January 7: 12pm-1pm, Medford Library, Large Meeting Room
January 14: 12pm-1pm, Ashland Library, Gresham Room
In 1905, Attorney Abraham Walter Lafferty was appointed special agent for the Department of Interior’s General Land Office in Portland, and opened a law practice a year later. In 1907, Lafferty took on representation of eighteen Oregon counties over the Oregon & California Railroad land fraud scandal, a cause with which he continued to be involved for the rest of his life. This talk by Tam Moore will cover the O&C Railroad land fraud scandal, and the series of litigations that followed, focusing on Lafferty’s involvement and his life outside of the cases as well.
Tam Moore has spent many decades as a journalist and TV reporter in Southern Oregon and served on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners in 1975-78. He is President of the Jackson County Heritage Association and a longtime volunteer with Southern Oregon Historical Society
The monthly Windows in Time lunchtime lectures feature well-known writers and historians and bring alive the people, values, and events that shaped our Southern Oregon heritage. The lectures are jointly sponsored by the Southern Oregon Historical Society and Jackson County Library Services. Programs are presented in Medford (first Wednesdays, in-person and online) and again in Ashland (second Wednesdays, in-person). Registration is only required to attend the Zoom version of Medford’s program (jcls.libcal.com/calendar). Recordings of Medford presentations are available on the JCLS Beyond YouTube channel. For more information, please contact the Southern Oregon Historical Society at 541-622-2025, sohs.org, or Jackson County Library Services at 541-774-8679, jcls.org.
About Jackson County Library Services: The JCLS mission is to connect everyone to information, ideas, and each other. With 15 branches throughout the County, JCLS offers in-person and virtual programs, Take & Make kits, At Home Services for patrons who cannot come to the library, Outreach to Child Care, free internet access, 24-hour online resources, and a staff of experts. Patrons can browse the online catalog and curated staff booklists, subscribe to the Library Connect blog, and use readers advisory resources via an online form called JCLS Discovery. Learn more at https://jcls.org. About Southern Oregon Historical Society The SOHS mission is to collect, preserve, maintain, and share the rich history of Southern Oregon. Since 1946, the Society has brought history alive through programs, events, and activities. The SOHS owns the second largest historical artifact collection in Oregon; the 1857 SOHS Hanley Farm Living History Museum; and the landmark SOHS History Center. The latter houses SOHS’s extensive library and archives, much of it accessible on-line, and will soon be home to a downtown event center. Learn more at https://sohs.org.
