Portrait and biographical record of the Willamette valley, Oregon, containing original sketches of many well known citizens of the past and present, Part 134

Author: Chapman Publishing Company, Chicago
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Chicago, The Chapman Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1622

USA > Oregon > Portrait and biographical record of the Willamette valley, Oregon, containing original sketches of many well known citizens of the past and present > Part 134

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We had a general merchandise store and he had experimented enough in selling goods to know that his mind could not be tied to the busi- ness. Customers buying tobacco got it at their own price and shopping women objected to his habit of stretching elastic tape when selling it by the yard. There was fun in such things but 10 perceptible profit. He opened the store in the morning while I was at breakfast and took his afterwards, and upon going in one morn- ing and finding the floor unswept, I soon saw what had engaged his attention during the half hour. A magnificent carrier pigeon on the wing, and above it in colored letters, this legend, " How glorious the flight of a bird must be !"

My mind was made up; Homer is an artist or nothing ; he shall fly. As a preparatory step, he was sent to the Commercial College in Port- land, which was of great advantage to him, al-

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though he spent considerable time in his life-long habit. The principal reported him bright, but not sufficiently studious of the works in vogue, and mildly suggested that bookkeeping by double entry was not, as a rule, illustrated by animals, wild or tame. Receiving a letter from me, containing a reprimand for his want of earnestness, hie, no doubt, gave an hour or two to retrospection, and passed in review his various attempts at the employments which afford other men a living, and wisely regarding them as hope- less for him, he turned to the only thing he could do and applied for a position on the West Shore, an illustrated monthly published in Portland. The publisher sent him to the head artist, a Mr. Smith, who eyed the young man rather con- temptuously. "Then you think, Mr. Davenport, that you have a natural talent for drawing?" Mr. Davenport, somewhat withered, thought he had some. "Do you see that man across the street, leaning against a drygoods box? Draw him," and the artist went down stairs and across the street to where the leaning individual was, thinking, as he went, that one egotistical green- horn was effectually disposed of. He was sur- prised, upon his return, to find the green-horn had finished two pictures, the leaning person and Mr. Smith. " Where did you take lessons in art?" "I never took any," said Davenport. Thinking there was a misunderstanding, he asked, " What art school did you attend?" "I never attended an art school." Mr. Smith slowly and musingly ejaculated, " Well, young man, you are either a liar or a fool." Homer felt let down at such abuse, but I consoled him by saying it was the only genuine compliment he had ever received from a professional, though couched in rough language.

Shortly afterwards I said, "Homer, the Fates are against us, we must separate; here is some money, go to San Francisco, and recollect, it is art from this on." We had supposed that the head of an art school would be glad to wel- come a young man with such decided predilec- tions as Homer had shown, and be willing, as well as able, to add improvement and give dis- cipline without attempting to destroy his indi- viduality, but in this we were completely in error. Homer was soon informed that his art was not art at all, but an uncouth vagary which must be forthwith abandoned. Henceforth he must drop his fancies and draw by scribe and rule ; everything must exist in natural and there- fore proper proportion ; expression without it is a veritable nightmare, and the boy who would undertake to draw a figure without, in the first place, blocking it in proportion, is a fool from whom nothing excellent can be expected. This lesson was dinned, with so much rudeness and

so continuously, that the benefit hoped for was impracticable.

Homer was too long for the teacher's Pro- crustean bed, and, therefore, spent very little time in that school. As before, the city with its zoological garden and heterogenous popula- tion became his school, at which he was not laggard in attendance.

A siege of la grippe sent him home, and soon after he got a position on the Portland Mercury, and worked several months for that paper, using star plates, the abomination of all artists. While working there he was sent to New Orleans to sketch . the Dempsy-Fitzsimmons fight, and made some very clever drawings of the com- batants.

The short time he was in the south was very valuable, as it introduced him to a new world, and one rich in that unrestrained and exuberant abondon of the negro race. He returned with his head and heart full of it and for several days was oblivious to all surroundings, until he had put into form the queer characters he had observed away down in Louisiana. He lias never pro- duced anything better than the darkey preacher, traveling on the train through Texas, engaged in his pastoral work. It was equal to anything from A. B. Frost and with the addition of Ho- mer's humor, which is extravagant enough for any darkey, was superb. In sanctimonious swell, the negro divine far exceeded the Rainsfords and Talmages of the north. Though his plug hat was somewhat battered by long and rough usage, his clothes seedy and threadbare, and his patent leather shoes really spurning his ample feet and grinning with more teeth than a shark, they did not prevent a lugubrious flow of re- ligious unction all impossible to the thin-lipped Caucasian.

