USA > Oregon > Multnomah County > Portland > History of Portland, Oregon : with illustrations and biographical sketches of prominent citizens and pioneers > Part 64
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BIOGRAPHICAL.
two brothers proposed to their associates to build an electric motor road from the city to the land. Inasmuch, however, as the building of such a road would involve the expenditure of a large amount of money none of their associates in the Fulton Park scheme conld be induced to invest their funds in an electric road enterprise. Know- ing, however, that if the property was to be made valuable, some quick and inexpensive means of access should be had to it, a proposition was made by Mr. Steel and his brother to their associates that they would build the road themselves in consideration of the company guaranteeing them a subsidy, which, considering the benefits to be derived by the company, and the increased value that would be given to their property, was very small. Their proposition was accepted and the two brothers proceeded immediately to the formation of the Metropolitan Railway Company, incorporated under the laws of Oregon, with a capital stock of $200,000, which was subsequently increased to $400,000. Up to this time electric roads were in an experimental stage, and particularly so on the Pacific Coast. Two or three such roads had been attempted in California, all of which had proved disastrous failures. One road, however, was then being operated successfully in Seattle, Washington. After examining the matter as carefully as they could they were satisfied that such a system of operating a road would be especially adapted for a suburban road. They finally entered into a contract with parties, representing the Sprague Electric Co., to equip their road. In commencing this enterprise the primal object in view was to get access from the southern part of the city to Fulton Park. It was, however, at once seen that in order to make their enterprise a complete success, it would be necessary to have their line of road extend through the business part of the city, and finally by the purchase of a franchise from a corporation known as the Traction Co., and with some modification of the same from the city they secured a franchise which extends from G street, through Second and other streets, southerly to the city limits. When they commenced this enterprise they were unable to induce any other parties to invest their means in it, and therefore had to carry it through on their individual credit. The road is now in successful operation from G street in the city to Fulton Park, a distance of 4 1-7 miles; is being operated very successfully, and is generally conceded to be one of the best properties in and about the city. They contemplate building a branch of their road to Riverview and other cemeteries contiguous thereto and ultimately to extend their line to Oswego and Oregon City. Besides the interests named Mr. Steel is financially interested in various other minor enterprises while his private operations in real estate have been conducted with almost uniform good results.
Mr. Steel was married in November, 1866, in San Francisco, to Miss Mary Ladd, a sister of W. S. Ladd, of Portland. They have had five children, four of whom are living, one sou aud three daughters.
Mr. Steel has been successful in business, not as the result of any single stroke, but rather as the result of patient, persistent and well directed effort. He possesses fine business judgment, excellent executive ability and an evenly balanced mind. He is naturally conservative, and wild speculative methods, with promise of great reward if successful, but with ruin as the price of defeat, have no charms for him. No man in this community stands higher for strict integrity of character, business probity and faithfulness to every trust and obligation. Portland has been benefitted in many
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HISTORY OF PORTLAND.
ways by his ready willingness to promote by his labor and his means every deserving public enterprise, and according to his ability to do and to give the city has liad no more helpful and sincere friend. He, early in life, became a convert to the Christian faith and has been an active member of the First Congregational Church of Portland ever since his residence here, having served as trustee and treasurer for the last twenty years and also for several years as member of the board of deacons and as one of the committee on Home Missions. He is an ardent republican in political faith and takes an active interest in political affairs, but has never sought or desired public office.
He is generons and charitable, and although closely devoted to business interests, gives much time and freely contributes of his means to benevolent work. Personally he is a genial and pleasant gentleman, but modest and retiring in disposition and naturally shrinks from anything that would lead him into the public view. He is domestic in his tastes, loves his home, and finds his chief pleasure in the family circle and in friendly intercourse with intimate friends.
