The Claire McGill Luce Western History Room at the Harney County Library takes the opportunity this Juneteenth to recognize the contributions of author and former Harney County resident Martha Anderson.

June 19th or "Juneteenth" marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday. On June 17, 2021, it officially became a federal holiday.

 “If anyone had told me before I began my research that the West practiced slavery in the open, I wouldn’t have believed it, “ said former Harney County resident Mrs. Martha Anderson. Her research dug into the history of Black men and women, like herself, who were making significant contributions to rural and urban communities following the westward movement of Blacks after the civil war. She compiled the stories and information she discovered into a ground-breaking book, “Black Pioneers of the Northwest 1800-1918.”

“The Blacks that settled in the West in the 1800s, she said, proved that “it doesn’t take a million dollars to be a good citizen. Rather, they showed the ability to work under any circumstances.”

Martha Anderson was no stranger to overcoming adversity herself. Together with her husband Walter Anderson, and his brother Oscar and wife, they constituted the entire Black population of Harney County for decades. After spending forty years building a successful cattle ranch in the Juniper Lake area of Harney County, declining health forced Walter and his wife to seek out a different line of work. The couple sold their ranch in 1952 and purchased a small hotel on Portland’s east side. Mounting medical bills and Walter’s death six years later coincided with a downturn in hotel business that put Martha in dire financial straits. Never a quitter, she sought financial advice from good friend, astute businesswoman, and neighboring Harney County rancher, Mary (Neal) Kueny.

Thanks to the generosity of Mary Kueny’s great-niece, Lois Renwick, a year-long series of correspondence between Mary and Martha Anderson has been donated to the archives of the Claire McGill Luce Western History Room.

More than a dozen letters of correspondence were received by Mary Kueny from Martha between 1958 and 1959. Some of the letters detail prospects for buyers of the hotel. Others describe business conditions in Portland at the time. A tone of melancholy prevails throughout.

On November 24, 1958, she writes:
“I am tired and lonely. Tho grateful for good health and strength. My problems seem to get larger and larger and business is very slow. I want to sell out as every way that I have tried to boost the income of this place it has not worked. Some of it I can lay to bad timing. But, it looks like Portland is not a good place for me…I intend to hold up Dad’s name as long as I have a breath. But, all these complications are confusing me…You have had lots of experience in managing things and know how to do business. Do you think I would be wrong in leaving here?... Walt hated a quitter, but truly I wish I was up in the hills with you… This is a cheerful light old building and Dad and I had some happy days here but is seems like it’s time to get to getting.”
 
Martha Anderson rallied from the setbacks of those troubled years and became a practical nurse before dedicating herself to documenting the history of Black pioneers across the West.

Read copies of Martha Anderson’s correspondence in person in the Western History Room or look for them to appear soon in our online digital collections.

Where the Crawdads Sing
A saying that suggests “far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters.” In other words, far from other people. Check out this book before it is released as a movie in July 2022!

Release date: July 22
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickson
Watch the Trailer

What it’s about: Set in a quiet town on the North Carolina coast, a young girl named Kya is forced to survive on her own. Known as "the marsh girl" with a love for nature, she's not accepted within her town, though she tries to fit in. We jump back and forth in time, watching Kya grow up in the past while learning about the murder of Chase Andrews in 1969's present, where locals suspect Kya's involvement.

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DUNE
 Meet Paul Atreides, the heir apparent to the House of Atreides. At the beginning of the novel, his family takes control of the desert planet Arrakis, the source of the most sought after commodity in the galaxy. But power like that breeds many enemies who will stop at nothing to take over Arrakis. Mixing politics, religion, and mysticism with a whole lot of adventure, Herbert sends you on an epic journey worthy of any science fiction reader. Science fiction aficionados have waited for years for a better remake of Dune, so this one could be huge if done well.

Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa
Released in 2021

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The Nightingale
The clear favorite of the most-anticipated books turning into movies in 2021 is Kristin Hannah’s World War 2 drama. Set in a small village in occupied France, the story centers around two sisters. Forced to house a German officer in her home, the older sister Vianne Mauriac must decide, to protect her daughter, where exactly she should draw the line of being complicit with German demands. On the other hand, her younger sister Isabelle Rossignol feels committed to doing anything she can to resist the German occupation.