If I were inclined, like some of Homer's inter- viewers, to distrust the force and persistency of inherited genius, I might say that if he had not made that picture, he would not have obtained his present place upon the New York Journal, and the conclusion would not be as violent an assault upon human nature as much that is written about him. That picture was an evidence of his ability to go up much higher, and I thought so well of it that I sent it with some others to C. W. Smith and Wm. Henry Smith, our cousins living in Chicago, who received them in the presence of the head of the art department of the San Francisco Examiner, and by the aid of those gentlemen, Homer was forthwith employed upon the great daily. But that was only an oppor- tunity and one so hedged about with unobserv- ing control that his expressed desire to begin the work to which he is by nature best adapted, was unheeded. He is a humorist and caricatur- ist, but at that time Mr. Hearst was absent in

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Europe and his art manager had either not made the discovery or was doubtful of that sort of work being a paying investment. Being tied up rather sternly and his pet yearnings often rebuked, he went to the San Francisco Chronicle, where he was allowed more liberty and was fair- ly beginning to show how the world of humanity looks when stretched in the line of its tend- encies, when the desire to see the World's Fair took him to Chicago. At its close, he returned to the Chronicle, and the Mid-Winter Fair com- ing on soon after, he found therein an ample field for the use of his faculties, and exercised them with but little hindrance from the kind and appreciative art manager of that paper. At that time he was getting but $35 a week, and when W. R. Hearst returned from Europe and took in the situation by personal inspection, he saw what all others, managers and artists alike, had failed to see, viz. : that a caricaturist so affluent in imagination, so overflowing with distinctively American humor, so fertile in artistic expedients and withal so rapid in execution, could be put to a higher and more extended use than merely making people laugh. The result of Mr. Hearst's discovery was the employment of Homer upon the Examiner at $100 a week. Everybody knows the rest. The purchase of the New York Jour- nal by Hearst, the transferrence of Davenport to that paper in which the unschooled Oregon boy has proved himself equal to the ambition of his employer.

Anyone visiting him at his home in New Jersey will readily see that although he is no longer a resident of the Webfoot state, in re- spect of character there has been no change. He works from the small hours in the afternoon until near midnight at the New York Journal office in the Tribune building, New York City, and after breakfast in the morning he and his two children live in his barn-yard, that has a larger assortment of choice animals than his father's had. His rest, relaxation and inspiration are with his earliest idols. Game chickens with long pedigrees, from the parks of United States senators and foreign noblemen, aristocratic bull dogs with immaculate hides and no taint of cold blood, a beautiful Arab steed, Koubishan by name, and a real child of the desert with a grace and style worthy his lineage of a thousand years ; a Kentucky thoroughbred carriage horse ; numerous parks of native and foreign pheasants ; quails from the Pacific coast, and carrier pigeons suggestive of the legends of his youth. To be with these and of these, is his only dissipation. Every room in his house is ornamented with pictures by Nast, Remington, Frost, besides his own pen pictures of distinguished men, odd characters by nature, and the abnormal or ex- cruciating shapes of humanity, the products of

social environment, religious mendicants of Rome, cockneys of London, colored southern gentlemen, unscrupulous political bosses and less heartless thieves.

It may be said that he is not a user of tobacco, opium or stimulating drink of any kind, not even of tea or coffee. While most artists are frequently incapacitated for work by reason of intemperate habits and are subject to spells of mental de- jection or irrational stimulation, he is compe- tent every day to get the best output of his faculties. Young people desirous of succeed- ing should think of this, and also that something more is needed to attain success than a "pull." A "pull " at the right time may bring an oppor- tunity, but the main thing is the inside " push " which does not wait for a " pull." And again, Homer's mental and physical make-up is not an accident, as people say ; he comes by it honestly. With controlling art and dramatic tendencies on both sides of the ancestral house, there is no need of exploiting the regions of fancy to account for outcroppings of similar tendencies in the children. And inherited tendencies, what- ever they may be, do not lie dormant all through childhood and all at once spring into prominence, creating geniuses and prodigies. They show from the first, and it is from the early and con- tinuous discipline of such birth endowments that excellence comes. Great poets begin very early to lisp in numbers and great inventors to con- jure with mechanical tools. It is well enough for young people to aspire to high places in the line of human endeavor, but it must be in ac- cordance with their natural aptitudes and tend- encies or they cannot rise. A great amount of time is lost and the lives of many people ren- dered fruitless, by a wrong direction of their energies, and it is to aid in preventing such oc- currences that this brief sketch is written.

