History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888, Part 2

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Mrs. Frances Auretta Fuller Barrett, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1886-88
Publisher: San Francisco : The History Co.
Number of Pages: 836

USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888 > Part 2

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10 Thornton counts in 1847 a Methodist and a Catholic church, St James, a day-school, a private boarding-school for young ladies, kept by Mrs Thornton, a printing-press, and a public library of 300 volumes. Or. and C'al., i. 329-30. Crawford says there were 5 stores of general merchandise, the Hudson's Bay Company's, Abernethy's, Couch's (Cushing & Co. ), Moss', and Robert Canfield's; and adds that there were 3 ferries across the Willamette at this place, one a horse ferry, and 2 pulled by hand, and that all were kept busy, Oregon City being ' the great rendezvous for all up and down the river to get flour.' Narrative, MS., 154; S. I. Friend, Oct. 15, 1849. Palmer states in addition that McLoughlin's grist-mill ran 3 sets of bulir-stones, and would com- pare favorably with most mills in the States; but that the Island Mill, then owned by Abernethy and Beers, was a smaller one, and that each had a saw-mill attached which cut a great deal of plank for the new arrivals. Jour- nal, 85-6. There were 2 hotels, the Oregon House, which was built in 1844, costing $44,000, and which was torn down in June 1871. The other was called the City Hotel. McLoughlin's residence, built about 1845, was a large building for those times, and was later the Finnegas Hotel. Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 30; Portland Advocate, June 3, 187]; Bacon's Merc. Life Or. City, MS., 18; Harvey's Life of McLoughlin, MS., 34; Niles' Rey., Ixx. 341.

Il Abernethy was the first mayor, and Lovejoy the second; McLoughlin was also mayor.

12 Niles' Reg., Ixviii. 84; Or. Spectator, Feb. 19, 1846.

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

lation. Champoeg had been laid off as a town by Newell, but is so in name only. Close by is another river town, of about equal importance, owned by Abernethy and Beers, which is called Butteville. Just above the falls Hedges has laid off the town of Canemah. Besides these there are a number of settlements named after the chief families, such as Hembree's settlement in Yamhill County, Applegate's and Ford's in Polk, and Waldo's and Howell's in Marion. Hamlets prom- ising to be towns are Salem, Portland, Vancouver, and Astoria.

I have already mentioned the disposition made of the missionary claims and property at Salem, and that on the dissolution of the Methodist Mission the Ore- gon Institute was sold, with the land claimed as be- longing to it, to the board of trustees. But as there was no law under the provisional government for the incorporation of such bodies, or any under which they could hold a mile square of land for the use of the in- stitute, W. H. Wilson, H. B. Brewer, D. Leslie, and L. H. Judson resorted to the plan of extending their four land-claims in such a manner as to make their corners meet in the centre of the institute claim, under that provision in the land law allowing claims to be held by a partnership of two or more persons; and by giving bonds to the trustees of the institute to perform this act of trust for the benefit of the board, till it should become incorporated and able to hold the land in its own right.

In March 1846 Wilson was authorized to act as agent for the board, and was put in possession of the premises. In May following he was empowered to sell lots, and allowed a compensation of seven per cent on all sales effected. During the summer a por- tion of the claim was sold to J. L. Parrish, David Leslie, and C. Craft, at twelve dollars an acre; and Wilson was further authorized to sell the water-power or mill-site, and as much land with it as might be

THE BEGINNING OF PORTLAND.

thought advisable; also to begin the sale by public auction of the town lots, as surveyed for that pur- pose, the first sale to take place September 10, 1846. Only half a dozen families were there previous to this time.13

In July 1847 a bond was signed by Wilson, the conditions of which were the forfeiture of $100,000, or the fulfilment of the following terms: That he should hold in trust the six hundred and forty acres thrown off from the land-claims above mentioned; that he should pay to the missionary society of the Methodist Epis- copal church of Oregon and to the Oregon Institute certain sums amounting to $6,000; that he should use all diligence to perfect a title to the institute claim, and when so perfected convey to the first annual con- ference of the Methodist church, which should be established in Oregon by the general conference of the United States, in trust, such title as he himself had obtained to sixty acres known as the 'institute reserve,' on which the institute building was situated- for which services he was to receive one third of the money derived from the sale of town lots on the un- reserved portion of the six hundred and forty acres comprised in the Salem town-site and belonging to the several claimants. Under this arrangement, in 1848, Wilson and his wife were residing in the institute building on the reserved sixty acres, Mrs Wilson having charge of the school, while the agency of the town property remained with her husband.

