The Family Man
To be a proper photographer, Britt needed a decent studio and a better home. With improved finances, he converted his log cabin into a storage shed and built a simple structure that served as house and studio. It started as a plain, one-story building similar to other early Jacksonville houses. However, Britt’s house differed with the innovation of a north-facing skylight that illuminated his studio. During an early remodel, Britt added decorative "gingerbread" trim introducing the fashionably new, "cottage gothic" architectural style to the still primitive frontier setting. A few years later he added more living space by building a second story and moving his studio to the top floor. Years later, in 1883, another two-story wing was added. By then, Britt’s opulent home boasted spacious living quarters, a wine cellar, solarium and two sky-lit studios on the second floor.
In 1861, Peter Britt married Amalia Grob, a recent widow Britt had courted years earlier in Switzerland. Amalia had a seven-year-old son, Jacob, whom Britt took on as his own. The couple had three more children, Emil, born in 1862, Arnold, who died in infancy and Mollie, born in 1865. Amalia died in 1871 leaving Britt to raise the children on his own. As adults, Mollie took over the household management, Jacob tended to many of his father’s agricultural affairs and Emil joined his father in the photography business. The family was close knit. None of the children married and all spent their entire lives in the Britt house on the hill.
Art and music had a place in the Britt household. Britt had trained as an itinerant artist in Switzerland and while in Southern Oregon painted landscapes and portraits for his own pleasure. Little is known about Britt’s musical abilities, but he did encourage the musical talents of his children. His sons sang with a singing group on summer evenings when they were boys, and Mollie played the beautifully carved Steinway piano that her farther bought for her when she was twelve. A 1916 newspaper article reminisced about garden concerts Britt once enjoyed from his veranda. "The porch is a large one, and, of Sunday afternoons years ago, the city band would play and friends of old Peter Britt would sit out under the trees and enjoy the music and the cool winds that stole in from the sea to greet the magnolias and the jasmine that bloomed in the yard."
Britt’s children continued to live in the ornate Victorian house after his death. Ultimately the bulk of the estate went to the Oregon University System. The house was destroyed by fire in 1960 and the grounds became a county park. On summer evenings Britt Festivals concertgoers continue to enjoy the view as they listen to music under the stars.
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