The author of this article lives and works on unceded territory of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and many other Tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River.

Liverpool Liz, the Senate Saloon, and Evergreen Park

Jan de Leeuw

Version 03-02-2019

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XXblxiEKwbxtGDMSy3DWKkV9WLwOkFCd

Table of Contents

The Usual Story

Elusive Liz

Portland’s Whitechapel Area

The Senate Saloon

Liz and Lou

The Evergreen Park Fiasco

The Marriages

The Will

Remaining Questions

References

The Usual Story

The research on which this article, and actually this whole book, is based was started because I was interested in the history of Peninsula Park. Here is what the City of Portland tells us about the early history.

Originally the site of "Liverpool Liz's Place", it had been a roadhouse and racetrack for quarter-mile horse racing (Bureau of Planning, 1992, p. 58).

In 1909, after the passage of a parks bond measure, the city purchased the site from a local businesswoman and created Peninsula Park. (Portland Parks and Recreation, 2016, p. 4).

For ease of reference I will call this “the usual story”. It is repeated in many official and unofficial documents, and you can find versions of it on many Piedmont real estate sites. I decided to find out more about Liverpool Liz, her roadhouse, and her race track.

The usual story seems to be mostly based on a series of Sunday Oregonian articles by Stewart H. Holbrook, newspaper chronicler of the more colorful aspects of Portland in its early days (Holbrook, 1933, 1934, 1948). His main informant was Spider Johnson, a seventy year old former barkeeper who lived and worked in what was then the North End (and is now NW Portland). Holbrook was writing around 1930, so he was already one generation removed from what actually happened around 1900, and it shows. What Spider told Holbrook was largely hearsay, so that already introduces two possible levels of distortion. Both the newspaper man and his informant had an interest in making the story as interesting as possible, which in context meant making it more lurid. But I will retell the usual story here anyway, because over the years it seems to have gained credence by more and more people repeating it. You have to realize from the start there is somewhat of a problem, however.

In later days Edward C. “Spider” Johnson, a man who claimed to have been around in the shanghaiing days, would spin these tales in Erickson’s Working Man’s Club and Saloon on Third and Burnside, for the enjoyment of Stewart Holbrook, a logger whose “rough writer” stories had brought him a large audience of readers. … It was through Holbrook that the tales of Spider Johnson entered into the mythology of Portland as indisputable fact, even to be repeated in some history books. (Blalock, 2012, p.65)

So here is how the expanded usual story goes. Around 1890 Elizabeth Smith arrived from England on a sailing ship. She quickly solicited her way up through the seedy ranks in the Whitechapel District, also known as the North End. She started by working on a whiskey scow on the Willamette River, but in a few years she owned the Senate Saloon, on N Second and Davis. The Senate Saloon served drinks on the first floor and ladies on the second floor. Or, in the words, of Holbrook/Johnson: “The first floor was devoted entirely to Bacchus; the second, to Venus.” The Senate Saloon came to be known as “Liverpool Liz’s Place” and Lizzie Smith became “Liverpool Liz”. Not that Liz was necessarily from Liverpool. But, as was the case for many of her seafaring clients, her final stop on the way to the US was Liverpool.

The Sunday Oregonian of October 15, 1933 had a drawing of Liz by the artist with initials R.L., based on the rather meager information about her appearance that Holbrook had collected. Our lead-off picture is a color version from the Holbrook archives at the UW Special Collections. Note the nice dress and the large diamond necklace. As the drawing shows, Holbrook and his informants had various positive things to say about Liz’s character and honesty. She took care of sailor’s wallets in her safe, when the sailors were doing whatever it was they were doing in the Senate Saloon. As the drawing shows, she purportedly also helped out people in need. It is unclear if this was actually the case. It is more likely to be just another example of the “hooker with a heart of gold” archetype (Wikipedia, 2017).

The story continues, but with a somewhat different twist. Around 1900 Portland, like most of the country, was in the grip of a bicycle craze (Chandler 2013a, John 2014).  Emancipated women rode bicycles, in much the same way as emancipated women started smoking cigarettes in the nineteen twenties. In both cases they were much helped along their way by commercial interests and the advertising industry.

At around the same time Portland east of the Willamette started to develop, and Piedmont and Woodlawn were laid out. Liz wanted to make some money on the East Side, bought the land that is now Peninsula Park, and started a bicycle racing track with a saloon the middle. Her ladies raced around the track, provocatively dressed, and after that all around the city, seated on their bicycles. Unfortunately, at least in the story, this turned off the more respectable women in Portland from doing the same. As a consequence the bicycle craze died, and with it died Liz’s bicycle park and her savings.

Here is the delightful painting “Liverpool Liz” by local artist Anna Magruder (also available as a tote bag on Amazon) of that heroic period. It fits the usual story, but that is about all it fits historically. In fact, after reading this chapter, it will be difficult for you to image Liz, or any of her girls, on a bicycle.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B94Urj3OjM7BbjEtTjE3R1NPU0k

Now the usual story bifurcates. In one version Liz died a pauper because of the bicycle park disaster, in another version she cleverly sold the land for $ 60,000 to the City of Portland for Peninsula Park and died a rich woman.

The “usual story” is nice and romantic, but unfortunately most of it is not true, and much of the rest is unverifiable. Let’s see what can actually be documented. I am relying a great deal on newspaper articles from the period 1890-1920, but I will continue to work on putting the story on a more factual basis using city, county, and state records. To put the actual story in context I will have to discuss the history of other parts of Portland, in particular the waterfront at Couch Addition and the North End.

Elusive Liz

Let’s try to discover the real story, instead of just going with the usual story. When I started writing this chapter I did not know when and where Liz was born, I did not know for sure what her maiden name was, if she was married or not, and if so how many times, where she lived over the years, and if and when she came to the US. In trying to find out more it was easiest to work backwards in time, because at least there is reliable information about her death. This chapter is written following my progress in time, describing and documenting more and more discoveries. But even at the end many questions remain. Especially where Liz was, and what she did, in the years before 1890 is somewhat of a mystery. Since this chapter, like the rest of the book, will never be finished, we hope to keep adding information.

So let’s start with my initial finds about her death.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B94Urj3OjM7BRVVDQXZOTWZZcHc

According to the Morning Oregonian of February 18, 1913, she died “about 60 years old” on Monday, February 17, 1913 at 28 ½ N. Fourth Street. There was no known will and there were no known relatives.

There is some more precise information the next day, in the Oregon Daily Journal of February 19. The age at death is given as 54, which means Liz was born in 1859 or 1860. The cause of death is given as bronchial pneumonia.  Interestingly, the article says she was buried on February 18 at 3pm “by the side of her husband” at Lone Fir Cemetery.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OoFp0hAQmtbp5X6O3L-M_LEeNMZZbVvB

From the  Metro site with cemetery records at

https://www.oregonmetro.gov/cemeteries/search-cemetery-records/18908

we find that she was buried in block 31, lot 58, burial space 3N. On the following map of the cemetery I have marked her gravesite in red.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWUtIUkZVSjFIZ28/view

The two newspaper articles, one reporting on the death of Elizabeth Young and the other reporting on the funeral of Elizabeth Smith, illustrate one of the problems I have. Liz had multiple names. When the will was discovered a couple of weeks later, the problem got even more serious. This is from the Oregon Daily Journal of February 25, 1913. I will have to say much more about the will further on in this chapter.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yJJR2Ba7v-xgue0EvItvUvaK1YfTY2vL

Thus her common name was Elizabeth Smith, her married name was Elizabeth Hutchinson, and her maiden name Elizabeth Young. It became clear, as I discover more and more facts, that she also at some time used Elizabeth Duncan. And in various newspaper articles over the years she is Lizzie Smith or M. L. Smith. Of course these multiple names make it harder to search for relevant information. More precisely, the person I am constructing in this publication could, at least in principle, be a mixture of various persons, roles, and personalities. I hope and trust that almost everything I found actually refers to the person eventually buried at Lone Fir, but I cannot be completely sure.

I know she was buried as Elizabeth Smith, and that is how she most often appears in newspaper articles. Unfortunately it is not easy to search the archives for the correct Elizabeth Smith either. There are too many Smiths in this world. Looking for Elizabeth Smith in Portland around 1900 in the Oregonian gives Dr. Elizabeth Smith, active in the Eugenics Movement, Elizabeth Smith, who owned the Occidental Hotel on NW First and Morrison, Elizabeth Smith, who was the president of the Temperance Union, and Elizabeth Smith, who died at the ripe old age of 103. Neither one of them is likely to be Liverpool Liz. So far I have not been able to find out where she got the name Smith, since it is presumably not her maiden name. A marriage ? But when and to whom ? Or did she just use it because it is the most common surname in England, Scotland, and the US ?

I did find a useful primary piece of information early on. The name Lizzie Smith does come up in the 1900 US Census. The census interviewer informs us she was born in England, in March 1860. Unfortunately there is no information about when she came to the US. Her address in July 1900 was 60 N Fourth Street, where she rented. Her occupation was given as lodging house keeper, and she shared the address with six young ladies, ages 20-23, without occupation, and with two young men, whose occupation was given as bartender. And unlike the eight young people in her boarding house, she could neither read or write. That in itself is quite a surprise, if true: the successful business woman from the usual story was illiterate ! Unfortunately Lizzie is nowhere to be found in the 1910 federal census, at least not under any of the names I tried, and equally unfortunately there is no 1890 federal census for almost all of the US, because all its records went up in flames.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWUtucEJIdFJPN0U/view

Portland’s Whitechapel Area

One thing is abundantly clear. Liverpool Liz and the Senate Saloon are inextricably connected. In order to find out more about Liz, I will have to look into the location and the ownership of the Senate Saloon. But before I start talking about the precise location, I need to talk a bit about the general area the Senate Saloon was in. It is part of the Couch Donate Land Claim, which became Couch Addition to the city of Portland. Captain John Couch claimed the 640 acres in 1845 (Snyder, 1989, p 39-42). Here is a map from 1891. As I will generally do with maps, I’ll also provide a link below it to a larger and better copy.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWXNDVEFXSVNwMzA

For contemporary Portlanders, the area is now part of the Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood. It is also part of the ABC district, in which the names of east-west streets are ordered alphabetically, increasing  from south to north. Originally there was A Street, B Street, and so on. In 1891 streets were renamed using names of Portland pioneers, Thus A Street became Ankeny Street, B Street became Burnside, C street Couch, D Street Davis, E Street Everett, and so on. This was combined with the numbered north-south streets, increasing from east to west. Each block in the grid was 200 by 200 feet, defining four 100 by 100 sections generally referred to as SW, SE, NW, and NE. And each of these four sections was divided into two 100 by 50 standard 5,000 square foot lots. One exception to the system was Front Street (now Naito Parkway), which was basically Zero Street, running north-south close to the river.

Within Couch Addition, I am mainly interested in the so-called Whitechapel district, the waterfront corner east of Fourth Street, and north of A Street. “Whitechapel” was a nickname, derived from the infamous London district, where Jack the Ripper did his dastardly deeds. A excellent description of Portland’s waterfront in the area of the tall ships, basically from 1850 to 1900, is Blalock (2012). There are also, of course, the more sensational and lurid accounts in John (2012), and in the several series of Sunday Oregonian articles by Holbrook in the thirties. In the recent canonical, but business-oriented, histories of Portland (MacCall, 1976, 1988, Lansing, 2003) the Whitechapel area from, say, 1880 to 1910 gets a moderate amount of attention, not in the least because of the corruption in the police force and city government, and the corrupting influence of the Portland elite of bankers and real estate tycoons. See, for example, MacCall (1976, p 195-196; 1988, p 290-291) or Lansing (2003, p. 233-237). There is a wealth of information about the North End, Whitechapel, and the nineteenth century saloon culture built on alcohol and prostitution in the excellent Reed College thesis of Christopher J. Head (1980) and the equally fine PSU dissertation of Chris D. Sawyer (1985).