[The foregoing sketch of Homer Davenport was written by the noted cartoonist's father, Hon. T. W. Davenport.]

JAMES P. G. HENDERSON. Four miles south of Philomath, and not far from the village of Fern, is located the finely cultivated farm of two hundred and seventy-six acres owned and operated by Mr. Henderson. Here he carries on general farming and stock-raising, making a specialty of Jersey cattle, two hundred and fifty acres of the tract being under active cultivation. Mr. Henderson was born October 17, 1848, in Buchanan county, Mo., the son of Perman Hen- derson, who was born September 19, 1801, near Knoxville, Tenn. With his parents, who were farmers, he remained at home until he was eighteen years of age, when he started out in the world on his own account, going direct to

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Missouri. His first employment was on a farm, but he later became interested in the saw and grist mill business, and with the proceeds of his labor purchased land, at one time owning property which is now the site of Kansas City, Mo.

It was in Kansas City that Perman Hender- son and Miss Sarah Trapp were united in mar- riage. Mrs. Henderson was born in Tennessee August 27, 1805. Until 1852 the young people resided in Missouri, when they outfitted for the west; but before they had gone very far they deemed it wise to retrace their steps on account of the cholera scourge that broke out at that time. In the spring of the following year they resumed the journey, and by means of ox- teams made the trip in five months, experiencing no serious difficulty with the Indians. About one mile from Wren and twelve miles from Cor- vallis, in Benton county, they took up a dona- tion claim on which they resided about four years, and then bought a tract three hundred and twenty acres in extent, located three and one- half miles south of Philomath, a part of which is now owned and occupied by his son James. The father made all the improvements to be seen upon the place at the time he lived upon it, and in addition owned other property, at one time being the possessor of thirteen hundred acres in this vicinity. The parental family orig- inally comprised thirteen children, but with the exception of five all are deceased. Martin re- sides in Californa; W. J. lives near Wren; L. M. resides eight miles southwest of Philomath; Keziah is the wife of W. S. Gibbs, and resides in Linn county, and James is the youngest of the family. The father was a very public-spir- ited man, popular with all who knew him and very successful in all his busness undertakings. He served two terms as county commissioner, and in politics was a stanch Democrat. In the work of the Christian Church he took a keen and active interest, and during his membership of about sixty-five years in that denomination took a part in all its avenues of usefulness. He lived to reach the unusual age of ninety-three years, and his wife died when over eighty-two years of age.

When his parents crossed the plains to Oregon James was a child only four years old, so that he recalls little or nothing of his birthplace. His education was received in the district schools and in the State Agricultural College at Cor- vallis, he in the meantime making his home on the parental farm. His marriage united him with Miss Emma Frances Baumgartner, a na- tive of Oregon, the young people at once settling on their present homestead. Their neat two- story frame dwelling is modern in every respect and is a credit to the owner, as well as to the lo- cality. Five children blessed the marriage of

Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, all of whom are at home, whose names are as follows: Earl B., Mary F., Esther P., Catherine L. and Grace W. Politically Mr. Henderson takes an active in- terest in matters which affect the Democratic party, and always votes for its candidates. As was his father, he is a member of the Christian Church.