EID, WILLIAM, capitalist and banker of Portland, was born in Glasgow, Scot- R land, November 22, 1841. His ancestors for several generations were residents of Forfarshire, and the town of Dundee. David Reid, his father, was conductor on the first railroad ever operated in Scotland, and for thirty years was prominently identi- fied with the railroad interests of that country. The education of our subject began in his native city at St. Andrew's Parish School, and was completed at the University of Glasgow in 1865. At the latter institution, after finishing his literary course, he studied for the bar and was admitted in 1867 as an attorney. He began the practice of his profession at Dundee in partnership with Alexander Douglas, under the firm name of Reid & Douglas. He soon acquired an extensive practice, and acted as coun- sel for the United States for several American claimants under the Alabama treaty. In 1868 he was employed by Mrs. Mary Lincoln, widow of the President, to assist in the preparation of the Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. While employed on this work he was appointed by President Grant as United States Consul at Dundee, and held the office at that port until his removal to Oregon in 1874. It was during the period he held this office that his attention was called to Oregon. From the official reports published on the State, and from intercourse with Americans, he gained much information concerning the State. In 1873 he prepared and published a pamphlet entitled Oregon and Washington Considered as a field for Labor and Capital. 30,- 000 copies were circulated, and the influence they exerted upon the development of this portion of the union is almost beyond calculation. The attention of capitalists and immigrants was directed towards this section, and one of the immediate results was the formation of the Oregon and Washington Trust and Investment Company, of Scotland, with a paid up capital of $250,000. The Earl of Airlie was made president of the company, and Mr. Reid its secretary. In 1874 he was sent to Oregon to organi- ize its business in this State, and so highly impressed was he with the resources of this region that he determined to permanently locate here, and become a citizen of the United States.
.
Micham Reid
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BIOGRAPHICAL.
In 1876 Mr. Reid, with several Scotch capitalists, established at Portland the Ore gon and Washington Mortgage Savings Bank, the first savings bank of deposit in the State. This financial institution, with its predecessor, made loans averaging $650,000 a year until 1881, when they had $3,700,000 at interest, and not a dollar had thien been lost by bad debts. In 1876 Mr. Reid's friends organized the Dundee Mortgage Company with a capital of $500,000. For three years this company loaned $750- 000 per year. With it in 1880 was consolidated the Oregon and Washington Trust Investment Company, the united capital being increased to $5,000,000. In 1882 lie established the First National Bank of Salem, and was appointed its president. Du ring the following year he organized the Oregon Mortgage Company. The great con- fidence reposed in Mr. Reid's sagacity and honesty can be best realized from the fact that from May, 1874 to June, 1885, he had made more than 5,000 loans, amounting to $7,597,741, of which $6,000,000 consisted of Scotch capital. The losses incurred in handling this large sum were very small, and it is doubtful if in the financial his- tory of this country, any equal amount, used in the same way, was ever so judiciously or profitably managed.
In 1881 Mr. Reid organized the Salem Mills Company, and in 1882 formed a com- pany with a capital of $200,000, called the City of Salem Company, which first intro- duced into Oregon the gradnal reduction system of milling. This company erected at Salem the largest brick mills in the State, having with the hydraulic use of the San- tiam river, an estimated 3,600 horse power. In 1884 he organized and established the Portland National Bank, of which he has since been president.
Soon after his arrival in Portland, Mr. Reid, in connection with Captain A. P. Ankeny, organized the Board of Trade of Portland, and was its active secretary for a period of six years. Shortly after the creation of this commercial body he appeared before both houses of the legislature, and strongly urged the passage of the first Ore- gon Immigration act, and it was largely through his efforts that the first State Board of Immigration was created. Of this body he was also appointed secretary, holding the position for three years. During this period he wrote several pamphlets describ- ing the resources of Oregon, which were translated into Flemish, German, French, and Spanish, many thousands of them being circulated at the Paris and Phila- delphia expositions of 1876.
