AN ESTIMATE OF THE CHARACTER AND SERVICES OF JUDGE GEORGE H. WILLIAMS
George H. Williams, Oregon's most eminent citizen, died at his home in Portland on the morning of April 4. The following from, the editorial page of the Morning Oregonian of April 5 is a record and estimate of him as a man and a citizen of this state and nation to which all will subscribe:
"The first citizen of Oregon, a man of great and simple nature, yet of intellectual powers the highest, has passed on into history. His services, throughout a long and eventful life, both to the State of Oregon and to our common country, the United States, have been of highest distinction and value. In him personal integrity, intellectual sincerity, intuitive perception of the leading facts of every important situation, quick discernment and faculty of separation of the important features of any subject from its incidental or accidental circumstances, with clearness of statement and power of argument unsurpassed, marked the outlines of his public character. He was a man who never lost his equipoise, nor even studied or posed to produce sensational or startling effects. In his private life and demeanor there was the same simplicity of character, evenness of judgment and temper and unaffectedness in action. His immense powers, of which he himself never seemed aware, were always at his command.
His public career began at the early age of twenty-four, when he was elected a judge in Iowa. This was in the year 1847. In 1852 he was chosen one of the presidential electors of Iowa, and in 1853 he was appointed chief justice of the Territory of Oregon. After four years of service in this position, in which he did much to lay down the principles of our early jurisprudence, he declined a reappointment and took up