Starring: Elle Fanning and Dakota Fanning
Release Date: 2023

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Woman in the Window
Among the books to movies in 2021 whose 2020 release has not been rescheduled is one of 2018’s hottest books. This psychological thriller peeks into the life of Anna Fox, a New York City recluse who, spying on the family across the street, witnesses a shocking event. With its unreliable narrator and layers of secrets, The Woman in the Window will keep you guessing to the end. Movie is available on Netflix.

Released in 2021.
Starring: Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, Fred Hechinger, and Julianne Moore

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In recognition of Women's History Month, the Harney County Library honors the group of women who established the first chartered circulating library in Burns.

In 1903, twelve local women joined together to form the Ladies Library Club. Each member initially contributed one book and paid yearly dues of twenty-five cents which went toward the purchase of additional books. The books were housed in the home of Phebe Geary, who also served as the librarian. As club membership expanded and the book collection grew to over 600 volumes, the group changed its name to the Burns Library Club and sought out new quarters in the Burns City Hall, then located at 90 W. Washington Street.

On the occasion of the library's twenty-fifth anniversary Cornelia Marvin, Oregon State Librarian, sent a gift of the book "Westward Ho" and a congratulatory letter recognizing the Burns library as one of the oldest circulating libraries in the state. In 1953, the surviving six members of the original Ladies Library Club were honored with a Golden Jubilee celebration. Pictured are Lela McGee, Phebe Geary, Clara Hanley, Mabel Biggs, Katherine Buoy Keeney, and Estella McConnell.

Learn more about the history of the Harney County Library by reading oral history interview transcripts by former librarians Genevieve Slater, Jolyn Wynn and Phyllis Zreliak. The entire collection of transcripts are available to read online under the Oral History Collection of the Western History Room.

We always get fantastic recommendations from our library patrons. These adult fiction and non-fiction books are all ones you all have excitedly told us about as dropped your books into the drop box at the front desk. Read on:

From In the days and months after Pearl Harbor, the lives of Japanese Americans across the continent and Hawaii were changed forever. In this unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe, Daniel James Brown portrays the journey of Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible.

Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil.

Woven throughout is the chronicle of Gordon Hirabayashi, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best—striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring. (From Amazon)

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Have a book that you LOVED and want to recommend? Let us know at the front desk or send us an email ([email protected])!

Black History Month is celebrated throughout the month of February to recognize and honor the contributions of Black Americans. Few in Harney County realize one of their own residents, Martha (Adams) Anderson, was a noted author whose writing on African-American history in the Northwest was at the forefront of a movement to preserve the stories of countless Black Americans, like her own family, who contributed to settling the West.

Martha Anderson described herself as coming from an “unusual family.” Born in Denver in 1910, she was reared on a ranch in Idaho. Anderson was interested in writing from an early age. In her 20s, she wrote scripts for Seattle radio stations, and in her later years had been a frequent contributor to trade magazines and other publications.
“As a child I listened to my grandfather (a Union veteran who later settled in Seattle) talk about Civil War battles, and eating mule meat. He was full of history.”

She met and married successful Steens Mountain area rancher, Walter Scott Anderson, several years after the death of his first wife, Stella, from pneumonia in 1936. Walter, a native of Arkansas, arrived in Harney County with his brother Oscar in the early 1910s and soon thereafter established his own cattle ranch at the site of the old Alberson Station.
The brothers, highly respected stock raisers, were noted in the Burns newspaper as the only two black ranchers in the county and remained so as late as the 1950s.

Walter and Martha sold their Juniper Lake area cattle operation and moved to Portland in 1952 due to Walter’s failing heart. In Portland, Mrs. Anderson operated the Medley Hotel for black servicemen who, she said, “didn’t have any civil rights.”
Her interest in history, no doubt fueled by stories from some of her hotel guests, led to the writing and publishing in 1980 of “Black Pioneers of the Northwest, 1800-1918,” detailing the lives of successful black gold rush muleskinners, laundresses, steamboat cooks, barbers, farmers, ranchers and businessmen. The publication is a primary reference for many contemporary works on African-American history in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.

“The blacks who settled in the West in the 1800s," she said, proved that, “it doesn’t take a million dollars to be a good citizen. Rather, they showed an ability to work under any circumstances. Those who worked the mining camps proved that a person could go out with a frying pan into the middle of the desert and make a living.”

Martha and Walter Anderson were both laid to rest in unmarked graves beside Oscar and his wife Maude Anderson in the Burns cemetery, an ignominious ending for true pioneers of their time.

