A ceremony last week marked the renovation of the historic Jackson Courthouse.
As a special treat, inside the Jackson Courthouse, the Washington State Historical Society displayed the flag stitched together by Matilda and her neighbors, flown July 4, 1853, to mark the creation of Washington territory in March. Jackson sent to San Francisco for the wool bunting, and the women stitched until they ran out of cloth. Hence, the flag bears 13 stars and eight stripes.
A few years ago, when I was invited to join the St. Helens Club, I knew one thing about the women’s organization: It had preserved the historic 1850 Jackson Courthouse.
I was honored to join a club that former Secretary of State Ralph Munro credited with “the oldest historic preservation effort in Washington.” At Friday’s courthouse dedication, he thanked the club for its efforts undertaken a century ago, when the membership included Chehalis librarian Anna Koontz, granddaughter of Matilda Jackson and Tumwater founder Michael T. Simmons.
I couldn’t help but think how pleased Koontz would be to see the historic cabin still standing, sparkling with new lumber that replaced soft, rotting wood, restored this year as initially built to retain its status as a state landmark on the National Register of Historic Places.
A bookmark commemorating Friday’s event, organized by area manager Pam Wilkins of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Department, describes the courthouse as “a rustic cabin reconstructed through the efforts of local women.”
“This building really tells us a story, and that’s why it’s so important,” Munro said. “So much of our state’s history lies in this yard and this building. If we don’t understand our past, then we have no idea of how to conquer the future.”
He focused his remarks on Matilda Coonse/Koontz Jackson, who left Missouri with her husband, Nicholas, and their four boys, filled with high hopes as they traveled the prairies, avoided cholera in the Platte River Valley and crossed the Rocky Mountains. On Sept. 7, 1847, only 500 miles from Oregon City, Nicholas drowned crossing the Snake River. The next day, Matilda miscarried the daughter she was carrying. Later, someone even stole her oxen and wagon.
Matilda and her sons finally arrived at Oregon City, the territory’s first capital and a commercial hub for early settlers. In January 1848, she met John R. Jackson, a British native and naturalized American who had crossed the Oregon Trail four years earlier. He had visited Oregon City for supplies and returned home in May with a wife and four sons. They traveled by flatboat, or barge, up the Willamette and Columbia rivers to the mouth of the Cowlitz, where Indians in canoes paddled them upstream to Cowlitz Landing at present-day Toledo.
“That same lady gave us every reason in the world to preserve and to protect this home,” Munro said. “But it wasn’t just for that…. In so many ways, she was the first lady of the territory.”
Visitors saw the Jackson home as a bright beacon of hospitality, and Matilda served as gracious hostess to all, including Gov. Isaac Stevens and his wife and Generals Ulysses S. Grant, George McClellan, and Philip Sheridan. She helped her husband in his roles as postmaster, judge, sheriff, and tax collector.
“Everybody talks about him, but I have to look at it through her eyes, and what a pioneer for our state that she was and the job that she did,” Munro said.
Parks Commissioner Patricia T. Lantz, a former state legislator, also spoke about Matilda Jackson, imagining the voices of travelers sharing news of Tumwater and Oregon City as they stopped at the house along the well-worn Cowlitz Trail.
“I smell the bread baking in Matilda’s oven,” Lantz said. “I see her laundry hanging over there in this late sunshine of October. If you look you’ll probably see the children peeking around the fence, shy at the sight of so many strangers. I see the vast forest behind us and I’m admiring the effort it has taken to create this stopping place.”
As a special treat, inside the Jackson Courthouse, the Washington State Historical Society displayed the flag stitched together by Matilda and her neighbors, flown July 4, 1853, to mark the creation of Washington territory in March. Jackson sent to San Francisco for the wool bunting, and the women stitched until they ran out of cloth. Hence, the flag bears 13 stars and eight stripes.
Nearly a century ago, Anna Koontz and Louisa Ware, the Jacksons’ daughter born in that cabin in May 1853, removed that same flag from one of two stone memorial tablets unveiled during the October 1922 dedication of the Jackson Courthouse.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
