Main at Texas - South

1913: On the right: Shotwell & Harris Clothing, Kress 5 and dime, The Pantitorium tailor shop, then Capitol Hotel on the corner of Capitol Street, followed by red brick Adoue Blaine Hardware, and next, The Great Jones Building, the offices of Jesse Jones then the Carter Building. On the left, Bering Hardware and the Dixie Theater, a cinema, in the first block. Just past Capitol Street is Stowers and Gimbels, the white 6-story building, then the red brick Oliver Music Company.

29 May 2015: The block on the right has been replaced by the J. P. Morgan Chase parking and gym complex with street level stores. The construction on the left, completed in 2017, is a 48 story tower, 609 Main at Texas, features a sharply angled roof-line which evokes Pennzoil Place, both projects of Gerald D. Hines, famous Houston-based developer.

To: Mrs. R. Baird
Yamhill
Oregon

Postmarked: Houston, Tex. Jan 19, 1913
Stamped: 1c Green George Washington #405 [Possibly imperforate by user

From: Bruce

Message: Houston Tex
1/19
Got here from New Orleans last night. Looks like a good town. Will write later.
Bruce
​Genl Dely.

Bruce was a 21 year old young man arriving in Houston, most probably by train. He was about 2200 miles from his home in the Portland, Oregon area, and wrote this brief note to his mother in a bit of a rush. He had already been on his own for a few years, living away from home as an 18-year-old with his Aunt Mary Harris in Portland while he worked for a freight office. His arrival from New Orleans suggests he was on a longer trip, and Houston may have been on his way home.

His mother was Isabel “Belle” Hines Davis Baird, mother of four children and descendant of early Oregon pioneers. Belle’s parents were Thomas Crawford Davis (1821-1887) and Nancy Ann Hines (1830-1891); her grandfather, William Tolbert Hines died on the Oregon Trail in 1847 as the family came West in covered wagons on the promise of free land. The Snake River crossing in Idaho was notoriously dangerous, and Hines was swept off his horse by the current and drowned in the turbulent waters. T.C. Davis took up his land warrant in Yamhill County, southwest of Portland and took up farming in the very rich land of the Willamette Valley. Belle grew up there and in 1878 married Richard Baird, Sr. who had immigrated from Dundee, Scotland three years before.

After his Texas trip, Bruce returned to Portland, Oregon where he remained the rest of his life, working first as a clerk for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, bond salesman in a bonding house, and for many years as a salesman in the neon advertising business. In 1918 he married Eva Lena Jeannet, daughter of Henry Frank Jeannet from Switzerland and Philomene Richard Jeannet from French Canada who had immigrated in 1878.
​
Eva died 24 December 1966 and Bruce died 4 July 1971, both in Multnomah County, OR, in the Portland area. Their burials have not been located. They had no children.