The present railroad system of the Pacific northwest owes much to Mr. Reid's enterprise and energy. In 1880 he conceived the idea of constructing a system of narraw gauge railroads in Western Oregon with its terminus at Portland, and was one of the organizers of the Oregonian Railway company, of which the Earl of Airlie was made president, and Mr. Reid local president. The construction of this system met with great opposition from rival railroad companies and the city of Portland. In the fall of 1880, 118 miles had been completed, but when Mr. Reid proposed to locate his terminus on the public levee of Portland, the citizens made a most vigorous fight against the project. The fight was taken into the halls of the Legislature, in the session of 1880, where, after considerable opposition, a bill was passed by a two-thirds vote of the senate and house, over the governor's veto, entitling Mr. Reid's company, which at that time was very popular with the farmers of the Willamette valley as an opposition road, to permanently occupy the public levee of Portland for its terminus and depot grounds. The road was then completed for a distance of 163 miles, and
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HISTORY OF PORTLAND.
liad its road bed graded to a point within eleven miles of Portland at a cost of $2,000- 000, where its further extension to the city was stopped by the Scotch owners of the enterprise, who, despite Mr. Reid's opposition, leased the road to the Oregon Rail- way and Navigation Company for a guarantee rent of seven per cent. upon its paid up stock for a period of ninety-six years, whereupon Mr. Reid withdrew from its man- agement. In 1884 the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company repudiated its lease, as Mr. Reid had predicted it would, upon the ground that the Legislature had not authorized the lease. Much litigation followed, and finally the court appointed a receiver. In the meantime the road had not been completed, and the grant of the levee by the legislature liad expired. Residents of the Willamette valley who would be greatly benefitted by the completion of the road, now appealed to Mr. Reid to again take liold of the enterprise. At their urgent solicitations he again applied to the Legislature for another grant of the forfeited levee, and undertook to complete the road from the place abandoned in 1881 to Portland. The bill which was intro- cluced for this purpose led to another severe legislative contest, the City Council of Portland and the Scotch owners of the former road being bitterly opposed to the scheme. Notwithstanding their opposition, however, the grant was passed in Febru- ary, 1885. Mr. Reid had previously incorporated the Portland and Willamette Valley Railway Company, and at once commenced the construction of the road from the uncompleted portion built in 1880 and 1881, and had the entire system finished to the terminus on the levee in Portland in November, 1887. This road, in which Mr. Reid has been so largely interested, has been of immeasurable benefit to the farmers residing in the fertile valley of the Willamette. Its existence is almost wholly due to his energy and persistence, and partly to the investment of his own capital. He is Vice President of the road, and its successful operation and its direct benefit to Port- land, have vindicated Mr. Reid's judgment, and in a great measure silenced the oppo- sition it originally encountered.
Mr. Reid's success in railroad projects caused the citizens of Astoria in the spring of 1889 to solicit his services to finance aud build the Astoria & South Coast railway from the mouth of the Columbia at Young's Bay to the Willamette Valley, which the Oregon & California Railroad, with a land grant since forfeited, had failed to accom- plish during the preceding eighteen years. Knowing the opposition he would encoun- ter, Mr. Reid for three months declined the task; but after continued pressure from Astoria, and in person selecting his own route across the Coast Range, and ascertain - ing the location thereon of valuable beds of coal, iron stone, cedar and fir timber, he in July, 1889, undertook the responsibility of financing for and building that road, and became the president of the company. In December, 1889, he had fifteen miles of track laid, and twelve more miles graded. He then proceeded to New York, where he obtained propositions from railroad capitalists to supply the necessary capital to complete the construction of the 100 miles (including the Seaside Branch) from Astoria to the Southern Pacific company's line in Western Oregon, and turn the road over, when constructed, to such New York capitalists in conjunction with himself.
So much for a bare outline of the career of Mr. Reid. It leaves untold many, very many, of the directions in which his aggressive energies have found outlet; it gives only a few salient facts in a life crowded with events and crowned with rare success. Enough has been told to prove that he is a man of undauntable will and perseverance,
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BIOGRAPHICAL.
and a sagacious financier. He is a man of remarkable energy, and his capacity for work seems almost unlimited. Always active, ever-on-the-move and apparently never tired, it is a wonder to his friends when he finds time for needed rest. His main power seems to lie in the unconquerable spirit of perseverance with which his plans are pursued. If one path to a desired end is closed, he seeks another; but the object on which he has fixed his eye is never abandoned. He extracts pleasure out of work and appears most happy when organizing the business details of some great enterprise, really enjoying the task for its very complexity.
