9/30/2019
By Michael Raffety
My maternal grandparents lived in Baker, Ore., a town that has since been renamed Baker City, which was its original name. Perhaps it was to distinguish it from Baker, Nev. My cousin Kathy McColloch and I visited Baker just about every summer. We both developed friends in town we looked forward to getting together with again. Sometimes I spent Christmas in Baker. It was a magical place then. But I remember most the Fourth of July in Baker. No ban on fireworks there. I got sparklers, caps for a cap pistol and assorted other minor fireworks that didn’t include firecrackers.
In June of 2017 I wrote about an art show at the de Young in San Francisco that featured paintings of women in hats and actual hats from the early 20th century mostly. Along with that I talked about someone my grandmother referred to as Aunt Rosie. Rosa Krann, learned hat making in Austria. She set up her own millinery shop in Baker City.
Someone responded to that column and wrote me that she had a number of Rosa’s hats, which she had donated to the Baker City Museum. I forwarded the email on to my cousin Kathy, who sent me a copy of the Baker City Herald story on Rasa Krann’s 52 years in business, how she raised her deceased sister’s five children and how the merchants helped her to financially afford that.
Then this past year I learned Kathy was writing a book about Baker City and how woven into the fabric of that town was the McColloch family.
Kathy started sending me chapters. Cherie and I were hanging on every word, waiting with anticipation for the next chapter or chapters.
Kathy’s book is now published. The name of the book is Baker City Testament, which can be found on Amazon. The story begins with the birth of Charles Henry McColloch in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War. He would always be known as C.H. His father Zachary McClloch participated in a battle on the Confederate side but lost interest in the war after losing his son Jeremy in that same battle. Zachary returned to the farm in Arkansas to care for his wife and two remaining sons.
Their relatively isolated farm had two root cellars, one of which was too dry to maintain what would normally be kept in a root cellar. They worked the farm by day and descended into the hidden root cellar by the barn by night.
Law had broken down in Arkansas. Martial law was declared and bands of “partisan rangers’ were created to execute deserters, stage raids on Union forces and burn crops the Union could appropriate. These “rangers” were actually armed bandits raping, pillaging, murdering farmers and their wives and burning down houses.
The McCollochs survived this reign of terror and C.H. was hired at age 13 to work at the Hotel Arlington in Hot Springs, Ark.
Kurt Krann left his father’s brick business in Vienna, Austria, and came to America to check on the family’s gold mine. When he got off the ship he expected to meet someone to help him. Instead he met some con men who robbed him.
With some aid and some emergency funds sewed into his suit Kurt Krann boarded an immigrant train bound for Oregon and met a large and strong German speaking man named August Meyer, a Union Army veteran. August Meyer’s mastery of English stayed secret as the duo spoke in German, which kept them safe from the machinations of neer-do-wells traveling on the same train. The duo of Kurt and August went on to have many adventures, make lots of money and wound up associated by marriage in the town of Baker City, with mining operations in the town of Sumpter, which was 20 miles from Baker City.
Meanwhile, C.H. McColloch and his new bride Mary drove wagons north until they boarded the train for Oregon. After having two boys – Claude and Frank — C.H. ran a butcher shop in Portland but eventually passed the Bar exam. He became an expert at mining law and wound up in Sumpter, Ore., eventually being elected mayor of Sumpter.
Later C.H. spent 20 years as city attorney for Baker City. In talking with Kathy I learned that as city attorney, C.H. bought some land that became a city park. That tidbit of information cut the legs out of someone who claimed they owned the land the city park was built on.
The Krann family and McColloch family became joined in Baker City when Frank McColloch married Betty Meyer the daughter of Marie and August Meyer. A photo of Marie McColloch bears a striking resemblance to my cousin Kathy McColloch. Betty gave birth to the Charles K. McColloch, who would grow up to marry Beverly Nordean, the middle daughter of my grandparents in Baker City. Frank spent World War I as a captain with the 91st Wild West Division, which participated in the offensive of the Meuse-Argonne. He survived the second deadliest battle of WWI.
Frank was admitted to the bar in 1919 and practiced law in Baker City until 1935, serving as city attorney and circuit court judge for some neighboring counties. He and Betty moved to Portland when Frank was appointed public utility commissioner for the state. Frank also joined a law firm in Portland.
Frank’s son Charles K. McColloch represented Baker City in the Oregon Legislature, later serving at the Oregon Tax Commission, practiced corporate law in Portland for two decades and then served as Oregon’s Real Estate Commissioner.
From Austria, from lawless Arkansas to Baker City the Kranns and McCollochs have an exciting story well told by C.K.’s oldest child, Kathy, who spent 35 years as a high school teacher helping her students learn how to write.
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