Nineteenth Century Heroines: Seeding the Future

Lilacs are a lovely flower—the scent, the color, the way they hang like plump grapes. It was a love of flowers and growing things in general that led this nineteenth century heroine to become a renowned hybridizer, developing more than 14 varieties of lilacs still treasured around the world.

Hulda Klager was born in 1863 in Germany. She was a toddler when her family immigrated to America, eventually settling in Woodland, Washington, about a half hour north of Portland, Oregon, along the I-5 corridor. They owned a farm, and Hulda grew up to marry a farmer. After reading a book by Luther Burbank about hybridizing and decided to experiment with apples. She hated having to peel so many of them to make a pie. She crossed a Wolf River apple with a Bismark and discovered a larger, delicious apple. She tried dahlias and roses as well. A couple years later, she started working with lilacs, developing deeper colors, bigger blooms, more hardy plants. By 1910, she had 14 commercial varieties to her credit, though at one time she had named as many as 100.

In 1920, she began opening her home and gardens each spring to share her lilacs with others. Her open houses were so beloved that towns around the area requested that she name new varieties after them, including the City of Longview, City of Kalama, City of Gresham, and City of Woodland. She was honored by Washington State and Harvard, among others, for her work. The death of her husband in 1922 made her rethink her work, but her family encouraged her to continue.

What happened next is best told in the words of the website dedicated to her work: 

“The spring of 1948 brought another great adversity when the swirling waters of the Columbia River swept across her property, wiping out her lilac gardens and nearly every other shrub on the place. Only the big trees withstood the flood but undaunted and at the age of 83, she set about rebuilding her garden. Many people who had purchased her lilacs in the past returned starts to her so she could replace her losses.

It took two years and a great deal of work but in 1950 she was able to open her gardens for Lilac Week once again — a practice she continued until her death in 1960.”

The seeds Hulda planted continue to bear fruit. Now a state and national historic landmark, Hulda Klager’s home and gardens continue to open each spring to share her legacy. Her life forms the basis for Jane Kirkpatrick’s Where Lilacs Still Bloom. 

Little Big(elow) House

I've said it before: my side of the country has less Anglo history than Marissa's. So I'm always tickled when I get to step back in time earlier than 1900. A few months ago, I had the privilege of visiting Bigelow House in our state’s capitol of Olympia. Built in the 1850s, Bigelow House is oldest house in that city, and one of the earliest still in existence in the Puget Sound area. It was the original home of lawyer and legislator Daniel R. Bigelow and his wife Ann Elizabeth White. The Bigelows were dedicated packrats. Nothing that didn’t have to be thrown out was. And that leaves us with a veritable treasure-trove of items dating to the earliest days of the territory.

Our charming docent Kristin shared a number of stories as she led us through the collection. One of my favorites involved Ann Elizabeth. She came to the Northwest with her family via wagon train on the Oregon Trail. Along the way, they spotted many graves of cholera victims. Finally, they came across a woman who’d been abandoned by her party to die of the disease. Ann Elizabeth’s family felt it wasn’t right to leave her alone to die. They left Ann Elizabeth instead, with a horse and a rifle. Ann Elizabeth was a teen at the time. She stayed with the woman until she passed away, buried her, then rode to catch up with her family, crossing miles of territory. Now, that’s a nineteenth century heroine!

Given that kind of gumption, it didn’t surprise me that Ann Elizabeth became a schoolteacher when she was seventeen, walking miles to teach her handful of students each day before returning home to her family. Docent Kristin is holding her school bell. She married Daniel when she was eighteen. He was already an influential member of territory at the time. He joined her in becoming an ardent supporter of women’s rights, hosting Susan B. Anthony for dinner when she came through on crusade (the chair at the top is where she allegedly while at the Bigelows’).  He went so far as to introduce legislation that would have given Washington women the vote decades before the rest of the nation. Sadly, it didn’t pass.

It was at Bigelow House that I saw something unexpected. Marissa and I have talked about mourning jewelry used in the nineteenth century. Often times a piece of the deceased’s hair was woven into a broach or put inside a locket. This is something different. This watch chain is woven entirely of human hair, a gift from Ann Elizabeth to Daniel, while she was still living. Waste not, want not!

Many pictures of Bigelow House are copyrighted, but you can see the exterior and some of the interior in this video:

It’s a little house with a lot of history behind it! And I appreciate that!