and W. B. Taylor, April 18, 1859, in Portland. After Curry left The Spectator, Aaron E. Wait, a native of Massachusetts, became the editor and on February 10, 1848, he enlarged the paper to twenty-four columns.
On September 7 it was necessary to suspend publication because its printer, John Fleming, had left for the mines. The paper appeared again, however, on October 12, with S. Bentley as printer and with the following note of apology:
The Spectator, after a temporary sickness, greets its patrons and hopes to serve them faithfully and, as heretofore, regularly. "That gold fever" which has swept about three thousand of the officers, lawyers, physicians, farmers, and mechanics of Oregon from the Plains of Oregon into the mines of California, took away our printer hence the temporary non-appearance of The Spectator.
Mr. Wait left The Spectator with the issue of February 22, 1849. Soon after the paper suspended publication for a time, but on October 4, 1849, the Reverend Wilson Blain, a Presbyterian clergyman, revived the paper. On April 18, 1850, Robert Moore became the owner of The Spectator, but he retained Blain as its editor.
On September 12, D. J. Schnebly became the editor and about a year later, on September 9, 1851, he became the owner. The Spectator frequently had trouble in getting a supply of white paper on which to print the news and had to change its size. In 1852 it became a distinctly political newspaper to plead the cause of the Whig Party. It failed to receive sufficient support and was compelled to suspend on March 16, 1852. Even after it was revived in August, 1853, the paper was not well supported and finally had to be sold to C. L. Goodrich in the latter part of 1854. With the permanent suspension of The Spectator in March, 1855, the history of the first paper in Oregon ends.
A month later, however, W. L. Adams, one of the pioneers of 1847, used the plant, starting The Oregon City Argus on April 21, 1855. According to the best information obtainable, this was the first real Republican paper, not only in Oregon, but also on the Pacific Coast. Mr. Adams, needing a printer, employed David W. Craig, who had been working on The Oregon Statesman. Starting in as a foreman, Mr. Craig became the