The subsequent history of Salem town-site belongs to a later period, but may be briefly given here. When the Oregon donation law was passed, which gave to the wife half of the mile square of land em- braced in the donation, Wilson had the dividing line on his land run in such a manner as to throw the reserve with the institute building, covered by his claim, upon the wife's portion; and Mrs Wilson being

13 Davidson's Southern . Route, MS., 5; Brown's Autobiography, MS., 31; Rabbison's Growth of Towns, MS., 27-8.

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

under no legal obligation to make over anything to the Oregon conference, in trust for the institute, re- fused to listen to the protests of the trustees so neatly tricked out of their cherished educational enterprise. In this condition the institute languished till 1854, when a settlement was effected by the restoration of the reserved sixty acres to the trustees of the Willa- mette University, and two thirds of the unsold re- mains of the south-west quarter of the Salem town- site which Wilson was bound to hold for the use of that institution. Whether the restoration was an act of honor or of necessity I will not here discuss; the act of congress under which the territory was organ- ized recognized as binding all bonds and obligations entered into under the provisional government.14 In later years some important lawsuits grew out of the pretensions of Wilson's heirs, to an interest in lots sold by him while acting agent for the trustees of the town-site. 15

Portland in 1848 had but two frame buildings, one the residence of F. W. Pettygrove, who had re- moved from Oregon City to this hamlet on the river's edge, and the other belonging to Thomas Carter. Several log-houses had been erected, but the place had no trade except a little from the Tualatin plains lying to the south, beyond the heavily timbered high- lands in that direction.

The first owner of the Portland land-claim was William Overton, a Tennesseean, who came to Oregon about 1843, and presently took possession of the place, where he made shingles for a time, but being of a restless disposition went to the Sandwich Islands, and returning dissatisfied and out of health, resolved to go to Texas. Meeting with A. L. Lovejoy at Van- couver, and returning with him to Portland in a canoe, he offered to resign the claim to him, but subsequently

14 Or. Laws, 1843-72, 61; Hines' Or. and Inst., 165-72.

15 Thornton's Salem Titles, in Salem Directory for 1874, 2-7. Wilson died suddenly of apoplexy, in 1856. Id., 22.

VANCOUVER TOWN.

changed his mind, thinking to remain, yet giving Lovejoy half, on condition that he would aid in im- proving it; for the latter, as he says in his Founding of Portland, MS., 30-34, observed the masts and booms of vessels which had been left there, and it occurred to him that this was the place for a town. So rarely did shipping come to Oregon in these days, and more rarely still into the Willamette River, that the possibility or need of a seaport or harbor town away from the Columbia does not appear to have been seriously entertained up to this time.

After some clearing, preparatory to building a house, Overton again determined to leave Oregon, and sold his half of the land to F. W. Pettygrove for a small sum and went to Texas, where it has been said he was hanged.16 Lovejoy and Pettygrove then erected the first house in the winter of 1845, the locality being on what is now Washington street at the corner of Front street, it being built of logs covered with shingles. Into this building Pettygrove moved half of his stock of goods in the spring of 1845, and with Lovejoy opened a road to the farming lands of Tual- atin County from which the traffic of the imperial city was expected to come.

