customers, and under each name the goods they had bought on credit, with the sums due. And while absent for a brief trip to Portland, his good wife, thinking to tidy up the store, got some lime and whitewashed the inside of the whole establishment. On his return and seeing what had been done, he threw up his hands in despair and declared he was a ruined man. The good woman consoled him with the suggestion that he could remember all the accounts and simply write them all over again on the wall. And so the next day being Sunday, and a good day, and everybody absent at church, he undertook the task. His wife dropped in after divine service, and inquired how he was getting along. He replied, "Well, I've got the accounts all down on the wall agin; I don't know that I've got them agin just the same men, but I believe I've got them agin a lot of fellows better able to pay." There were preachers and teachers and all sorts of men in Oregon then, as now.
Another man that dropped in on young Portland the next year after Waymire, was William H. Bennett (Bill Bennett) who, having quit the mountains and the fur trade, started in to make his fortune in making shingles out of the cedar timber on the townsite, which was a gift to him. Bennett got a start and prospered until he was ruined by his convivial habits. He pushed various small enterprises, finally starting a livery stable at the corner where the Mulkey block is now located. The business started by Bennett was owned successively by John S. White, Lew Goddard, Elijah Corbett, P. J. Mann (founder of the Old Folks' Home), Goddard & Frazier, and now by William Frazier at the corner of Fifth and Taylor streets. In 1846 came Job McNamee from Ohio, having come into the valley with the emigration of 1845. McNamee was a good citizen and brought a good family, wife and daughter, possibly among the first ladies of the place, and whose presence smothered down some of the rough places in the village. Mrs. McNamee became the wife of E. J. Northrup, one of the best citizens Portland ever had, and the founder of the great wholesale and retail hardware store now owned by "The Honeyman Hardware Company." Not long after the advent of the McNamees, came Dr. Ralph Wilcox from New York, a pioneer of 1845. Dr. Wilcox was the first physician and the first school teacher of this city, and a most useful and public-spirited citizen, taking a leading part in organizing society and serving the public as clerk of the state legislature and as clerk of the United States district and circuit courts. His widow, Mrs. Julia Wilcox, now over ninety years of age, is still active and an interested spectator of the growth of a city of two hundred and twenty-five thousand people, which she came to in her early womanhood as a few log cabins in an unbroken forest.
And about the same time as Dr. Wilcox came, came the O'Bryant brothers, Humphrey and Hugh, the latter of which became the first mayor of the city in 185 1, a notice of whom will appear with that of the other mayors. And about the same time with O'Bryant came in J. L. Morrison, a Scotchman, who set up a little store at the foot of Morrison street, giving his name to the street, and dealing in flour, feed and shingles.
L. B. Hastings and family came across the plains in 1847 and stopped a while in Portland. He is remembered as an active pushing business man, and stayed with the fortunes of the town for four years. But imagining he could see a larger city at the entrance to Puget sound, joined with Pettygrove in building a schooner, and loading it up with all their worldly belongings. Pettygrove sold out his interests in Portland, and the whole party sailed away in 1851, for Puget sound, where they founded the city of Port Townsend, and where they spent the remainder of their lives and strength in building up a city to eclipse Portland. Port Townsend has about two thousand population today, and Portland has twenty-five times as many, a clear proof that a man's backsight is always better than his foresight.
And now Portland got its first politician and statesman in Col. William King, landing on the river front in 1848. Col. King was an unusual man. He
