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NOTICES
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OHS RESEARCH LIBRARY | |
| Winch family papers, circa 1840–2000 (inclusive), Coll 42 |
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| Quantity: 8 cubic feet (13 document cases, 4 flat boxes, 2 card file boxes, 1 custom box, 1 oversize folder) |
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| The collection includes photographs and papers of the Winch family of Portland, Oregon, including materials relating to Martin Winch, his wife Nellie Amelia Wygant Winch, their son Simeon Reed Winch, and Simeon's second wife Margaret (Mary) Tobin Winch. Additional materials pertain to related families, including the Rae, Reed, Wood, and Wygant families and Dr. John McLoughlin. Materials include financial records, correspondence, house inventories, correspondence, diaries, photographs, daguerreotypes, and drawings. Also included is correspondence of Simeon Gannett Reed and letters to Reed from William S. Ladd. |
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Martin Winch was born December 16, 1858, to Martin and Frances Wood Winch in Quincy, Massachusetts. After the death of the senior Martin Winch in 1870, his widow and two sons came to Portland to live with Mrs. Winch's sister, Amanda Wood Reed, wife of one of Portland's leading businessman, Simeon Gannett Reed. The younger Martin proved himself highly capable while working for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and then the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (in which Reed owned substantial shares), in addition to running his own printing business at night. Later the childless Reeds entrusted Winch with their Oregon business affairs when they moved to Pasadena, California, and at Simeon Reed's death, Winch was appointed as Mrs. Reed's financial agent. When Mrs. Reed died, Winch was named executor of her will, which included an endowment for the establishment of an educational institution in Portland. To uphold this bequest, Martin Winch contested the other heirs in court from 1904 to 1912, eventually winning a settlement that allowed for the establishment of what is now Reed College. He died in 1915. |
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Martin Winch's wife Nellie Amelia Wygant Winch was born in Oregon City in 1859 to Margaret Glen Rae Wygant and Theodore Wygant. Margaret Rae's mother was Eloisa McLoughlin, daughter of Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor Dr. John McLoughlin. Margaret's father was William Glen Rae, a relative of the Hudson's Bay Company explorer John Rae. Nellie's father, merchant Theodore Wygant, was an Oregon pioneer who traveled overland to Oregon City in 1850. Nellie's sister Alice married William Whidden, a prominent Portland architect. Nellie Wygant married Martin Winch in 1882, and they had one son, Simeon Reed Winch, born in 1888. She died in 1940. |
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After his graduation from Princeton University in 1911, Simeon Reed Winch went on a European tour with his mother, Nellie Winch, after which he attended Harvard Law school in 1912–1913. Returning to Portland, he began work at the Oregon Journal, eventually assuming the position of the paper's business manager in 1921 — a position he held until his death in 1946. During World War I, he served as Assistant Food Administrator for Oregon and later entered officer's training school, although the war ended before he could serve at the front. His first wife was Olivia Failing, descendant of Portland pioneer merchant Josiah Failing. The couple had two daughters, Nella Winch McElroy and Emily Winch Baines, and in the 1920s the family built a large house at 2665 Cornell Road in Portland. After Olivia Winch's death in 1942, Simeon married Margaret Elizabeth (Mary) Tobin in 1943, with whom he had one son, Martin Tobin Winch, in 1944, two years before his death. |
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Mary Tobin Winch (known for a time as Toots Tobin) was employed at the Oregon Journal at the time of her marriage to Simeon Reed Winch. She later became active in local civil rights and charitable causes and served as a trustee of Reed College. She lived in the Cornell Road house until her death in 2003.
Content Description
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| The collection consists of photographs and papers pertaining to the Winch and Wygant families of Portland, Oregon, the Reed family of Portland and Pasadena, California, and their relatives. The bulk of the photographs are cabinet and studio photographs and albums of the Winch and Reed families from the late 19th century to early twentieth century. Notable photographic items are daguerreotypes and cabinet photographs of Dr. John McLoughlin, a portrait of Theodore Wygant, a series of photographs of the Winch family home at Southwest Broadway and Main Streets in Portland, numerous portraits of Simeon Reed Winch from birth to later years, and images of Amanda Reed's residence in Pasadena. Also included are many snapshots belonging to Mary Tobin Winch taken during a late twentieth century Nile trip. |
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The bulk of the papers consist of financial records and correspondence, including ledgers, cash books, and correspondence of Martin Winch and Simeon Reed Winch. Some notable pieces of correspondence are letters, 1910 and 1911, to Simeon Reed Winch from Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt; a letter of Simeon G. Reed to the father of his future wife Amanda Wood, 1850, asking for her hand in marriage; and letters from Portland merchant and banker William S. Ladd to Simeon G. Reed, 1858, including one offering Reed a position in Ladd's newly formed bank. A diary by Theodore Wygant, a Winch relative and 1850 Oregon pioneer, is included. Other diaries include ones by Maria Louise Wygant, which include detailed accounts of her trips to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and expositions in San Francisco and San Diego in 1915. House inventories of the Winch residence provide glimpses into period furnishings, while the inventories of the Tolmie Estate Sale provide information about Fort Vancouver life during the Hudson's Bay Company era. Papers associated with Dr. John McLoughlin in this collection include copies of correspondence as Chief Factor at Fort Vancouver, a transcript copy of a Hudson's Bay Company letterbook from 1829–1832, and large typescript copies of a Hudson's Bay Company ledger from 1819–1823. |
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