In July 2020, members of the group Rural Alliance for Diversity (RAD) in Burns became aware of the Anderson’s and their unique story. They contacted Oregon Black Pioneers for support in a project to raise awareness and funds for the creation of a grave marker for the Anderson’s. A GoFundMe campaign generated $1400 for the markers. During Memorial Day weekend in May 2021, members of RAD, OBP and the Harney County community formally dedicated headstones in the Burns cemetery for Martha and Walter Anderson. RAD also purchased a copy of Martha Anderson’s book, now available for public circulation at the Harney County Library.

Learn more about the Andersons in the files of the Claire McGill Luce Western History Room, located in the back of the Harney County Library.

Check out our books that represent characters that are underrepresented and their stories brought to life. We have put together a theme of characters (fiction and nonfiction) with lost stories brought to life by the author. All of our book picks are specifically curated with inspiration from The Bohemians by Jazmin Darznik. The real-life artists and misfits of the 1920’s including Ansel Adams, Maynard Dixon, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dorothea Lange, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and Edward Curtis. 

For a true deep dive, we recommend truly living the book that you just read. For example, the “Pisco Punch” from the Bohemians: a true historical drink. Try out the drink of a true free wander with the recipe below.

 Ansel Adams is not only a notable photographer but a pianist as well, try listening to one of his favorite Nocturnes composed by Frederic Chopin. Although these historical figures may not be with us today, their spirit still lives on, and we can still get to know them thanks to historians, authors, librarians, and archivists that dutifully preserve knowledge.

Below is a list of our underrepresented stories of counter-culturalists, misfits, and free spirits:

Circe by Madeline Miller

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child -- not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power -- the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. (From Amazon.)

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The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations—until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen.

The stranger’s arrival marks the first entrance of the modern world in the lives of the Akha people. Slowly, Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock—conceived with a man her parents consider a poor choice—she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her, wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an orphanage in a nearby city. (From Amazon.)

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The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother’s Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for.

Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master’s dying wish: that Ren find the man’s finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master’s soul will wander the earth forever.

As the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths racks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers. Ji Lin and Ren’s increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes.

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The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash

Twelve times a week, twenty-eight-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill's owners-the newly arrived Goldberg brothers-white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May's best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for seventy-two hours of work each week, it's the only opportunity she has. Her no-good husband, John, has run off again, and she must keep her four young children alive with whatever work she can find.

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

One of the best known horror stories ever. Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss scientist, has a great ambition: to create intelligent life. But when his creature first stirs, he realizes he has made a monster. A monster which, abandoned by his master and shunned by everyone who sees it, follows Dr Frankenstein with murder and horrors to the very ends of the earth.

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Strange Case of Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been a part of modern consciousness since it's publication and smashing success. The split personality of Jekyll and Hyde has disturbed audience and been retold in countless forms.

Stevenson's short novel became an instant classic. It was a Gothic horror that originated in a feverish nightmare, whose hallucinatory setting in the murky back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. The respectable doctor's mysterious relationship with his disreputable associate is finally, revealed in one of the most original and thrilling endings in English literature.

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Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan

In this bestselling autobiography, completed shortly before his death in 1984, Ansel Adams looks back at his legendary six-decade career as a conservationist, teacher, musician, and, above all, photographer.

Illustrated with eight pages of Adams' gorgeous black-and-white photographs, this book brings readers behind the images into the stories and circumstances of their creation. Written with characteristic warmth, vigor, and wit, this fascinating account brings to life the infectious enthusiasms, fervent battles, and bountiful friendships of a truly American original.

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In Search of Chopin

In a new film from the director of award-winning and critically acclaimed trilogy In Search of Mozart, In Search of Beethoven & In Search of Haydn Phil Grabsky brings us the music and life story of one of the world’s favourite composers, Fryderyk Chopin.

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What Would Frida Do?: A Guide to Living Boldly
by Arianna Davis

Revered as much for her fierce spirit as she is for her art, Frida Kahlo stands today as a brazen symbol of daring creativity. She was a woman ahead of her time whose paintings have earned her generations of admirers around the globe. But perhaps her greatest work of art was her own life.

What Would Frida Do? explores the feminist icon's signature style, outspoken politics, and boldness in love and art, even in the face of pain and heartbreak. The book celebrates her larger than life persona as a woman who loved passionately and lived ambitiously, refusing to remain in her husband's shadow. Each chapter shares intimate stories from her life, revealing how she overcame obstacles by embracing her own ideals.

