Frank L. Turner (1882-1961) – Courtesy Keith Cox

In a ‘bunch of stuff ‘ given to me by the late Martha Murfin some years ago, I ran across the typewritten manuscript for an article written by her father, Frank Turner, for the Ilwaco Tribune.  It is not dated and I’m not sure it was ever published, but was titled “From Auld Lang Syne,”  which was the name of the fabulous history column Frank wrote during the 1940s and ‘50s after he had sold the newspaper paper to daughter Martha and her husband, Dick.  Here it is in its entirety:

There was little in the way of entertainment for the young people and bachelor oystermen, aside from church and school, and the young men, waiting between tides for their work on the oyster beds were accustomed to displays of strength and skill for a certain amount of recreation.  There was a pile of pig iron, and one stunt was to lift it by the teeth.  Shooting with white man’s gun, and with the Indian’s stout yew wood boys, was practiced in competition.  But top competition in weight lifting was practiced on a 400 pound cannon, or cannonade that had been unloaded from shipboard on the high tide bank of the bay.  It took a he-man to lift the three-inch cannon as some claimed they did.  However, although the remains of the cannon are still said to be here and there in Oysterville, there is now no way to check on the prowess of the young pioneers.           

Early Oyster Boys Abe Wing and Jimmy Johnson

The fact is, the thing blew up.  It happened, according to the best recollection of the late Mrs. J.A. Morehead on Lincoln’s Birthday in 1878 – perhaps a year or so earlier.  The young men waiting on the tide, including Captain Peter Jordan and Johnnie Clark, loaded her up goo, ramming home a big charge of powder, followed by a heavy round rock from the pile of discarded ballast on the beach.  They touched her off.  There was a might roar.  One chunk fell through the roof of the Chris Johnson home 500 feet away and others in sundry places about the village.  But the worst was one that slapped Peter Jordan on the side of the head.

It was nip and tuck with Jordan in the days that followed, whether he would live or die.  Possibly the skill of Mrs., Stevens, as a nurse and the prayers of her daughter, Laura Belle, pulled him through.  On a July day in 1881 Captain Jordan married Laura Belle, but carried the scars of the cannon all through life.

Oysterville Cannon, May 2016

The last piece of that old cannon to surface, as far as I know, was found at the bay shore by Pete Heckes some years ago and was affixed to the hood of his pickup for a time.  I hasten to add that my husband, Nyel Stevens, is not descended from the Gilbert Stevens family of those early Oysterville days.  However, it is interesting that it was Nyel’s idea to ‘replace’ that old cannon with the present-day replica of a mountain howitzer and to form The Honorary Oysterville Militia on the occasion of the town’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2004.  It was the story of that old cannon that gave ‘General Stevens” the idea.