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Stacy D. Stumbo The Roseburg News-Review May 2, 2003
Two local organizations are trying to illuminate Douglas County’s past for today’s youth.The Douglas County Historical Society has given complete sets of “The Umpqua Trapper” to local middle and high school libraries with the help of $5,000 from the Cow Creek Tribe of Umpqua Band of Indians.
The Trapper is a quarterly publication the society established in 1965. Since then, 153 issues featuring 350 articles written by local contributors and historians have been published.
Ken Shrum, the historical society’s president, estimates the publications will offer information about Douglas County’s traditions, myths and histories to roughly 8,100 students at 30 schools. Additionally, an index covering the first 35 years of the publication with more than 17,000 listings, and copies of the 1982 book “Historical Douglas County” and “Treasures from the Trapper,” have been donated.
History
Issues of the Umpqua Trapper cost $2.50 and can be purchased at Roseburg Book & Stationery, 549 S.E. Jackson St., the Douglas County Museum, 123 Museum Drive and the historic Lane House at 544 S.E. Douglas Ave., in Roseburg. To order individual issues by mail send $3.50 and make checks payable to the Douglas County Historical Society at 733 W. Ballf St., Roseburg, OR 97470.
ANDY BRONSON / The News-Review
“I think a lot of people don’t recognize the value of history,” said Tribal Chairwoman Sue Shaffer. “We’re a mobile society today, and we lose our connection to an area and its history. Those of us who hold that connection with our past can rely on it. It gives us a sense of security. I think Douglas County has a wonderful history that people should know more about.”
Shrum said the Trapper provides the most comprehensive history of the region available, containing more information than most books devoted to Douglas County.
Members of the Cow Creek tribe have been featured in the Trapper a number of times, primarily in stories by Harriet Duncan Munnick — a woman some consider the unsung hero of Douglas County scholarship.
“She did very extensive research on Catholic Church records and the Cow Creek,” Shrum said. “A lot of it involved translating of old documents from the missionary types who roamed all over the West Coast in the old days. I can’t believe all the information she assembled.”
Shrum said Munnick’s contributions and those of other Douglas County history buffs should bring the past into focus for area youth. Additionally, he hopes they will inspire children to learn more about their own families and history.
Munnick was a schoolteacher whose career began in Lincoln County shortly after World War I. Although not from Douglas County, her interest in the area began when she wrote her college thesis on Gen. Joseph Lane.
Stephen Dow Beckham, history professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland and author of “Land of the Umpqua,” knew Munnick well and shared her passion for early Northwest history.
“Over the years her interest in history deepened and, by the 1960s, she was well into research into the French-Canadian and metis (mixed-blood) communities of the Pacific Northwest,” Beckham said.
In addition to work for the Trapper, Munnick transcribed and translated early Pacific Northwest death, marriage and baptismal records from French and Latin. Her research resulted in the behemoth seven-volume “Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest.”
“I have all Harriet’s books,” Shaffer said. “She sent them to me before she died (in 1992 at the age of 96). She was a wonderful woman — sharp as a tack.”
Beckham worked as a proofreader for Munnick on her transcriptions of Roseburg, Jacksonville and Portland Catholic church records.
“Harriet was a dear friend, a kindred spirit in the quest for documentary materials, and a woman with a great memory,” Beckham said. ” She lived on a hilltop near West Linn, Oregon. I looked from the hilltop where I live in Lake Oswego across the hills and fields to her place. I often traveled there to check tribal genealogies and translations of records dating back 150 or more years before
