THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
Attie Bray & Rose Seeley

Attie Bray & Mae HurtAttie Bray, twenty-two in 1903, Burgess Starr and Sarah Hurt's niece, was one of the first--if not the first--white children born on what had been the Alsea Sub-Agency for the Siletz Indian Reservation. As soon as the area was opened to whites, Ira and Georgianah Bray (neé Starr), Attie’s parents, were among the first settlers to begin legitimate homesteading on the central Oregon coast.

 

Ira Bray was a cruel man--especially around his five children. For example, he would eat candy in front them while telling them they couldn’t have any because they were bad. So even as a child Attie was regularly told that she was a sinner even when she wasn’t. Unlike her father, Attie was sweet and kind, and easily endeared herself to all she met. Some day she hoped to become a schoolteacher, but for now, she worked as a “servant girl.”

 

Ira BrayAttie went to Smith Island with her friend, Rose Seeley. The Seeley children, like the Mitchell children, had also been abandoned by their father after their mother died. In the Seeleys’ case, Rose Seeley, twenty-seven in 1903, had assumed the responsibility of raising her younger siblings--not an easy task for someone with about a seventh-grade education who, like Attie Bray, worked as a “servant girl.”

 

Her father, Judson Seeley, a former justice of the peace, had abandoned his seven children when he--well nobody seems to know exactly what happened to Judson Seeley. He just wasn’t there one day, and he certainly wasn’t there when Rose and three of his other children--Edna, twenty-eight and a Salvation Army Cadet; Wesley, nineteen; and Florence, sixteen--went camping with Creffield on Smith Island.

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Attie Bray's Commitment & Asylum Records

Rose Seeley's Commitment & Asylum Records

Photos on the right are stills from How the Fire Fell, Edward P. Davee’s movie based on the Holy Rollers.


Most were taken by Destiny Lane.
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Florence Seeley

A woman in a Mother HubbardRachael Perrell as Donna Starr

Holy Rollers

Holy Rollers

Creffield's Followers

Holy Rollers

Holy Rollers

Holy Rollers

 

 

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