Mr. Reid was married in December, 1867, to Agnes, daughter of Alexander Dun- bar, of Nairn, Scotland. They have had five children, of whom two are sons, born in Scotland, now twenty and eighteen years old, and three daughters, born in Portland.
M ACKENZIE, DR. KENNETH A. J., was born in Cumberland Honse, a Hudson Bay
Company post in Manitoba, Canada, Jan. 13, 1859, and is a son of Roderick and JaneMackenzie. He is of Scotch descent and representative of a well known family of Ross Shire, Scotland, the old families of Langwell and Aldy, earls of Cro- martie and Brahan, being a branch of the Mackenzies.
Roderick Mackenzie, his father, was for many years Chief Factor in the Hudson's Bay Company service and is now one of its retired officers, living at Melbourne in Eastern township, Canada. He is a man of great purity and strength of character, widely known and respected for his integrity and who made a deservedly high reputation for rare executive and business ability. His wife, Jane Mackenzie, is also a descendent of an ancient family of Ross Shire, and a woman of inany graces of mind and heart.
At the age of seven the subject of our sketch was sent, with an elder brother, to Jedburgh, Rakburglıshire, Scotland, where he entered the Nest Academy, an old and celebrated preparatory school. Here he remained for several years and until he had completed the prescribed course of study necessary for admission to Edinburgh University, which renowned institution he was about to enter when the sudden and unexpected death of his brother caused him to return home and occasioned an entire change in his plans. Even at this time, however, he had determined to enter the medical profession and his subsequent education was directed toward this end.
After his return home his preliminary education was continued at the High School, Montreal, and at the Upper Canada College of Tor- onto. In 1876, he began the study of medicine at McGill University, Montreal, where, after a course of four years, he graduated with the degree of M. D., C. M. Being at the time under age and desiring to further prosecute the study of medicine, before beginning the active practice of his profession, he went to Edinburgh, Scotland, and attended the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. After receiving his degree from this institution he was about to enter a competitive medical examination for admission to the India Medical service, but he was persuaded to abandon this course upon the advice of Surgeon General Alexander Anderson, a relative, who had passed twenty years in India. At this time his father, throngh correspondence with Donald Macleay, of Portland, had obtained information which led him to believe that this city offered a good field for the practice of medicine.
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HISTORY OF PORTLAND.
This was impressed upon his son and was the cause of his final location in Portland. After leaving Edinburgh, Dr. Mackenzie spent a year in serious study in the London Hospital and Medical College, and University College Hospital, London. From there he went to Paris, Berlin and Vienna and at these different cities by study, observation and practical experience, largely added to his knowledge of medicine and surgery. At Vienna he spent nearly a year in a large general hospital practice, following the clinics of the most eminent specialists in that renowned medical center. This valuable experience was followed by a few months of general travel in Europe, when he returned to America and with little delay came to Oregon, arriving in Port- land in the winter of 1882.
Dr. Mackenzie at once entered npon the practice of his profession in his chosen field and from the beginning his success was such as to give him a high place among the city's ablest and oldest practitioners. His reputation as a skillful physician and surgeon has steadily increased and at the present time he enjoys a most extensive and remunerative practice. Among his professional brethren his talents and attainments are universally recognized and conceded to be of higli order, their recognition of his merit and ability having been shown on many occasions. He is a member of the Oregon State Medical Association, of which he was elected president in 1887, an honor never before accorded to one of his years. He is also a member of the Portland Medicel Society, and, as far as his time and professional duties would permit, has sought to make it an instrument to advance the tone and character of the local profession. For inany years he has been one of the surgeons of St. Vincent Hospital. He is consult- ing surgeon of the Union Pacific railroad, associate surgeon of the Northern and Southern Pacific railroads, and professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Medical School of the Oregon State University. His contributions to medical literature have pertained mostly to surgical subjects. Among the subjects treated especially deserving of mention are "Surgical Treatment of Empyema," and "Lateral Curvature of the Spine," which were published in the transactions of the Oregon State Medical Association.
