- Drawing by Pat Fagerland, 2000
It is not clear whether Gilbert Stevens’ wife, Elvira, was called “Mother Stevens” because she had so many children of her own, because she was related to half of Oysterville one way or another, because of her much appreciated maternal and midwifery qualities, or for a combination of these reasons. What is clear, even after 156 years, is that Elvira Wing Viles Stevens was a beloved member of the community.
When she arrived in Oysterville in 1854, Elvira was thirty-one years old and had been married to Gilbert Stevens for ten years. By many standards, she had already experienced a lifetime’s worth of adventures and hardships. She had been married twice, widowed once, had given birth to six children and had buried two of them, the second of whom died during the Stevens family’s nine-month trek on the Oregon trail. Undoubtedly, these experiences helped to shape the character of the strong, caring woman whom early Oysterville residents greatly admired and remembered long years later.
She was the first white woman to make a home in Oysterville, even before the growing collection of buildings on the banks of Shoalwater Bay had been given a name. In fact, “Oysterville” suggested by I. A. Clark was only one of several names proposed and, according to native son Charlie Nelson, the men of the village left it to Mother Stevens to make the final choice. “…And a fitting one, too,” was Charlie’s comment.
Born Elvira Wing in Dead River, Maine, in 1823, she was married at age 14 to George Viles. In 1843, with young daughters Delina and Lucinda, Elvira and George moved to Jackson, Michigan, to join some of Elvira’s other Wing relatives. Within a few months of the move, Elvira was a widow.
Ten years later she was headed west on the Oregon Trail with her second husband Gilbert Stevens and their family which included their three children — one of whom died on the journey — and, of course, Elvira’s two older daughters. (A sixth child had died in infancy.) It was a meeting with the Crellins on the trek to Oregon that ultimately led the Stevens family to Oysterville where they built the town’s first hotel.
Mother Stevens bore four more children after settling in Washington Territory, the first of whom was said to be the first white boy born in Oysterville. Eventually, through the marriages of her children and of her many nephews and nieces, Elvira was related to or “connected” to most of the families in Oysterville and to many throughout the Shoalwater Bay area, among them Wirts, Bowens, Whitcombs, Crellins, Kimballs, Holmans, Cartrights, Peases, and Jordans. In addition, of course, were the Wings. Her brother Hiram Wing, Abram and Levi Wing (sons of another brother), her sister Harriet, and even her mother, Nancy Grover Wing (Mrs. Abraham Wing) lived in Oysterville, having come west to live near Elvira.
As far as I know, there is no connection between the Gilbert Stevens family and Nyel’s family so our same surnames are coincidental. The closest ‘relationship’ I can claim is that my grandfather, Harry Albert Espy, was helped into this world by Mother Stevens on November 5, 1876. Later that year, she wrote of his birth to her daughter Delina Crellin: “Mrs. Espy has made great improvement on her babies,” a statement that I choose to believe was complimentary to my grandfather, but I’m not quite certain in what regard.
I love this story! This summer we brought friends up to Oysterville and toured the cemetery (I like cemeteries) and saw the marker. It would be wonderful if someone wrote even a fictionalized version of this woman’s life. Someone, say, who knows a lot about history. I know that incorporating history into fiction is not your medium, but this screams to be written.