Margaret LaPlante - Jacksonville

These are some of the first photographs of Jacksonville, when the town was in its infancy. In the foreground is the back of Chinatown. The photograph above was taken prior to 1854 when St. Andrews Church was built. The photograph below shows the church as well as a few more structures.

The life of a miner was not an easy one. They did not have much in the way of protective clothing, and they had to wade out in the cold streams and work hunched over for hours at a time searching for that elusive gold nugget. The gentleman shown here is crouched on a board that was placed across a small creek in Jacksonville. The miners placed their gold pan in the water hundreds of times a day, bringing it up time after time hoping to find some gold dust or a gold nugget amongst the silt and water. Some did strike it rich, but others kept moving from one area to the next. Miner Stephen Oester is pictured below with his tools. In addition to his gold pan, he has his pick and ax.

Peter Britt was born on March 19, 1819, in Obstalden, canton of Glarus, Switzerland. As a young man, he worked as a portrait and landscape painter. His work took him from one small hamlet to the next. While engaged in this line of work, he met a young lady by the name of Amalia Grob. Amalias father did not approve of the profession that Britt had carved out for himself, and soon the relationship ended. Britt immigrated to America and settled in Illinois. He later came overland to Oregon. The years went by, but Britt always maintained contact with friends and family in Illinois. It was through such contact that he learned Amalia was living in Wisconsin with her six-year old son Jacob, and she had been recently widowed. Britt immediately wrote to her giving her two options. He offered to send her money to return to their home country or she could come to Oregon and marry him. She chose the latter and came around the Horn. They were married in a small ceremony at a friends house. Over the years, they had three children.