History of Oregon Newspapers/Early Oregon Editors
EARLY OREGON EDITORS
The first editor of the Morning Oregonian was Simeon Francis, who had come out from Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln's home city (How often the name of Lincoln enters early Oregon history!) for the purpose of starting a newspaper. David Watson Craig, also formerly of Springfield, who had read law in the office of Lincoln and Herndon, had written him that there seemed to be an opportunity for a good daily paper in Portland. Craig had worked for Francis for four years as a printer while the future Oregonian editor was editing the Illinois State Journal. Finding the field occupied on his arrival in 1860, Francis went to work for Pittock as a printer on the Oregonian. For a time no name appeared as editor. Finally, on August 24, 1861, the name of Simeon Francis appeared in the masthead. He served as editor for about a year, resigning to become a paymaster in the army with the rank of major.
One of the early editorials in the Daily Oregonian under the editorship of Francis was one dealing with a subject much in the consciousness of Pacific Coast people in the early days of the Civil war—the proposed "Pacific Republic." The article, one of those combination news-editorials so common in those days, began:
While Senator Nesmith was in San Francisco on his way to Washington, he was waited upon by a committee, who stated to him that there was an organization of citizens in California, who had digested and matured a plan for establishing a Pacific Republic. The following were the leading features of the scheme:
[Texas and westward, including Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Sonora, California, and Oregon were to be included in the new republic. The organization was complete, in San Francisco under the auspices of the Knights of the Golden Circle, an order powerful in Texas and Arizona; and after the secession of the South they were to march on the states in Mexico to be acquired or conquered, then offer California and Oregon a partnership in the new republic.]
Nesmith told this to Gen. J. A. McDougal, who used it in a public speech at Sacramento. The general is a decided friend of the Union "as is."
This scheme occasioned considerable concern in the Northwest, and opposition to it was one reason why the father of George H. Himes, a youth then at the beginning of his long career as printer and publisher, persuaded his son not to enlist in the Union army after the firing on Sumter. The two met in the road when the son was on his way to town (Olympia) to see about enlisting. The elder man pointed out that friends of the Union were going to be useful, in all probability, right in their own front yards here at home. The Pacific republic scheme did not develop, but it was a threat.
Francis appears to have made a satisfactory editor for the new paper. His long experience in Illinois and his good general knowledge of newspapering made him highly useful to the new daily. He was succeeded in 1862 by Amory Holbrook, a leading lawyer characterized by Harvey Scott as "an able man but an irregular worker." George H. Himes, who came to the Oregonian from Olympia as a printer while Holbrook was still editor, gives a graphic portrait of him.
"Holbrook had a law office not far from the Oregonian," said Mr. Himes.[1] "He was an able lawyer and had a good practice even while he was editor. He was a striking figure on the streets, in his high topper hat of rough material. I can still see him writing his editorials, as he often did, sitting down in some doorstep on the main street. The back of an envelope would do for copy paper; he seldom used the regular copy paper; and he would take off his high beaver hat and write against the flat top of it.
"His handwriting was clear, and easy to read, and I used to like to set it. His style was concise and compact." Holbrook was less fortunate than his predecessor in handling the local political situation, and his resignation came in 1864 after he had so far offended the Union party that a new paper called the Union was started.[2]
Other editors in this period were John F. Damon and Samuel A. Clarke, who is much better known in connection with the Oregon Statesman and the Willamette Farmer.
Damon had before coming to Portland edited a newspaper in Port Townsend, Wash. Before that he had been a compositor for the publishing house which got out the works of Longfellow, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau. He was one of the fastest type setters that ever came to Portland; his average speed, hour after hour, Mr. Himes recalls, was 1800 ems. At San Francisco piece rates this would have paid him nearly $3 an hour. He is best remembered by all but the very old-timers as Seattle's marrying parson in the 90's—in which capacity his performance ran into record-breaking figures.
Among others who contributed editorial matter in the short pre-Scott period of the Morning Oregonian were H. W. Corbett, prominent Portland merchant, and Judge E. D. Shattuck, former instructor at the young Pacific University which had just graduated Harvey W. Scott as the only member of its first class.
Judge Shattuck had been editor of the News, Portland's first daily paper, in 1859. Here was another New Englander prominent in early Portland. Born in Vermont December 21, 1824, he was admitted to the bar in 1852. In 1853 he occupied the chair of ancient languages at Pacific University, Forest Grove. This was three years before Harvey Scott entered the preparatory department at Pacific and ten years before his graduation.
Probate judge of Washington county in 1855, Shattuck later served in the Oregon constitutional convention, edited the News in 1859, and in 1862 was elected judge of the Oregon supreme court, serving five years. He was occupying this post when he supplied editorial copy to the Oregonian and recognized the possibilities of young Scott, who was studying law in Shattuck's office.
Holbrook's trouble with the Union party coincided with Pittock's clash with the printers, as told elsewhere in this volume.
Clarke, who had been serving as editor, succeeding Holbrook, from May to the end of September, 1864, was sent to Salem to two months reporting the legislature.
This took both him and Mr. Pittock, who was state printer, away from Portland at the same time, and Jim McCown, assistant foreman under Pittock, was more or less in charge of the paper. McCown used to obtain editorial contributions from Corbett, Shattuck, and others as previously mentioned. One day Judge Shattuck, who had been observing young Harvey W. Scott, Pacific's young graduate, then serving as city librarian while studying law, made the suggestion that this scholarly and studious young man, with whose record at Pacific University he was familiar, though he had not been one of his instructors, would be a likely source of good editorial copy.