The town was partially surveyed by H. N. V. Short, the initial point being Washington street and the survey extending down the river a short distance. The naming of it was decided by the tossing of a cop- per coin, Pettygrove, who was from Maine, gaining the right to call it Portland, against Lovejoy, who was from Massachusetts and wished to name the new town Boston. A few stragglers gathered there, and during the Cayuse war when the volunteer companies organ- ized at Portland, and crossing the river took the road to Switzler's ferry opposite Vancouver, it began to be apparent that it was a more convenient point of de- parture and arrival in regard to the Columbia than

16 Deady, in Overland Monthly, i. 36; Nesmith, in Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1875, 57.

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

Oregon City. But it made no material progress till a conjunction of remarkable events in 1848 called it into active life and permanent prosperity. Before this happened, however, Lovejoy had sold his interest to Benjamin Stark; and Daniel Lownsdale in Sep- tember of this year purchased Pettygrove's share, paying for it $5,000 worth of leather which he had made at his tannery adjoining the town-site. The two founders of Portland thus transferred their own- ership, which fell at a fortunate moment into the hands of Daniel Lownsdale, Stephen Coffin, and W. W. Chapman.17

In 1848 Henry Williamson, the same who claimed unsuccessfully near Fort Vancouver in 1845, employed P. W. Crawford to lay out a town on the present site of Vancouver, and about five hundred lots were sur- veyed, mapped, and recorded in the recorder's books at Oregon City, according to the law governing town- sites; the same survey long ruling in laying out streets, blocks, and lots. But the prospects for a city were blighted by the adverse claim of Amos Short, an immigrant of 1847, who settled first at Linnton, then removed to Sauvé Island where he was engaged in slaughtering Spanish cattle, but who finally took six hundred and forty acres below Fort Vancouver, Will- iamson who still claimed the land being absent at the time, having gone to Indiana for a wife. The land law of Oregon, in order to give young men this oppor- tunity of fulfilling marriage engagements without loss, provided that by paying into the treasury of the territory the sum of five dollars a year, they could be absent from their claims for two consecutive years, or long enough to go to the States and return.

In Williamson's case the law proved ineffectual.

17 Lovejoy's Founding of Portland, MS., passim; Brigg's Port Townsend, MS., 9; Sylvester's Olympia, MS., 4, 5; Hancock's Thirteen Years, MS., 94. For an account of the subsequent litigation, not important to this history, see Burke v. Lownsdale, Appellee's Brief, 12; Or. Laws, 1866, 5-8; Deady's Hist. Or., MS., 12-13. Some mention will be made of this in treating of the effects of the donation law on town-sites.

CONSTRUCTION OF ROADS.

She whom he was to marry died before he reached Indiana, and on returning still unmarried, he found Short in possession of his claim; and althoughi he was at the expense of surveying, and a house was put up by William Fellows, who left his property in the keeping of one Kellogg, Short gave Williamson so much trouble that he finally abandoned the claim and went to California to seek a fortune in the mines. The cottonwood tree which Crawford made the start- ing-point of his survey, and which was taken as the corner of the United States military post in 1850, was standing in 1878. The passage of the donation law brought up the question of titles to Vancouver, but as these arguments and decisions were not con- sidered till after the territory of Washington was set off from Oregon, I will leave them to be discussed in that portion of this work. Astoria, never having been the seat of a mission, either Protestant or Cath- olic, and being on soil acknowledged from the first settlement as American, had little or no trouble about titles, and it was only necessary to settle with the government when a place for a military post was tem- porarily required.

The practice of jumping, as the act of trespassing on land claimed by another was called, became more common as the time was supposed to approach when congress would make the long-promised donation to actual settlers, and every man desired to be upon the choicest spot within his reach. It did not matter to the intruder whether the person displaced were Eng- lish or American. Any slight flaw in the proceedings or neglect in the customary observances rendered the claimant liable to be crowded off his land. But when these intrusions became frequent enough to attract the attention of the right-minded, their will was made known at public meetings held in all parts of the ter- ritory, and all persons were warned against violating the rights of others. They were told that if the

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

existing law would not prevent trespass the legisla- ture should make one that would prove effectual.18 Thus warned, the envious and the grasping were gen- erally restrained, and claim-jumping never assumed alarming proportions in Oregon. Considering the changes made every year in the population of the country, public sentiment had much weight with the people, and self-government attained a position of dignity.