For better understanding it is also necessary to remember some catastrophic events for the area in the period 1890 to 1900. In 1893 and 1896 there were serious economic panics and depressions throughout the country, which resulted in massive job loss, houselessness, and business closings. As usual, this mostly affected the poor, and people living in the Whitechapel area were definitely poor. In 1894 the Willamette and the Columbia rivers both flooded large areas of land. The Willamette reached a high-water mark of 33.5 feet. The water covered 250 city blocks, knocked out utilities, and devastated much of the Whitechapel area. As a consequence of these events, a lot of the housing in the area was in a very bad state, unoccupied, and if it was occupied it rented out for very little. Here is a map of the flooded area.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWi1Edm5zak5JOEU/view

As a consequence of the low rents, the abundance of sailors, the corruption, and the general lawlessness the district became an area with cheap boarding houses, saloons, and brothels. Owners often erected small clusters of wooden houses, of questionable quality, which could be leased for boarding and for “cribs”. Those cribs were used, as the Ministerial Association of Portland in their 1893 vice port states, by “young girls of 16 years of age … consorting with the Negroes, Italians and the lowest elements of the city.” (quoted by MacCall, 1976, p 195).

In order to get a general feel for the area I will now discuss a 1897-1898 lawsuit, informally known as the “cribs case”, and formally known as Blagen et al. vs Smith. The suit will also give us some information about the location of the Senate Saloon. There was fairly extensive reporting about this lawsuit in the Morning Oregonian. I will include links to the relevant articles, but I will quote from the summary and opinion of Justice Frank A. Moore when the case reached the Oregon Supreme Court in May 1899.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWGYybUZiY0VjZ1E/view

Plaintiff N. J. Blagen owned two lots on the SE corner of Couch and First Streets, which he leased to the W. C. Noon Bag Company. That company employed 40 to 60 men and women, making bags, tents, awnings, and sails. Here is a picture of the Blagen building from 1951, with the bag company still operating.

Defendant R. C. Smith leased two lots diagonally across Couch Street from Blagen’s building, as well as some lots on the intersection of Davis and First, where he planned to change the existing small wooden buildings into cribs, “for the purpose of renting them to dissolute women, to be used as bawdy houses.” The plaintiffs argues that this would negatively impact the value of their property. In addition:

The plaintiff the W.C. Noon Bag Company avers that from the windows of the Blagen building the said cribs are in plain view; that its employees, in coming to and returning from their labor, must necessarily pass by or between these buildings, which, if they are permitted to be used for immoral purposes, will bring into the vicinity in which they are situated drunken, disorderly, and disreputable persons and criminals, the effect of which will be to endanger the lives and morals of its employees, and interfere with, disturb, and injure its business, resulting in a private, direct, and special damage to it.

Plaintiffs brought an impressive array of witnesses to the trial, among them J. C. Ainsworth and H. I. Glisan, various representatives of real estate and utility companies, and sundry local business people. Defendant brought witnesses that argued cribs would actually enhance the neighborhood and raise property values, because it would bring economic activity and real estate value to a depressed area, where there was none before. Fleishner, Mayer, & Co., who owned the property Smith leased on the NW corner of First and Couch, testified

The property was very unproductive of late years, and there were many objectionable places surrounding it already. The income from the property in 1890 was $3500; 1891 $4700; 1892 $2815; 1893 $692; 1894 $162.50; 1895 $110; 1896 $26.50.

Judge Stearns of the municipal court found that the economic damage to the Blagen property and the bag business was not proven and not likely to be substantial, mostly because:

That at the time of bringing there were and still are, situated within two blocks of said property of N.J. Blagen fifteen saloons, and over twenty-eight houses of prostitution, called “cribs”, and that said cribs or houses of prostitution and saloons have been standing on said property for several years prior to January 1, 1897.

In other words, dear N.J. Blagen, you knew what you were in for, and the additional cribs will not really change the character of the neighborhood. Thus the temporary injunction was lifted.

The Oregon Supreme Court in May 1899 decided differently, however,  after hearing additional testimony. In the opinion written for the court by justice Frank A. Moore, it says:

One of the witnesses who appeared on the plaintiff’s behalf, in speaking of the occupant of a crib in the immediate vicinity of Blagen’s property, in answer to the question, “What would the appearance of these women indicate was their occupation ?” says “Why, it is self-evident that they are on the town. For instance, several weeks ago I was walking along there about half past six or seven, and the windows were out, -- fully open --, and one of the Japanese women was standing around in undress uniform, and several Chinamen were standing around, negotiating, apparently, on the outside.”

Judge Stearns was overruled and the temporary injunction was made permanent. You can follow the lawsuit in the articles from the Morning Oregonian linked in the reference section.

It is also useful to consider the following map, which is a subset of one of the 1889 Sanborn maps.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BVW04a2U5SjBrcFE/view

The Blagen block is in the upper-right section of what is marked block 509, and the Smith cribs are in the lower-left section of block 513. I will come back to this map in the next section of this chapter.

For now, here are some photos I made on February 7, 2019, arranged in the same way as the Sanborn map. The Blagen building is still there, in all its 19th century capitalist glory. The Overland Hotel (with my fingers unfortunately photobombing the picture) has reverted to the Norton House, its old name when it was established by Patrick Norton in 1877. It was restored, renamed and repurposed by Bill Naito in 1977. The Smith cribs on the NW corner are now the Fleischner Building. It is mentioned in the Blagen lawsuit that around 1890 that corner was the Bella Union Theater, “a mixed saloon, where women resorted and sold liquors”. Before that it was the first place of business of the 1853 pioneer grocery firm of Allen & Lewis. There is a nice drawing in the Oregonian of April 16, 1893.

In 1909 the firm of Fleischner, Mayer, & Co bought a 100 by 200 feet part of block 513 to build a large clothing factory.

The fourth block, which contained the Senate Saloon and the Roma Hotel, is a renovation of the Globe Hotel, built in 1911 for $ 35,000 by M. Seller & Co, wholesale and retail sale of glassware and crockery. It now houses, since 2012, this renovated Globe Hotel and the Old Town campus of the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine.

The Senate Saloon

There is considerable uncertainty about the location and ownership of the Senate Saloon. There was definitely more than one location over the years. Newspaper searches are complicated by the fact that there is a Senate Saloon in Spokane (Washington), Walla Walla (Washington), Helena (Montana), Pendleton (Oregon), Topeka (Kansas), Weiser (Idaho), and they all made the news between 1880 and 1910. Also “LIverpool Liz’s” may not always have been the same thing as the Senate Saloon. At times it may just have been a “female boarding house”, without a saloon. I will use the address information I have, together with the wonderful Sanborn maps for 1898, 1901, and 1908-1909, to be as complete and as precise as possible. Throughout we will have to realize the important point that owning a saloon does not mean owning the land, or even the building, on which and in which the saloon is located. In many, possibly most, cases the land and buildings in the downtown area belonged to capitalists such as W. K. Smith or J.C. Ainsworth, and the saloon owners merely owned the business and were leasing the building.  

Let’s start with Spider Johnson. He said Liz owned the Senate Saloon, on Second Street, “catty corner from where the Overland Hotel still stands”. There is an obvious problem with Spider’s geography. It is clear from the 1889 Sanborn map we just saw that the Overland Hotel was on the NE corner of the intersection of First and C street, and not on Second street. Thus the Senate Saloon would be on the SW corner of that intersection. This is consistent with information in the Supreme Court ruling on the Blagen case.

That long prior to January 1, 1897, there was situated directly across the street  from said property of N.J. Blagen a house of prostitution kept by one “Liverpool Liz”, and on the corner of First and C streets, diagonally across the street, there was what was known as the “Bella Union Theater”, a mixed saloon, where women resorted and sold liquors; that next to the building occupied by Liverpool Liz there stood a sailor boarding house, kept by Jim Turk; that this part of the town is known as part of the Whitechapel district.

This, in turn, corresponds with the information in Blalock (2012, p 60).

In Portland, from 1876 to 1887, Turk maintained a sailor’s boarding house at 9 C (now NW Couch) Street, between First and Front Streets. This was in the area called “Whitechapel”, one block from the Allen & Lewis Wharf. In 1888, this address became a flophouse called the Roma Hotel.

But there is another address. On December 15, 1899 the Morning Oregonian, under the heading “A Run for Nothing”, reports a small fire because “two electric wires had crossed in the second story of the Senate Saloon, corner of Fourth and Davis, and set fire to a paper ceiling.” The Morning Oregonian of June 3, 1900 reports a fire in the rear of the Senate Saloon, again placed on the corner of Fourth and Davis. “The flames originated in the oil room, and were not discovered until they had extended to the rear of a frame building, 271 Davis Street.” The paper reports that the saloon and adjoining building were occupied by M. L. Smith, which we know is another moniker for Lizzie. This is confirmed by the 1900 census, which gives the address of Lizzie Smith as 60 N Fourth Street, right on the corner. This is enough information to look at a cutout of a 1901 Sanborn map.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BVXU5SXg4Q2ZMb1U/view

The map shows the block on the SW corner of Davis and Fourth, where Fourth has the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. The street numbers on Davis show where number 271 is, and the map seems consistent with a saloon on the corner. It mentions F.B., which is Sanborn’s abbreviation for “female boarding”, on the second floor. There is a lot more female boarding around the corner on Fourth Street, and if this is indeed a version of the Senate Saloon run by Lizzie, that is probably where she lived. Paper ceiling and all. 

I went back to the corner of Fourth and Davis, and made the following disappointing photo. Portland Maps says it’s now 331 NW Davis, built in 1923, and currently for sale.

There is a third Senate Saloon location to consider. I should thank Joseph Gilmore, of Oak Point, Washington, who wrote a letter on August 15, 1903, to the License Committee of the City of Portland. He alleged to have been robbed of $ 25, and perhaps drugged, when visiting the Senate Saloon and Dance Hall on August 13. It should be mentioned that the proprietor of the Senate Saloon at the time, whoever that was, told the paper that “Gilmore is not responsible and that $25 was an impossible amount for him to have had at one time.” Gilmore asked that the liquor license be revoked, or at least not renewed, and even that the place be shut down. And in his letter he gives the address as 61 N Second Street, on the corner of Second and Davis. The Oregonian of February 19, 1902, has an article called “Ladies at the Bar”.

On the corner of Second and Davis streets Miss Liverpool Liz was regarding with satisfaction the exterior of her well-appointed dance hall, but, as the functions which are given there do not commence till evening, no strains of music emanated from the interior.

In other newspaper articles from 1905 the NW corner of the Second and Davis intersection is also mentioned as the address, sometimes of the Senate Saloon and Dance Hall. On February 21, 1906, for example, the Oregon Daily Journal reports that Fred Peterson lost his watch at Liverpool Liz’s on Second and Davis. Exciting local news. There is even a mention of the Senate Saloon at this address in a 1907 article. But after that, silence. We shall see from the city directories that Liz still had a saloon at 61 N Second in 1909, but it was not in the news any more, and it may have lost its liquor and female licenses at that time.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BVXU5SXg4Q2ZMb1U

Mr. Gilmore’s information allows us to use the Sanborn maps again to find out where the Senate Saloon was. The map for 1901 shows it in the south-east (lower-right) corner of block 517 of the city, at the NW corner of Davis and Second.  As we shall see later on, in 1904 Liz married George C. Duncan, who died at this address on March 13, 1905. Between the saloon and the house at number 67 is the dance hall, and the map indicates again that the second floor is used for “Fem. Boarding” -- Sanborn’s euphemism for a bordello. In 1908 the building is still there, but there is a somewhat different partitioning of the quarter section, and the dance hall has disappeared. There does not seem to be a saloon at that location any more. In Sanborn speak D means Dwelling, S means Store).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=11hXS4m64efgZXT1TOuUC-sGqaxCXsfz6

In the 1907 Portland Block Book it shows that the lower half of block 517 was owned in 1906 by Robert R. Thomson, the millionaire steamboat man, who made his fortune on the Upper Columbia, and subsequently moved to San Francisco. He also owned, by the way, half of the Fleischner block on Couch and First.

Here is a picture of the same corner of Second and Davis as it is now.

The text on the building suggests it was built in 1910. Lyndon Musolf was a political science professor at PSU, who was appointed Executive Director of the Housing Authority of Portland in 1973, and an advocate for affordable housing. His obituary in the Oregonian of December 7, 2017 says

In 1998, his efforts in housing were recognized by the City of Portland when they re-named a building in the Old Town area the 'Lyndon Musolf Manor,' a building he helped convert to 95 units of affordable housing.

