Joe Herrle, left, and Jeremy Hess, of Logs and Timbers, LLC, remove a long log from a work bench on the south side of the Historic Jackson House in this April 2017 file photo.
In May 1847, Nicholas and Matilda Coonse left their home in St. Charles, Missouri, with their four young sons, seeking a better life out west. Instead, Nicholas drowned in the Snake River Sept. 7 at Three Island Crossing east of Fort Boise, and Matilda, distraught, gave birth prematurely to a baby girl who survived only two days.
Ill and weak, Matilda and her sons eventually arrived in Oregon City, a widow with few options. In early 1848, John R. Jackson needed supplies from Oregon City, where he met, wooed and married Matilda. The May 4, 1848, edition of the Oregon Spectator reported the wedding of John R. Jackson of Lewis County to Mrs. Matilda N. Coonse of Oregon City, with Baptist minister Reverend Hezekiah Johnson as officiating minister. (The Coonse surname was later changed to Koontz.)
Jackson, Matilda and the boys traveled the Cowlitz River to the landing near present-day Toledo and then rode horses north to his little log cabin on a rise he called “The Highlands,” near present-day Mary’s Corner. I imagine the four boys found it difficult to see their mother with a new husband, only eight months after their father died. In a diary he wrote later, Henry referred to Jackson as his “Wash Pa.”
This Friday, from 2 to 4 p.m., the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission and former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro are dedicating the restored Jackson Courthouse at the Jackson House State Park Heritage Site at 4277 Jackson Highway on Jackson Prairie.
But Jackson, Lewis County’s sheriff, probate judge, census taker, and justice of the peace, didn’t build the courthouse of large peeled logs alone in the fall of 1850; he had the help of Matilda’s four sons — Henry,12; Barton, 10; Grundy, 8; and John, 6.
“Within a week Mr. Jackson and the boys had cut the logs and prepared a building 16 by 26 feet for the courthouse,” states a June 2, 1899, Weekly Oregonian article. “Holes were cut for windows, but there was no floor except mother earth. A fire was built on the ground, the smoke finding its way out through a hole in the roof.”
The log cabin, which served as Washington Territory’s first U.S. post office and district courthouse, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1849 Matilda’s eldest brother, Philip Glover, who had married Nicholas’s sister, brought his family west to Oregon. After his first visit north to The Highlands, he complained that Jackson “worked the boys too hard,” according to Trudy R. Hannon’s 1998 book John R. Jackson, Washington’s First American Pioneer.
John and Matilda had three children together — Mary in 1849, Andrew in 1851, and Louisa in 1858. Matilda lost three sons, too: Henry, Grundy, and Andrew.
In 1873, Jackson died in that old courthouse at 73. After Barton Koontz later built a home nearby where he and his mother lived, the courthouse fell into ruin, overgrown with ivy and myrtle.
But Matilda’s daughter and granddaughter preserved the family’s legacy.
Anna Koontz, a Chehalis librarian born to Matilda’s son John, spearheaded efforts by the St. Helens Club in 1915 to rebuild the dilapidated courthouse, preserving some original wood such as the staircase. Afterward, the courthouse and surrounding 1.4 acres became Washington’s second state park.
Daughter Louisa (Jackson) Ware donated five acres of forested land north of the courthouse for a small day-use park named for her mother, Matilda Jackson. She stipulated it must remain a waystation, which has prevented the state from selling it.
The Civilian Conservation Corps restored the old courthouse in 1934, and this year, the State Parks Department spent $216,000 to redo the cabin’s front porch, repair water damage, restore the roof, and replace rotten logs. Workers also added wheelchair-accessible pathways and three new interpretive panels.
I’m grateful to Jackson as well as to the four young sons of Nicholas and Matilda Coonse who helped him create a lasting legacy.
•••
Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