Although no claimant could sell the land he held, he could abandon possession and sell the improve- ments, and the transaction vested in the purchaser all the rights of the former occupant. In this manner the land changed occupants as freely as if the title had been in the original possessor, and no serious in- convenience was experienced19 for the want of it.

Few laws were enacted at the session of 1847, as it was believed unnecessary in view of the expected near approach of government by the United States. But the advancing settlement of the country demand- ing that the county boundaries should be fixed, and new ones created, the legislature of 1847 established the counties of Linn and Benton, one extending east to the Rocky Mountains, the other west to the Pacific Ocean, and both south to the latitude 42°.20

The construction of a number of roads was also au- thorized, the longer ones being from Portland to Mary River, and from Multnomah City to the same place, and across the Cascade Mountains by the way of the Santiam River to intercept the old emigrant road in the valley of the Malheur, or east of there, from which it will be seen that there was still a conviction in some minds that a pass existed which would lead travellers into the heart of the valley. That no such pass was discovered in 1848, or until long after annual caravans of wagons and cattle from the States ceased

18 Or. Spectator, Sept. 30, 1847.

19 Holden's Or. Pioneering, MS., 6.

20 Or. Laws, 1843-9, 50, 53-6; Benton County Almanac, 1876, 1, 2; Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1875, 59.

CURRENCY AND PRICES.

to demand it, is also true.21 But it was a benefit to the country at large that a motive existed for annual exploring expeditions, each one of which brought into notice some new and favorable situations for settlements, besides promoting discoveries of its min- eral resources of importance to its future develop- ment.22

On account of the unusual and late rains in the summer of 1847, the large immigration which greatly increased the home consumption, and the Cayuse war which reduced the number of producers, the colony experienced a depression in business and a rise in prices which was the nearest approach to financial distress which the country had yet suffered. Farm- ing utensils were scarce and dear, cast-iron ploughs selling at forty-five dollars.23 Other tools were equally scarce, often requiring a man who needed an axe to travel a long distance to procure one second-hand at a high price. This scarcity led to the manufacture of axes at Vancouver, for the company's own hunters and trappers, before spoken of as exciting the suspi- cion of the Americans. Nails brought from twenty to twenty-five cents per pound; iron twelve and a half. Groceries were high, coffee bringing fifty cents a pound; tea a dollar and a half; coarse Sandwich Island sugar twelve and fifteen cents; common mo- lasses fifty cents a gallon. Coarse cottons brought twenty and twenty-five cents a yard; four-point blankets five dollars a single one; but ready -made common clothing for men could be bought cheap. Flour was selling in the spring for four and five dollars a barrel, and potatoes at fifty cents a bushel;

21 It was discovered within a few years, and is known as Minto's Pass. A road leading from Albany to eastern Oregon through this pass was opened about 1877.

22 Mention is made at this early day of discoveries of coal, iron, copper, plumbago, mineral paint, and valuable building and lime stone. Thornton's Or. and Cal., i. 331-47; S. F. Californian, April 19, 1848.

23 Brown says: 'We reaped our wheat mostly with sickles; we made wooden mould-boards with a piece of iron for the coulter.' Willamette Valley, MS., 6.

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

high prices for those times, but destined to become higher.24

The evil of high prices was aggravated by the nature of the currency, which was government scrip, orders on merchants, and wheat; the former, though drawing interest, being of uncertain value owing to the state of the colonial treasury which had never contained money equal to the face of the government's promises to pay. The law making orders on mer- chants currency constituted the merchant a banker without any security for his solvency, and the value of wheat was liable to fluctuation. There were, be- sides, different kinds of orders. An Abernethy order was not good for some articles. A Hudson's Bay order might have a cash value, or a beaver-skin value. In making a trade a man was paid in Couch, Aber- nethy, or Hudson's Bay currency, all differing in value.25 The legislature of 1847 so far amended the currency act as to make gold and silver the only law- ful tender for the payment of judgments rendered in the courts, where no special contract existed to the contrary; but making treasury drafts lawful tender in payment of taxes, or in compensation for the ser- vices of the officers or agents of the territory, unless otherwise provided by law; and providing that all costs of any suit at law should be paid in the same kind of money for which judgment might be rendered.