Dr. Mackenzie was married, in 1885, to Cora Scott, a daughter of Pliny Hardy, a well known lawyer of New Orleans and a comrade of Pierre Soulet, a distinguished statesman of Louisiana. They have two children, Ronald and Jean Mackenzie.
Few physicians make such rapid advance in their calling as is illustrated in the career of Dr. Mackenzie. Ilis success may be largely ascribed to his natural love for his profession, his earnest and exclusive devotion to his work and the most careful and thorough preliminary training. Added to the advantages of instruction nnder the best medical teacliers of Europe, lie has been a close student and a hard worker. When he entered upon the practice of his profession he was thoroughly prepared. There was nothing superficial about his knowledge, and when he began to treat diseases and perform surgical operations his skill was quickly recognized by results. Confidence in him, both in the profession and among his patients, was thus early established and his subsequent career has only increased that confidence and added to his reputation.
His practice has been general in character, but has embraced some of the most difficult cases in surgery, a branch of medical science for whichi he has evinced a high order of skill and in which he has performed some very successful operations.
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BIOGRAPHICAL.
His income from his practice is large, and by prudent financial management he lias already gained a modest competency. He takes deep interest in sanitary and charitable work and in many practical ways has done much to advance both. Person- ally he is a gentleman of pleasant and winning manner, has a wide circle of close and intimate friends, and in the social life of Portland is a prominent figure. In a profession where distinction usually comes late in life, Dr. Mackenzie has, while yet young in years, attained to a position in the front rank among the physicians of Oregon-an achievement which, with his strong vigorons intellect, united to a rugged constitution, permitting an unusual degree of mental and physical exertion, gives abundant reason to believe that a career of still greater usefulness and still higher honor await him in the years to come.
ATMAN, HARRISON B., of Portland, was born in Courtland county, New York, February 25, 1826. His father, Harvey B. Oatman, died one year after the birthi of our subject. One year later he accompanied his mother to Bellevue, Huron county, Ohio, where the family remained ten years and then settled in West Liberty, Ohio. Here they remained four years, after which they removed to Elgin, Illinois, and a few years later to Ogle county, in the same State. The latter place was at this time a new country and here Mr. Oatman commenced life on his own account as a farmer on land obtained from the government. On December, 25,1847, he was married to Miss Lucena K. Ross, a most estimable lady, who from that day to the present time has not only shared his fortunes, but has been a most excellent wife and mother and in its highest sense a worthy helpmate and companion.
He remained at Ogle until the fall of 1852, when he removed to Des Moines, Iowa, and the following summer (1853) with his brother, Harvey B. Oatman, and their families, started on the long journey across the plains to Oregon. After several weary months of traveling they arrived in the Rogue River Valley, in the fall of 1853, and here the two brothers and their wives took up a claim of 640 acres to which they were entitled under the donation act, near Phoenix. The old wagon which had survived the journey of more than 3,000 miles was placed on the line dividing the respective claims and served as a place of habitation until a log cabin could be erected, and in this primitive way they commenced life in Oregon.
For fourteen years following Mr. Oatman remained in the Rogue River Valley engaged in farming, mining and merchandising. He was a part owner of the mine of the "49" Mining Company in Southern Oregon, retaining his interest until after he had located in Portland. He also established the first store in Phoenix, which lie successfully conducted for some time. Numerous incidents occurred during the period Mr. Oatman resided in Rogue River Valley illustrating the dangers of pioneer life in Oregon at that day. Perhaps the most thrilling incident in his experience occurred on September 25, 1855. On the preceding day Mr. Oatman, with Daniel P. Brittain and Calvin M. Field, started from Phoenix, each with ox teams and a load of flour destined for Yreka, California. Camping the first night near the foot of the Siskiyou Mountains, the train started up the ascent in the morning, Mr. Oatman in the lead. When within 300 feet of the summit the party was fired upon by Indians. Field and a young man by the name of Cunningham, who was passing at the time, were killed, Mr. Oatman alone escaping of those attacked, as Mr. Brittain,
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