The building has seen it all: from female boarding to affordable housing.

To get a more precise picture of the saloon ownership over time I downloaded all Portland City Directories from between 1885 and 1913 and looked at the business section, under saloons. The following table gives an overview of what I found, with the owners and addresses for each year. It basically confirms and organizes what I already knew.

The two entries for Kendel in 1892 and 1893 are starred, because the directory lists him, at the same address, as a pawnbroker, and no longer as a saloon owner. There was no saloon owned by either Lou Kendall or Lizzie Smith in 1894 and 1895, which were, of course, the years of the flood. I have no information about some sort of transaction between Liz and Lou which made Lizzie the owner of record from 1897-1898 on. The table validates what already knew, and completes it.

The three Senate Saloon addresses obviously means the business moved two times. It is clearly the same business over time, although it changed ownership around 1897. It also seems clear that all three locations were called “Liverpool Liz’s”.  But more generally, I have very little information about Liz’ early career in the Senate Saloon. If it is true she arrived from England around 1890, then she did rise to the top of the saloon empire surprisingly quickly.  I know, from the census, that she (allegedly) could neither read or write. There must have been an early partnership of some sort with Lou Kendall, which had its glory days in the 1890’s and broke up just before the turn of the century.

The Oregonian sometimes mentions other owners, probably erroneously. On June 9, 1903 the paper suggests the Senate Saloon was owned by one William Duncan. As we shall see Liz probably married a William Duncan in October 1904, so maybe Duncan, who was listed in the city directories as a bartender working for Liz, was just pretending to be the proprietor jure uxoris. More about the various Duncans later. In one other place Louis Victor Brayer, alias Victor Gonzalez, alias Le Lapin or The Rabbit, is also mentioned as an owner of some Senate Saloon in Portland. It is not clear when, but certainly before he was guillotined on Devil’s Island in 1930. I don’t think he really was an owner of the same Senate Saloon(s)  I have been talking about.

The Senate Saloon remained in the news roughly until 1905, and not in a good way. There were at least two suicides, and one attempted suicide, of the women working there. In 1905 there was a murder case that got a lot of of attention (Chandler, 2013b). On March 25 Blanche Tompkins and Nora Stone, two prostitutes working at the saloon, got into a fight. Nora Stone was hit with an oil lamp, her dress caught fire, and she was seriously burned. She died two weeks later on April 13, in Good Samaritan Hospital. Blanche was charged with first degree murder, but acquitted on May 6, 1905. The jury ruled the death an accident. There was  some baffling jurisprudence created here. The jury found that Blanche had thrown the lamp with malicious intent, but at the same time the fact that it actually hit Nora was ruled an accident. And then on October 19, 1906 Nellie Boyle, one of the women who was a regular  at Liverpool Liz’s, had her throat slit by Henry Hose.

This, and similar goings on, finally got the attention of the police. Boarding house and crimp bosses such as Larry Sullivan and Jim Turk had lost a great deal of their political cloud, and owners of the saloons consequently lost their protection. Mayor George Williams wanted to beautify the city, and get rid of the cribs, or at least move them out of sight. The Senate Saloon, previously untouchable, was hit hard. On August 30, 1903 the Morning Oregonian has a detailed account of extensive raids on North Side saloons.Twenty five policemen, on the orders of Chief of Police Charles Hunt,  raided nine saloons. One of them was the Senate, on Second and Davis, allegedly owned by Liverpool Liz. In the raid “39 women of the red light district were caught in the net”, described as “bepowdered and often profane”.

The protection racket may not have been entirely gone.

But the net as it scooped did not touch Fourth Street. Where the red lights burn the brightest the damsels sang, danced, and conducted themselves as they pleased without the fear of a raid.

Chief Hunt did not care to discuss why Fourth Street was not touched. The whole story is at the following URL.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWmU4QUN6M0Ywams/view

The Oregon Daily Journal of November 8, 1905, reports the recommendation of Chief of Police Gritzmacher, with the full support of Mayor Harry Lane, to revoke the liquor license of Liverpool Liz’s, which, according to the police, was “the lowest dive in the city”.

More robberies, instances in which “knockout drops” have been given, pocket picking, brawls and other breaches of the law have been reported from “Liverpool Liz’s” saloon than from any other dive in Portland. 

Earlier that year Chief Hunt had issued an order that banned all women from five saloons, including the Senate Saloon. Now clearly not much is left if you take away the women from the brothel and the liquor from the bar. It seems a safe conjecture that sometime between 1905 and 1910 the Senate Saloon went out of business, ten years before prohibition came to Oregon. Portland was becoming less of a wide open sailor’s town, and crime and corruption moved from bars and brothels to corporate boardrooms and government offices.

There is one final “Liverpool Liz’s” place, the place where she died, 28½ N Fourth Street. She rented that place from John Pulos for $ 200 per month.to run a 30 room flophouse called the Ray Hotel. No Senate Saloon any more, just the Ray Hotel, and a male nurse, Richard Hamill. More about the Ray Hotel, John Pulos,  and Richard Hamill (or Hamil) in the section on the will and estate.

John Pulos did some maintenance. There is a building permit  notice in the Oregonian of March 26, 1911, when Liz was still living there.

The 1908 Sanford map of the block containing number 28 there is a building that seems to be partitioned into three parts. The middle one is a store of some kind, one and one-half story high (coded as S). That is where Liz spent her final days, still very close to where she allegedly arrived and started her career around 1890. When I walked around in Old Town to take the photos of the four locations of the Senate Saloon and Ray Hotel it struck m how close they were together. Liz had a small radius, when she tried to move out to the other side of the river it did no go well.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWTE0TWNNOFNaWWs/view

The house in which Liz died, and where she ran her Ray Hotel, corresponds with the right side of the building in the photo below, the one with the red door. Comparing this with the Sanborn map makes it clear that there have been some huge changes on the lot since 1908.

After Liz died in 1913 John Pulos, who was her landlord, bought the Ray Hotel and its inventory for a measly $ 100 from the estate. The Oregonian of December 15, 1917, shows what he did with the place.

The 1913 report of the Portland Vice Commission comes with a map, showing where the doubtful and immoral hotels, boarding houses, and apartment houses were located. Unfortunately the original map is in a rather bad condition and it makes it hard to find which  streets the various establishments were on. The excellent Vintage Portland website overlaid the locations with a Google map of the area. I am not sure how good or reliable the overlay is, but it seems allright. The Vice Commission reports were made between 1911 and 1913, and we no longer see an immoral female boarding house on Second and Davis, where the last Senate Saloon was. We do see a boarding house with “immorality countenanced or ignored” on Fourth Street between Burnside and Couch -- and that may be the Ray Hotel.

What about this Spider Johnson idea, illustrated in the color image on the first page of this chapter,  that Liz “had a good heart” and helped men in distress. There is no known evidence to support this alleged good heart -- but it is plausible she was abused and taken advantage of by Bush, Duncan, Chase, Hutchinson, Kendall, Hamll, Smith, Pulos, Marco, Descamps, and who knows how many others.

There is a description of a female boarding madam in the 1913 Vice report, pages 23-25.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SosjLQB3rGv0TGARxCY2ZgM5M9QR9h7p

This is probably not Liz, because the boarding house reported on there is near City Hall, has 54 rooms, and was brand new at the time. But I can imagine it to be an alternative description of Liz, very different from the one by Johnson/Holbrook, less romantic, and possibly more realistic.

The landlady, Mrs. ---, is possibly 45 years old, with experience written on her face. She said to me that she had been in this business for years and had a long and varied career in this as well as in the sporting business. She is a cold, calculating, immoral character, whose sole purpose is to make all the money she can in her present place, and she is certainly doing that. Mrs. --- is a divorced woman. She said her husband is now running some sort of disreputable place in Vancouver. … The landlady herself is a dissipated woman who drinks excessively. She told me, in discussing her profits in the rooming house business, that she owned real estate unencumbered and had money in the bank. She has beautiful diamonds, and her clothing, as well as other personal effects, all indicate prosperity.

When Liz died in 1913 she was alone and sick in a dilapidated boarding house. Her bank account, her diamonds, her real estate, and her health were pretty much gone.

Liz and Lou

In this section I follow Liz’s relation with Louis P. Kendall. Again, the fog of time creates some problems. “Louis” is often “Lou”, in many cases there is no “P”, and “Kendall” often is written as “Kendel”. That results in many different combinations to search for, but nevertheless I am reasonably confident that the persons using these names, between 1888 and 1919, are really the same person. There are too many links between between his various activities and addresses. But I may be wrong, and sometimes “Kendel” may not be “Kendall”. And it is also possible Lou changed his name from Kendall to Kendel, because of his unsavory past as a saloon keeper and brothel owner. I am reasonably sure that in 1888 Louis P. Kendall owned one version of the Senate saloon. In the Morning Oregonian of February 18, 1888, there is a lurid account of the murder of Charlie “Crawfish” Olsen by Frank Jachetta. Together with a third man they were making the rounds of the saloons of the North End.

By the time the trio reached Louis Kendall’s Senate saloon they were in an advanced state of intoxication, so much so that Louis ordered them out and refused to serve them with drinks.

The Portland City Directories of 1889, 1890, and 1891 all list Lou P. Kendel, with profession saloon keeper, and with business and home address at 40 N First Street. That is the location of “Liverpool Liz’s Place”, opposite the Blagen block, on the southwest corner of First and Couch. The city directory information changes in 1892 and 1893, now Louis P. Kendel is listed as a pawnbroker, at the same address as before. In 1896 and 1897 Louis P. Kendall is back as a saloon keeper, but now with business and home address at 60 N Fourth Street. That is on the corner of Fourth and Davis, and it is the same as the address of Lizzie Smith in the 1900 federal census.

Spider Johnson in Holbrook (1933) suggests that Lou and Liz got romantically involved and went into business together. In later articles Holbrook even says that Kendall and Liz were married at some point. I don’t think so. They did, however, seem to share a fondness for ostentatious diamonds, typical for the vulgarians one finds in both the lower and the upper classes.

I don’t think I ever saw her when she wasn’t wearing a huge gold necklace, at the end of which was a cluster of diamonds.

Lou was a flashy guy. He wore a big watch chain with a diamond as big as a hunk of coal hanging in the middle of it.

Liz and Lou Kendall worked together for a long time. Lou also took on a string of race horses, and for a time he did pretty well with them, although they cost him plenty before he got through. I don’t remember just when it was, but Liz and Lou got into some sort of rumpus over their various businesses and split up.

There is some mention of Kendall and horses in the Oregonian, May 21, 1889.

Louis P. Kendall owns Winnipeg by Autocrat, out of Maid of the Mill. Winnipeg has a record of 2:40.

From the scraps of information I have so far, it seems that Liz and Lou were business associates, at least from 1888 until around 1900. They boarded at the same address, in two versions of the Senate saloon. Around 1890 they were doing well, with horses and diamonds and all, but then there seems to have been a falling out, described by Spider as a “rumpus”.

The Oregonian of April 20, 1899 has some more pertinent information about that rumpus. Elizabeth Young sued Lou P. Kendall in state circuit court because he had obtained possession of  several pieces of real estate bought with her money.

Maybe Liz asked Kendall to put the deeds in his name because she could neither read nor write. The truth of her claims is difficult to verify, however, because I do not know what the informal arrangements between the parties were, but some of them fit the primary sources. The six transactions that the article refers to did indeed take place. Here are links to the six deeds, some to Kendel, some to Kendall.