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Paul Doiron
Series: Mike Bowditch Mysteries
Title: The Poacher’s Son (Book 1)
 
“Set in the wilds of Maine, this is an explosive tale of an estranged son thrust into the hunt for a murderous fugitive---his own father.
Game warden Mike Bowditch returns home one evening to find an alarming voice from the past on his answering machine: his father, Jack, a hard-drinking womanizer who makes his living poaching illegal game. An even more frightening call comes the next morning from the police: They are searching for the man who killed a beloved local cop the night before---and his father is their prime suspect. Jack has escaped from police custody, and only Mike believes that his tormented father might not be guilty.” (From FantasticFiction.com)

Links
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Michael McGarrity
Series: Kevin Kerney
Title: Tularosa (Book #1)

“It's been two years since an on-the-job shooting forced ex-Santa Fe chief of detectives Kevin Kerney to retire. He is drawn back into action when Terry Yazzi, his former partner and the man responsible for his wounds, pleads for Kerney's help. Yazzi's son, a soldier, has disappeared in the barren desert surrounding the White Sands Missile Range.
 
Kerney's investigation resurrects the long-forgotten thrill of the hunt―and other emotions surface after meeting the tough-but-beautiful Capt. Sara Brannon, the Army's investigating officer. Together, they uncover a crime far greater than an AWOL soldier: a conspiracy of death that snakes from the secretive world of military operations, to the cutthroat alleys of a Mexican border town, leading them to a final, shocking revelation that may cost them both their lives.” (From Amazon.com)
 
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Nevada Barr
Series: Anna Pigeon
Title: Track of the Cat (Book #1)

“Fleeing New York to find refuge as a ranger in the remote backcountry of West Texas, Anna Pigeon stumbles into a web of violence and murder when fellow park ranger Sheila Drury is mysteriously killed and another ranger vanishes.”
 
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William Kent Krueger
Series: Cork O’Connor
Title: Iron Lake (Book #1)

“Anthony Award-winning author William Kent Krueger crafts this riveting tale about a small Minnesota town's ex-sheriff who is having trouble retiring his badge. Cork O'Connor loses his job after being blamed for a tragedy on the local Anishinaabe Indian reservation. But he must set aside his personal demons when a young boy goes missing on the same day a judge commits suicide-and no one but O'Connor suspects foul play.”
 
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Tony Hillerman
Series: Leaphorn & Chee
Title: The Blessing Way (Book #1)
 
“Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high lonely place, a corpse with a mouth full of sand, abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer. There is palpable evil in the air, and Leaphorn's pursuit of a Wolf-Witch is leading him where even the bravest men fear, on a chilling trail that winds perilously between mysticism and murder.”
 
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Harlan Coban
Series: Wilde
Title: The Boy From the Woods (Book #1)

“The man known as Wilde is a mystery to everyone, including himself. Decades ago, he was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. After the police concluded an exhaustive hunt for the child's family, which was never found, he was turned over to the foster system. Now, thirty years later, Wilde still doesn't know where he comes from, and he's back living in the woods on the outskirts of town, content to be an outcast, comfortable only outdoors, preferably alone, and with few deep connections to other people.
 
When a local girl goes missing, famous TV lawyer Hester Crimstein--with whom Wilde shares a tragic connection--asks him to use his unique skills to help find her. Meanwhile, a group of ex-military security experts arrive in town, and when another teen disappears, the case's impact expands far beyond the borders of the peaceful suburb. Wilde must return to the community where he has never fit in, and where the powerful are protected even when they harbor secrets that could destroy the lives of millions . . . secrets that Wilde must uncover before it's too late.”

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The Harney County Library is located on the traditional indigenous homeland of the Wadatika people, now the Burns Paiute Tribe.  During the month of November, we celebrate and honor the histories, cultures and traditions of Indigenous communities in Oregon, with particular gratitude for the knowledge of the land which the Burns Paiute have shared, and their many ongoing contributions to the Harney County community and beyond.

Throughout November, the Harney County library has set up a display of materials about the history and culture of Oregon native peoples, including the Burns Paiute Tribe, which can be viewed here or checked out. We, at the library, are also always available to help you find more materials either right here, or through our SAGE inter-library loan system.

Please come celebrate Native American Heritage Month and reflect on the history of America’s indigenous peoples throughout the month of November and every month of the year!