Matilda Siegmund Jones

Matilda Siegmund Jones was my great aunt, the youngest sister of my paternal grandfather, Henry Siegmund. Born in 1880 on a family farm near Stayton in the Willamette River Valley of western Oregon, she was a school teacher and a member of the Marion County Historical Society and served on its board.

In 1926, working at Coos River School in Marshfield (now Coos Bay), Oregon, she wrote Autobiography of my Childhood for a correspondence class on advanced writing with the University of Oregon. In 1939, living in Bonanza in Klamath County, she wrote to Mozelle Hair, the head of correspondence study at the University, to seek advice on compiling stories from her childhood for publication.

Her essay, Hummingbirds Duel for Flower Rights, was published December 22, 1940 on the wildlife page of The Sunday Oregonian, Portland. She read A History of Stayton Oregon, on the public radio station KOAC (Corvallis, OR) on November 29, 1954. Later, it was published in the weekly newspaper, The Stayton Mail. The Harvest Cycle on the Jacob Siegmund Farm from 1873 to 1937, was published in the journal, Marion County History, Vol. 3, p. 3, 1957.

As far as I know, the essays that appear below were never published. Although she could not have anticipated the World-Wide Web, I think she might have been pleased that they have been published here.