'Hurrah for Harrison' in downtown Forest Grove

Title

'Hurrah for Harrison' in downtown Forest Grove

Description

One of a pair of humorous images dating from the 1888 Presidential election between Harrison and Cleveland. A crowd of men and boys watches as a man carrying an American flag is carried in a wheelbarrow down the street. A caption below the wheelbarrow reads, “Hurrah for Harrison.” Harrison, like the majority of Forest Grove at the time, was a Republican; he lost the election. A related image captioned “Hurrah for Cleveland” shows the same man being dumped out of the wheelbarrow into the muddy street. The Oregonian printed a description of this scene on November 15, 1888, noting that two local men had made a bet about the outcome of the election and that the loser had to carry the other one in a wheelbarrow procession through town, but that the loser dumped out the winner as a joke. The man holding the wheelbarrow was Charles Fritz, who ran a local photography studio; the man riding in the wheelbarrow was Joseph Vaughn. This photograph was taken in downtown Forest Grove, standing just south of the present-day intersection of Main Street and 21st Avenue, looking towards the north-northwest. It is one of very few images showing downtown Forest Grove’s original wooden buildings. The sign for the shoe shop which served as a workshop for children at the Forest Grove Indian School in the early 1880s is barely visible behind the crowd on the left. None of the buildings pictured survive today.
[Front] [typed] Hurrah for Harrison

Date Created

1888

Medium

photographic prints

Language

English

Identifier

WCMpic_000615

Rights

Online access to this image is for research and educational purposes only. To inquire about permissions, order a reproduction, or for more information, please contact the Five Oaks Museum at Research@FiveOaksMuseum.org.
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

Type

Still Image

Collection