This relief was rather on the side of the litigants than the people at large. Merchants' paper was worth as much as the standing of the merchant. Nowhere in the country, except at the Hudson's Bay Company's store, would an order pass at par.26 The inconvenience of paying for the simplest article by orders on wheat in warehouse was annoying both to purchaser and seller. The first money brought into the country in any quantity was a barrel of silver dollars received at

24 S. F. California Star, July 10, 1847; Crawford's Nar., MS., 119-20. 25 Lovejoy's Portland, MS., 33-6.

26 Brigg's Port Townsend, MS., 11-13.

SHIPPING.

Vancouver to be paid in monthly sums to the crew of the Modeste.27 The subsequent overland arrivals brought some coin, though not enough to remedy the evil.

One effect of the condition of trade in the colony was to check credit, which in itself would not have been injurious, perhaps,28 had it not also tended to discourage labor. A mechanic who worked for a stated price was not willing to take whatever might be given him in return for his labor.29

Another effect of such a method was to prevent vessels coming to Oregon to trade.30 The number of

27 Roberts' Recollections, MS .. 21; Ebbert's Trapper's Life, MS., 40.

28 Howison relates that he found many families who, rather than incur debt, had lived during their first year in the country entirely on boiled wheat and salt salmon, the men going without hat or shoes while putting in and harvest- ing their first crop. C'oast and Country, 16.

29 Moss gives an illustration of this check to industry. A man named Anderson was employed by Abernethy in his saw-mill, and labored night and day. Abernethy's stock of goods was not large or well graded, and he would sell certain articles only for cash, even when his own notes were presented. Anderson had purchased part of a beef, which he wished to salt for family use, but sult being one of the articles for which cash was the equivalent at Abernethy's store, he was refused it, though Abernethy was owing him, and he was obliged to go to the fur company's store for it. Pioneer Times, MS., 40-3.

30 Herewith I summarize the Oregon ocean traffic for the 14 years since the first American settlement, most of which occurrences are mentioned elsewhere. The Hudson's Bay Company employed in that period the barks Ganymede, Forager, Nereid, Columbia, Cowlitz, Diamond, Vancouver, Ware, Brothers, Janet, Admiral Moorsom, the brig Mary Dare, the schooner C'adboro, and the steamer Beaver, several of them owned by the company. The Beaver, after her first appearance in the river in 1836, was used in the coast trade north of the Columbia. The barks Cowlitz, Columbia, Vancouver, and the schooner Cadboro crossed the bar of the Columbia more frequently than any other ves- sels from 1836 to 1848. The captains engaged in the English service were Eales, Royal, Home, Thompson, McNeil, Duncan, Fowler, Brotchie, More, Darby, Heath, Dring, Flere, Weyington, Cooper, MeKnight, Scarborough, and Humphreys, who were not always in command of the same vessel. There was the annual vessel to and from England, but the others were employed in trading along the coast, and between the Columbia River and the Sandwich Islands, or California, their voyages extending sometimes to Valparaiso, from which parts they brought the few passengers coming to Oregon.

The first American vessel to enter the Columbia after the arrival of the missionaries was the brig Loriot, Captain Bancroft, in Dec. 1836; the second the Diana, Captain W. S. Hinckley, May 1837; the third the Lausanne, Captain Spaulding, May 1840. None of these came for the purpose of trade. There is mention in the 25th Cong., 3d Sess., U. S. Com. Rcpt. 101, 58, of the ship Joseph Peabody fitting out for the Northwest Coast, but she did not enter the Columbia so far as I can learn. In August 1840 the first American trader since Wyeth arrived. This was the brig Maryland, Captain John H. Couch, from Newburyport, belonging to the house of Cushing & Co. She took a few fish and left the river in the autumn never to return. In April 1841

