara, in 1960.

The Greggs owned it until 2004, when Stahancyk entered the picture. She loved the place.

“A lot of people just wanted to tear it down,” said Barbara Gregg. “But not Jody Stahancyk. Just look at what she’s done. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Stahancyk, who was in court Thursday and wasn’t able to lead the great-granddaughters on the tour, said earlier she was delighted with the house. “It was a way for people to see that the same way we take care of our clients, we take care of restoring this house,” she said.

The law office of Bates and Burnett was the first decentralized law office in the city of Vancouver. They occupied the Charles Brown House from May 31, 1946 to June 8, 1960. They are pictured above with the graduating class of 1905 from Vancouver High School. Mr. Bates is on the far left and Mr. Burnett is on the far right. The Charles Brown House has been used as a law office for the past 60 years.