Editor’s Note – Republished from 2022 – we update this story every year.  We added some fun content at the bottom of this story. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Ghosts Of Christmas Past Remind Us Of A Simpler Time In Hillsboro. The City of Hillsboro and its citizens have always been passionate about the holidays, even way back when.   The first settlers in the Tualatin Valley spent Christmas Eve of 1840 together in a crude tent on the Tualatin Plains.  This would have been just West of where Top Golf is now.

Joseph L. Meek, Robert “Doc” Newell, Caleb Wilkins, and George Ebbert were all fur trappers in the Rocky Mountains and had fought the elements to make it to our valley.  These rugged men were supported by their wives, who had traveled with them, and their children.  How this group made it from the Rocky Mountains to our valley requires some serious research and reading (which I have done), but let’s say it was brutal.  They survived things none of us could, including crossing the Columbia River 11 times with horses and babies to reach Fort Vancouver.

The women and children included three Sisters, all daughters of the Nez Perce Chief Kowesota:

• Virginia Meek, Nez Perce, wife of Joe Meek, and their baby boy, Courtney Walker
  Meek, who was a year and a half.
• Kitty Newell, Nez Perce, wife of Robert “Doc” Newell, and three children (who
  were named after his trapper friends), Francis Ermatinger (5), William
  Moore (2) and Marcus Whitman, two and a half months old.
• Catherine Wilkins, the Nez Perce wife of Caleb Wilkins, had one child traveling with
  her, two-year-old George Wilkins.

With them was Fanny Ebbert, Nez Perce wife of George Ebbert.

If you are a local, you may look at those last names and realize each of them has a street or area named after them.  Pause for a minute and see if that hits a nerve!

Starving, with little food, bitterly cold, and the rain dripping through the tent, this brave band hung on, hoping for a better future. They hung on together, not knowing what would happen or what faced them.  Christmas was celebrated in spirit only.

Historian Ginny Mapes provided these notes to us to understand how our pioneers viewed this bleak situation.

A quote from memoirs of the Meek family, given by Virginia, Joe’s wife —

“Oh, but it was cold and lonesome [Dec 18, 1840]. Mr. Meek hurried and built a bark house and
had a nice fire and made it nice and warm, but I couldn’t help it, I was lonesome and
homesick for my people. There was plenty of game and fish in the creek [McKay], and
they were never hungry. (end quotes needed here)
“Mr. Meek would say, ‘Never mind, Virginia, never mind. In the spring, you will see the
nicest country you ever saw.’ Sure enough, the next spring, everything was nice and
green, and she found the prettiest flowers she had ever seen and the largest
strawberries, but she couldn’t help being lonesome and homesick. They picked out the
land for their farm, built a log house, and planted a garden. She was influential in
choosing their farm where the land”

These early pioneers would be among the most influential people in the Pacific NW, with Meek leading the meeting at Champoeg, where the decision was made to make this territory independent rather than British.  That eventually led to our Statehood and that of the other NW States as well.  No doubt these pioneers shared Christmas and many holidays over the years here in greater Hillsboro, and their descendants continue to do so to this day.

After the Oregon Trail opened in 1847, hundreds and thousands poured into the Oregon Territory, and many ended up here in our area.  German, Dutch, Swiss, and other European first-generation people came and settled, bringing their old-country traditions with them.  Places like Roy, Verboort, Helvetia, and Laurel all have distinct traditions that manifest themselves during the Holidays.

One example is Teresa Grossen Brandt, who shared on Facebook that Ginny Mapes had shared her Granat family recipe for Swedish Rosettes.  Grossen-Brandt made them up and posted this photo of the result.  Pretty amazing.  The Grossens are well known for the sausages and cheeses they make, steeped in family tradition, all of which I have been so fortunate to sample.  Oh my gosh, are these traditions amazing!

The Modern Era-

The 1900s brought the car, the train, and the Industrial Revolution.  New traditions came, but Hillsboro was an all-white community, almost without exception.  That meant that Christmas was the Holiday the vast majority celebrated.  While we are very diverse now, that is a more recent evolution, driven by our tech sector and the employees it has brought in worldwide. Now we see holidays celebrated year-round across every religion and cultural tradition.  But we can not deny where we came from or that Christmas is as American as the Super Bowl.

Here is a look at the 1921-22 Hillsboro Argus, along with some very special photos I have obtained as President of the Hillsboro Historical Society.  This is a window into our past, and below you will find some interesting relics you can still see today if you are of a mind to.  So here we go!

Click on a Photo to start the slideshow in full size!

Traditions Tie Us To Our Past – Our past was just that, our past.  But it does not mean that these things are canceled or irrelevant.  They were and are essential because they are who we were and what made our community great.  It showed us to be who we hoped to be and who we hope to be – what we can be.  It is a time of charity, caring, and an outpouring of love and fun.

Now, we have done so much, built so much, and simultaneously torn down so much of what was.  Let us not do that- not be those people who aspire to live in the glass city on the hill.  Not when what we have always had and needed was in our grasp.  Together, we have melded our town into something grand, and many aspire to make it grander.  Our diversity is our strength, yet it feels as if we have sometimes stamped on tradition.  That is not right.  We can care for and enrich each other without removing anyone’s heritage or traditions.

We love our town, making house by house and block by block our new Holiday traditions.  Would any of you care to please email me your traditions and memories?  I will include them below for everyone to share.  No matter your faith or experiences, we are Hillsboro, and together, we shape our future the way we want.

Happy Holidays to you all, and Merry Christmas too!

Special Thanks to my good friends Ginny Mapes and Judy Gates Goldmann, two of our State’s premier living historians.  Also, thanks to WCHO for the photos, Jeff LeRiche for coloring our cover photo, and the members of the We Remember Hillsboro Group on Facebook (9,800 of us, and we want you to join). 

Bonus Content this Year – Some AI Fun with two Hillsboro History items:

Meet “Naughty Santa” – He is an old Santa that I bought from Jeff Nelson at Le’Stuff, and he resides in our offices at 222 East Main Street, Hillsboro, Oregon. My co-tenants are several small businesses.  The ladies who work there often move Naughty Santa around, and the other night I got a jump as I opened the back door off our dark alley access to find him suspended in the doorway staring at me from about 7 feet up.  I got a jump and a laugh.  So this one is for them- Naughty Santa is coming for you!

And here are John Wesley Gates and his pal Albert Coussens from a Christmas way in the past – brought to life from the photo above as they sleighed down Main Street one year, which they actually did.- How is this not fun?

Happy Holidays everyone – From the Hillsboro Herald and all of our friends and family!