James et al to Kendall, 06/29/1888, lots 2 and 4, block 7, Southern Portland, $ 1,500

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YSkDyj7YFWCwEt5N_SmCKyrhn0h0l39-

Conant to Kendall, 07/11/1888, lot 8 in block 324, East Portland, $ 1,200

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uw8Ll3_vu2S-dc-jJqOkqldM4pdZIuyT

Bowman to Kendall, 03/05/1889, lots 31 and 32, Glenhaven Park, $ 2,500

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14iGYzTt8Kw2DLkJZXyNfu5VYlY8hvzpf

Daniels to Kendall, 04/04/1889, 3 acres, Sec 31 T 1 N R 2 E, $ 1,600

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1e1GiwGgj6sBu2S0m5mIT4KRVEJpOxHbX

Mayer to Kendall, 04/04/1889, 5 acres, Sec 31 T 1 N R 2 E, $ 1,600

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TiFUGhXyWD2YxoB6VBE--x9Nic31xaUo

Lowen to Kendall, 01/02/1890, lots 1 and 3, block 7, Southern Portland, $ 1,500

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YsG4434LQoF6N1D-igg2Dtcz6m0g4Ksx

For curiosity’s sake I found out from the deeds where the three and five acre lots were, after some conversion from chains and links, and some measuring on the 1906 plat map. Here is section 31 of T1 N R 2 E, outside the city boundaries at the time. The 5 + 3 = 8 acres were platted in 1899 by H. F. Varwig Jr. as the 48 lots of the Queen Ann subdivision, which is next to what is now Normandale Park.

Mr. Varwig was one of the scions of the family firm that made and marketed cigars, VIM Rye Whiskey, and R. Bond Bourbon. Here is a delicious, but clearly politically incorrect, advertisement for that last product, taken from the wonderful blog Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men.

But enough of this distraction.

There is another parcel of land, which is relevant to Lou and Liz, but is not mentioned in the lawsuit. It is also in Glenhaven Park, in the five-acre lots 9 and 10, which Lou Kendall acquired from J. V. Beach and Agnes O. Beach on February 25, 1890 for $ 3,000.  

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18-Y5yQ1gDd0jnzx9rmjBIzfrn4m-NS1b

On March 12, 1890 Kendall filed the plat for Morgan’s Subdivision, dividing the 10 acres into 30 lots. Here is the recorded plat.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18chDoEg9D5tJJU_Hr0ilQLAa-PTuACtg

On this part of a 1906 map we see the two five-acre lots 31 and 32 in Glenhaven Park at the bottom, and Morgan’s Subdivision at the top.

After 1900 Liz and Lou went their separate ways. In the city directories of Butte and Bozeman in Montana there is a bookkeeper named Louis P. Kendall in 1900 Butte and a bookkeeper named Lou P. Kendell in 1901-1902 Bozeman. I guess Lou had moved, and maybe he was on the run. On December 4, 1906, however, Lou P. Kendel of Portland, 52 years old, was back. He married Mary Alice McLoughton of San Francisco in Vancouver, Washington. Mr. Kendel was listed on the marriage documents as a lodging house keeper, who had never been married before. The new Mrs. Kendel was in her second marriage, and she worked as a book binder. In the Portland City Directory of 1907, 1908, and 1909 the Kendels lived at 631 ½ Washington, and in one place his profession during that time is described as “Fur”. Whatever that is. Then, starting in 1914, they moved to 1834 E. Glison, where Lou P. Kendel died on March 5, 1919. But the Kendels were active in real estate as well, and some of the properties were previously associated with the ones mentioned in Elizabeth Young’s lawsuit.

On June 25, 1906 Lou P. Kendal (unmarried) sells lots 31 and 32 in Glenhaven park for $ 2,500 to Amanda and Maud Dietz.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wSqdx0wnHyMzZJyqI32z2v0sV8ZGSNSy

In April 1, 1908, Lou P. Kendel and wife sold lot 8, block 324, in East Portland for $ 3,000 to Charles O. and Sophia A. Sigglin.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Vt1COiPosiRv2zmAcIS4uONP4j7F3czS

And, surprisingly, on April 22, 1899 Lou P. Kendell of Butte City, Montana, sells lots 1, 2, 3, and 4 in block 7 in South Portland to Elizabeth Young for $ 4,500 !

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_lIjgjJLyOEldlDfeuwvYGxwl3MsKsFn

And a day before that, on April 21, 1899, the same Lou P. Kendell of Butte City sells all of block 2, 3, and 6 of Morgan’s Subdivision in lots 9 and 10 in Glenhaven Park to Elizabeth Young for $ 150.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r8xYkNJMoojfj9A8Ynqb_knY0XPzwp0P

If Liz is truthful, and for some reason I believe she is, then Kendall bought the lots in South Portland with her money for $ 3,000 and then sold them back to her ten years later for $ 4,500. Finally Kendall bought the lot in East Portland allegedly with Liz’s money for $ 1,200 and then sold it to Siglin for $ 3,000. Nice work if you can get it.

On June 22, 1906 Elizabeth Young sold lots 1-4 of block 7 in South Portland for $ 2,000 to John Bonadurer and Fred Neubauer.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1G4kBjpx0B6_Kv0HIGK5ovWVbW7-pSL0W

No matter how you write it, Liz took are serious loss on the South Portland lots. Selling them for so much less than what she bought them for indicates she rather desperately needed the money in 1906.

On the following page from the 1907 Portland Block Book we see Morgan’s Subdivision, with the 30 lots that Liz owned on the right.

In the Oregonian of February 27, 1918, I found on the delinquent tax list that the heirs of Mrs. Elizabeth Young owed back taxes of about $ 75 on lots 1-6, block 2, lots 1-12, block 3, and lots 1-12, block 6 in Morgan’s Subdivision. That is five years after Liz was dead and buried, giving new meaning to the phrase that the only unavoidable things in life are death and taxes.

Someone was paying the back taxes, however. In the Oregonian of July 21, 1918 we see:

I have no record yet of the final sale, and it is unclear if the non-resident heirs ever got their money.

As we shall see in the section on the will, Hamilton Johnstone was a lawyer working for the estate, who had contacted Liz’s distant relatives after her death.

The Evergreen Park Fiasco

Around 1899, at the height of the bicycle craze, some people associated with the North End, and the Senate Saloon in particular, wanted to get in on the action. Bicycle parks were starting up all over the state, and they decided to create one on the Portland East Side. The names associated with this business enterprise were Elizabeth Smith, Harry Bush (or Busch), Henry Chase, and John Darrow. Liz’s business partners Henry Chase and Harry Bush were two men later convicted for beating her up. I don’t know much about John Darrow, except that he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in 1902. A fine bunch. It seems that Chase was the contractor, Bush was the manager, and Liz was the financier. In the 1900 Polk City Directory

Harry E.R. Bush is proudly listed as the proprietor of the Evergreen Athletic Grounds.

Between Ainsworth Street and Portland Boulevard (now Rosa Parks Way) to the North, and between the west boundary of the Piedmont subdivision at Commercial and Kerby Avenues and Patton Boulevard (now Interstate Avenue) to the West  were 80 undeveloped acres of land, owned by banker and investor William Kanan Smith, one of our early local millionaires. By the way, Smith also owned considerable property in the Whitechapel area and on the waterfront. Our budding developers leased 40 acres of that land to start what they called Evergreen Park, the race track with a saloon in the middle. It is not entirely clear which part of the Smith tract they actually leased. Court proceedings later on indicated Piedmont was a quarter of a mile to three quarters of a mile away. In the same proceedings it says the resort is to be located on Willamette Boulevard, which is now another stretch of current Interstate Avenue. The conditions on the lease are also unknown, but clearly nobody actually “bought” the land from W.K. Smith. In 1900 the City would buy the southwest corner of the W.K. Smith tract for Ockley Green School, in 1909 it would buy the eastern 20 acres for Peninsula Park, and in 1920 it would lease 25 acres for the Municipal Automobile Park.

It is not clear what was actually build or realized of Evergreen Park. Here is an ad in the Oregonian of May 20, 1899.

Maybe a racetrack was indeed graded. It seems the area had a board fence, some type of buildings went up, and maybe even some actual bicycle racing went on. Spider Johnson told Stewart Holbrook:

Mrs. Esther Smith-O’Neel, who lives here in Portland, told me that she remembers of being at Liz’ bicycle park when she was about 5 years old. She remembers especially the dust that went up from the track when the “scorchers”, as they called them then, went by (Holbrook, 1933).

Maybe. But it could have been some other track, Mrs. Smith-O’Neel.

In the history page of the Piedmont Neighborhood Association’s website it says

Originally the site of “Liverpool Liz’s Place”,  it had been a roadhouse and racetrack for quarter-mile horse racing.

Local lore also says that some of the buildings were actually stables for the horses. I have seen very little evidence of any horses racing in the area. And, as we shall see, Evergreen Park only operated in the single summer of 1899, maybe only for a month, and it seems unlikely that anything substantial was going on during that period. The Grand Opening was on June 4, with music and dance and a balloon ascension, but no racing of any kind.

And still no liquor license. Harry Bush almost from the start ran into all kinds of trouble. Remember that Piedmont was platted by Edward Quackenbush, and that it was one of the first areas that had something like CC&R’s. Only houses could be built, no businesses, houses had to be of a certain price, and no alcohol could ever be sold in the neighborhood. The good citizens of Piedmont send delegations to the Committee of Licenses to prevent the unsavory Bush from getting a liquor license. And those “Piedmont Men” had some heavy hitters, like Quackenbush, Charles E.  Ladd, and William Killingsworth. They testified  before the liquor license committee. According to the Oregonian of June 10, 1899:

The general purport of their remarks was that they did not want a saloon in their neighborhood. They had gone out there to be away from such places, and for the sake of a proper neighborhood in which to rear their children had submitted to expense and some privations, and they asserted that they were there first, and that their wishes and rights in the matter ought to be considered before those of a saloon-keeper.

It was said that Bush is a man of disreputable antecedents and character, and it is alleged that the money he has expended comes from a disreputable source, and the people of Piedmont have no faith in his promise to keep an orderly place. They stated that there was a very noisy and disorderly crowd at Bush’s place last Sunday; that there was a sound of deviltry by night there, and that the noise was kept up till 10 or 11 o’clock, and could be heard nearly a mile.

Clearly one of the early examples of NIMBYism. Note that the license committee met on June 9, and “last Sunday” was the June 4 opening of the park. The “Piedmont Men” must not have appreciated the music of the “best concert band on the pacific coast”. Also note that the “disreputable source” of the money was, of course, Liverpool Liz. The committee decided to advise the council not to grant the liquor license.

Bush tried to counter at the next meeting of the committee by having one George Moore, ex-policeman, special policeman, and constable, apply for the license. The people of Piedmont were not fooled. The Oregonian of June 20, 1899, says:

Notwithstanding that his record would seem to entitle him to be fully qualified to run a saloon, the Piedmont people appeared to regard him as a blind, or figurehead, representing Bush, and they have an idea that Evergreen Park, as a roadside resort, is bound to be a rendezvous for a class of people who cannot “carry on” as they would like to at the resorts they patronize in the city.

Bush did not get his license. He sued the City, filing a petition for a writ of mandamus to compel the mayor and council to issue the license, arguing arbitrariness and improper procedure. Also, from the Oregonian of June 30, 1899:

Bush alleges that he has invested a large sum of money in the place, and, to make it profitable, it is necessary for him to sell wines, liquors, and beer, and that the park has at all times been carried on in a peaceful, quiet manner.

The petitioner further asserts that the saloon is not obnoxious to the residents of the vicinity, the majority of them being willing that the saloon be located there, and the only reason given by the council for withholding the license is that some people in Piedmont, a distance of from one-quarter to three-quarters of a mile, object to it.

If this distance estimate is not just a legal excuse by a desperate person, then the 40 acres of Evergreen Park were the western half of the W.K. Smith tract, bordered on the west by current Interstate Boulevard, and largely in the current Arbor Lodge neighborhood. Some additional pinpointing will be necessary.

Bush’s lawyers did have a valid point, however. The mandamus was based on the fact that the council did not deny the license by resolution, but merely acknowledged the report of the license commission. On August 20, 1899, we find in the Oregonian

A suit follows, wherein the redoubtable Bush mandamused the auditor and license committee to compel them to issue a license, and the question was thought favorable to Bush, but yet he has not been granted a license.

By August 20, however, the license problem was moot.  As I mentioned, the money Bush used for the park came from Liz. The single time she visited the park Bush beat her up. In addition he threatened to kill a certain Martin Gearhart, and went around shooting his pistols near the park.

