Bored with momentary academics for his staff’ kids, John McLoughlin, chief contributor to the Hudson’s Bay Firm in Fort Vancouver, despatched to England to search for a trainer. He has a pair. They traveled from England round Cape Horn, then to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and sailed from there throughout the Pacific to the mouth of the Columbia River earlier than reaching the Hudson’s Bay outpost in 1846.
The academics Richard (1820-1882) and Charlotte “Anna” (1825-?) Covington had been completed musicians and artists. Each had musical voices and performed the piano, guitar and violin. Richard was considerably inventive and was acknowledged as a “man of many accomplishments”. He drew maps, sketched Fort Vancouver and the encompassing panorama.
Shortly after the couple arrived, the Hudson’s Bay Firm named Richard as considered one of Clark County’s first justices of the peace. The next yr he was elected a county clerk underneath the Oregon Territory Provisional Authorities. The locals additionally elected him headmaster in 1862 and 1863. In 1863 he served once more as justice of the peace.
The shifting claims of the USA and Britain for the realm enabled the Covingtons to say land in April 1848. They discovered their cabin at what’s now Northeast 76th Road and Covington Street.
In line with the 1850 census, the 2 academics ran a boarding college that taught eight kids. It’s doubtless that they gave up college when the Sisters of Windfall got here to the realm to arrange colleges within the metropolis.
In 1867 the Covingtons bought their dwelling earlier than leaving for Washington, DC, the place Richard labored within the patent workplace for President Ulysses S. Grant. When the Covingtons left for the east coast, they by no means returned. The story says little about his spouse after she moved. Richard died in Hawaii.
As soon as the social coronary heart of the county, its oldest residence fell right into a shabby, pale reminiscence. In 1926 the Fort Vancouver Historic Society and the Ladies’s Membership of Vancouver made a plan to maneuver it. Round 1928 that they had the home dismantled, every reduce wooden numbered, cataloged, relocated after which on the present location, 4201 Important St.
Martin Middlewood is the editor of the annual version of the Clark County Historic Society. Attain out to him at ClarkCoHist@gmail.com.
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