Vintie Beall and her relatives spent their entire lives telling people how to pronounce their last name.
“It’s like a bell,” they said. “Like a church bell.” But few people remembered for long.
Vintie was the only child of Robert Vinton Beall, a pioneer who arrived in Oregon with his brother, Thomas, in July 1852. Lured to the valley by the promise of gold, the brothers quickly headed south to Josephine County, where they mined briefly before. moving to Jackson County in late August.
By 1854, both had claimed land near Central Point and were operating a railroad company between Jacksonville and Oregon City, and Jacksonville to Crescent City.
In 1864, 33-year-old Robert married 17-year-old Ann Maria Riddle. They had two children, Mary born in 1866 and Vintie in 1878.
Although rarely called junior, Vintie was also officially Robert Vinton Beall; however, until his father died in 1915, most people knew him as Vinton or Vintie.
In April 1889, just a month before Vintie’s 11th birthday, he was riding with his father and taking cattle to graze in the meadows east of Eagle Point. While taking a break in Brownsville, Vintie began to complain of a severe headache. Within seconds, his speech was slurred, he started vomiting and passed out.
Medford doctors Geary and Pryce were called and when they arrived they found Vintie barely conscious and delirious. The doctors agreed: spinal meningitis. For eight days, Vintie was close to death, and when the crisis passed, he became deaf. It was over a month before he could sit for more than a few hours a day, but in July he was finally able to walk.
Unable to hear and no longer able to play the cornet in the Central Point Cornet Band, Vintie turned to art: painting and drawing. After seeing Vintie’s work at the county fair, a reporter called him an “embryonic artist.”
“Shows unmistakable signs of a great artist in the future.”
For nearly two years, her parents took Vintie to any hearing specialist they could find. Finally, in 1891, after extensive tests and treatments, doctors in San Francisco told them he would never regain his hearing.
Undeterred, Vintie agreed to attend a school for the deaf in Salem, where “he was getting a good education.” Two years later, he graduated from a college for the deaf in Berkeley, California, and returned home “an above average businessman of the most fortunate.”
After completing two years of his courses at the University of Oregon, Vintie returned home to work briefly with his father.
In February 1900, he took the train to Effingham, Illinois, and entered the Illinois College of Photography. After graduation, he accepted an offer to be an instructor at the university.
After opening a photo studio in North Carolina and doing well for a year, he was asked to come to Louisiana to help photograph Mardi Gras, and after that he agreed to stay and work for a company of photography His friends and family in Oregon thought he would stay there and only come home for a visit, but Vintie knew he had already been gone too long.
He quickly tired of the big city and realized that a rural photo gallery run by an expert photographer had a good chance of being a success. In the summer of 1902, his photographic studio was built and opened for business.
“PHOTOS! LATEST! IDEAS! THE BEST!” his first ad said. “The Original Wayside Studio Now Ready AT BEALL’S RANCH . . . Southern Oregon’s Best Equipped Studio.”
At the age of 83, in October 1940, Robert Vinton “Vintie” Beall died.
For more than half a century, Vintie—photographer, farmer, and friend—had stayed home.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “Silent City on the Hill, Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery.” Contact him at newsmiller@live.com.