What part of his thrilling programme of two nights ago he commenced with is uncertain. A woman of the North End, well known as “Liverpool Liz”, was badly pummeled, and doubtless the bold, bad man regarded this as a curtain-raiser, and immediately after reached the climax. Martin Gearhart and his wife, living near the park, awoke to find bullets whizzing through the air.

People living near the park say he has been using his pistol too freely on more than one occasion.

Bush was fined $ 50 for “warlike demonstrations”, and locked up for assault with a deadly weapon, awaiting a grand jury arraignment.  In October 1899 his assaults landed him in jail for a year, and that killed his mandamus court case against the city. Less than a year after it started Evergreen Park was already belly-up and whatever was built was being torn down. In the Oregonian of  May 20, 1900:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BX2l0MGQ5cHlwUU0/view

The next article, from the Morning Oregonian of May 12, 1900, illustrates the pathetic role Liz had in the Evergreen Park enterprise. She was out $ 6,000, about $ 160,000 in 2017 dollars. She had supported both Bush and Chase for months, and all she got out of it were some serious beatings. As with the Municipal Auto Park, W. K. Smith got to keep all the improvements and became even richer than he already was.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BX2NJeWk5OWxNT3M/vi

The Marriages

So, perhaps more importantly,  what about this husband that she was allegedly buried next to at Lone Fir ? There is a George C. Duncan, who died March 15, 1905, age 36 years, of alcoholism, and was buried two days later at Lone Fir in block 31, lot 58, burial space 1N. In the same lot as Liz, in a lot bought by a Mrs. Duncan from Mrs. Arvyla Snyder. Who was this Duncan ?

The Portland City Directories of 1903 and 1904 give additional information.

Thus George was a bartender in the Senate Saloon, located at 61 N Second Street, where he also boarded. He married the boss. And he died at the same address.

Here is a picture I made recently of the north half of lot 58. George Duncan is to the right of the vaulted obelisk with the Duncan name on it, Liz is on the left, in an unmarked grave. The Lone Fir records at the Oregon Historical Society indicate the northern half of lot 58 was bought by a Mrs. Duncan from a Mrs. Arvilla Snyder, but it is not clear (so far) which Mrs. Duncan this was, and when the sale was made.

Now how did I come up with Mr. Duncan and tie him into the story of Liz ? A marriage announcement in the Morning Oregonian of November 2, 1908 says that Robert A. Hutchinson, age 38, married Mrs. George C. Duncan, age 40.

And here is the marriage certificate.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BVzVfU3k4bGhJNmc/view

In other words, the widow Elizabeth Duncan remarried. She may have told the fib that she was only 40, or it is a typo and the license really said 49. Note that the information in the paper gives the address of Mr. Hutchinson as 67 N Second Street. The witness Thomas J. Williams ran a saloon at that address. The Oregonian of November 4, 1907, indicates he was arrested for “dispensing of liquor on Sunday” during the (brief) campaign against vice of 1907. The patrolling police were alerted to Williams because the heard “laughter and the clink of glasses”, and discovered that at the premises a certain Alice Davenport was “entertaining a bunch of seven sailors”. As we shall see later on, 67 N Second Street is right next to the Senate Saloon at 61 N Second Street, where Liz had her business.

The Hutchinson marriage was a stormy one. After one year and five days Elizabeth Hutchinson filed for divorce, because “he cursed her, struck her, and told her he wished she was dead”. He also “called her bad names” and “failed to provide for her”. In the Oregon Daily Journal, November 7, 1909 it says she alleged that “her husband avoided seeing her when she was critically ill last June except when he was intoxicated and his visits were unwelcome … When under the influence of liquor, she says, he sought the sick room, but this gave her no joy”. Most importantly, for our purposes, “she owned lots in Glenhaven Park before her marriage and asks that they be decreed to her”. Earlier, she had made a will on July 19, 1909, leaving her estate to family in Wales, and not to Robert A. Hutchinson. Judge Bronaugh granted the divorce on November 20, 1909. In the Portland City Directories of 1911, 1912, and 1913 Robert A. Hutchinson is still listed as a bartender, working at various saloons.

Note that the will of Elizabeth Smith was executed in July 1909, when she was Elizabeth Hutchinson, and she was critically ill,  The Morning Oregonian of November 20, 1909 informs us she was in the hospital for ten weeks after an operation. This may also explain why, starting in July 1910, she needed the expert nursing care of Mr. Richard Hamill.

Spider Johnson told Holbrook there were anywhere between zero and six husbands. If my detective work is correct bartenders George C. Duncan and Robert A. Hutchinson were two of them. Spider also said the last husband was still living in 1933, in Marshfield City, Oregon. And indeed, in the 1930 census there is Robert A. Hutchinson, 58 years old, proprietor of a card room in Marshfield. So, pretty conclusively, I can conclude that Elizabeth Young is Elizabeth Smith is Elizabeth Hutchinson is Elizabeth Duncan.

Not surprisingly, because of the nature of her business, there were other men in Liz’s life, and as a rule they treated her badly. Many of them hung around around the Senate Saloon, not exactly the place to meet the ideal husband. Spider Johnson suggests involvement with Lou Kendall and Douglas Gaston, both rather shady characters. He also tells the story that she was almost beaten to death once by one of the barkeepers in the Senate Saloon, but without giving a name or a date.

In 1890 Lou Kendall allegedly cheated her out of about $ 10,000 worth of real estate. We’ll talk about this later.

In 1899 Harry Bush, a “North End rounder”, went to prison for a year because he pistol-whipped Elizabeth Smith and seriously injured her. He also took a shot at her. This is after she financed Bush’ Evergreen Park project to the tune of $ 6,000.

In 1901 Henry Chase beat and seriously injured his “consort”, Elizabeth Smith, after she had purportedly supplied financial assistance to the Chase family for months (Morning Oregonian, 06-12-1901). I am not sure what the legal status of “consort” is, but for now let’s just interpret it as some sort of fiance.

In the Oregonian of May 31, 1904 it says William Duncan, “a North End vulture”, at least once mentioned in the paper as the owner of the Senate Saloon, was arrested for stealing a diamond ring from Elizabeth Smith. It is indeed a sorry situation when your employer is stealing your jewelry.

We have already seen that Robert A. Hutchinson, also connected in a way to the Senate Saloon, abused her and gave her no joy.

The court reporter in the Hutchinson divorce case said that Elizabeth Hutchinson “drew a blank in the lottery of love”. This seems to be a fair characterization of all of Liz’s relationships.

Let me summarize what I have found out so far. Lou Kendall and Liz worked together from about 1889 (and maybe before that, but I have no data to support that) until about 1899 (when they definitely had a falling out). There is no indication they were ever married. In the 1900 census Lizzie Smith was . unmarried. Then in 1908 Mrs. George C. Duncan marries Robert A. Hutchinson, and divorces him the next year. He was a bartender in the saloon of Thomas Williams, next to the Senate Saloon on Second and Davis. The evidence, especially from the probate file, is overwhelming that Elizabeth Hutchinson is Liverpool Liz, even though the 1908 marriage certificate says she was 40 years old (she must have been 48). This means that some time between 1900 and 1908 she must have married George C. Duncan. We know from the Portland City Directory that a George C. Duncan worked as a bartender in the Senate Saloon in 1903 and 1904. We know from Lone Fir Cemetery that she was buried in 1913 next to a George C. Duncan, who was born in 1870 and died in 1905. But I have not been able to find any records of that marriage, at least not in Multnomah County. George C. Duncan does not appear in the federal census of 1880 or 1900. Thus our model so far is that Elizabeth Young became Elizabeth Duncan between 1900 and 1905, and then became Elizabeth Hutchinson in 1908. The idea is that she just adopted the names Elizabeth Smith or Lizzie Smith or M. L. Smith without marrying any Smith.

But then today (06/13/2018) I looked for Elizabeth Young marriages in Washington. And I found the documents below. There is a marriage in 1904 between William Duncan and Elizabeth Young, both residing in Portland, Oregon. William Duncan is a 34 year old bartender, Elizabeth Young gives her age as 37 (although Liverpool Liz was 44 in 1904). And, curiously, William Duncan gives his father’s name as George C. Duncan. This cannot be the George C. Duncan buried in Lone Fir, because that George C. Duncan was born in 1870, the same year as William Duncan. If this Elizabeth Young is Liverpool Liz, then this marriage would indeed change her name to Elizabeth Duncan, but not to Mrs. George C. Duncan.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xZ85F8YIBwGfV1oms6ftQZ7r60-Dyucs

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jnv23g4wwiebz9afziyhKcfnqoTi6wn1

The Portland City Directories of 1901, 1902, and 1904 list a William Duncan as a bartender working for Lizzie Smith or M. L. Smith at the same time as George C. Duncan, who is listed on the same page in 1904.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1E-bS6B9zxwhpnvK-vWhphvW_slZLxXuk

We have encountered William Duncan (I should say “some William Duncan”) before. This is from the Oregonian of June 9, 1903.

As I mentioned before, I don’t know about this “proprietor” claim. Looks incorrect to me. Unless Duncan was leveraging his amorous connection to Liz. And there is this from the Oregonian of March 31, 1904.

Clearly the 1904 marriage does not completely fit into the current version. It raises several questions. Why would you marry someone who stole your precious diamond ring just a few months earlier ? How were the two barkeepers related ? Brothers ? Or were they a single person using two names ? Who was this George C. Duncan, William’s father ? What happened to William Duncan after 1905 ? Did Liz marry two Duncan’s within a period of five years ? How could she marry William when George C. was still alive ? Was the license in error, because it should have said instead that she married George C. Duncan, whose father’s name was William Duncan ? I have no answers (yet), but I like this last hypothesis because it explains why I cannot find the George C. Duncan marriage, and why Liz became Mrs. George C. Duncan. Let’s assume, for the moment, that George and Liz married in October 1904, and George drank himself to death in March 1905.

The other problem is Liz’s age on the marriage certificates. Mostly from the census and the newspaper articles about her death I have assumed so far that she was born in March 1860, and was 53 or 54 when she died in February 1913. But when marrying Robert A. Hutchinson in November 1908 she gave her age as 40, and the probate is rock-solid in establishing that marriage. When marrying William Duncan in October 1904 she said she was 37. Both marriage certificates are consistent with a birth year of around 1867, and an age at death of 45 or 46. Maybe she thought she was seven years younger than she actually was, maybe she lied. I’ll stick with 1860 for now, but with a somewhat uneasy feeling. Note that the William Duncan license also reveals that her father’s name was William Young and her mother’s name Catherine Jones, which I did not know before.

Now I’ll go out on a limb once more, and show a marriage solemnification from England. A William Young and a Catherine Jones married on the 18th of July 1846 in the Parish Church of the Parish of Liverpool, Lancaster, England. William Young was a bachelor, and Catherine Jones is described as a spinster, which could mean she was not that young any more. Young’s profession was mariner. The names match the ones on the 1905 Washington marriage certificate, but of course the names are common, and there are a lot of people getting married in England, even in 1846. The year again is a bit off. Even if Liz was born in 1860, that would be in the fourteenth year of her parents marriage, which seems a bit late (although she could easily be the sixth or seventh child).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=13msR3EewXkK5blxMByfRodVdYd2uvLsx

There is another piece of information which puts the parentage in doubt, and by implication the William Duncan marriage as well. The Death Records in the Oregon State Archives show Elizabeth Smith dying on February 14, 1913 at 28 ½ Fourth Street. Her age is given as 54, and, more importantly, her father’s name is Thomas Young, born in Wales.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AjeJpGEf5i79Gh-Cgiu__R5V1WJiDX_s

There is no mother’s name provided. Elizabeth’s profession is “housewife”, which is incorrect because we know it is “lodging house keeper”,  and the cause of death is “bronchopneumonia”. The certifying doctor is E. Smith. This is solid information, and it suggests the Liverpool couple mentioned above are not the parents. It also seems to suggest that the William Duncan bride is not our Liz, although any Elizabeth Young marrying a Portland bartender in 1904 is quite a coincidence, especially since we know that there was a William Duncan bartending in the Senate Saloon at that time. Hopefully more information will trickle in to resolve these age, origin, and marriage discrepancies.