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

American vessels which brought goods to the Colum- bia or carried away the products of the colony was small. Since 1834 the bar of the Columbia had been crossed by American vessels, coming in and going out, fifty-four times. The list of American vessels entering during this period comprised twenty-two of

the second trader appeared, the Thomas H. Perkins, Captain Varney. She remained through the summer, the Hudson's Bay Company finally purchas- ing her cargo and chartering the vessel to get rid of her. Then came the U. S. exploring expedition the same year, whose vessels did not enter the Columbia owing to the loss of the Peacock on the bar. After this disaster Wilkes bought the charter and the name of the Perkins was changed to the Oregon, and she left the river with the shipwrecked mariners for California. On the 2d of April 1842 Captain Couch reappeared with a new vessel, the Chenamus, named after the chief of the Chinooks. He brought a cargo of goods which he took to Oregon City, where he established the first American trading-house in the Willamette Valley, and also a small fishery on the Columbia. She sailed for Newburyport in the autumn. On this vessel came Richard Ekin from Liver- pool to Valparaiso, the Sandwich Islands, and thence to Oregon. He settled near Salem and was the first saddle-maker. From which circumstance I call his dictation The Saddle-Maker. Another American vessel whose name does not appear, but whose captain's name was Chapman, entered the river April IOth to trade and fish, and remained till autumn. She sold liquor to the Clatsop and other savages, and occasioned much discord and bloodshed in spite of the protests of the missionaries. In May 1843 the ship Fama, Captain Nye, arrived with supplies for the missions. She brought several settlers, namely: Philip Fos- ter, wife, and 4 children; F. W. Pettygrove, wife, and child; Peter F. Hatch, wife and child; and Nathan P. Mack. Pettygrove brought a stock of goods and began trade at Oregon City. Iu August of the same year another vessel of the Newburyport Company arrived with Indian goods, and some articles of trade for settlers. This was the bark Pallas, Captain Sylvester; she remained until November, when she sailed for the Islands and was sold there, Sylvester returning to Oregon the following April 1844 in the Chenamus, Captain Couch, which had made a voyage to Newburyport and returned. She brought from Honolulu Horace Holden and family, who settled in Oregon; also a Mr Cooper, wife and boy; Mr and Mrs Burton and 3 children, besides Griffin, Tidd, and Goodhue. The Chenamus seems to have made a voyage to the Islands in the spring of 1843, in command of Sylvester, and to have left there June 12th to return to the Columbia. This was the first direct trade with the Islands. The Chenamus brought as passengers Hathaway, Weston, Roberts, John Crank- hite, and Elon Fellows. She sailed for Newburyport in the winter of 1845, and did not return to Oregon. In the summer of 1844 the British sloop-of- war Modeste, Captain Baillie, entered the Columbia and remained a short time at Vancouver. On the 31st of July the Belgian ship L'Infatigable entered the Columbia by the before undiscovered south channel, escaping wreck, to the surprise of all beholders. She brought De Smet and a Catholic reënforce- ment for the missions of Oregon. In April 1845 the Swedish brig Bull visited the Columbia; she was from China: Shilliber, supercargo. Captain Worn- grew remained but a short time. On the 14th of October the Amer- ican bark, Toulon, Captain Nathaniel Crosby, from New York, arrived with goods for Pettygrove's trading-houses in Oregon City and Portland: Benjamin Stark jun., supercargo. In September the British sloop-of-war Modeste returned to the Columbia, where she remained till June 1847. The British ship-of-war America, Captain Gordon, was in Puget Sound during the summer. In the spring of 1846 the Toulon made a voyage to the Ha- waiian Islands, returning June 24th with a cargo of sugar, molasses, coffee,

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History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888, Part 2

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Mrs. Frances Auretta Fuller Barrett, 1826-1902 Publication date: 1886-88 Publisher: San Francisco : The History Co. Number of Pages: 836

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Mrs. Frances Auretta Fuller Barrett, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1886-88
Publisher: San Francisco : The History Co.
Number of Pages: 836