CHARLES P. McCORMICK. The McCor- mick farm located three and one-half miles northwest of Woodburn, Marion county, has attained about the highest state of productiveness known to modern agricultural science. With its pioneer development is associated the name of one of the most potential of the early settlers of Oregon-Mathew McCormick-whose land holdings have steadily increased to the posses- sion of six hundred and forty acres, and whose name is honored and respected wherever it is known. For many years assisting in the man- agement of the farm, his son, Charles P. Mc- Cormick, has been in almost entire control since 1897, and may be said to have inaugurated the splendid enterprise of the latter day which has helped to establish the farming and stock-raising prestige of the county and the Willamette val- lev. Mathew McCormick was born in County Meath, Ireland, December 12, 1825, and was seven years of age when his family boarded a sailing vessel for America. Arriving in Genesee county, N. Y., his father, Patrick McCormick, bought a farm. Mathew McCormick spent his youth on this farm with his brother, John. There was need for the boys in the family to embark upon self-supporting careers as soon as their physical and mental powers were developed. At the age of fifteen Mathew McCormick went to Rochester, N. Y., and was apprenticed to a carriage-maker, and while thus employed was interrupted in his work by the demand for his services in the Mexican war. In 1844 he enlisted in the Fourth United States Infantry. At the battle of Monterey, he was wounded above the left knee while charging to take a battery, and was laid up for some time in a hospital. He was afterward sent on a furlough to New Orleans, where he was discharged from the service. Going to St. Louis, Mo., he became a member of the police force, on which he served for a year. For another year he was engaged in blacksmithing and wagon-manufacturing, and in the meantime was looking about for a permanent outiet for his ambitions .. Hearing about the men who were seeking new homes in the far west, he determined to cast his lines with these heroic and daring investigators. Outfitting with five yoke of oxen to a wagon, he set forth upon his mission as a miner and fortune-hunter.

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After six months of varying adventures, he reached California in October, 1849, and pros- pected and mined on the Feather river until late that year, in the meantime finding living very expensive, being compelled at times to pay $1.25 per pound for flour.

Upon the conclusion of his mining experi- ences, Mr. McCormick embarked on a schooner for Portland, and was three weeks on the jour- ney, encountering severe storms on the way. Arriving at Milwaukee, Ore., he remained there for some time, but finally decided to settle in Marion county. His first location was on French Prairie. In the fall of 1850 he settled on his present farm of six hundred and forty acres, known as the La Rock donation claim. Incredi- ble as it may seem, he purchased this entire pro- perty for $1,000. At the time there were but a few acres cleared, and a log cabin had been erected. With this small encouragement he set about to make himself and his family comfort- able, and in time his labors were rewarded with abundant harvests and fine cattle.

In 1846 Mr. McCormick married Johannah Clancey, and of the seven children born to this couple but two survive-John and Charles- both of whom are engaged in farming in Marion county. Mr. McCormick is a Democrat in poli- tics and in religion is a member of the Roman Catholic Church. For about twelve years he served as school director. He is a man of ster1- ing worth, and the value of his services in behalf of the upbuilding of his adopted state can hardly be estimated, nor can it be in the cases of any of the noble and self-sacrificing men who came in the early days to conquer the wilderness.

Charles P. McCormick, manager of the pater- nal farm, was born within speaking distance of his present home March 25, 1857, and has always resided upon the farm. He was educated in the public schools and in St. Lawrence College, Montreal, Canada, and at an early age was taught to assist in all departments of farm work. Together father and son operated the broad ex- panse of fertile land until 1897, in which year the son assumed complete charge, and is now responsible for the success of the enterprise. Beginning with 1890, hop-raising was inaugur- ated with the planting of thirteen acres in that plant. This area has since been continually enlarged, until at the present time he has sixty- five acres under this product. In 1902 the yield from his vines was seventy-five thousand pounds.

On October 24, 1888, Mr. McCormick was united in marriage with Mary Van Wessenhove, daughter of Frank and Ellen (Coyle) Van Wes- senhove, of which union seven children have been born, the order of their birth being as follows : John T., Josephine C., Caroline E., Zeta A., Rosa, Nellie, and Grace Irene.

Like his father, Mr. McCormick is a Democrat in politics, and in religion a Roman Catholic. He is a man of enterprise and energy, is practical and progressive, and his farm is one of the most neat and well cultivated in Marion county. He is highly respected by those who know him, for he has always taken an active interest in those affairs tending toward the promotion of the best interests of his community, and makes good fellowship one of the cardinal principles of his daily life.

WILLIAM J. HUMPHREYS. The Hum- phreys brothers, both of whom are large land owners and very successful farmers, stock-raisers and miners, are men of solid worth, and have materially contributed to the well being of Marion county. William J., the oldest in a family of eleven children, five sons and six daughters, was born in Monroe county, Tenn., December 4, 1828, a son of Thomas M. and Jane (Harrison) Humphreys, farmers for many years in Tennes- see.