The Will

Initially all I knew about the will and the estate was from the small articles in the 1913 papers when Liz died. But while going through the Multnomah index of probate records at site of the Genealogical Forum of Oregon I came across the name Elizabeth Hutchinson again. Here is a clipping of the page where I found her. There is no year, which indicates it is a relatively old case, there is an “E” for estate, and there is the case number 10610.

Again, I did not know if this was Liverpool Liz, although my research suggested she made her will in the brief and unhappy period she was married to Robert Hutchinson. So on May 19, 2018 I wrote a letter to the records room of the Multnomah Circuit Court, asking if they could help me find the probate records for case number 10610. They arrived in the mail on June 11, 2018, and I excitedly opened the large envelope to see if this was indeed the estate case of Liverpool Liz. And it was, all 60 pages of it. With the actors I already knew about from newspaper articles. Richard Hamill, the male nurse, the mysterious James Derbyshire, whom nobody could find, C. Henri Labbe, the executor of the estate, Ernest Descamps and Cesare Marco, witnesses at the signing of the will, and Mary Roberts, Tom Williams, and Mary Ann Thomas, the beneficiaries. But this estate file was a primary source, and it had much, much more information. I scanned the 60 pages. You can download them, if you are so inclined.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18teiTIwrCYaPL67gHcmmpYpZZ3CraNbf

This section of the chapter is dedicated to Charles Henri Labbe (1875-1935), the dean of the Portland consular corps, consul for France since 1899, vice-consul for Belgium since 1909, recipient of the Légion d’Honneur, president of the Multnomah Amateur Athletic Club, president of the Riverview Cemetery Association, and member of a multitude of other clubs, organizations, and committees. He was also an estate lawyer, and as such this thoroughly respectable man handled the estate of the thoroughly unrespectable Liz.

On February 24, 1913 C. Henri Labbe petitions the court to admit the Will to probate and that Letters Testamentary be issued to him (i.e. make him executor and give him control of the estate). On April 2 he is appointed. Judge Cleeton decides the last Will and Testament has been appropriately filed and witnessed and admits it to probate. C. Henri Labbe is “a fit and proper person to be executor” and is consequently appointed as such. He takes the oath.

I will faithfully honestly and to the best of my ability perform the duties of Executor of the last Will and Testament of Elizabeth Hutchinson, deceased.

The picture is from the Oregonian of February 22, 1910.

Now I generally do not trust upstanding citizens to handle other people’s money in a fair and generous way, especially not when these other people are dead with no friends or relatives around, when the other people can allegedly neither read nor write, have routinely been cheated and pushed around, have allegedly made a will while seriously ill in a hospital, and have led a life which upstanding people consider to be morally objectionable. But I shall give C. Henri Labbe the benefit of the doubt. In the back of my mind I will continue to entertain the possibility that the will was forcefully obtained or is a fake, the witnesses perjured themselves, and C. Henri Labbe was not as upstanding as advertised. If only to make what follows more exciting.

Let’s start with the actual text of the will.

I, Elizabeth Hutchinson, nee Elizabeth Young, sometimes known as M. L. Smith of the City of Portland, State of Oregon, being of sound and disposing mind and memory do make publish and declare this my last Will and testament in manner and form following that is to say:-

First: I order and direct that all my just debts and funeral expenses be paid as soon as they conveniently may be paid after my decease.

Second: I give and bequeath to my friend James Derbyshire the sum of One Hundred and Fifty Dollars.

Third: All the rest residue and remainder of my property whether real personal or mixed and wheresoever situated I give devise and bequeath to my niece Mrs. Mary Roberts of Glascoed Cottage, Pender Street, Newborough, Anglesea, North Wales, England, to my cousin Mrs. Mary Ann Thomas of Lodge Maes Both, Duryran, Anglesea, North Wales, England and my nephew Tom Williams of Rhondda Valley, South Wales, England, share and share alike being one third to each.

Fourth: I hereby nominate and appoint C. Henri Labbe of Portland, Oregon the Executor of this my last Will and Testament and I order and direct that no bonds be required of him conditioned on the faithful performance of his duties as such Executor.

Fifth: I hereby revoke all other wills and codicils by me heretofore made and declare this and no other to be my true last Will and Testament.

In witness whereof I do hereunto set my hand and seal at Portland, Oregon this the 19th day of July, 1909.

Liz has a pretty nice signature for someone who could neither read nor write (according to the 1900 census). Added to the will was testimony by the two witnesses.

The above instrument was on the date thereof signed sealed published and declared by the said Elizabeth Hutchinson as and for her last Will and Testament in the presence of us who at her request and in  her presence and in the presence of each other have subscribed our names as witnesses thereto.

Several remarks about this will are in order. That it only surfaced after her death may not be uncommon. The witnesses owned a saloon nearby, and were somewhat shady characters. I know from the Hutchinson divorce case that Liz had been in the hospital in June 1909 for 10 weeks after a life-threatening disease of some kind and an operation. Not surprising she made her will at the time.

I think it makes sense to suggest that the friendly neighbors Descamps and Marco, who served as witnesses in the making of the will, suggested C. Henri Labbe as executor.

The witnesses filed letters to the court.

This certifies that before this court on this 1st day of April 1913 came Ernest Descamps of lawful age and a competent witness and being by me first duly sworn to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the matter at hearing testified as follows:

I reside in the County of Multnomah, State of Oregon. I knew Elizabeth Hutchinson in her lifetime and at the time of witnessing her will, hereinafter mentioned: she was a resident of the City of Portland, County of Multnomah and State of Oregon at the time of her death and she died in said County and State on or about the 17th day of February, 1913 and left estate in said county.

The instrument now shown me, marked as filed in this court on the 24th day of February, 1913 purporting to be the last Will and Testament of said deceased was signed by the said Elizabeth Hutchinson in the City of Portland, Oregon on the 19th day of July, 1909 the date it bears date in the presence of myself and Cesare Marco the other subscribing witness with whom I was acquainted at the time of witnessing said will the said Elizabeth Hutchinson thereupon published the said instrument as and declared the same to be her last Will and Testament and requested us in attestation thereof to sign the same as witnesses. The said Cesare Marco and I then and there in the presence of said Elizabeth Hutchinson and in the presence of each other subscribed our names as witnesses to said instrument.

At the time of executing the said instrument the said Elizabeth Hutchinson was overt to age of twenty-one years to wit about 50 years and was of sound and disposing mind and memory and was not under restraint undue influence of fraudulent misrepresentations.

(signed)  Ernest Descamps

There is a similar letter from Cesare Marco. As I said, some dispersion can be cast on the reliability of the witnesses. Descamps & Marco was an ill-reputed saloon and liquor store at Second and Davis, on the same intersection as the Senate Saloon. Cesare Marco around 1895 owned the Roma Hotel flophouse, previously owned by Jim Turk, next to the Senate Saloon at First and Couch streets. The newspapers record various other shady dealings by Marco, mainly within the Italian community. Descamps, on the other hand, was a pillar of the French underworld in Portland. In the Oregonian of March 17, 1929 there is a lurid piece with the headline Why was Ernest Descamps “Fed to the Dogs” ? Picturesque King of Local Underworld Drops from Sight and Only Pieces of a Human Body, Never Fully Identified, Are Clues to Apache Crime Which Has Gone Down as Unsolved Mystery of Portland’s Past. Although it will take us pretty far away from the history of Piedmont I may eventually may write up something on Descamps & Marco, and their upstanding lawyer C. Henri Labbe. Too good of a story to pass up. For the time being this link will have to do.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fgbglb1wLAOp1avljq_tos07NWRRwa-l

The addresses of the family members given in the will have a somewhat debatable spelling. It’s Dwyran, not Duwyran. It’s Anglesey, not Anglesea. It’s Pen-dref Street, not Pender Street. It is probably Maes Bach (i.e. small place) and not Maes Both. If we look on the map Dwyran and Newborough are on the island of Anglesey and pretty close to each other, a ten minute bike ride. Maybe Liz was from that area as well, although there is no guarantee she is even from Wales. If I have guessed her parents correctly, she may have actually been from Liverpool.

.

If the will is genuine, she must not have seen her family in 25 years or so, but she may have kept in touch. As I concluded before, there do not seem to be any siblings or children, and no family in the US is mentioned in the probate documents. The Morning Oregonian of February 21, 1913 reports that at a hearing to appoint an administrator for the estate Penumbra Kelly told the judge that Liz had a sister on the East Side, with two surviving children, and that he is confident he can locate them. Interesting information, but the sister is never mentioned anywhere else, before or after Liz’s death. Nevertheless, Penumbra Kelly is a somewhat serious source. He was the son of Oregon pioneer Reverend Clinton Kelly, after whom Clinton Street, Clinton Park, and Kelly Butte are named, and he had quite a career himself, serving three terms in the Multnomah county house of representatives, in addition to being elected county commissioner in 1876 and sheriff in 1888. For now, however, the sister is one of the many unresolved threads. As far as I can see, she never existed.

When Liz died the papers said her estate was estimated to be worth $ 15,000, or about $ 360,000 in 2016 dollars. Fake news. The estate files have an actual inventory and appraisement of the estate, dated April 28, 1913. Appraisers were Paul Labbe (an uncle of C. Henri Labbe), C. M. Sonesky, and L. E. Sauvie.

-- Money in Canadian Bank of Commerce (Savings Dept.)                                       $ 1322.18

-- One gold watch and chain                                                                                      $     50.00

-- One pair diamond earrings                                                                                     $   500.00

-- One diamond ring                                                                                                   $     40.00

-- Lots 1 to 6 Block 2, Morgan’s Subdivision to Glenhaven Park                               $   900.00

-- Lots 1 to 12 Block 3, Morgan’s Subdivision to Glenhaven Park                             $ 1800.00

-- Lots 1 to 12 Block 6, Morgan’s Subdivision to Glenhaven Park                             $ 1800.00

-- Personal effects -- No Value                                                                                   $       0.00

-- The lodging house known as the “Ray House” at 28 ½ Fourth Street, Portland,

    Oregon, consisting of thirty furnished rooms with a lease running for about

    one year at $ 200.00 per month, to guarantee the payment of which the

    landlord holds a deposit of $ 600.00                                                                      $   200.00

                                                                                                                                   ________

                                                                                                                                  $  6612.18

A couple of things are noteworthy. After Liz’ death the Daily Oregonian said she owned 5 acres of land south of Gregory Heights. In The Morning Oregonian it said she owned five acres at Rose City Park. Those two locations do not really contradict each other, and they correspond nicely with the eastern half of Morgan’s Subdivision. The valuable lots in South Portland that Liz bought back from Lou in 1899 for $ 4,500 have disappeared. The delinquent tax pages in the Oregonian of January 12, 1903 shows Liz still owned these lots in 1903, with $ 17.07 in unpaid property tax.  Maybe she sold them between 1903 and 1913, and maybe the sheriff sold them for her. To be resolved. The Ray House is the house where she died. She rented, and only owned the $ 600 deposit on the lease. Thus there is the actual building, owned by the landlord, and rented by Liz, who owned the 30-room lodging house business. Also note there are some diamonds in the estate, with some nice earrings, but nothing as spectacular any more as what was described by Spider Johnson.

It was not easy to find the beneficiaries. Who, for example, was the fortunate James Derbyshire ?

There is a candidate that is much more likely to be Liz’s good friend James Derbyshire. The Portland city directories of 1905 have a logger of that name boarding at 32 ½ Front Street. Of course in 1905 George Duncan had died, and maybe James Derbyshire had the privilege of comforting Liz. He disappeared from the Portland City Directories. It is entirely possible after that he was logging somewhere far away, as loggers are wont to do, which explains why he was hard to find in 1913. But around 1910 there also was a local boxer with the last name Derbyshire in the 135 pound class (and in 1912 in the 158 pound class). I am not the only one having trouble finding James Derbyshire. The Oregon Daily Journal of March 15, 1915, two years after the death of Elizabeth Smith, could not find him either.

.

One would suspect finding the relatives in Wales would also be quite difficult. The estate hired lawyer Hamilton Johnstone to do a search. And a successful one, as the following declaration shows.

KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS: That we, MARY ROBERTS, of Glascoed Cottage, Newborough, Anglesey, North Wales, England: TOM WILLIAMS of Rhondda Valley, South Wales, England, and MARY ANNA THOMAS, of Crescent Lake P. O., Saltcoats, Sask., Canada, formerly of Lodge Maes Bath, Duryran, Anglesey, North Wales, England, residuary legatees each for one third under the last Will and Testament of Elizabeth Hutchinson, deceased, at Portland, Oregon, on or about February 17th, 1913, hereby certify that C. Henri Labbe, Executor of the last Will and Testament of said Elizabeth Hutchinson, deceased, has turned over to us the real property of said estate free from all and every claim of administration.

We further certify and declare that we have also received from said C. Henri Labbee, Executor as aforesaid, the following personal property, the same being all the rest, residue and remainder of the personal property of said estate remaining in the hands of said Executor as per his final report and account duly filed herein and his report and account supplemental thereto, to wit:

One trunk of personal effects.

One gold watch and chain.

One diamond earring.

One diamond ring and

The sum of $ 68.03

We hereby acknowledge full satisfaction of all claims and demands against said Executor and against the estate of Elizabeth Hutchinson, deceased, growing out of the provision of said will in our favor and we hereby consent that said Executor be discharged and that said estate be closed.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, we have hereunto set our hands and seals at Portland, Oregon, this the 5th day of October, 1915.

(signed) MARY ROBERTS, TOM WILLIAMS, MARY ANNA THOMAS (actual signature in all three cases is Hamilton Johnstone, the Attorney in fact).

I just want to remark that Hamilton Johnstone did a remarkably good job locating the beneficiaries in the Wales countryside, and in discovering that one of them had actually emigrated to Saltcoats, Saskatchewan, which is located precisely in the middle of nowhere. How he did it, I don’t know. There was no transatlantic telephone service until 1927, although the telegraph had been around a long time already.

One of the duties as administrator of an estate is to settle all claims against the estate, and the estate files usually have copies of various unpaid bills. One of them is particularly interesting.

That Petitioner, Executor as aforesaid, received of Dr. Karl Smith a claim of $ 77.50 for professional services rendered to said deceased during her last illness, and Dunning & McEntee, Undertakers, have presented their claim of $ 150.00 for funeral expenses. That petitioner considering the claim of Dr. Smith excessive, compromised the same with Dr. Smith for $ 60.00.

As is not unusual with substantial estates, a claim was filed against the estate. On September 9, 1913 one Richard Hamill maintained to have cared for and attended Liz from July 1910 until her death. Hamill thought that $100 per month was a reasonable fee for his services as a nurse, and consequently he asked for $ 3,000, although he also said that Liz had even promised to leave all her property to him.

The claim was contested by executor Labbe and by Hamilton Johnstone, who was the attorney for the beneficiaries, who had (allegedly) already been found at the time.  Hamill brought witnesses to testify that Liz “had small use for women” and had described him as “the Scotchman who could do the most for her”. Circuit Judge Cleeton was not impressed and threw out the claim the next day. Again, I cannot find any traces of Hamill in the census and other records. Most of the people Liz associated with were small time crooks and operators, and they did not get much attention in the paper. But the Hamill episode, if true, does suggest that Liz may not have been healthy in her final years. It is quite extensively documented in the probate documents.

Before I saw the probate documents I had no idea there was something like the Ray House, and that Liz was actually running a boarding house until the day of her death. Labbe filed two executor’s reports, the first one dated July 17, 1914 and the second and final one on January 28, 1915. The reports are included in the documents you can download, but I’ll retype the final report here, because it gives precise information about the Ray House, the Hamill case, and the various claims against the estate.

It’s quite a bit of typing, but here I go. Incorrect spellings in the report are copied, but noted.

                        In the County Court of the State of Oregon

                                for the County of Multnomah

In the matter of the Estate of

Elizabeth Hutchinson, deceased.

         Comes now C. Henri Labbe, Executor of the last Will and Testament of Elizabeth Hutchinson, deceased, and presents his final report and account as follows: -

Immediately after his appointment, the said executor qualified by filing his oath and received his Letters Testamentary. Immediately thereafter he gave due and legal notice of his appointment and to the creditors to present their claims by causing the proper notice to be published in the Sunday Welcome, a newspaper of general circulation published in this County and State for the statutory time. Proof of which publication was duly filed herein as by law required on the 7th day of October 1913.

In due course of administration said executor caused an Inventory and Appraisement of the assets of said estate to be made and the same was filed April 29th, 1913. Said Inventory and Appraisement showed the following property, towit: -

                  (Note: Appraisal we have already seen follows here)

Said Elizabeth Hutchinson died in this County and State on the 17th day of February 1913, and sais executor files his petition for appointment on the 24th day of February 1913, but was not appointed until April 2nd, 1913. In the meanwhile, the assets of the estate were in the possession of Mr. Harry Bulger, an officer of the court who, however, was ignorant of the fact that the said lodging-house was a part of the estate and said executor only became aware of the fact when a claim was made on him for the rent of the same. After the death of said Elizabeth Hutchinson, Richard Hamil who had been living with said deceased for sometime prior to her death, took possession of said lodging-house claiming an interest therein. Along in April, the rent for April not having been paid, John Pulos, landlord of said lodging-house, petitioned and was appointed administrator of the estate of Elizabeth Smith, and name which said deceased had assumed and by which she was known. When said administrator became aware of the appointment of said executor, he resigned and presented his claim for rent to said executor. As a part of his answer in the suit hereinafter described, the executor had set up a counterclaim against said Richard Hamil for the sum of $1000.00 alleged to have received by him during said term from February 17th, 1913, to on or about April 29th, 1914. Said counterclaim was interposed to offset the claim of said Richard Hamill. It would have been very difficult to establish said counterclaim and even if the executor had been fortunate enough to establish it, it would have been of no value as against Hamil as executor understands he has nothing with which to respond to a judgment. Said claim was therefor waived in the dismissal of the suit as set out herein. The matter of the Hamil suit is set out in detail hereinafter.

Said Elizabeth Hutchinson in her lifetime had been a well known character in the “North End” of Portland where she was commonly known under the name of “Liverpool Liz” and whatever profits were made by said lodging-house, were due to her individuality and the patronage which a wide acquaintanceship brought to said lodging-house. Immediately after her death, this patronage feel away and instead of being an asset, said lodging-house on account of the high rent of $200.00 per month and the expenses connected with the same, became a burden to the estate and soon would have eaten up the live assets of said estate. The landlord, on account of the fact that the lease was secured by a deposit for $600.00 and that the estate was solvent, was independant and exacting and insistent that the rent be promptly met each month and would make no concession. The rent was high and at that time with summer coming on, there was no demand for lodging-houses in the neighborhood. Said executor inquired among some acquaintances in the “North End” as to the lodging-house situation and was informed that there was absolutely nothing doing and several cases were cited of tenants forfeiting their deposits and giving up their houses for lack of business. However, said executor on the order of the Court succeeded in selling said lodging-house to John Pulos for the sum of One Hundred dollars and by forfeiting the deposit, said estate was released from any further obligation under the lease. However, interest on said deposit for one year amounting to $36.00 was collected by the executor. This sale was confirmed by the Court. As a part of the bargain, said executor was obliged to and did pay the back rent and the expenses since the death of said deceased to date of sale as is shown by the claim of said John Pulos hereto attached. While said sale of One Hundred Dollars may appear cheap and while it is a fact that said landlord took advantage of his position to drive a hard bargain, the said executor feels that under the circumstances, the sale while not a good one, was the best that could be made, everything considered.

        In the course of administration, the said Richard Hamil above mentioned, presented a claim to the executor for services rendered to the deceased amounting to $ 3000.00. Knowing the character and reputation of the deceased and her manner of life and being suspicious of the good faith of the claimant, the executor on May 12th 1913, rejected said claim. The said claimant then presented this claim to this Court and aftera full hearing , the same was disallowed by the Court of September 10h, 1913. Claimant then brought suit in the Circuit Court against the executor on the same claim. The executor interposed a demurrer that the Court was without jurisdiction six months not having elapsed since the issuance of the Letters Testamentary. The demurrer being sustained by Judge Davis of the Circuit Court, plaintiff took a voluntary non suit and files another suit against the executor on the same facts six months having by that time elapsed since the issuance of the Letters Testamentary. The executor then filed his answer setting up as one of his defenses the hearing before Judge Cleeton who was at that time supposed to be acting as a Circuit Judge in probate; the executor claiming that the matter having once been passed upon was now resadjudicata (sic). To this defense plaintiff demurred but on the showing of the executor the demurrer was overruled by Judge Kavanaugh who, however, permitted plaintiff to go to trail on the facts. The matter was then transferred to Judge McGinn’s department and the question of the jurisdiction of Judge Cleeton as Judge of the Circuit Court having been raised in another case and the matter of the Probate Court being in a tangle Judge McGinn refused to hear the matter, since which time it has been pending. However, a stipulation has been entered into by Mr. Carl Wangerien, representing the plaintiff and Mr. Hamilton Johnstone representing the beneficiaries under the will of said Elizabeth Hutchinson, deceased, dismissing the said suit, and no further claim being now made against the estate by said Richard Hamil nor against the executor the estate may now be closed without any further hinderence (sic). In the contest of said claim, said executor has paid out $5.00 for sheriff’s and witness’s fees; $10.00 reporter’s fees for the hearing before Judge Cleeton and $11.00 filing fees in the suit in the Circuit Court. These disbursements are carried in the account hereinafter set out and the proper vouchers are attached to said account and filed herewith.

        October 31st, 1913, on the petition of said executor, the Court entered an order authorizing and directing said executor to pay the funeral expenses amounting to $150.00 and expenses of last illness amounting to $60.00. These two claims have been paid nd vouchers taken. The claim of Dr. Earl Smith for professional services rendered said deceased in her last illness as presented was for $77.50. Considering the same excessive, the executor succeeded in having the same cut to $60.00 which amount was paid. These two items appear in the account hereinafter set out and the vouchers showing payment are hereto annexed and filed herewith.

        The beneficiaries under the said will reside in Wales and in Canada and could not personally take over the real estate, and while the Hamil claim was pending, the personal property of the estate not being sufficient to liquidate the same in case said claimant succeeded in establishing his said claim, the executor cared for said real property and was compelled to and did pay taxes for the year 1912 amounting to $79.86 and also the taxes for 1913 amounting to $91.83. The proper receipts showing these payments are hereto attached and filed herewith.

        Taxes on the personal property for 1913 amounting to $26.40 have also been paid and a receipt taken therefor which receipt is filed herewith.

        At the time of the death of said Elizabeth Hutchinson, Mr. Harry Bulger, an officer of Judge Cleeton’s office, took possession of the personal property of the deceased and turned a trunk containing deceased’s effects over to the Portland Van & Storage Co. He informed the executor of this trunk but as no bill was ever presented the executor was of opinion that no storage was being charged for the same. A short time ago the executor was informed by Mr. Bulger that a statement for storage had come to his office. The executor withdrew said trunk from storage and has the same in his possession, ready to turn over to the beneficiaries. From a hasty examination, the executor is convinced that contents of said trunk are of no value. The bill for storage has been paid and is hereto attached and filed herewith.

        Since the filing of the prior report and account, the executor has paid the claim of Dr. Buck amounting to $100.00; the expense of publishing first notice $3.00 and the appraisers fees of Six dollars. Mr. L. E. Sauvie, one of the appraisers, being employed by the County in the Clark’s department as Deputy Clerk, very consciensiously (sic) refused to receive any fees for his services.

        Since the inception of the proceeding of this estate, the executor has acted as his own attorney and in the litigation on the Hamil claim has appeared in propria persona. In the litigation on the Hamil claim he also acted as a witness at the hearing before Judge Cleeton. In the litigation on the Hamil claim said executor was assisted by Mr. Hamilton Johnstone who appeared on behalf of the beneficiaries under the will. In this litigation the services of Mr. Johnstone have been of value to the estate and the executor. Mr. Johnstone has made a claim on the executor for a bill for his services. The executor believes that Mr. Johnstone is entitles to a fee from the estate for his services, and would ask that the same be fixed by the Court along with the extra allowance to the executor.