On the Tennessee farm Mr. Humphreys re- ceived a substantial home training, and his edu- cational opportunities were those of the early sub- scription schools of his district. In his neigh- borhood was a family by the name of Wilson, who had two interesting daughters, with one of whom Mr. Humphreys became much impressed, his brother, John P., entertaining an equal re- gard for the other sister. A double wedding, celebrated July 21, 1852, united the four hopeful young people who had shared each other's joys and sorrows since earliest childhood, and the following September, the two brothers and their wives, Mr. Humphreys, Sr., and his family, be- sides others from the same neighborhood, started overland for Missouri, where they spent the win- ter. The following spring they outfitted for crossing the plains, and without any particular misfortunes succeeded in reaching their destina- tion in Oregon, having lived well on the way, game and fish contributing towards a varied and by no means undesirable diet. Mr. Humphreys located in the Waldo Hills, and in the fall of 1854 bought the right to one hundred and sixty acres of land of John Greenstreet, the property having a little log house of one room ready for occupancy. Otherwise there were no improve- ments on the place, and the new owner at once began to clear his land and prepare the way for planting. This farm, comprising three hundred and seventy acres, is one of the best in the county, and the visitor is impressed with the innumerable evidences of neatness, thrift and practical man- agement.

In the spring of 1854 Mr. Humphreys bought a claim in Jackson county, Ore., and operated it

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for several months. Since then, however, he has been interested in mining from time to time, at present owning a number of valuable claims. Though living a very busy life, he has invariably evinced a keen interest in general affairs in Marion county, and as a stanch upholder of the Republican party has filled local positions of trust, though he has never aspired to political offices. He is identified with the Grange, and is a member of and liberal contributor towards, the Methodist Episcopal Church. Of the large family of children born to Mr. and Mrs. Hum- phreys, Margaret is deceased; John M. lives near Heppner, Ore .; Augustus lives in Portland ; Texanna B. is the wife of Joseph Rogers, of Portland; Sarah J. is the wife of Grant Ashby, of Antelope, Ore .; Mary L. is the wife of J. B. Ashby, of East Salem; William lives in East Salem; the next child, a son, died in infancy ; Carrie P. is the wife of C. L. Rogers, of Rose- dale, Marion county, Ore .; Minnie C. died at the age of eleven years; and Harrison H. is man- aging his father's farm. Mr. Humphreys is suc- cessful and popular in his neighborhood, and has made many warm friends during the years of his residence in the northwest. He is a man of marked integrity of character, has given frequent evidence of the possession of a high public spirit, and is always ready to assist in the promotion of enterprises tending to advance the best inter- ests of the county.

HON. TIMOTHY WOODBRIDGE DAV- ENPORT. The family which in the present generation claims Homer C. Davenport, the fa- mous cartoonist, as one of its most gifted rep- resentatives, is one which has ever treasured high ideals, and numbers among its members, both in the present and past generations, eminent scholars, litterateurs, artists, sculptors, musicians and scientists-all of whom have striven to at- tain the greatest heights in their chosen fields of endeavor. Creditably maintaining the prece- dent long since established by his family is the Hon. Timothy Woodbridge Davenport, one of the most erudite scholars of the west, a prolific writer on educational and scientific topics, phy- sician, lawyer, ex-member of the state legislature, surveyor and stockman.

Mr. Davenport was born on a farm in Colum- bia county. N. Y., July 30, 1826, a son of Dr. Benjamin Davenport, a grandson of Jonathan Davenport, a great-grandson of Benjamin Daven- port, and great-great-grandson of Thomas Dav- enport. The latter, the founder of the family in America, emigrated from England prior to 1640, locating at Dorchester, Mass. His son, Benja- min, was born in Boston, Mass. Jonathan Dav- enport. of the third generation, was born in

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Portrait and biographical record of the Willamette valley, Oregon, containing original sketches of many well known citizens of the past and present, Part 134

Author: Chapman Publishing Company, Chicago Publication date: 1903 Publisher: Chicago, The Chapman Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1622

Author: Chapman Publishing Company, Chicago
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Chicago, The Chapman Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1622