The Hamil claim has been the cause for a long delay in closing the estate and the contest of said claim has entailed a large amount of extra work on the executor. The successful outcome of said litigation and the saving to the estate of a substantial sum executor believes is due in a measure to his firm stand against said claim to his aid in the litigation and the aid and support of his collegue (sic) Mr. Hamilton Johnstone. For his services so rendered the executor believes he is not only entitles to his commission on the property of the estate as inventoried but also to an extra allowance.

Said estate is now fully administered and nothing further remains to be done. There are no outstanding claims and all claims which have been presented have been paid and settled. The Hamil claim is not out of the way as hereinbefore set out and there is nothing now to prevent the closing of the estate.

The estate was not of sufficient size to be subjected to an inheritance tax, so none has been paid.

The executor has on hand all the property of said estate mentioned inthe inventory and appraisement except the lodging-house which was sold as hereinabove set out. The finds on hand at the time of the death of said Elizabeth Hutchinson have been sufficient to administer said estate without recourse to the sale of any of the personal or real property mentioned in said inventory.

The executor having thus accounted for all the property would account for the funds of said estate as follows:-

(Note: Accounting on a page copied below)

There being nothing further to be done, said estate being now fully administered, said executor would pray for an order fixing the time and place for the hearing of objections to said final report and account and for the settlement of the same and on said settlement a further order to turn said estate over to the beneficiaries under the last Will and Testament of said Elizabeth Hutchinson, deceased.

                                        (signed) C. Henry Labbe, Executor

Here is the executors list of the assets and the expenses..

On October 5, 1915 Judge Cleeton orders and decrees that

• The executor’s final report is approved, confirmed and settled.
• The executor’s request for extra compensation, mostly for efforts in connection with the Richard Hamill lawsuit, is allowed at set at $ 175.
• Hamilton Johnstone, lawyer for the beneficiaries, is also allowed $ 175 for extra services.
• The sale of one of the diamond earrings by the executor to Jaeger Bros for $ 250 to cover costs is approved.
• Since James Derbyshire cannot be found the $ 150 will be put in a special account in his name controlled by the Treasurer of Multnomah County.
• The rest, residue, and remainder of the estate, both the real property and the personal property, will be turned over to the three beneficiaries Mary Roberts, Mary Anna Thomas, and Tom Williams.
• As soon as the proper receipts are filed the executor is hereby discharged.

It is of some interest that in his first report Labbe is somewhat less circumspect. There it says

Said Elizabeth Hutchinson in her lifetime had been a prostitute and under the name of “Liverpool Liz” was a very well known character in the “North End” of Portland.

Clearly Labbe is proud to have fought off Richard Hamil, to have negotiated effectively with John Pulos, and to have haggled $17.50 of the “excessive” bill of Dr. Earl Smith. What type of  services were rendered by Dr. Buck is not specified in the probate files.

Remaining Questions

Although I have collected quite a lot of information on Liz and the Senate Saloon, there remain many open questions. Most of the people featuring in the story, including Liz herself, move on the margins of society. The newspapers and biographers do not pay attention to them, which makes the writing of their history extra complicated. In this section I will list some of these unanswered questions, mainly for my own reference, so I know what to keep working on.

First, everything that happened before 1890 in Liz’ life is vague and badly documented. I do not know if she was born in Wales or England, when she came to the US, and if she came alone. I found a possible pair of parents, but it is basically a pretty wild guess. Also, I do not know when she was born. Most information suggests 1860, but some of the marriage information uses dates around 1867.

I also do not know how she started her career in the business of running saloons and (female) boarding houses. Did she already have money, or just with a winsome personality ? Was she supported by Lou Kendall, and what precisely was their early relationship ? Liz said she started buying land in 1888, which means she must have had access to considerable amounts of money at the time. If what she said in the Smith vs Kendall lawsuit was true, then she spend close to $ 10,000 between 1888 and 1890, a gigantic amount of money for those days. Where did it come from ? The real estate dealings also seem to imply she must have arrived quite some time before 1890.

The multiple Elizabeth Smiths in Portland at the time create problems. For example, there is an Elizabeth Young, boarding between Alder and Washington on Third, in the Portland City Directory of 1876. If that is our Liz, she must have been around 16 at the time. And it remains mysterious when and how she picked up the Smith name and the money. What is clear from the papers is that in 1892 the Senate Saloon was already known as “Liverpool Liz’s Place”. But also in 1892, it says in the Oregonian of November 27:

Lizzie Smith smiled pleasantly when City Attorney Manley called her name. Lizzie’s is a familiar face in the police court. She has been arrested several times for soliciting, but she will not behave herself, so this time she was run in for vagrancy and fined $ 25.

Again, there is no guarantee this was our Lizzie Smith. If she was already buying property in 1888, then maybe this soliciting version is a younger and wilder namesake. There are various other instances in the papers over the years where some Elizabeth Smith is arrested or fined for drunk and disorderly behaviour.

I think I have succeeded pretty much in locating the Senate Saloon. Why they had to move two times, I do not know. The owners of the land and the buildings were mostly the usual suspects, rich investors and capitalists who made their own plans and did not care who were their lease-holders. Why Lou Kendall sold the saloon to Liz, if he did, is not known. Liz lost her liquor license around 1905, but I don’t know the precise date her last Senate Saloon gave up the ghost.

The real estate dealings involving Liz and Lou are pretty well documented, but there are still some gaps. They can probably be filled quite easily. What was the outcome of the lawsuit ? Who bought the lots in Morgan’s Division from the estate ?

It would be nice to see the actual lease from W. K. Smith to Harry Bush (or to Liz) for the grounds of Evergreen Park. The precise location of the park in the Smith tract is unclear. I also do not know which buildings were actually built at the time, and which were left after the demise of the project. And I cannot be sure if there was any bicycle or horse racing going on at all.

As for Liz’s marriages, I made a great deal of progress. The probate files show that the marriage to Hutchinson is a certainty. Hutchinson married Mrs. George C. Duncan, and George was a barkeeper working for Liz, who was buried next to Liz. That marriage seems pretty well-established too. But unfortunately there is this William Duncan, another barkeeper working for Liz at the same time as George, who marries Elizabeth Smith and lists George C. Duncan as his father. That is a mystery, suggesting various hypotheses that I still have to test. Also, I do not know of any marriages before 1904, when Liz married George C. Duncan.

There is no information about the precise nature of Liz’s disease, hospitalization and operation in 1909. Those events are important, because they are linked to the will, to the Hutchinson marriage and divorce, and probably to the Ray Hotel and Richard Hamil. There maybe hospital records from that time, but that is something I have not explored yet.

As far as I know there are no photographs of Liz, Evergreen Park, the Senate Saloon(s), Lou Kendall, Harry Bush, Robert Hutchinson, and the Duncans. There may be some in family archives, but I do not have access to them. This adds to the inevitable sepia-like vagueness of the history of these small time crooks and procurers, despite their ostentatious diamonds and their rather pathetic real estate dealings. Maybe it is better that way. But I’ll keep digging.

References

Barney Blalock: Portland’s Lost Waterfront. Tall Ships, Steam Mills, and Sailor’s Boarding Houses. The History Press, Charleston SC, 2012

J.D. Chandler: The Bicycle King.

Weird Portland Blog, January 16, 2013a

http://weirdportland.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-bicycle-king.html

J.D. Chandler: A Killing at Liverpool Liz’s Place

Slabtown Chronicle Blog, January 20, 2013b

http://portlandcrime.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-killing-at-liverpool-lizs-place.html

Stewart Holbrook: Liverpool Liz had a Good Heart, The Sunday Oregonian, October 15, 1933

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B94Urj3OjM7BZnJUbDNoTW5LLWM

Stewart Holbrook: Gay Dogs: Ladies who Operated Bars, The Sunday Oregonian, July 29, 1934

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B94Urj3OjM7BRjEyV29tUUFaR0E

Stewart Holbrook:The Three Sirens of Portland, The American Mercury, May 1948, p 544-548

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B94Urj3OjM7BRmhXMzFEYktTNjA

Finn J.D. Jones: Merrill brought bikes to Portland, and prostitutes took 'em away. Offbeat Oregon Blog, September 7, 2014

http://offbeatoregon.com/1409a.303.fred-merrill-bicycle-king.html

Also as podcast

http://offbeatoregon.com/assets-2014/1409a.fred-merrill-bicycle-king/141114.1409a.fred-merrill-bicycle-king.mp3

Finn J.D. Jones: Wicked Portland. The Wild and Lusty Underworld of a Frontier Seaport Town. The History Press, Charleston SC, 2012

E. Kimbark MacCall: The Shaping of a City. Business and Politics in Portland, Oregon 1885-1915. The Georgian Press Company, Portland, 1976.

E. Kimbark MacCall: Merchants, Money, & Power. The Portland Establishment 1843-1913. The Georgian Press Company, Portland, 1988

Jewel Lansing: Portland. People,  Politics, and Power 1851-2004. Corvallis, Oregon State University Press, 2003.

Oregon Supreme Court: N.J. Blagen er al, Appls, v. Robert C. Smith, Respt. The Lawyers Report Annotated, 44, 1899, 522-527.

Piedmont Neighborhood Association: Accessed 12-14-2017

https://piedmontneighborhood.com/piedmont-neighborhood/

Eugene E. Snyder: Portland Names and Neighborhoods. Their Historic Origins. Binford & Mort Publishing, Portland, 1979

Eugene E.Snyder: We Claimed this Land. Portland’s Pioneer Settlers. Binford & Mort Publishing, Portland, 1989

Sanborn maps: Accessed 12-13-2017

https://multcolib.org/resource/digital-sanborn-maps-1867-1970

Wikipedia: Hooker with a Heart of Gold. Accessed 12-13-2017

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooker_with_a_heart_of_gold

“Crawfish Charley” Fatally Shot by Francisco Jachetta Last Night. Morning Oregonian, February 18, 1888.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1E3D5igqbQ4XQq6m3WXvte8ix09FbIFrS 

Multnomah County Circuit Court (1913-1915): Case file 10610. Elizabeth Hutchinson Estate.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18teiTIwrCYaPL67gHcmmpYpZZ3CraNbf

Portland Parks and Recreation (2016): Peninsula Park Rose Garden Preservation Strategy.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BaVdEQ2dUZDgxbTA

Bureau of Planning, City of Portland (1992): Proposed Local Historic Districts. Albina Community Plan. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BbU9SVkZxSWZBZm8

Preliminary injunction, Morning Oregonian, February 16, 1897

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWkJuWTRqenlLVVk/view

Arguments at the municipal court, Morning Oregonian, April 3, 1897

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWkdCcGRCU2lfbUE/view

Lifting the injunction by Judge Stearns, Morning Oregonian, April 9, 1897

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWkNEVU9wU3o2ZXc/view

Injunction by Oregon Supreme Court, Morning Oregonian, March 14, 1897

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94Urj3OjM7BWkoxUnJLZ1pLczA/view

Christopher Joseph Head: Nights of Heaven: A Social History of Saloon Culture in Portland.

B.A. Thesis, Division of History and Social Sciences, Reed College, May 1980

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SCTOlQct_Bu9kbD0x5opFKWL6e60GqiI

Chris D. Sawyer: From Whitechapel to Old Town. The Life and death of the Skid Row District, Portland, Oregon. Dissertation, Department of Urban Studies, Portland State University, 1985

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vxF1rGFuVTE6f3D9s4VV8xBmeC6pdCO9

Henry Russell Talbot, Chairman: Report of the Portland Vice Commission to the Mayor and City Council of the City of Portland, Oregon. Portland, 1913

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B94Urj3OjM7Bd3lUSEE4d1RJbkU

Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men!: Portlandʼs Varwig Family Sold VIM with Vigor.

http://pre-prowhiskeymen.blogspot.com/2015/09/portlands-varwig-family-sold-vim-with.html

Multnomah County Court, Probate Case 10610, Estate of Elizabeth Hutchinson.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18teiTIwrCYaPL67gHcmmpYpZZ3CraNbf